<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18828">
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>The largest exporter of oil is Russia, more than
the Saudi's.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Yet there was only one bidder, my my a dream
auction.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Is this the real world we live in, or are we back
in the days of sherwood forest with Robin hood and the sheriff.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>The Wizard of Russia <BR>By Michael Bohm<BR>Michael Bohm is opinion page
editor of The Moscow Times.<BR><BR>A year after former Yukos CEO Mikhail
Khodorkovsky was arrested on fraud charges, Baikal Finance Group a
mysterious company with a share capital of only 10,000 rubles ($330)
acquired Yukos' largest subsidiary, Yuganskneftegaz, for $9.3 billion in an
"auction" consisting of only one bidder. After Yuganskneftegaz was sold four
days later to state-controlled Rosneft, Andrei Illarionov, economic adviser to
then-President Vladimir Putin, called the state expropriation of Yukos "the
Biggest Scam of the Year" in his annual year-end list of Russia's worst events.
When Illarionov announced his 2009 list in late December, he should have added
another award and given it to Putin: "the Best PR Project of the
Decade."<BR><BR>The Yukos scam was "legal nihilism" par excellence, but most
Russians have a completely different version of the event. The Kremlin's
180-degree PR spin on the Yukos nationalization should be a case study for any
nation aspiring to create a Ministry of Truth. As Putin explained in his
December call-in show, the Yukos affair was not government expropriation at all,
but a way to give money that Yukos "stole from the people" back to the people by
helping them buy new homes and repair old ones. Putin, it turns out, is also
Russia's Robin Hood. War is peace. Ignorance is strength. <BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Oh by the way Obama's job program is going to cost
100 billion, again another robin hood:)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Frank</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>