One of the disadvantages of having my e-mail address printed in the paper is that I get a lot of weird people communicating with me. (I am not referring to the honoured readers of this blog.)

Most of the offers of cheap Viagra are caught in the FT’s capacious spam-filter. But I seem to get an awful lot of people trying to interest me in dubious-sounding business propositions. Most of them I delete without a second thought. But I think this particular communication has an unusual panache to it.

EMERALDS, FOSSILS AND RUBIES: YOUR VERY BEST ACQUISITION AGAINST ECONOMICAL CRISIS
 
GOOD DAY ULTRA-AFFLUENT PARTNER, DEAREST BROTHER:
 

(more…)

It sounds like something from a political thriller by Michael Crichton. Arab sheikhs and Chinese communists amass billions of dollars. They wait for a moment of financial weakness in the US. Then they use their massive “sovereign wealth funds” to buy large stakes in strategic US firms. They secure places on the board. Then, at a crucial moment, they…

Well, what exactly do they do? Slip out of a board meeting and blow up the building? Deliberately destroy the companies in which they have invested, in the hope of harming the hated Americans?

The fears aroused by the rise of sovereign wealth funds are deep – but vague. SWFs are investment vehicles controlled by governments. They are rich and getting richer. They currently control about $3,000bn and their total valuation by 2015 has been variously projected at anything between $10,000bn and $15,000bn.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.

Some lunches end with coffee in the drawing room; others finish with a brandy on the terrace. But the final course of my lunch with Mikheil Saakashvili is taking place in a Dolphin helicopter, speeding towards a military base in the middle of Georgia.

President Saakashvili – affable over lunch on a terrace in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital – is ebullient once up in the air. As we lean back on our black leather seats, he puts on a CD at top volume: it is Charles Aznavour singing “Je N’ai Rien Oublié”. French is one of the many languages the president speaks and besides – he informs me – Aznavour is of Georgian origin.

Gesturing towards the countryside – and shouting to make himself heard over the helicopter blades and the Aznavour – Saakashvili says that if I look to my right I will see South Ossetia, a Georgian territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists. “We don’t want to fly too close to there,” he laughs. “The last time I did that, they shot a missile at my helicopter.” (more…)

You will be glad to know that the weather is beautiful in Paris. But the outlook is cloudy with showers for Nicolas Sarkozy.

I was here this time last year, on the eve of Sarko’s election. Almost a year later, all that hope and expectation has all but evaporated. A poll last week showed that 72 per cent of French people now have an unfavourable view of Sarkozy’s presidency. This is an astonishing achievement. It took Chirac more than a decade in office to achieve similar levels of unpopularity.

Sarkozy gave a long interview on television last night to try and repair some of the damage. He argued that reforming the French economy was always going to be difficult - and would inevitably piss off important interest groups. (A loose translation, obviously). This seems plausible enough to me. But I think that some of the problems of his presidency are more personal than that. The furore over his personal life has obviously hurt him - and he tried to draw a line under it last night. But in a broader sense, Sarko seems a bit unpresidential. While Chirac spoke slowly in a deep voice and sat very still, Sarko gets visibly agitated and seems fidgety and angry when put under pressure. (more…)

Tensions between Russia and Georgia seem to have ratcheted up a couple of notches, with the story that the Russians have shot down a Georgian drone.

The Georgians are already very anxious about what they regard as further steps in Russia’s “creeping annexation” of the Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On April 16th, the Russians announced that they are opening “representations” in the two territories, to deal directly with Russian citizens there. David Smith of the Georgian Security Analysis centre in Tbilisi argues that - “This is big—tantamount to Russian annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.”

But - as Smith makes clear - the Georgians are pleased with what they regard as a firm western response. The secretary-general of Nato, Condi Rice, John McCain and Hillary Clinton have all spoken out in support of Georgia.

The whole argument highlights the debate about how to handle an angry and resurgent Russia. The “anti-appeasement” crowd will argue that Russia has been encouraged by the refusal to grant Georgia a membership action plan at the Nato summit - and that current developments are an example of Russia testing western resolve. The “understand Russia” crowd will argue that the Kremlin is responding to western provocation over Kosovo - as well as Ukraine and Georgia.

And what do you think?

If you browse down my blogroll, you will see a link to the excellent and eclectic Normblog.

Norm has asked me to write a piece on a favourite book, which you can find here. Seeing my effort on screen, it seems extremely short and perfunctory. But some of the other efforts in Norm’s “writers choice” series are really good. I particularly recommend the essays by John Lloyd, Francis Wheen and Christopher Hitchens.

Nikita Krushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1956, told the western world: “We will bury you.” Now Dmitry Medvedev, the newly elected president of Russia, has come back with a revised offer: “We will buy you.”

In a speech this year, Mr Medvedev urged Russian businesses to emulate the Chinese and to go on a global buying spree to secure new technology and markets. “This is a very important task,” he insisted.

Russia certainly has lots of money to spend. Its currency reserves of $464bn (€305bn, £234bn) are the third largest in the world. It has set up a $127bn stabilisation fund with a licence to invest overseas. Gazprom, the state-run gas monopoly that Mr Medvedev chaired until recently, is keen to buy assets in western Europe.

 Continue reading Medvedev will not declare cold war

March will be a bad month for those who prefer their elections free and fair. On March 2nd (this Sunday) we have the Russian presidential election. Then on March 14th it is the Iranian parliamentary elections. And then on March 29th, Zimbabwe is holding joint presidential and parliamentary elections.

So much for the inevitable forward march of democracy.

It’s a bit of a toss up as to which of these three electoral charades will be the most blatantly unfair. But I would say that things will get progressively worse as the month goes on. The Russian election will be bad; the Iranian election will be really bad - and the Zimbabwe polls will be grotesque. (more…)

With his fancy hats and fluent English, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan cuts a dashing figure on the international stage. But, while Mr Karzai is a regular at Davos, he keeps a low profile in Afghanistan itself. Holed up in his presidential palace in Kabul, he seemed tired and evasive at a press conference there last week.

Mr Karzai’s erratic behaviour is just one reason for fearing for the future of Afghanistan. The Taliban insurgency is still raging across the country. Suicide attacks are occurring at eight times the rate they were in 2006. Diplomats in Kabul are told not to visit restaurants or markets. Last week an International Monetary Fund report portrayed the Afghan economy as based on opium and aid.

Open bickering has broken out within the international coalition that is trying to shore up Afghanistan. The Canadians, who hold the vital region around Kandahar, are threatening to withdraw their 2,500 troops unless allies send reinforcements. Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, has criticised the counterinsurgency efforts of Nato allies.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.

President George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda” has run into the Middle Eastern sand. The president himself will be the last to recognise this. Speaking in the United Arab Emirates on January 13, he hailed a “great new era” of “the advance of freedom”. “My friends,” he proclaimed to the assembled sheikhs, “a future of liberty stands before you.” Then Mr Bush flew on to Egypt and lavished praise on President Hosni Mubarak, who threw into jail the last man to run against him for the presidency.

As Mr Bush traipsed around the Arab world, Freedom House – which monitors political and civil liberties – issued its annual report. It lamented that “2007 was marked by a notable setback for global freedom”. The lobby group pointed to events in south Asia, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. The bad news keeps on coming. The violence and instability surrounding the Kenyan and Pakistani elections has underlined the difficulties of holding democratic votes in relatively poor countries with deep ethnic and tribal divisions.

While Freedom House bemoans the setbacks to democracy in places such as Kenya, Pakistan and Egypt, there will be plenty of others who will shrug and say, in effect: “What did you expect?” The Bush administration has been naive. It is pointless – and often counter-productive – trying to push democracy in countries that are not ready for it. Stability and economic growth must come first.

Continue reading this column here.