|
Morning Africa |
Register and its all Free.
If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox as your Browser. 0930-1500 KENYA TIME Normal Board - The Whole shebang Prompt Board Next day settlement Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.
The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site http://www.rich.co.ke
Looking forward to hosting @EliudKipchoge at #Mindspeak tomorrow from 0930 @ICNairobi |
read more |
|
The Great Mosque of Cordoba, a timeless masterpiece Africa |
An extraordinary achievement of medieval architecture, the Great Mosque of Cordoba, Spain was expanded three times after the original structure was completed in 787 CE. Each of the four main building campaigns through 987 CE respected the spatial concept of the original: a walled-in courtyard and a hypostyle hall built on a grid of modular bays.
What makes the mosque truly memorable is the architecture of its massive prayer hall which, like a forest, feels infinite and unknowable, yet human-scaled in the rhythm of repeating bays. A two-tiered system of arches, built of alternating red and white stones, supports the roof. The arches in turn rest upon slender columns of jasper, onyx, marble, and granite, some of which were reclaimed from ancient buildings.
|
read more |
|
Iran braces for economic war with America @TheEconomist Law & Politics |
TEHRAN’S grand bazaar, a weathervane of politics, is on strike again. Shutdowns there foreshadowed Iran’s 1979 revolution. In 2012 they pushed the government into talks that eventually resulted in a deal, signed in 2015, that restricted Iran’s nuclear efforts in exchange for sanctions relief. And Donald Trump’s pull-out from that deal on May 8th drew an instant reaction from traders, who sense something ominous. “Tehran feels like it did before...1979,” says Pejman Abdolmohammadi, an Iranian lecturer at the London School of Economics.
Iran’s business world was already glum. America’s continued curbs on dollar transactions had muted the effect of the lifting of global sanctions in January 2016. But now, merchants say, America is moving from containing the regime to trying to change it. Mr Trump has told firms worldwide that they have three to six months to cut ties with Iran or face sanctions, too. Oil exports, which rose as a result of the deal, are already falling. Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line, no longer takes orders for Iranian oil. South Korea has cut oil imports from Iran by 40%.
President Hassan Rouhani, who struck the nuclear deal, is struggling. His officials have shut currency exchanges, chased money-changers off the streets and fixed the exchange rate. But most of the foreign reserves needed to calm the market are abroad, and America is making it hard to repatriate them. On May 15th America’s Treasury called the governor of Iran’s central bank a financer of terrorism. The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force reports soon on whether Iran’s banks heed anti-terror and money-laundering rules. This “could knock Iran off the financial system”, says a diplomat.
The regime is resilient, some say. Its economy is the world’s 27th largest. It pumps 3.8m barrels a day of oil, and it is good at smuggling. Muhammad Javad Zarif, the foreign minister, has taken to Beijing and Brussels his ideas for dodging American curbs. They include creating a bank trading only in euros, and depositing Iran’s oil takings in Europe’s central banks. But getting Europeans to forfeit American markets will be hard.
Meanwhile, hardliners have Mr Rouhani in their sights. They say his deal gave up a lot for little reward. With their grip on the judiciary, the security forces and some state concerns, they are squeezing him. They have chased an adviser of his back to London and arrested many dual nationals. Some see in sanctions a chance to resume smuggling. If regime change comes, it could consist of a coup mounted by these dark and well-connected characters.
|
read more |
|
Maersk Tankers ends Iran shipping after renewed US sanctions @France24_en Law & Politics |
Danish shipping group Maersk Tankers on Thursday said it would cease its activities in Iran due to the US decision to leave a landmark nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions against Tehran.
Maersk Tankers would honour customer agreements entered into before May 8, but then wind them down by November 4, "as required by the reimposed US sanctions," the company told AFP.
The group said it "has been transporting cargoes for customers in and out of Iran on a limited basis," without providing precise figures for its activities.
|
read more |
|
28-OCT-2013 @BarackObama and @HassanRouhani The Two Husseins Law & Politics |
THE recent rapprochement between President Barack Obama and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani has certainly snapped a losing sequence in US-Iran relations that goes all the way back to the Iranian revolution in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. The Shah was the second and last monarch of the House of Pahlavi and otherwise known as the peacock throne. Hussein [Barack Hussein Obama] and Hassan [Rouhani] share the same name as did Prophet Muhammed’s revered grandsons. Those who pursue the study of anthroponymy [personal names] especially in the Islamic World probably view this as very fortuitous.
I was wandering around the Hirshhorn Gallery in Washington last year and I came across this from the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei:
What’s in a name?
A name is the first and final marker of individual rights, one fixed part of the ever-changing human world. A name is the most basic characteristic of our human rights: No matter how poor or how rich, all living people have a name, and it is endowed with good wishes, the expectant blessings of kindness and virtue.
Hussein and Hassan are going to cut through a great deal of interference. In this situation, there are powerful vested interests fully invested in the status quo. If the pax Americana in the Middle East were a three legged stool with the US the most important leg, then Israel and Saudi Arabia are the other two legs of that stool. Neither Riyadh nor Tel Aviv are aligned with President Obama’s Iranian rapprochement and Saudi Arabia in particular has become increasingly forthright and is even threatening its own pivot and away from the US.
|
read more |
|
Mr Sadr, who cannot become prime minister because he did not run himself, is in a strong position to be kingmaker. @TheEconomist Law & Politics |
MUQTADA AL-SADR is a master at tapping Iraqi discontent. The firebrand Shia cleric (pictured) directed his supporters to attack the American troops who invaded Iraq in 2003. More recently he has led campaigns against corruption and foreign influence. His supporters ransacked government offices in 2016. And in the election on May 12th they gave his nationalist bloc, Sairoun (“Marching to Reform”), the most seats in parliament. Unofficial results put it unexpectedly ahead, with 55 seats.
The bloc led by Iraq’s mild-mannered prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, came second, with 51. A coalition led by Hadi al-Amari, the gruff commander of the Iranian-backed Badr Brigades, came third, with 50. The surprising result signals growing discontent with Iraq’s sectarian old guard. But it is unlikely to sweep it away.
|
read more |
|
28-AUG-2017 China Rising Law & Politics |
Apart from a few half-hearted and timid FONOPs [freedom of navigation operations], China has established control over the South China Sea. It has created artificial Islands and then militarised those artificial islands across the South China Sea. It is a mind-boggling geopolitical advance any which way you care to cut it
|
read more |
|
05-DEC-2016:: "We have a deviate, Tomahawk." Law & Politics |
However, my starting point is the election of President Donald Trump because hindsight will surely show that Russia ran a seriously sophisticated programme of interference, mostly digital. Don DeLillo, who is a prophetic 21st writer, writes as follows in one of his short stories:
The specialist is monitoring data on his mission console when a voice breaks in, “a voice that carried with it a strange and unspecifiable poignancy”. He checks in with his flight-dynamics and conceptual- paradigm officers at Colorado Command: “We have a deviate, Tomahawk.” “We copy. There’s a voice.” “We have gross oscillation here.” “There’s some interference. I have gone redundant but I’m not sure it’s helping.” “We are clearing an outframe to locate source.” “Thank you, Colorado.” “It is probably just selective noise. You are negative red on the step-function quad.” “It was a voice,” I told them. “We have just received an affirm on selective noise... We will correct, Tomahawk. In the meantime, advise you to stay redundant.” The voice, in contrast to Colorado’s metallic pidgin, is a melange of repartee, laughter, and song, with a “quality of purest, sweetest sadness”. “Somehow we are picking up signals from radio programmes of 40, 50, 60 years ago.”
|
read more |
|
Steep New York cocoa premium drives demand for African shipments -traders @Reutersafrica Commodities |
Cocoa dealers are snapping up West African beans for import to the United States, according to trade sources, as they seek to profit from the steepest premium for the chocolate ingredient in over 40 years in the New York market.
A jump in U.S. cocoa imports from West Africa would narrow that rare premium, which has been widening since late 2017 when a large volume of old or low-quality cocoa supply from Cameroon hit the European market.
The differential between the two international trading hubs grew further when New York saw tightening supplies of higher quality beans as cargoes from Ecuador were rejected by U.S. customs because they were contaminated with a noxious weed.
U.S. futures prices rose to a premium of roughly $240 to London futures by May 1, the highest since 1977.
|
read more |
|
Emerging-Market Malaise Won't Be Going Away Anytime Soon @business Emerging Markets |
By my count, emerging-market currencies are in the midst of their fifth major weakening trend since 2011. The origins of the current downturn are broadly similar to the earlier four episodes, which is to say that a combination of rising U.S. Treasury yields, sluggish equity markets and risk aversion are to blame. What’s different now is that these factors may not dissipate as quickly.
The sensitivity of emerging-market currencies to higher rates is striking. Every major upward move in yields since 2011 has triggered currency weakness among countries with large current-account deficits. So unless there’s a recession or a serious slump that would reverse the rise in U.S. yields, the pressure is likely to continue. In the chart below, the shaded areas represent recent episodes of emerging-market currency weakness. The red line is an index of overall emerging-market currency valuations and the dark blue line is emerging-market currencies with current-account deficits. The light blue line denotes currencies of current-account surplus countries excluding China.
The 2011 and 2015 episodes were largely confidence events, as they came first with the U.S. government shutdown and then with China’s surprise decision to devalue the renminbi. Both were accompanied by weakness in equities (green line). The drop in bond yields (purple line) reflected pessimism. The 2013 and 2016 episodes were driven purely by higher bond yields. It didn’t matter what equities were doing. The current episode is one of sharply rising yields and, at best, a sideways equity market.
Absent good luck, and especially in an environment of rising bond yields, pressures could end up being chronic.
|
read more |
|
"I don't expect a big bang liberalization at any point soon," says Nebil Kellow, an Ethiopian financial analyst and managing partner of FirstConsult. @euromoney Africa |
The government's approach is instead a financially repressive model that employs capital controls and prioritizes state banks funneling cheap credit for public enterprises to build much-needed infrastructure. Furthermore, it claims it lacks the capacity to regulate foreign banks, partly because the sector was only reopened for domestic private lenders less than three decades ago. Obviously, this has advantages for the 17 private Ethiopian banks, which do not have to compete with the likes of KCB of Kenya or South Africa's Standard Bank. Instead, they are up against the state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), which controls more than 60% of deposits, although private banks are steadily increasing their share.
Foreign exchange availability is the current economic headache, which was by no means solved by the devaluation: the birr has returned to a 20% gap between the informal and official exchange rate. The credit analyst offers the standard hope for resolving the hard currency shortage, which is that government efforts to increase manufacturing exports will soon pay off and begin to rebalance a yawning trade deficit, which the IMF forecasts will grow to $13.6 billion, or 16% of GDP, this year. Stuck Although there is reason for optimism, with more electricity being generated and industrial parks occupied by foreign textiles factories, exports have been stuck at around a meagre $3 billion for the last five years.
|
read more |
|
ZAMBIA A swirling fog of debt @Africa_Conf Africa |
The government is suspected of dishonestly reporting its debts, as it chases every last ounce of credit
Creditors, investors and the opposition believe President Edgar Lungu's management of national finances is plunging the country into a debt crisis. The Ministry of Finance issues desperate-sounding statements denying it has lost control of debt figures, while the government continues to issue publicly guaranteed debt to bankrupt state-owned companies regardless – and without adding the sums to the debt statistics. President Lungu has even – unlawfully, constitutional experts say – signed a personal guarantee for a huge loan, so frantic is his government for cash.
|
read more |
|
Zimbabwe's new president may not be able to fix the economy @TheEconomist Africa |
UNTIL recently Priscilla Magaya was an administrator in a printing firm in Harare, Zimbabwe’s sunny capital. Today she spends her days on the side of a street, clutching a thick bundle of different banknotes. A few weeks ago, after two years of not paying her wages, her employer went bust. Ms Magaya turned to money trading, swapping real American dollars for Zimbabwe’s confusing profusion of local paper. For $100 in actual greenbacks, buyers get $120 in bright green “bond notes”—a Zimbabwean currency introduced in 2016 that is meant to be pegged to the dollar—or $140 in mobile money, which is also meant to be on a par with real dollars. Her earnings are “not something that I can survive on”, she says, but she has no other option.
Two years ago money in Zimbabwe was simple: everyone used the American dollar, introduced in 2009 after hyperinflation destroyed the Zimbabwean version. Since then, however, banks have run out of real dollars because the cash-strapped and unscrupulous government grabs them in exchange for all-but-worthless IOUs. Zimbabwe is becoming the world’s first cashless economy, but not in a good way. ATMs are empty. Banks allow customers to withdraw just $20 a day, not in real dollars but in local bond notes. Long queues form each morning. Most people rely on electronic bank transfers or mobile money to pay their bills, usually at a hefty premium.
All this loopiness was originally the fault of Zimbabwe’s former president, Robert Mugabe, who was ousted in a coup last year after 37 years in power. Can his successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, restore sanity? It will not be easy. The fiscal deficit was a daunting 11% of GDP in 2017. Unpaid doctors and teachers are striking. Businesses are folding like useless banknotes. Elections are due by August. The ruling party is itching to splurge cash on pre-ballot handouts and, perhaps, voter intimidation.
Mr Mnangagwa’s best hope is that after he wins the elections he can persuade international lenders, such as the IMF, to renew Zimbabwe’s lines of credit, which were cut under Mr Mugabe. Foreign investors could also bring in more hard currency: Zimbabwe has plenty of gold and platinum, much of which isn’t being exploited.
|
read more |
|
|
|
|