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Friday 07th of September 2018 |
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The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site http://www.rich.co.ke |
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Why the big bang was not the beginning @newscientist Africa |
WE ARE told it was big, yet it was probably unimaginably small. We are told there was a bang, yet there was apparently no sound, and no space for anything to explode into. Some think it might have happened multiple times, so even its definite article is in doubt.
Although everyone has heard of the big bang, no one can say confidently what it was like. After all, recounting the beginning of time is about finding not just the right words, but the right physics – and ever since the big bang entered the popular lexicon, that physics has been murky.
Perhaps no longer, thanks to an unusual way of delving into our universe’s backstory that has emerged over the past few years. In this view, the essence of space and time can exist beyond the confines of the cosmos, but in a state of roiling chaos we would not recognise. The big bang is not a hard-and-fast beginning, but a moment of profound transformation – one quite different from anything most of us could have imagined.
Though often misattributed to the US astronomer Edwin Hubble, the basic idea of the big bang dates back to the Belgian priest and astronomer Georges Lemaître, who observed in the late 1920s that the universe is expanding. Extrapolating backwards, Lemaître imagined a “primeval atom” that ballooned into everything we see today.
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a tsantsa, or shrunken, mummified head with hair from the Shuar, a group of Jivaroan peoples from the Ecuadorean Amazon @financialtimes Africa |
The museum displayed a tsantsa, or shrunken, mummified head with hair from the Shuar, a group of Jivaroan peoples from the Ecuadorean Amazon. According to a museum file, shrunken heads, which were used as war trophies, were made by “removing the skull from the skin, leaving the hair”, which “made the skin shrink without losing its physiognomy.”
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"China remains the linchpin. If the trade war sinks China's economy, the emerging world and rest of Asia will inevitably feel the full gravity of the downforce." Africa |
China’s growing share of the global economy means its familiar role as the bulwark between emerging market pain and developed economies has never been more crucial.
This year’s turmoil in markets across Argentina, Turkey, South Africa and now spreading to Asia has done little damage to the growth outlook for most developed economies. Indeed, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has showed little sign he’ll slow the pace of monetary tightening, which is causing so many strains across the developing world.
If the slowdown in China’s economy gets much worse though, it’ll be a different story. The $12 trillion economy faces fresh challenges as Donald Trump mulls new U.S. tariffs on up to $200 billion of Chinese imports, which may be announced as soon as this week.
China makes up about 15 percent of the global economy versus just 3 percent during the Asian crisis two decades ago and contributes more than 30 percent of global growth. It’s the biggest trading partner for many emerging markets and the largest buyer of many commodities they rely on.
"China is the locomotive that keeps the EM train rolling along," said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economics research at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong. "Slowing growth in China thus poses an especially acute challenge to emerging markets, after already grappling with higher dollar funding costs for their debt."
In an extreme scenario that few are expecting, a hard landing for China would unleash a "tsunami of contagion" according to Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific Chief Economist at IHS Markit.
"The shock waves of contagion would also spread more widely to other global emerging markets, notably commodity exporting nations, as world commodity prices for key commodities such as iron ore, copper and aluminum would also fall sharply," says Biswas.
Conclusions
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Stalking Bubbles: Paul Tudor Jones 1987-1990 Insecurity Analysis Africa |
I don’t want to encourage anyone to adopt a global macro strategy, or to look for bubbles to short, or even to actively trade in general. Rather, I think of Jones’s extensive comments as a kind of case study. His principles have been studied by generations of traders. How does this episode illustrate his philosophy? What can we learn about his decision-making process? How did he implement his ideas?
“The week of the crash was one of the most exciting periods of my life.” Paul Tudor Jones[1]
The year 1987 made Paul Tudor Jones famous as the man who had predicted the crash. Jones had started his firm Tudor Investment Corp. three years earlier after years as a commodity pit trader. In the summer of 1987, he was profiled by Barron’s and discussed his bearish outlook on the U.S. stock market. Jones thesis rested on two key ideas. First, Jones used an “analog model” that his research director Peter Borish had developed. The model was an overlay chart of the stock markets of the 1920’s and the 1980’s and showed an “astonishingly robust” correlation. Jones also pointed to a chart showing the Dow Jones Industrial’s deviation from its trend. Prior spikes had occurred in 1836, 1929, and 1966 - all followed by bear markets. He observed that there was exuberance in other markets (for example, in fine art), and noted some troubling debt and economic statistics.[2]
In the article, Peter Borish admitted to “fudging the exercise somewhat by juggling the starting periods”. Nevertheless, the bearish outlook paid in spades on October 19. On the day of the crash, Jones covered his short position and went long bonds, expecting the Fed to ease financial conditions. That month he made 62%.[3]
“I feel that you have to start getting short now because the panic, when it comes, will be so violent and sudden that the longs won’t be able to get out nor the shorts get aboard.” Paul Tudor Jones, June 1987[4]
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Mirrors on the ceiling, The pink champagne on ice Emerging Markets |
If volatility spikes, positions are going to be reduced en masse. Or to put it another way and to borrow the lyrics from the Eagles Hotel California:
Mirrors on the ceiling, The pink champagne on ice And she said “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device” Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door I had to find the passage back To the place I was before “Relax,” said the night man, “We are programmed to receive. You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave! “ What is clear is that we are at the fag-end of this party.
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[The End of] Halcyon Days @TheStarKenya Emerging Markets |
From Latin Alcyone, daughter of Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. When her husband died in a shipwreck, Alcyone threw herself into the sea whereupon the gods transformed them both into halcyon birds (kingfishers). When Alcyone made her nest on the beach, waves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus restrained his winds and kept them calm during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the “halcyon days,” when storms do not occur. Today, the term is used to denote a past period that is being remembered for being happy and/or successful.
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Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso, was shot dead in the presidential buildings in Ouagadougou on 15 October 1987 @LRB Africa |
he day before the assassination I got a call from Sankara. This was a first. We knew each other well but, until then, his aide had always called me before putting the president on the line. This time, his lively voice took me by surprise. We were of the same generation: he was 37, I was 30. ‘Hey Stephen, how are you these days? You know it’s really getting very tense here in Ouaga. I think you should come, it’s urgent, don’t hang around.’ These were not his exact words. But the contrived levity, the hint of imminent danger and the discreet appeal for support are what I remember of that short, one-sided conversation. As always, Sankara pretended to be in control of the forces unleashed by his revolution. He was a high-spirited figure impelled by a ‘historic mission’ – Pan-Africanist, Marxist, anti-imperialist – and made light of fear and uncertainty.
A little more than 24 hours later he was dead. The news spread quickly in Ivory Coast. I remember improvised candlelit vigils with his picture in the streets, mourners humming laments, and occasional shouts of ‘France assassine!’ or ‘Le Vieux l’a tué!’ ‘Le Vieux’ was Ivory Coast’s octogenarian president Félix Houphouët-Boigny, a pillar of the postcolonial Franco-African state better known as la Françafrique. I was in a state of shock, Sankara’s words echoing in my ears. But I was enough of a journalist to send a telex to Blaise Compaoré, second in command in the ruling quartet of young army officers that Sankara had headed. Compaoré’s response was prompt. He told me to come, and said he had given orders to let me across the border: Burkina Faso had been sealed off and its airspace closed to traffic. After a night and a day of a wild driving – more than a thousand kilometres north from Abidjan to Ouagadougou – I sat in front of Compaoré in the presidential buildings.
The room was familiar: we had often met here before, in the presence of Sankara, Compaoré’s closest friend, his ‘brother’. Sankara had been a mercurial, lively presence; Compaoré had always seemed slower but also more solid. I remember the long silences more clearly than the few words we exchanged. I was caked in dust and sweat, fresh from the road, exhausted but on edge. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, speaking in his familiar soft tone of ‘Thomas’, his comrade, and the ‘tragedy’ of his death. He was a model of taciturnity, perplexity and grief. ‘Now go and do your job,’ he said eventually. ‘Find out what happened.’ I gathered up my bulky tape recorder, surprised that he hadn’t suggested an interview, that he didn’t want to edit the first draft of history. Or maybe that had been his reason for inviting me into the country, but then he changed his mind.
It didn’t take long to reconstruct the fatal chain of events. Twelve men had died with Sankara, but one of his aides, Alouna Traoré, had escaped. Friends in town tipped me off about his location. I met him the following night, in a small adobe house in a neighbourhood of unpaved roads, by the light of a kerosene lamp. He was unscathed but extremely tense. He had attended Sankara’s last meeting, which had started shortly after 4 p.m. The president had just come from a collective workout and was wearing a red tracksuit. After less than half an hour, shots erupted in an adjacent courtyard. Sankara sprang up. ‘Stay in here,’ he ordered, ‘it’s me they want!’ Leaving the room unarmed, with his hands in the air, he was met by a volley of gunfire. A commando led by Hyacinthe Kafando, a member of Compaoré’s security detail, burst into the room, spraying it with bullets. Traoré was lucky that Kafando and his men left the premises to requisition prisoners in town to clean up the scene. He snuck out before the bodies were removed at nightfall and buried in shallow graves. A medical officer issued a death certificate to the effect that the president had died of ‘natural causes’. I learned later from one of Sankara’s closest advisers that he had begun his last day by drafting a speech which he intended to deliver that evening before the Revolutionary Military Organisation. He had been going to announce a ‘purification’. The word is ambivalent but those who pre-empted his move clearly thought that he had decided on a purge.
I found Sankara disarmingly sincere, utterly engaging and even prophetic. He was a cumulonimbus in a region desperate for rain, a ‘third way’ in Cold War Africa, a youthful maker and breaker challenging the regional tradition of gerontocratic rule. But the downpour never came. He spent most of his time in office speaking in the name of ‘the people’ who were now supposed to be able to speak for themselves, and never sought an electoral mandate from his fellow citizens. Executed at the behest of his brother in arms, he has become a martyr. But to what cause? Will Sankara continue to haunt his country’s history as the wraith of an overnight transformation that led nowhere?
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NOV 14 ::Ouagadougou's Signal to Sub-Sahara Africa Africa |
What’s clear is that a very young, very informed and very connected African youth demographic [many characterise this as a ‘demographic dividend’] – which for Beautiful Blaise turned into a demographic terminator – is set to alter the existing equilibrium between the rulers and the subjects, and a re-balancing has begun.
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Ethiopia PM says China will restructure railway loan @ReutersAfrica Africa |
“During our stay, we had the opportunity to enact limited restructuring of some of our loans. In particular, the loan for the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway which was meant to be paid over 10 years has now been extended to 30 years. Its maturity period has also been extended,” Abiy told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, upon return from a summit in China.
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Technical Signals Flash Glimmer of Hope for South Africa's Rand 15.3324 Africa |
Momentum indicators suggest the rand is due for a rebound. The dollar’s one-week relative strength index versus the rand reached 74 on Thursday, well above the 70 level that some traders see as a signal that the South African currency is oversold. The last time the gauge was at this level, in mid-January 2016, it heralded a three-month, 17 percent rally in the South African currency.
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