February 13, 2009
Where Citi Is, Trouble Soon Follows
Posted by James Surowiecki

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/jamessurowiecki/2009/02/where-citi-is-t.html

As I argued in my last post, we need to be careful about extrapolating from history, particularly when the historical record is short. That’s one reason why I’m not convinced that nationalizing most of our major banks is the best solution to our current financial problems. But I will say that if the recent history of our financial system tells us anything, it’s that it’s a miracle (and not in the good sense) that at least one bank—Citigroup—hasn’t already been taken over. This is a bank that was, by most accounts, technically insolvent in the early nineteen-eighties, as a result of the Latin American debt crisis. It was in serious trouble again in the early nineteen-nineties—Congressman John Dingell actually gave a speech in 1991 saying it was insolvent. And it’s been a major player in, and cause of, our current financial crisis, with a chorus of analysts declaring that, once again, its liabilities are greater than its assets. It does make you wonder how many lives it has, and it also makes you wonder why, after its earlier woes, regulators ever allowed it to get this big.

Vladimir Putin Cuddles With A Puppy Seen On www.coolpicturegallery.us
And yes, this is very real. Vladimir Putin was presented with a Bulgarian Shepherd puppy after he signed a deal with Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov to provide Bulgaria with cheaper oil.

Prominent Russians: Vladimir Putin

Born October 7, 1952

At the stroke of the 21st century, Vladimir Putin became one of the worlds’ most well-known politicians. Today his name is associated worldwide with Russia’s rise from the ashes – both economically and politically. But the second Russian President’s career had a rather humble beginning. Vladimir Putin’s parents could hardly have imagined that their beloved son would one day take the helm of their vast country when he was born on 7 October 1952 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). His mother, Maria Ivanovna Shelomova, was a factory worker and his father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, a conscript in the Soviet Navy, where he served in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s.

The family lived in a small communal apartment when 8-year old Vladimir started school number 193, just across the street from his home. Putin’s first teachers remember him as a rowdy pupil. By 5th grade he was the only one in his class not to be a member of the Pioneers movement (a popular youth movement of the Soviet era) – largely because young Putin often misbehaved. All this changed, however, when he reached 6th grade and began practicing sports – namely martial arts like judo. In his autobiography, “Ot Pervogo Litsa” (“In the First Person”), Vladimir Putin wrote that back then his main motivation for taking up martial arts was a wish to emulate the intelligence officers portrayed on Soviet screens by actors like Vyacheslav Tikhonov.

Having graduated from high school in 1970, Putin entered the International Law Branch of the Law Department of Leningrad State University. He became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and got acquainted with the man who was destined to change his fate later on – Leningrad’s future mayor Anatoly Sobchak. After graduating from University, Putin decided to realize his childhood aspiration to work in the intelligence field. In 1975 he underwent training at the 401st KGB school in Okhta, Leningrad. He then went on to work in the Second Department (counter-intelligence) before he was transferred to the First Department, where his duties included monitoring foreigners and consular officials in Leningrad.

In 1985 his KGB career took a new twist – a fluent German speaker, Putin was sent to Dresden in East Germany, where Soviet troops were stationed at the time. He still remembers those years with special delight, which he confirmed in an interview on the on the anniversary of the troops’ pullout. After Soviet troops left East Germany, Putin returned to Leningrad where, in June 1991, he assumed the position of surveillance officer with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University. But the stint was short-lived – Putin formally resigned from the state security services on 20 August 1991, during the KGB-supported coup d’etat against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Nevertheless, his work at Leningrad State University got him re-acquainted with Anatoly Sobchak, then mayor of the city. It was Sobchak who brought Vladimir Putin into politics.

On 28 June 1991 Putin was appointed Head of the Committee for External Relations of the Saint Petersburg Mayor's Office. He was responsible for promoting international relations and foreign investments, as well as registering foreign business ventures in Saint Petersburg. Putin remained in this position until 1996. Nowadays, even his current political critics say that back then Putin was famed for his resistance to the temptation of corruption – self-exiled Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky is often cited by the media as saying, “Putin never took bribes during his time in the office.”

The future president’s career in St. Petersburg ended with that of his patron. In 1996 Sobchak lost a mayoral vote and Putin lost his job. But his talent didn’t go unnoticed and he was summoned to Moscow to work in President Boris Yeltsin’s Administration. Just a year later, in 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin to head the Russian security services – the FSB. Yet again, his career at this post lasted for only a year – on 9 August 1999 Vladimir Putin was appointed Russia’s prime minister. In those years of political uncertainty, he became the country’s 5th head of government in less than eighteen months. Few expected Putin, who was virtually unknown to the general public, to last any longer than his predecessors. Moreover, his first premiership came amid a worsening crisis in the North Caucasus, where militants from Chechnya had invaded the neighboring Dagestan Republic – that’s when Putin said his memorable phrase about his “firm intention to kill militants even when they’re in a toilet.”

The Chechen military campaign and Putin’s tough stance against it forged his image in – and outside – Russia, and despite hard-fought campaigns by other candidates for the presidency, Putin's hard-line politics, his law-and-order image and his unrelenting approach to the crisis in Chechnya soon propelled him to victory over all his rivals. Just hours before the clock marked the New Year in 2000, Boris Yeltsin unveiled a big sensation – in a televised address to the nation he announced his early retirement and recommended Vladimir Putin as his successor - another career change in less than a year. Putin was now a stand-in president of the Russian Federation – a status that changed to acting president after a presidential election in March 2000 that Putin won in the first round with 52.94 percent of the vote.

Vladimir Putin’s first chapter as Russia’s president could be better described as “an up-and-down period in modern Russian history.” Russia’s economy was booming and Putin implemented major changes to the country’s power structure. He also made sure that influential tycoons of the Yeltsin-era, sometimes called oligarchs, would no longer control politics in their favor. Such steps were greeted with support from Russians, most of whom blamed the wealthy businessmen – not always with legitimate backgrounds – for the severe economic crisis of the late 1990s. But amid a growth in the quality of living, Russia went through a difficult and violent time dealing with Chechen terrorists. On several occasions – like the Moscow theater siege, bombings of metro and apartment buildings in the Russian capital and the hostage taking in a Beslan school – the militants made it clear that they were willing to take the Chechen war beyond the republic’s borders. The whole country was gripped by fear. In these circumstances, Putin had to react with tough measures. His hard-line policies towards building security in the country were sometimes criticized by the Western media, but after the militant movement in the Northern Caucasus was suppressed and Chechnya finally saw peace, the Russian public openly declared their loyalty to Vladimir Putin. At the start of his second presidential term (which he again won in the first round with 71 percent of the vote), he enjoyed his all-time highest approval rating of more than 80 percent.

As the country continued its vast economic growth during Putin’s second term, which started in 2004, Russia’s foreign policy came into the spotlight. Despite being strongly criticized by the Western media during his second term for what it called “autocracy” and “strangling the freedom of the press,” Putin managed to mend the greatest drawback of the Yeltsin-era – Russia finally had its voice heard in the international arena and became an important player in the global decision-making processes. Putin was strongly critical of US foreign policies. In 2007 he gave a memorable speech during a security conference in Munich, where the Russian leader lashed out at Washington’s attempts to govern the whole planet and called for the creation of a democratic multi-polar world, with the rule of international law.

As the Russian constitution didn’t allow the president to run for a third consecutive term, at the end of 2007 – several months ahead of the presidential vote – Vladimir Putin announced that he would support Dmitry Medvedev as his successor. Medvedev, in return, said that should he win the election, he would appoint Putin as prime minister. The result of the vote spoke for itself – having come practically out of the blue, Medvedev won in the first round as well with 70.28 percent of the vote, signaling the non-diminishing support for Putin’s way of controlling Russia’s policies. On 8 May 2008, Vladimir Putin began his second spell as Russia’s prime minister – a post he has successfully occupied ever since.

http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/leaders/vladimir-putin/