In case you need examples:

Saint-Gobain ( 900m euro)
ThyssenKrupp ( 500m)
Hoffmna-La Roche ( 500m)
Siemens ( 400m)
Pilkington ( 400m)
BASF ( 300m)
Otis ( 300m)

All the time?

You forgot:

4) The company abuses its dominant position.

He is clearly talking about the ISS.

I have never claimed otherwise. I would however like to add that oil and gas are not the only raw materials which Russia exports, and that demand is dropping on all of them.

Now, why don't you go ahead and look up how much percent of the state budget comes from oil and gas?

Not good enough. When this much money is on the line, you make space. Besides, it's a way to relieve the world's rich people of their money for the good of the Motherland. These people make some terrible commies, I must say.

That is quite horrid, thank you for bringing it to our attention. With all that paper and plastic that's now in the Washington DC ecosystem, who knows what the repercussions will be. Have you ever seen a hobo trapped in saran wrap? It's tragic.

OPEC has been cutting production, and the oil prices are still less than 30% of what they were half a year ago. Its stock market has lost 80% of its value. Russia has some reserves built up, but anticipates a budget deficit for next year (and possibly the years after that). They have a lot of spending to do, like the announced plans to raise pensions, retool the military, etc. Will the oil prices bounce up? Maybe -- it depends on how quickly we're heading towards recovery (and it doesn't look like we're in any hurry), and whether or not last year's high oil prices had been a bubble in the first place.

In light of this, it seems absolutely mad to cut off a pretty reliable source of funding. The only thing I can think of to explain the decision is that (as someone remarked above), they're simply playing hard-to-get, or that space tourism is not that profitable for them in the first place (which I frankly cannot imagine).

This seems like a fantastic way to help funding the space programme, and Russia isn't exactly awash in cash. Seems stupid.

You're right! It sounds almost too good to be true!

And it's not just around our Sun and our Moon anymore! What the hell is going on?! What is oozing out of our ground?!

That's all in the game. This is the case with any risk measure, alone or in combination with others. The worst-case scenario is the Dies Irae; you cannot take it into account if you want to do any business at all.

The point was (and I am sorry if it didn't come across clearly), that though banks are better diversified on the micro level, this leads to them holding similar portfolios, introducing systemic risk. That is, banks, as an aggregate, are difersified poorly as a result (among others) of Basel-induced VaR contsraints.

So Mr. Mathematically-savvy Man, why don't you go ahead and transform economics for the better? I'm sure there are many more "obvious" things out there to come up with.

VaR is a pretty decent risk measure on a micro scale. The real problem with it is that VaR constraints tend to make banks less diversified, introducing systemic risk. When things go sour, banks are forced to sell off similar assets, and because all of the banks tend to hold assets with similar risk, markets fluctuate all the more.

It is telling that a broad index of hedge funds is better resistant against risk than an index of banks.