[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: Note; Glavred; KP; WSJ(E); EDM (2); Time; FT

[Deychak, Orest]

[The next mailing to this list will not be until July 27 at the earliest.  OD]


Glavred


Президентська місія віце-президента (Presidential Mission of the Vice-President)


Alyona Getmanchuk


In Ukrainian; Russian version also available on the website;  a number of folks on this list are mentioned/ quoted:


http://glavred.info/archive/2009/07/17/150334-1.html


Kyiv Post


www.kyivpost.com


July 16, 2009


Lawmakers end with fights, not legislation


 

The Verkhovna Rada adjourned on July 16 without passing anti-crisis legislation needed for more international loans, but will likely resume in special session later this summer.

Parliament closed its doors for the summer on July 16 without voting on crucial legislation. The end of the session means that an extraordinary session will have to be called to pass amendments to laws on bank recapitalization. The banking measure is part of an anti-crisis package of legislation required to receive a desperately needed $3.3 billion loan tranche from the International Monetary Fund.

After the Party of Regions stubbornly blocked parliament again this week, demanding an increase in the minimum wage, tensions spilled over. Parliamentarians engaged in physical confrontations that have become hallmarks of how they operate.

Scuffles broke out between lawmakers in Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc and Regions deputies, who even turned off the parliament’s electronic system. As jostling lawmakers swarmed around the rostrum, parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn shouted: “Why do we fight so hard for the people, and then spit on them from the heights of the rostrum?”

After lawmakers failed to agree to vote, Lytvyn sent parliament into recess until Sept. 1, although an extraordinary session could be called as early as next week.

Parliament’s inactivity has prevented important legislation from being passed. The unfinished business includes bank recapitalization, the law on presidential elections and Euro 2012 preparations, as well as ratification of a loan from the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development for road reconstruction.

The IMF called for political consensus when tentatively agreeing to disburse the next $3.3 billion tranche of a $16.4 billion standby credit on July 10. Ukraine has received $7.3 billion from the IMF thus far. Many experts warn that the nation’s economy – already deep in recession and expected to shrink by 14 percent or more this year – would sink further without additional loans.

Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, chief of the IMF mission to Ukraine, said that the release of the funds depended on “the completion of prior actions,” namely amendment of banking legislation. The IMF also stressed the need for fiscal responsibility in the run up to the presidential elections.

This clearly didn’t register with the Party of Regions, the largest faction in the Verkhovna Rada with 173 seats. The party is led by Victor Yanukovych, who is expected to clash with Tymoshenko, President Victor Yushchenko and many other candidates for the presidency in the Jan. 17 election.

“The Party of Regions will defend people’s social protection,” read a banner hung in parliament earlier this week. They have blocked parliament since June 25, demanding that the minimum wage be raised. Earlier this month, Tymoshenko – in rejecting the minimum-wage hike as unaffordable – called the opposition’s actions “financial terrorism.” Her eponymous bloc controls 156 seats of the 450 seats.

“This is an absolutely cynical act,” agreed Oleksandr Paskhaver, president of the Center for Economic Development in Kyiv. “From the point of view of politicians, they see it as humanitarian. But any economist looks at it as populist and unjustified in the current conditions.”

Paskhaver said that such a move didn’t make economic sense given the crisis, and that different measures are needed to stimulate demand and get the economy moving. “If you just give money to citizens they will use it in various ways. Only a small part will go on buying goods and services,” he said.

The Region’s skewed economic agenda as well as their attempts to disrupt the work of the parliament and the government are seen as an attempt to capitalize on the crisis ahead of the Jan. 17 presidential election. “Blocking the work of the coalition will allow them to talk about its ineffectiveness,” said Serhiy Taran, director of the International Democracy Institute in Kyiv. “They are going to build their campaign by criticizing the government. They are not interested in resolving the crisis.”

But the stubborn focus on elections could seriously damage Ukraine’s economy and international reputation, particularly if the legislation required by the IMF isn’t passed.

Oleksandr Yefremov, deputy head of the Party of Regions’ parliamentary fraction, told reporters on July 16 that an extraordinary session could take place next week or in August. But Yefremov stressed his party’s continued commitment to getting an agreement on increasing social payments.

“They could pass bank legislation at an extraordinary meeting,” Taran said. “But the Party of Regions will want something in return that’s beneficial to them.”

 


Wall Street Journal


http://europe.wsj.com/home-page


July 15, 2009


The Summer of Eastern Europe’s Discontent


By ANDREW WILSON <http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=ANDREW+WILSON&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND>  and NICU POPESCU <http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=NICU+POPESCU&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND>  | From today's Wall Street Journal Europe. 


Crisis in Eastern Europe has disrupted the last three holiday seasons. War in Georgia in August 2008 caught most European diplomats on the beaches. The gas crisis in Ukraine came during a very cold New Year. And the Moldovan parliament burned during Easter. The EU should be gearing up for another eventful summer.

New elections are due in Moldova on July 29, after the deadlocked parliament twice failed to elect a new president. Another gas row between Ukraine and Russia could erupt in July or August, as Gazprom struggles for revenue to boost its plummeting cash-flow and Ukraine struggles to pay.

Amid this flurry of activity, the EU is taking its ability to influence events in Eastern Europe for granted. That's a mistake. The EU expansions in 2004 and 2007 have actually managed to push the farther Eastern region further away. On a practical level, for instance, visas are now needed to travel from the region to new EU members like Poland or Hungary.

EU expansion has also created less tangible problems for the EU. People in corrupt and divided Ukraine, which sees the offer of EU membership recede over the horizon, ask how their country is so different from corrupt and divided Romania, which has been welcomed into the EU fold. Recent polls in Ukraine, the "linchpin" state in the region, show 42% of the population in favor of integration with Russia, as opposed to 34% with the EU. The local states are weak and are either unable or unwilling to adopt the EU's massive rule-book, which is necessary even to be considered for EU membership. Only in tiny Moldova is opinion solidly in favor of the EU.

The picture is not all bad. The practical benefits of the common market are pulling new member states closer to the West economically. As for the nonmembers in the region, five of the six -- Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan -- now trade more with the EU than they do with Russia; Belarus, the sixth, is the exception. But the EU is failing to transform its economic role into political influence. Russia marshals its resources more carefully, and has learned the power of incentives. It has offered neighborhood states concrete benefits, such as open labor markets, cheap energy and hard cash (loans and trade concessions) during the present economic crisis. As the war in Georgia showed, Russia also uses hard power -- not just with military force, but also with economic coercion. Russia has now had trade conflicts with all its neighbors, each one coinciding with a political row.

The EU isn't keeping pace with Russia in this regard. It doesn't really do hard power. Its occasional use of smart sanctions -- travel bans and asset freezes against the leadership of Belarus over faked elections and the rebel "Transnistrian Republic" in Moldova -- have not borne much fruit. Its soft power is also too often ineffective, particularly on the people-to-people level. Its restrictive visa policy means that the fragile middle class of the eastern neighborhood is excluded from the European mainstream. Education exchanges are minimal, and the EU has no real mass media presence in Eastern European markets that are increasingly monopolized by Russian media and increasingly centralized local governments.

The inability of the EU to transform the region, and the tendency of weak states to play Russia against the West, make the problems so frequent. The crises are not only serious, but multiple and reinforcing. Some result from weak statehood, such as lack of territorial control and state capture by corrupt special interests. Some stem from Russia's attempts to build a sphere of influence (Russia seeks to control the gas energy infrastructure and maintains a military presence in all six states). These problems were exacerbated by the economic crisis, which hit the region particularly hard.

The EU's policy toward the region should not be based on the remote prospect of accession, nor on "enlargement-lite" policies that are effectively trying to export the EU's rulebook and promote EU interests without offering accession or substantial financial assistance in exchange. Instead, the EU should develop country-specific solidarity strategies to deal with underlying weaknesses, such as building on the March 2009 agreement with Ukraine to upgrade its gas pipeline system. Visa regimes for citizens of the neighborhood countries urgently need to be liberalized to boost the EU's waning soft power and promote travel for bona fide citizens of the neighborhood countries back and forth from the EU, rather than the current de facto reality of permanent illegal migration.

The EU also needs to start putting Eastern Europe back on the diplomatic map. The "Eastern Partnership" launched in May is a good start. It aims to re-energize EU policy in the East by offering the region a new set of association agreements, discussion on visa-facilitation, and regular summits. But it started in exactly the wrong way, when Angela Merkel was the only leader from the big EU states to attend the Prague summit. What is needed is an "EU listening tour" of the region, in which leaders from EU states start taking into account the political and security concerns of the region and incorporate them in the emerging discussion between the U.S., Russia, and the EU on the new European security architecture. These discussions currently exclude the neighborhood countries.

While the region is beset by short-term crises, the EU's policies are too long-term. As the U.S. is discovering with its Mexican and Caribbean backyards, problems of poverty, corruption and weak statehood do not stop at the border. The EU is understandably preoccupied with its own internal problems, but these will only get worse if the EU is surrounded by a collapsing neighborhood.

Messrs. Wilson and Popescu are policy fellows at the European Council on Foreign Relations where they co-authored the recent report: "The Limits of Enlargement-lite: European and Russian Power in the Troubled Neighbourhood." 

Eurasia Daily Monitor

July 14, 2009

SBU Challenges the FSB in Crimea

In line with implementing stricter security policies in Sevastopol and the Crimea, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is adopting tougher policies towards Russian intelligence activities in the peninsula. These follow the August 2008 decrees restricting the movement of Russian Black Sea Fleet vessels in and out of Sevastopol without Ukrainian consent. The SBU has officially given its Russian equivalent, the Federal Security Service (FSB), until December 13 to remove itself from Ukraine. SBU chairman Valentyn Nalyvaychenko warned that if the FSB has not left by that date, "then they would bear criminal responsibility. The criminal code contains an article on ‘espionage'" (www.pravda.com.ua, June 28).

The FSB officers also operate in counter-intelligence matters. Russia utilizes its domestic intelligence agency, (the FSB) in its dealings with the CIS, because it is regarded as the "near abroad" (the SVR is used in the "far abroad"). Russian policy would be the equivalent of the FBI rather than the CIA operating in Central and Latin America.

Nalyvaychenko explained that he had consulted the Ukrainian foreign ministry before advising Moscow of the cancellation of the protocol permitting the FSB to operate in Sevastopol. Nineteen FSB officers currently operate in Sevastopol. Russian intelligence has always been thought to support separatist, anti-NATO and anti-American groups and parties, even providing Black Sea Fleet personnel who wear civilian clothes to participate in protests. Nalyvaychenko revealed that one factor behind the decision to terminate the right of the FSB to maintain its presence in Sevastopol was that they did not restrict themselves to the naval base. "Foreign special services operate in the city of Sevastopol. And this is against Ukrainian law," he said (www.bbc.co.uk/ukrainian, June 18).

One member of the Ukrainian parliamentary committee on national security and defense, Oleksandr Skybinetsky, said that most Ukrainian experts in security affairs are concerned that Russian intelligence orchestrates various groups and protest movements that are hostile to Ukrainian sovereignty. The SBU has instituted criminal charges against separatists and brought in political leaders for interrogation. The leader of the Progressive Socialist Party faction in the Sevastopol city council, Yevhen Dubovyk, was recently questioned after he threatened radical steps to unite Sevastopol and the Crimea with Russia (Ukrayinsky Tyzhden, June 12).

A second factor of concern to the SBU is the possible recruitment of Ukrainian citizens who comprise the majority of the 20,000 workforce in the fleet and military-industrial enterprises that provide services to it. Financial inducements are hard to resist when pay in the fleet and its ancillary industries is twice that in other Russian naval units and many times higher than the average pay in Ukraine.

Why the FSB needs to be involved in the security of the Black Sea Fleet is puzzling, since this would more normally be the task of military intelligence. Ukrainian military intelligence operates in Sevastopol and it is assumed by Kyiv that Russian military intelligence maintains a presence within the fleet.

The ostensible reason the Black Sea Fleet claims it needs Russian intelligence units is to safeguard the security of the fleet on foreign territory. The question is against whom? The SBU has offered to provide full security for the fleet. Nalyvaychenko revealed that the SBU had established a new "powerful counter-intelligence unit in Simferopil, Sevastopol and other cities of the Crimea." This unit would be ideally suited to protect the fleet, he added (Nezavisimoy Gazete, June 15). As soon as this unit was established, Nalyvaychenko advised his Russian counterparts that the FSB was no longer required in the Crimea.

The SBU could deal with law and order and terrorist issues. "We do not need assistance or the physical presence of foreign secret services," Nalyvychenko said (Nezavisimoy Gazete, June 15). The Russian reaction was predictably negative and similar to Yushchenko's August 2008 decrees. The Russian foreign ministry reiterated that the FSB was in Ukraine based on earlier agreements in relation to the fleet. They could only be removed through mutual agreement (www.pravda.com.ua, June 18).

Anatoliy Tsyganok, the head of the Russian Center for Military Forecasting, believes that the FSB will ignore the Ukrainian demand (www.pravda.com.ua, June 17). Kiril Frolov, a representative of the Institute for the CIS, warned of an "asymmetrical response" from Russia for this "unfriendly Ukrainian act against the Russian state" (www.bbc.co.uk/ukrainian, June 18). It remains unclear how Russia can retaliate, since Ukraine has no military base on its territory and the SBU only has a minimal presence in its diplomatic representations within Russia.

The old and technologically obsolete vessels in the fleet are not a threat to the four NATO member countries in the Black Sea. The only occasion they have been used is in the August 2008 invasion of non-NATO member Georgia. NATO has long known everything it needed to know about the Fleet. In December 1991, this author faxed to Ukrainian members of parliament, after they had held a successful referendum on independence, xeroxes of the pages pertaining to the Black Sea Fleet in the International Institute for Strategic Studies' Military Balance. Open source IISS publications were purchased by the Soviet Embassy who then classified them as "confidential" and they were subsequently placed in the restricted areas ("spetsfond") of Soviet libraries.

Sevastopol was neglected by Kyiv since independence. The city has few memorials dedicated to Ukrainian history, but is full of Russian and Soviet symbols tying the twice "hero city" to Russia. The city's youth is "educated exclusively on Russian history, Russian patriotism and loyalty to Russian statehood." The fleet plays an important role in this process, which transcends its military function, "especially in the areas of education, propaganda, information and culture" (Ukrayinsky Tyzhden, June 12).

On June 12 Ukrayinsky Tyzhden asked: "What about official Kyiv?" "Well, it (official Kyiv) undertakes a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine." Russian policies towards Sevastopol are conducted within the context of "great power politics." Ukrainian policies in contrast are "the private affair of individual patriotically inclined persons who have become accustomed to disinterest from official Kyiv" (Ukrayinsky Tyzhden, June 12).

--Taras Kuzio

Eurasia Daily Monitor

July 15, 2009 

IMF Confirms Sharp Contraction in the Ukrainian Economy

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) completed the second review of its stabilization program for Ukraine on July 10. A visiting IMF delegation recommended that the IMF board grant Ukraine the third $3.3 billion tranche of the $16.4 billion stand-by loan. Kyiv received the previous two tranches of the loan totaling $5.3 billion in November 2008 and May 2009.

Indeed, the results of the review were a setback for the government of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Less money will arrive than she expected. The third tranche, if approved by the IMF board later this summer, will be $500 million less than the $3.8 billion that she wanted. Moreover, the IMF presented new conditions in addition to those that the government previously failed to meet, such as pension reform and improving the management of the state-owned oil and gas behemoth Naftohaz Ukrainy. Now the government will have to increase domestic gas prices every quarter in order to lower Naftohaz's budget deficit. This will be painful not only for the domestic industries that rely heavily on gas, but also for the population whose real incomes plummeted by 13 percent in the first quarter of 2009 alone.

Possibly the most painful setback for Tymoshenko's government was the correction of the IMF's forecast for Ukraine's economic performance in 2009. The IMF now expects GDP to contract not by 8 percent as it originally expected, but by a staggering 14 percent -which is another confirmation that the Ukrainian economy was severely damaged by the global recession. Tymoshenko might eventually admit that her forecast for 0.4 percent GDP growth, on which the state budget was based, was overly optimistic as her arch-rival President Viktor Yushchenko warned when the budget was passed late last year. Consequently, the IMF expects the state budget deficit to jump from 4 percent, as agreed with Tymoshenko earlier, to 6 percent. On the positive side, the IMF corrected its forecast for inflation from 16 percent to 13 percent (www.imf.org, July 10).

The revision of these forecasts was due to the negative developments in the first quarter of 2009, when the economic downturn was more pronounced than expected, as the IMF explained. Ukraine's GDP fell by 20.3 percent in the first quarter, the worst contraction in the region and probably the fastest quarterly contraction of the national economy since 1991.

The IMF's forecast for GDP was its most pessimistic so far. In late June a pool of local analysts forecast a 12.8 percent decline (Interfax-Ukraine, June 22). The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said in early May that it expected Ukraine's GDP to contract by 10 percent in 2009. There has been more optimism concerning 2010, with the IMF and the World Bank expecting 1 percent growth and the EBRD forecasting zero growth. Taking into account the low GDP figure for the first quarter, which was made public by the Ukrainian statistics committee only in late June, other international financial organizations should also correct their forecasts.

Despite these gloomy predictions, the IMF mission praised the Ukrainian government, noting that, "macroeconomic and financial policies in Ukraine have been broadly on track." The targets agreed with the IMF during the first review in the spring regarding base rates and the central bank's reserves were met, and the government "made good progress in the resolution of the systemic problem banks," the IMF said (www.imf.org, July 10). Between the first and second reviews of the IMF stabilization program, the government completed the bailout of three mid-size banks out of the five agreed with the IMF. However, the bailout of two larger banks, Nadra and Ukrprombank, is far from complete since the government has refused to buy them until after they restructure their foreign debts.

Ahead of the January 17 presidential election, the IMF has inevitably become a factor in domestic politics. It refused to allow Tymoshenko to use the whole $3.3 billion tranche of its loan to cover the budget deficit, forcing her to tighten fiscal discipline, which means that the demand of the opposition Party of Regions (PRU) to increase wages and pensions cannot be met (EDM, July 8). This is a boon to the PRU's presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, who will not miss any opportunity to portray himself as a defender of the people's interests, while his main rival Tymoshenko has accepted the conditions of the "foreigners" from the IMF.

The PRU also accused the IMF of indirect interference in the election campaign. PRU shadow finance minister Mykola Azarov claimed that the IMF continues to assist the government in order to help Tymoshenko's party stay in power. He said that when the PRU was in power, the IMF did not provide assistance to Ukrainian governments ahead of crucial elections. "The IMF would tell us in an election campaign that it would take no decision until after the election," said Azarov. He noted that Tymoshenko's government has been aided by the IMF despite its failure to meet IMF conditions, in particular on the budget deficit and on reforming Naftohaz Ukrainy. According to Azarov, this provides proof that the IMF is guided by political considerations (UNIAN, July 6).

--Pavel Korduban

TIME/CNN

 

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1910689,00.html

 

Wednesday, Jul. 15, 2009

No Sex, Please: Ukraine Bans Brüno

By James Marson / Kiev

It seems there's some truth to the saying "There is no sex in the Soviet Union." When Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan hit cinema screens in 2006, few were surprised that the real-world home of Borat, the idiot-innocent Kazak main character, decided to ban the film as a matter of pride. But now censors in Ukraine are giving his latest film, Brüno, the same no-show treatment, claiming morality — not hurt feelings — as the reason. 

Baron Cohen's comedy may be raking it in at the U.S. box office, but the Ukrainian Culture Ministry has failed to see the funny side. It has decided that Brüno's edgy parody of homophobia, with its numerous risqué sex scenes, is too much for Ukrainian citizens to handle and has nixed the film's distribution. Maksym Rostotskiy, a member of the Ministry of Culture's Expert Commission on Film Distribution, says he felt obliged to ban the film "as a psychologist and a lawyer," adding that it contains "scenes of homosexual relations with elements of sexual perversions." 

The film, which follows a gay Austrian reporter's quest for fame in the U.S., was due to be released in Ukraine next week. But the commission felt that the country, with its conservative Catholic west and Orthodox east, was just not ready for Brüno and the character's over-the-top sexual antics, including an explicit romp with his pint-size boyfriend and oral sex with a ghost. 

Nine out of 14 experts on the commission voted to ban the film, Deputy Culture Minister Tymofiy Kokhan, head of the commission, tells TIME. In their reports they noted that the film "contains artistically unjustified pictures of the sexual organs, homosexual acts, homosexual perversions, sadism and anti-social behavior that could damage citizens' moral health." Kokhan says he would have been inclined to allow the film to be released on DVD, but the majority vote took the decision out of his hands. 

Critics have lambasted the ban, saying it reeks of moral censorship. "It's a very worrying sign if the Ukrainian authorities say they are banning the film because of homosexual scenes," says Evhen Minko, chief editor of media-watchdog magazine Telekritika. Given the way the film lampoons intolerant attitudes toward homosexuality, the joke seems to be on them. "They didn't understand it," says Minko. "The commission's interpretation of the film is a parody in itself." 

Ukraine's parliament has been on a moral crusade of late, banning gambling last month and, in the past few weeks, prohibiting the possession and production of pornography. Observers have expressed concern that such decisions are a sop to retrograde social forces that oppose liberalization and have the support of the generally conservative Ukrainians. With a presidential election scheduled for Jan. 17, politicians seem to be on the lookout for ways to give themselves a boost in the polls. "[They] are trying to make an impression on society by using the most extreme methods," says Taras Karasiychuk, director of the Gay Alliance of Ukraine. "It's more populism than a desire to protect morals."  

Karasiychuk says the ban was not surprising in a country where latent homophobia is fed by a lack of knowledge and stereotyping. But Deputy Culture Minister Kokhan denies that the decision was primarily motivated by issues of homosexuality, pointing out that Brokeback Mountain was distributed in Ukraine after its release in 2005. 

It's not only Ukrainian sensibilities that Brüno has managed to upset. Universal Pictures has decided to release a toned-down version of the film in Britain, after cutting out some of the more explicit scenes in the hope of taking it from an 18 rating (meaning only those over age 18 can see it) to a 15. 

But Kokhan remains unimpressed. "Watch this film, and it will answer most of your questions [about the ban]," he says. "It's not a film of the artistic values that Ukrainian viewers need." 

Financial Times

www.ft.com

Investors want greater transparency after Ukraine CDS prices soar

By David Oakley 

Published: July 17 2009 

The lack of transparency in the credit defaults swaps market has been a cause for concern in Ukraine, where the cost of insuring bonds against default rocketed to astronomical levels this year, writes David Oakley .

Ukraine's sovereign CDS price surged to a record 5,383 basis points on March 5 - extremely high, even accounting for the country's dire economic outlook. Argentina, which has a much weaker economy, has never had such high levels.

The cost of insuring Ukraine debt rose sharply from about 3,000bp at the start of February, leading to speculation at the time that the price jump would benefit some of the banks because they had large short positions through buying CDS contracts at much lower levels.

Investors speculate that one bank thought to have hedged itself by buying Ukraine's CDSs was Morgan Stanley, which had also pulled a loan for Ukravtodor, Ukraine's public road fund, in early February.

Morgan Stanley would not comment on its trading positions but the bank stresses that it would not go short on a borrower deliberately in the hope that it would default.

The bank said it pulled the Ukravtodor loan because covenants were triggered when Ukraine's sovereign ratings were downgraded as its outlook deteriorated.

Lack of liquidity in the market was also responsible for pushing prices artificially high, something that has affected the sovereign CDS prices of industrialised countries such as Austria and the UK. The cost to protect their debt shot up at about the same time as Ukraine, although to nothing like the same extent.

Austria's CDSs hit a record 268bp in early March - almost double the levels of a month earlier, while UK prices rose to record highs of 164bp in mid-February - again almost double the levels of a month earlier.

These prices seemed artificially high considering neither country was ever likely to default on its debt.

However, in spite of the lack of liquidity and transparency, most analysts still believe CDS prices are useful and relevant.

Meyrick Chapman, fixed income strategist at UBS, says: "Credit default swaps can be a good measure of risk. CDS may not be that liquid among the sovereigns, but it is still a fairly useful measure of risk."

He says investors often speculate about unusual market moves when they have been on the wrong side of a trade. "It has been known for investors to claim market manipulation when they lose money - and that can happen in any market."

 

 

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