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Wednesday 09th of August 2017 |
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Aug. 07, 2017 The End Zone and the Mighty Dollar Africa |
It was as if the FX markets had reached the conclusions that it is all in the price now, maybe not an impeachment but pretty much everything else is baked into the price of the dollar. The dollar is the elephant in the room [financial markets]. This week we will need to study it closely for the signals that it emits. I think the rebound will gather strength because just about everyone has been lulled into a [false] sense of security. And that the dollar which was deep in its end-zone has just thrown a hail-mary pass, which is set to make up a lot of ground.
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The Itch By Don DeLillo Africa |
“She’ll laugh. She’ll tell our kids.” “I didn’t think of that.” “Eight years old, six years old. Imagine their response.” “Zaum.” “You remember. Good for you.” “Transrational poetry.” “Shapes and sounds. The futurists. Zaum. You remember. A shape, a sound.” “Tell your kids. Zaum. Let them say the word.” They went back to their desks and bent into the screens, scrolling through their messages.
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Here's what a war between North Korea and the U.S. might look like @business Law & Politics |
“But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice -- guessed and refused to believe -- that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return. Yet they do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the rainbow, and they its children. . . .” ― Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow
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29-11-2010 FAR away in distant lands lies the Hermit Kingdom They all have had tiny little hands like the Elves in the Elves and the Shoemaker. Law & Politics |
FAR away in distant lands lies the Hermit Kingdom. This land is ruled by The House of Kim and its capital is Pyongyang. The first and ‘Eternal’ President was Kim Il-sung and his successor Kim Jong-il whose designated successor is Kim Jung-un. They all have had tiny little hands like the Elves in the Elves and the Shoemaker.And this country has nuclear weapons and on its border with its neighbour South Korea sit 25,000 American soldiers. Last week the North shelled the South and issued all kinds of threats. “The DPRK (North Korea) will deal a merciless military counter-attack at any provocative act of intruding into its territorial waters in the future.’’ President Obama sent the USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea and now here we sit watching developments and trying to model what is happening and what might happen? In reality, we are actually navigating in uncharted waters. The media keeps chanting like a mantra, China will rein North Korea in. It is not in their Interests to have a mad dog like North Korea as an ally. And whether its the BBC, The New York Times or Radio France. I venture this is an embedded narrative fallacy and that most Western commentators are apparently popping Qaaludes. Let me tell you why. China is taking a much more forward position and particularly in Asia, its near abroad. I believe North Korea is the perfect instrument [the Attack Dog] for China to show those who choose to operate outside their sphere of influence [and by extension, in the US’] that there will be a very heavy price to pay.I venture that the Chinese are quite happy to see those 25,000 US soldiers run right into the sea and we need to grow up [as does the media] and see it for what it is. North Korea and China see a weak and tottering President Obama and this flashpoint represents the beginning of a roll back of US Power. And you know the battlefield is not just the military one. Its a financial one as well. Did you know the South Korean President has a military war room and an economic war room and they say he spends more time in the economic war room. Think about that for a moment. By this time, you know I consider one of the finest books about trading and economics one written by Edwin Lefevre called Reminiscences of a Stock Market Operator and in that book he says ‘The Tape is your Telescope’ and it is. And I follow all kinds of tapes and one of the tapes is the South Korean Stock Market called the KOSPI. About 5 working days before this blew, someone sold more than $1b worth of South Korean equities seconds before the close. Who was that? Not one commentator has connected those dots. Just because China does not flex its ability does not mean it cannot. If you have the power to do something and have not that does not make you less powerful.
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Disaffected Youth Are Wild Card in Kenya's Cliffhanger Vote @business Law & Politics |
“I am not falling for the ideas of politicians,” Kibaraza, 27, said as he strolled along a dusty street near his home in Kawangware, a slum in the capital, Nairobi. “We vote for them and they go there and benefit themselves. Somebody driving a Toyota Corolla, we vote for them and after one year you see him with a Range Rover, a Mercedes-Benz.”
The average age in Kenya is just 19 and with more half of the 19.6 million registered voters aged under 35, Kibaraza and his contemporaries have the power to determine the outcome of a presidential contest that could go either way.
Ndung’u Wainaina, executive director at the Nairobi-based International Center for Policy & Conflict, expects the opposition to be the main beneficiary of young voters’ discontent over a dearth of economic opportunities.
“Theirs’ will likely be a protest vote against the conservatives,” he said. “If the youths want, they can become the actual determinants of the vote if they choose to come out to vote en masse.”
“We are struggling,” he said. “We are living on hope, that one day they will care about us.”
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BAT's $25 Billion Lucky Strike World Currencies |
It's enough to give any treasurer a smoker's cough: launching the third-biggest fundraising ever during the August lull, in an industry that's been roiled by regulators, by a company that's just suffered a two-step rating downgrade.COMPANY MAY RAISE$25 billionNot a problem for British American Tobacco Plc.It's in the process of raising $25 billion in what may be the largest corporate bond offering of the year. The maker of Lucky Strikes wants to refinance its 42 billion-pound ($55 billion) buyout of Reynolds American -- a deal which will give it No. 1 position in tobacco-related products globally.
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Pala New Energy Metals will invest in cobalt, lithium, vanadium, rare earths, nickel and tin. Commodities |
Pala New Energy Metals will invest in cobalt, lithium, vanadium, rare earths, nickel and tin. Pala Investments Ltd. started the fund with its own money and cash from other investors. The firm previously snapped up cobalt, anticipating surging demand from automakers that more than doubled prices in the past year.
“We have been focused on the evolution of the battery chemistries and this has allowed us to invest early in different components of the battery," Stephen Gill, managing partner at Zug, Switzerland-based Pala Investments, said in an interview. "We hope to continue to be ahead of the curve as technologies evolve."
The company was among investors to buy up physical cobalt before selling it for cash and shares in Cobalt 27 Capital Corp., listed in Canada this year to offer equity investors a way to take a stake in the market. In June, Pala said it had swapped 626 metric tons of cobalt for shares in Cobalt 27, making it the largest shareholder with 19.5 percent.
In total, the Toronto-listed firm, run by Pala Managing Director Anthony Milewski, bought 2,158.6 tons of cobalt for cash and shares, or about 2.5 percent of annual global demand. Spot prices have jumped almost 120 percent in the past year to $57,500 a ton.
Cobalt is essential for lithium-ion batteries powering anything from Tesla Inc.’s cars to Apple Inc.’s iPhones and iPads. Heath Jansen, a mining analyst at Citigroup Inc., recently called cobalt a "wonder metal" riding the boom in electric vehicles. The metal, mined in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, is more efficient than the minerals used in earlier-generation batteries.
Pala may invest through debt and equity stakes in mining projects or buy and store physical metal to benefit from rising prices.
Plans to hoard base metals, including a scheme promoted by JPMorgan Chase & Co. for copper in 2012, have previously prompted concerns among consumers that prices would be pushed artificially high. The cobalt market was mired in surplus for years after the global financial crisis before battery demand tightened the market.
Pala is looking beyond its early focus on cobalt, with battery technology starting to shift toward other metals. "What’s cobalt today may also be nickel tomorrow," Gill said.
Emerging Markets
Frontier Markets
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Kenyans Cast Votes in East African Powerhouse's Tense Election @WSJ Kenyan Economy |
At stake is Kenya’s hard-won stability and standing as a dynamic regional hub for enterprise and a destination for local and international businesses. The result and conduct of the vote will reverberate across Kenya’s borders, from war-torn Somalia where Kenyan troops are fighting the Islamist insurgency al-Shabaab, to the faster-growing economies of Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania, where democracy is in retreat.
“There is a tsunami of money that would flood into Kenya if this election can be pulled off well,” said Aly Khan Satchu, an investment expert in Nairobi. “From an economic perspective, this is a pivot election...it could produce a very bifurcated outcome.”
The largest and most sophisticated economy in East Africa, Kenya avoided the economic slowdown that hit many of its mineral-exporting neighbors when prices for oil and ores plunged in 2014.
Kenyan gross domestic product grew 6% last year, dramatically outperforming the sub-Saharan average rate of 1.4%.
Lured by stability and an open market, international capital has poured into Kenya, cementing the country’s position as a hub for finance and technology. Hundreds of tech companies have set up in a district of the capital renamed “Silicon Savannah.”
“Elections matter because of Kenya’s importance for global and regional businesses. It’s simply a sign of how critical Kenya is,” said Charles Murito, country director for Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which arrived in Nairobi a decade ago and now employs 55 staff here.
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