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I recently joined a new frequent flyer program, which is not something I expected to do. I am already a member of several, covering each of the three major airline alliances, and I thought I was pretty well set. But as I sat in the departure lounge in Lomé, the capital of the West African nation of Togo, waiting to board a flight to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, a pretty young lady in company livery invited me to join the ASky Club. ASky is a new, mostly private, airline that serves a substantial West and Central African route network, operating Boeing 737 and Bombardier Dash-8 aircraft. It is affiliated with Ethiopian Airlines, which offers connections to North and South America, Europe, and Asia. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Aero Contractors,
Africa,
Air Afrique,
Air Burkina,
Air Ivoire,
Air Mali,
Air Uganda,
airline,
Arik Air,
ASky,
British Airways,
Cameroon Airlines,
Celestair,
Comair,
Ethiopian Airlines,
Etihad,
Frank Zappa,
Ghana Airways,
Guggenheim airline ETF,
InterAir,
Kenya Airways,
Kulula,
Lonrho,
Senegal Airlines,
South African Airways,
Virgin Nigeria
Eurasia Group founder and emerging markets guru Ian Bremmer has come around to the view that the BRICS construct is nothing more than a bunch of countries “united by a catchy acronym” and little else. His op-ed piece in last Friday’s New York Times notes that Brazil, Russia, India, and China “have formalized their club and extended their reach by inviting South Africa to join” – a development that occurred in December of 2010 and asks, “But do their meetings and joint statements really allow them to punch above their individual weight? What do these countries share beyond a common interest in bolstering their global clout?” Several hundred words later he concludes that these five countries “will sometimes use their collective weight to obstruct U.S. and European plans. But the BRICs have too little in common abroad and too much at stake at home to play a single coherent role on the global stage.” Has he been reading my blog? [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
BEEs,
Brazil,
BRICs,
China,
CIVETS,
Colombia,
correlation,
Egypt,
emerging markets,
Frontier Markets,
Ian Bremmer,
India,
Indonesia,
killer bees,
Mexico,
Russia,
South Africa,
Turkey
This is from the Diverging Markets blog, written by Ulysses de la Torre.
According to the Financial Times, in perversion of all perversions, we’re now supposed to believe that Switzerland is the new China. Got that?
“Switzerland is the new incipient China,” said Steven Englander, Citigroup’s head of foreign exchange strategy.
Apparently, Switzerland’s attempts to keep the franc artificially weak while building up its central bank reserves make it so.
Well gee. Not too long ago, Brazil was supposed to be the new China…Continue
Tagged as:
Brazil,
China,
emerging markets,
Frontier Markets,
Mexico,
Switzerland
I have just seen a graph prepared by technology consultant Chetan Sharma of Issaquah, Washington, which purports to show that a greater number of Earth’s inhabitants – six billion, if the data are correct – have mobile phone subscriptions than have electricity or safe drinking water. The data aren’t correct. For one thing, these six billion people, according to Mr. Sharma’s chart, constitute 80 percent of the world’s population, which would put world population at 7.5 billion, when the World Bank tells us it is only 6.84 billion. Also, in most of the world outside Europe, Japan, and North America, the overwhelming majority of mobile phone usage is via prepaid cards rather than contract subscriptions. And to add to that, if a substantial number of people have cell phones but not electricity, how do they recharge their phones? Still, the basic message conveyed by this chart – that mobile phone penetration is becoming nearly universal among people at all income levels – stands. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Angry Birds,
Chetan Sharma,
Citibank,
Kenya,
M-Pesa,
Nigeria,
Pew Research Center,
Safari.com,
Tanzania,
TxtEagle,
Verizon,
Vodafone
If you think that the main problem small businesses face is raising capital you probably aren’t a small business owner. If you think that the reason businesses don’t hire more people is that they don’t have enough money, you almost certainly aren’t a small business owner. That’s probably why the JOBS Act passed with overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate: there aren’t too many small business owners in either chamber. The Republicans like the bill because it supposedly helps small businesses, the Democrats because it promises to create more jobs. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Andrew Ross Sorkin,
bipartisanship,
business failure,
Enron,
Harvard Business School,
job creation,
JOBS Act,
Sarbanes-Oxley,
Small Business Administration,
Solyndra,
venture capital
I recently joined a new frequent flyer program, which is not something I expected to do. I am already a member of several, covering each of the three major airline alliances, and I thought I was pretty well set. But as I sat in the departure lounge in Lomé, the capital of the West African nation of Togo, waiting to board a flight to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, a pretty young lady in company livery invited me to join the ASky Club. ASky is a new, mostly private, airline that serves a substantial West and Central African route network, operating Boeing 737 and Bombardier Dash-8 aircraft. It is affiliated with Ethiopian Airlines, which offers connections to North and South America, Europe, and Asia. [click to continue…]
