President Putin is behaving like a corporate President as well as a sovereign head lately, and that is a good thing. Although we would like to see structural reforms to the Russian economy, the next best thing is signing multi-billion dollar business deals with an assortment of countries. First it was a uranium deal with Australia, then deals in metals and defense worth well over a billion dollars with Indonesia, and just recently a billion dollar telecommunications deal with Vietnam, not counting a metals deal that is currently being discussed. Just yesterday a deal for two airliners worth over a hundred million each was signed with Armenia. I didn’t even mention anything to do with energy in today’s update, even though I could have easily talked about what a positive influence it has been the past several days on equity markets here.