Bordeaux 2006 – a few questions answered

An American journalist put various questions to me yesterday about the Bordeaux 2006 market so I thought I may as well share them with purple pagers since there is clearly some interest in this general topic on the members' forum both here and here.
 
Has the declassification in St Emilion had any effect on prices or is classification useless?
I think this is all rather minor parish pump politics, I'm afraid, even if hugely disruptive for the Bordeaux/French market and doubtless very distressing for the likes of Hubert de Bouard of Angelus who is current St-Emilion president. It...