|
Wednesday 31st of July 2019 |
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
Macro Thoughts |
read more |
|
@BorisJohnson Is in a Battle With Currency Traders @markets Africa |
Boris Johnson’s greatest political weapon is his self-confidence. Even more than his charm or his intellect, it is his boundless belief in his ability to get things done that has accompanied his rise to Prime Minister of the U.K.. He never wavers, at least in public, and never betrays a shred of self-doubt. Opponents not already disarmed by the famous Johnson charm or sense of humor often find this impossible to counter. However, knowingly or not, Britain’s new prime minister is now setting up the hardest fight of his career. It is not with any politician, who might be awed by the confidence that an Eton and Balliol education infers, but rather with the foreign-exchange market. That could be a problem. Currencies are immune to personal charm. And they have a history of humiliating British prime ministers, even the greatest of them. For months now, anything that increases the chance of a “no deal” exit has damaged the pound and anything that reduces “no deal” risk has raised it.With the rival Brexit Party now positioned to scoop up all these votes should the U.K. prolong its membership, meeting that deadline becomes an existential issue for Johnson and for the Conservatives at large. In this particular situation, he is working on the assumption that failure to exit on time would do much worse damage for his party than would the severe economic problems that would follow a “no deal” exit. He is almost certainly right. So the two choices are “delay” (the worst outcome for Johnson) or “exit with no deal” (the worst outcome for currency markets). It is possible that Johnson is involved in a high-stakes game of chicken to force the EU to negotiate. Whatever Johnson may confidently say, it is clear that markets think “no deal” would be bad, and that the chances of it happening have long been higher than one in a million. Beyond that, strategists have tried all kinds of models to answer the question. I will mention two. First, Bloomberg U.K. economist Dan Hanson estimates that sterling could fall an additional 13%. This is because for every 1 percentage point increase in “no deal” risk, trade-weighted sterling falls 0.2%. According to the bookies, no-deal risk could yet rise 65 percentage points before it reaches 100 (rather generous odds, I think), and so a 13% drop is possible. Hanson’s model simply regresses moves in “no deal” probabilities expressed in betting odds against sterling and the result is spectacular:London’s Capital Economics conducted the same exercise for the dollar-sterling exchange rate, and found that for every 10-percentage-point increase in the chance of “no deal” equates to the pound losing 3.5 cents on the dollar. So if there is really still a 65% chance of “no deal,” sterling stands to drop an additional 22 cents or so. Against the dollar, sterling is on the verge of taking out its post-referendum low, after which the only significant landmarks left would be the low set in 1985, a few months before finance ministers agreed in the Plaza Accord to limit the strength of the dollar and then, only a few cents lower, parity with the dollar. To go much lower than this will involve something truly historic, in other words. And declines to these kinds of levels have never lasted long in the past; “no deal” could very swiftly create an epic buying opportunity, but only once economic destruction has been wrought.. At present, it looks alarmingly as if he is over-confident. As Thatcher could have told him, you can’t buck the market.
|
read more |
|
Jack Ma's $290 Billion Loan Machine Is Changing Chinese Banking @business International Trade |
Jack Ma’s online bank is leading a quiet revolution in the way China lends to small businesses, taking aim at a credit bottleneck that has held back Asia’s largest economy for decades. Using real-time payments data and a risk-management system that analyzes more than 3,000 variables, Ma’s four-year-old MYbank has lent 2 trillion yuan ($290 billion) to nearly 16 million small companies. Borrowers apply with a few taps on a smartphone and receive cash almost instantly if they’re approved. The whole process takes three minutes and involves zero human bankers. The default rate so far: about 1%. The financial-technology boom that turned China into the world’s biggest market for electronic payments is now changing how banks interact with companies that drive most of the nation’s economic growth. As MYbank and its peers crunch reams of new data from payment systems, social media and other sources, they’re growing more comfortable with smaller borrowers that they previously shunned in favor of state-owned giants. For China’s $13 trillion economy, which expanded at its weakest pace since at least 1992 last quarter, the implications could be profound. Non-state firms -- mostly small businesses -- account for about 60% of growth, employ 80% of workers, and have been disproportionately squeezed by a more than two-year government crackdown on shadow lenders. “Small and medium enterprises are really the boiler room of the economy,” said Keith Pogson, global assurance leader for banking and capital markets at Ernst & Young based in Hong Kong. “It used to be a segment that banks thought was too difficult and too risky. But now they run their model and work out what the risks are so they feel more comfortable.” China is quickly becoming a world leader in the use of big data and artificial-intelligence technology to make loans, according to Cliff Sheng, co-head of Greater China financial services at Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm. Among the country’s biggest advantages: it takes a more relaxed approach toward privacy than many other jurisdictions. “Our legal framework and regulatory environment -- which raise fewer privacy concerns -- make it easier to generate a huge amount of data and thus provide an unparalleled testing bed,” Sheng said. One uniquely Chinese source of information for banks is the controversial social credit system, which is being tested in cities across the country as a way to reward good deeds and punish misbehavior. In one potential scenario cited by MYbank President Jin Xiaolong in a recent interview, a small-business owner whose social credit score dropped because he failed to return a borrowed umbrella would find it harder to get a loan. But the biggest data trove may come from payments providers like the one operated by Ma’s Ant Financial, the biggest shareholder of MYbank. After obtaining authorization from borrowers, MYbank analyzes real-time transactions to gain insights into creditworthiness. For example, a drop in customer payments at a retailer’s flagship store might be an early indicator that the company’s prospects -- and its ability to repay debt -- are deteriorating. The upshot of more information is a loan approval rate at MYbank that’s four times higher than at traditional lenders, which typically reject 80% of small-business loan requests and take at least 30 days to process applications, according to Jin, who plans to double MYbank’s roster of borrowers in three years. He said the Hangzhou-based firm’s operating cost per loan is about 3 yuan, versus 2,000 yuan at traditional rivals.
|
read more |
|
Since U.S. Africa Command began operations in 2008, the number of U.S. military personnel on the African continent has jumped 170 percent, from 2,600 to 7,000 @theintercept @nickturse Africa |
Since U.S. Africa Command began operations in 2008, the number of U.S. military personnel on the African continent has jumped 170 percent, from 2,600 to 7,000. The number of military missions, activities, programs, and exercises there has risen 1,900 percent, from 172 to 3,500. Drone strikes have soared and the number of commandos deployed has increased exponentially along with the size and scope of AFRICOM’s constellation of bases.
The U.S. military has recently conducted 36 named operations and activities in Africa, more than any other region of the world, including the Greater Middle East. Troops scattered across Africa regularly advise, train, and partner with local forces; gather intelligence; conduct surveillance; and carry out airstrikes and ground raids focused on “countering violent extremists on the African continent.”
AFRICOM “disrupts and neutralizes transnational threats” in order to “promote regional security, stability and prosperity,” according to its mission statement. But since AFRICOM began, key indicators of security and stability in Africa have plummeted according to the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. “Overall, militant Islamist group activity in Africa has doubled since 2012,” according to a recent analysis by the Africa Center.
There are now roughly 24 “active militant Islamist groups” operating on the continent, up from just five in 2010, the analysis found. Today, 13 African countries face attacks from these groups — a 160 percent increase over that same time span. In fact, the number of “violent events” across the continent has jumped 960 percent, from 288 in 2009 to 3,050 in 2018, according to the Africa Center’s analysis.
While a variety of factors have likely contributed to the rise in violence, some experts say that the overlap between the command’s existence and growing unrest is not a coincidence.
“The sharp increase in terrorist incidents in Africa underscores the fact that the Pentagon’s overly militarized approach to the problem has been a dismal failure,” said William Hartung, the director of the arms and security project at the Center for International Policy. “If anything, attempting to eradicate terrorism by force may be exacerbating the problem, provoking a terrorist backlash and serving as a recruiting tool for extremist groups.”
Take Somalia, for example. Over the last decade, AFRICOM has conducted hundreds of airstrikes and commando missions there and claims an enemy body count of approximately 800 terrorists, primarily members of the Shabab, a militant group. The number of U.S. air attacks has skyrocketed of late, jumping from 14 under President Barack Obama in 2016 to 47 under the Trump administration last year. Yet the Pentagon’s own analysis found that violent episodes involving the Shabab represent roughly 50 percent of all militant Islamist group activity in Africa and that this “rate has remained consistent over the past decade.”
In October 2017, members of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, or ISGS, ambushed American troops near the border of the Sahelian states of Mali and Niger, killing four U.S. soldiers and wounding two others. Just after the attack, AFRICOM claimed the troops were providing “advice and assistance” to local partners, but it was later revealed that American commandos operating alongside a Nigerian force had — until poor weather intervened — hoped to link up with another contingent of U.S. special operators trying to kill or capture Islamic State leader Doundoun Cheffou.
Despite these and several other long-running U.S. military efforts in the region, militant groups in the Sahel have grown more active and their attacks more frequent, according to the Africa Center. In fact, “violent episodes” linked to groups associated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, and ISGS increased from 192 in 2017 to 464 last year. At the same time, fatalities linked to these groups more than doubled, from 529 to 1,112.
This is especially significant in light of a 2000 report prepared under the auspices of the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, which examined the “African security environment.” While noting the existence of “internal separatist or rebel movements” in “weak states,” as well as militias and “warlord armies,” it made no mention of Islamic extremism or major transnational terror threats. Now the Africa Center counts 24 “active militant Islamist groups” on the continent while other official tallies have, in recent years, put the figure at nearly 50 terrorist organizations and “illicit groups” of all types.
Neither the Pentagon nor AFRICOM responded to The Intercept’s questions about the Africa Center’s analysis, the command’s effectiveness, and any role it may have played in the rising violence on the continent.
|
read more |
|
#Zimbabwe is in crisis. But to expect the ruling #ZANU-PF government to resolve this is improbable at best. It is, more likely, impossible. Read @BitiTendai @africaarguments Africa |
Zimbabwe is in crisis. But to expect the ruling ZANU-PF government to resolve this is improbable at best. It is, more likely, impossible. Today nearly four out of every five Zimbabweans just about survives in absolute poverty. On average, Zimbabweans are poorer now than they were at independence in 1980. Informal employment is at 95%, which is why the civil service has more than doubled over the last ten years to 600,000 employees – this is the only place government can create jobs. Whole communities today live on less than 35 cents per person per day. In practice, this pays for a small dollop of maize, four leaves of vegetables, and a cap of cooking fat. We have a term for this, Tsaona, which means living by “accident”. In today’s Zimbabwe, the elites prosper, in spite of the misery, and because of mal-governance. They use their preferential access to dollars to arbitrage against other local, artificial digital currencies. Furthermore, they have created cartels that are able entirely control the import and distribution of fuel coming into the country. Meanwhile, the military and other favoured clients are offered mining concessions that are then parcelled out opaquely to friends, local and foreign. Finally, the government’s agricultural scheme, appropriately named “command agriculture”, amounts to a $4 billion private piggy bank used to finance everything from private vehicles to dowries. ZANU-PF cannot realistically be expected to reform a system that it not only profits from, but on which its rule depends. Future reform has to dismantle the corrupt political economy, whilst also expanding the productive sector. The only time in the last four decades there has been a serious attempt at reform was during the Government of National Unity between 2009 and 2013, when I served as the Minister of Finance. During this period, three critical actions were introduced. One, it was recognised that the government could not spend what it did not have. We described this as the “eat what you kill” philosophy. This immediately provided confidence and clarity to foreign investors and our international partners. Two, we dollarised the economy, thereby ridding the country of the opportunities for arbitrage against the inflating Zimbabwean currency. Three, we opened up the economy thereby incentivising the private sector.
|
read more |
|
21-JAN-2019 :: The Mind Game that ZANU-PF played on its citizens has evaporated in a puff of smoke Africa |
“Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.” “Cowry shells and dollars have value only in our common imagina- tion. Their worth is not inherent in the chemical structure of the shells and paper, or their colour, or their shape. In other words, money isn’t a material reality – it is a psychologi- cal construct. It works by converting matter into mind.” The Point I am seeking to make is that There is a correlation between high Inflation and revolutionary conditions, Zimbabwe is a classic example where there are $9.3 billion of Zollars in banks compared to $200 million in reserves, official data showed. The Mind Game that ZANU-PF played on its citizens has evaporated in a puff of smoke
|
read more |
|
29-JUL-2019 :: The ''Oudh'' Spring in Khartoum met a ''red in tooth and claw'' Counter-Revolution and Sudan feels like an African Fault-line. Africa |
This single Paragraph does not tell the Story because this year in 2019 so much has gone on. Let start with the Geopolitical and Political dimension. There has been a significant advance and intrusion by Middle Powers [KSA, UAE, Egypt was always there] into the Horn of Africa. The ''Oudh'' Spring in Khartoum met a ''red in tooth and claw'' Counter-Revolution and Sudan feels like an African Fault-line. Its somewhat counterintuitive but it is the Al-Sisi Model which is delivering economic growth of 6% but I for one think its impossible to replicate because the cry for Political Freedom is relentless and at fever pitch. Sudan is surely a collision which is set to repeated elsewhere in what could morph into a Gladwell level move not unlike Ebola which is exponential at its heart.
|
read more |
|
|
|
|