Emerging Markets Business and Economics. “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” Yogi Berra
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South African President Jacob Zuma, currently on a three-day state visit to Britain, has come in for a rough time in the British press, which has castigated him for his polygamous habits. Stephen Robinson, writing in The Daily Mail, calls him a “sex-obsessed bigot with four wives and 35 children” and wonders why Britain is “fawning over this “vile buffoon.” [click to continue…]
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I subscribe to the “Stock Gumshoe” blog, which specializes in ferreting out the truth behind those teaser ads for scores of investment newsletters and tipsheets that promise you 1,400% returns in six months, but only if you take advantage of this limited time subscription offer, a $1,000 value for only $695. In addition to debunking these extravagant claims, the blog’s publisher and author, Travis Johnson, analyzes various investment opportunities he finds interesting, some of them off the beaten track, and he doesn’t charge you hundreds of dollars to reveal the names and details. Recently he posted a lengthy article on Africa, with a particular focus on Lonrho, a U.K.-based company with a long history in Africa and a newly revitalized Afro-centric investment strategy. Here is my comment, posted on Travis’s blog: [click to continue…]
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Here is a comment (the second one I have posted) in a LinkedIn forum on the global economic crisis, in which various serious and fanciful proposals for replacing the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency have been discussed. “What Will Replace the U.S. Dollar?”
Carbon emissions credits or kilowatt hours are a poor medium of exchange for the same reason that cigarettes or rare wines or tulip bulbs or even barrels of oil are: they are unstable and they have utility apart from their value as units of account. Until we have batteries capable of storing all the electricity generated and a much more efficient electric grid, a kilowatt hour produced but not consumed is lost forever. You can’t save it and use or spend it tomorrow. And because of transmission loss, a kilowatt hour generated in California is something less than a kilowatt hour when it reaches New Jersey. [click to continue…]
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Zimbabwe, it seems, is preparing for a return to the international stage in something other than the role of pariah. According the official government newspaper The Herald, the government has just launched a “massive investment and tourism marketing drive that should see high-powered business delegations visit and court investors from 26 nations worldwide.” The 26 countries, all of which are to receive a visit before the end of 2009, include the United Kingdom, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, China, Russia, Iran, Australia, Japan, Spain, and that economic powerhouse North Korea. [click to continue…]
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I have just returned from a week-long ski vacation in Montana. We stayed in a condo with limited Internet access, thus the lack of posts this past week.
Despite no broadband access, there was cable TV with dozens of channels, and I got a heavy dose of TV news, which I rarely watch at home. By far the biggest story of the week has been the AIG scandal. If you have been on Jupiter the past week or two, AIG is the huge insurance company that has received over $150 billion from the U.S. Government since last September, when it became apparent that the company lacked the funds to make good on the hundreds of billions of dollars in credit defaults swaps – essentially insurance against default on the mortgages underlying mortgage-backed securities – it had written. It transpires that since AIG went on government life-support it has paid out some $160 million in bonuses to staff, a figure recently revised upward to more than $200 million. [click to continue…]
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