[FPSPACE] A bit off topic, but the rammifications are relevant...

[Igor Lissov]

No we should have retained Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and lost
$65 billion. Are you really mad, Peter? :-)

More on topic, if tomorrow's Obama budget will indeed cancel
Constellation entirely, here in Russia we will probably lost
the drive to the new spaceship/rocket/launch site program.
Should I see the Obama move as an attempt to force the Russian
government to kill our future space program?

Igor Lissov

> It appears that Putin attempted, before and during the height of the late
> 2008 economic crisis, to severely damage the USA economically (beyond what
> was happening already) by dumping Russia's entire shareload of Fannie Mae
> and Freddie Mac stock, and concurrently attempted to get the PRC to do the
> same, at the same time.  The PRC demurred.