Let me begin with an amusing image: me, age 11, on a purple skateboard…

And then me, sprawled out on the pavement, thankful my mom forced me to wear a helmet.

I was never very good at skateboarding. My younger brother was, and he always used to show me up. But I always loved watching him do tricks, like ollies and kickflips… 360s off the loading platform behind the school cafeteria.

So I’ve got a bit of a softspot for this sport. Which is why I wanted to share this little article with you from the International Herald Tribune. A skateboarding school is waiting final approval in Kabul, Afghanistan.

It’s an unlikely place for a skateboarding school, but the kids can’t seem to get enough of it.

The idea began as an after-school program, and its main goal is to help bring a bit of normalcy into these kids’ lives. Even girls are allowed to join in the fun, and this one quote, from Maro, a 9-year old girl, really hits home:

“It gives me courage, and once I start skating, I completely forget about my fears.”

And that’s reason enough.

With cash-strapped companies coming cup-in-hand to their equally cash-strapped governments, the world over is looking for Warren Buffett-sized checkbooks to help ease the credit crunch.

Increasingly, the world is looking to China and its $1.9 trillion in reserves.

Should China whip open its gigantic checkbook to bailout the global financial system?

Does it even want to?

China’s been burned before with its investments in the U.S. financial sector. It has a 9.9% stake ($5 billion) in Morgan Stanley (MS:NYSE) that has been pummeled by the industry-wide downturn. And some Chinese leaders believe that the U.S. and Western Europe should clean up their own mess.

Continue Reading »

News from Asia Times Online has a tiny Caspian county rivalling Mother Russia for regional energy dominance.

In an announcement on October 13, British consultant group Gaffney, Cline & Associates valued Turkmenistan’s natural gas resources for its new Yoloten-Osman field at 4 trillion cubic meters… at least.

On the high side of the estimate, this field could contain as much as 14 trillion cubic meters.

The U.S. consumes 604 billion cubic meters a year, so this is a massive find! It’s also five times the size of Turkmenistan’s previous favorite field.

This new reserve estimate came as a big shock to Russia’s Gazprom (GAZP:Russia), who’d picked up a giant contract with Turkmenistan’s state-owned energy company, Turkmengaz. The contract, signed on July 25 earlier this year, meant Turkmenistan would export 50 billion cubic meters a year to Russia through 2009. Gazprom needs these exports to meet its contracts with Europe, as the company exports about two-thirds of its total production.

Continue Reading »

Over the past several months, the investment world has turned its ever-roving eye on the Middle East and North Africa.

Since July, four new exchange traded funds have hit the market focusing on these regions. They are the WisdomTree Middle East Dividend Fund (GULF:Nasdaq), the Market Vectors Gulf States Index ETF (MES:NYSE), PowerShares MENA Frontier Countries Portfolio (PMNA:Nasdaq), and the SPDRs S&P Emerging Middle East & Africa ETF (GAF:AMEX).

But the one thing lacking in these ETFs is investments in Iran.

Of course, the U.S. has decreed it will not make investments in Iran, who it considers a state-sponsor of terrorism. That’s nothing to fool around with.

While much of the Western world stands firm by not investing in Iran, other nations, like China and Russia aren’t quite as righteous. Russia has repeatedly stood against strong sanctions in response to Iran’s nuclear program… as has China, but for different reasons. Iran and Russia have a history that goes back to before the Cold War. But China…

Iran is the world’s fourth largest oil exporter, and China, in early December 2007, signed a $2 billion deal with the country to secure oil supplies.

Continue Reading »