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Macro Thoughts

Does anyone read details anymore or just inhale cocaine

Home Thoughts

The 16th crew at Concordia research Station in Antarctica to spend a
full winter at the facility, wave goodbye to the Sun as it descends
below the horizon, not to return for four months.
Sunday 3 May marked the start of the crew’s winter-over period. The
12-member group will spend the next few months in total darkness. This
is in addition to their nine-month isolation in one of the most
extreme environments on Earth.
Concordia research station is one of three stations operating year
round for science in the middle of the Antarctic ice sheet. Located at
Dome C on the Antarctic peninsula, the station sits 3200 m above sea
level.

"Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended
so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules
of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer
insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries." Hannah
Arendt

Political Reflections

Global cases rising steadily as Brazil⁴ overtakes UK⁵. Global
R-value sits just above 1. >10%: Cameroon⁶⁸ Sudan⁷⁶ Tajikistan⁸⁶ >5%:
Brazil⁴ Bangladesh³⁰ South Africa³⁶ Kuwait⁴⁰ Afghanistan⁵³ Armenia⁶³
Bolivia⁶⁴ Guatemala⁸¹ Gabon⁹⁴ Kyrgyzstan⁹⁷

With most European countries confident that they are past the worst of
the coronavirus pandemic, their attention is turning to the chance of
its resurgence once society returns to some semblance of normal.
But beyond the epidemiological challenges lies a slowly amassing
threat that is not pathological in nature, but economic, political,
and military.
This is the geopolitical second wave, and its power is already
starting to concern Western leaders.
Imagine a scenario: Just as Europe and the United States begin to feel
as if they have the coronavirus under control, it takes hold in the
developing world.
Exhausted, indebted, and desperate for their own economies to get back
up to speed, richer countries are too slow to help.
Panic ensues. Migrants mass in southern Europe, which is still
struggling to pull itself out of a coronavirus-induced depression.
Somewhere, a state defaults on debt held largely by Western financial
institutions. In the chaos, an autocrat eyes an opportunity for a land
grab. A United States already unwilling to take the lead leaves China
to step into the void.
This is just one (invented) scenario of a number that are raising
concerns in Western capitals and that were laid out to me in
conversations with more than half a dozen leading security experts,
academics, and government advisers in recent weeks.
Of those I spoke with, few doubted that a second wave was coming. The
real concern was where it would land.
History, as Barack Obama said of American progress, zigs and zags.
Great changes set off chain reactions: The Wall Street Crash of 1929
ushered in the New Deal era; Allied victory in 1945 created the
conditions for the Cold War.
Each event creates political aftershocks and trends that we can see
clearly only afterward. The decade that followed the 2008 financial
crisis saw the euro zone teeter on the brink of collapse, Britain vote
to leave the European Union, and Donald Trump elected president.
Today, the global economy has suffered another sudden seizure,
shifting geopolitics as U.S.-China tensions have risen, trade has
slowed markedly, and structural divisions between northern and
southern Europe have widened.
The question, then, is what might happen in the decade after this crisis?
“Historians love chapter breaks,” said Robert Kaplan, an American
foreign-policy expert and former member of the U.S. Defense Policy
Board, who this month briefed officials at 10 Downing Street on the
potential second-order effects of the coronavirus crisis. “COVID-19
will come to be seen as a chapter break.”
Among Kaplan’s concerns is how Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin,
will act, a fear echoed by some of the most influential voices in
British foreign policy, who worry that the geopolitical second wave of
COVID-19 will hit Europe the hardest.
Michael Clarke, a defense-studies professor at King’s College London
and former special adviser to Britain’s national committee on security
strategy, who remains plugged in to the country’s foreign-policy
establishment, told me that an economically weakened Russia, hit by
the recent collapse in oil prices, poses a greater danger to Western
security interests.
“Putin’s aggressive opportunism will probably get worse,” Clarke said.
“The nature of Putin’s leadership is that he can’t stand still; he has
to keep pushing forward. This makes him more volatile.”
What happens if the Russian leader, spooked by the country’s
collapsing economy, eyes an opportunity to test NATO’s resolve?
Others, such as Bruno Maçães, Portugal’s former Europe minister, told
me that the crisis might not embolden Russia, but cripple it, leaving
it more dependent on China and bringing Beijing’s sphere of influence
to the borders of continental Europe.
“Crises,” Kaplan noted, “put history on fast-forward.”
The array of possible second-wave consequences is dizzying: the
prospect of the disease taking hold in a developing G20 country—think
India—which could see the virus quickly doubling back to Europe and
the U.S.; the uncertain impact of technological advances in fields
such as artificial intelligence as they are used to help combat the
disease’s spread; a recession pulling at the ties between the European
Union’s poor south and wealthy north.
Clarke is particularly concerned about an arc of instability from West
Africa through the Middle East to Asia, where conflict and instability
have in recent years forced people to flee.
Karin von Hippel, the director general of the Royal United Services
Institute, an influential British defense and international-affairs
think tank, told me that “some kind of reckoning with China” is likely
as well.
“Some countries will emerge from this trying to cling to China … but
most others are likely to try to decouple,” she said.
For Britain, Germany, France, and other major European economies
reliant on the American security umbrella but wanting to maintain
strong economic ties with China, the difficulty of managing the
fallout from the Trump administration’s anti-China rhetoric may now
only increase.
This is the world in which countries such as Britain are having to
think about their strategic vision.
Some of the challenges might be entirely new but many others are
likely to be ones already at play that have been accelerated by the
pandemic, such as worsening relations between Washington and Beijing.
More than anything, though, for Western governments there is a simple
underlying reality to the geopolitical second wave: cash, or a lack of
it.
“You’ve got more problems but less money to deal with them,” one
senior adviser to the British government, who asked for anonymity to
speak candidly about internal deliberations, told me.
After more than a decade of public-spending cuts, for example,
Britain’s military—capable of helping the United States invade both
Iraq and Afghanistan less than 20 years ago—has morphed into a “one
shot” force that is unable to sustain itself for longer than six
months outside Europe, according to Clarke.
What will its capacity look like after another set of cuts? Britain
and France required American support to intervene in Libya in 2011.
Could a joint European force do so again anywhere along its exposed
underbelly on the North African shore? Could it even be used in a
purely medical capacity, as it was during the Ebola outbreak in 2014?
A major British government review of the country’s foreign-affairs,
defense, and intelligence strategy was due to be published this year,
but it has since been pushed back indefinitely because of the
pandemic.
The immediate consequence is that the review, when it happens, will be
less strategic and more tactical—driven by financial considerations
rather than any grand vision the government wanted to set out for
post-Brexit Britain.
Officials in London will have to focus more on “What can we afford?”
and less on “What do we want to do?,” an approach that is short-term,
ad hoc, and defensive.
Inside Downing Street, concern about COVID-19’s geopolitical second
wave is real, with work under way to understand the potential threats
and prepare for them.
The British government expects protectionism to increase, supply
chains to be brought back under national control, nation-states to be
strengthened, and the U.S.-China relationship to become more
antagonistic—changes that could be seen as simply the “firming up of
some fundamentals,” in the words of the government adviser I spoke
with.
Whether the pandemic brings about revolutionary change or simply
accelerates the currents already working under the surface, the fact
is that the epidemiological second wave isn't the only one we need
worry about.

Gladwell „‟Tipping Point‟‟ moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches
critical mass. It‟s the boiling point. It‟s the moment on the graph
when the line starts to shoot straight upwards.

Here is a huge list of coronaviruses with identical or nearly
identical sequences at the critical S1/S2 and S2' locations, but only
COVID-19 (SARS-Cov-2) has the pathogenic PRRAR polybasic cleavage
site. Why? I think Chinese scientists artificially inserted it there.
#COVID19

International Markets

Euro 1.0933
Dollar Index 99.437
Japan Yen 107.40
Swiss Franc 0.9718
Pound 1.2245
Aussie 0.6554
India Rupee 75.68
South Korea Won 1224.47
Brazil Real 5.72
Egypt Pound 15.78
South Africa Rand 18.26

My Mind kept to an Article I read in 2012 ‘’Annals of Technology
Streaming Dreams’’ by John Seabrook January 16, 2012.
“People went from broad to narrow,” he said, “and we think they will
continue to go that way—spend more and more time in the niches—
because now the distribution lands-cape allows for more narrowness’’.
Netflix is not a US business, it is a global business. The Majority of
Analysts are in the US and in my opinion, these same Analysts have an
international ‘’blind spot’’
Once Investors appreciate that the Story is an international one and
not a US one anymore, we will see the price ramp to fresh all-time
highs.

Commodities

Emerging Markets

Just days after it overtook Italy and Spain in total number of cases,
the Latin American nation claimed the No. 3 spot from the U.K.,
reporting 254,220 confirmed cases as of Monday.
The country is quickly catching up to Russia, which trails only the
U.S., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
But a quickly deteriorating political crisis and infighting among
federal and state officials, as well as in President Jair Bolsonaro’s
own cabinet, leave the nation without a comprehensive strategy to slow
the spread.
Social distancing measures vary from state to state -- even city to
city -- as local leaders take charge of implementing their own
quarantines and lockdowns.
On Friday, Health Minister Nelson Teich quit after less than a month
on the job, just as Brazil had a record 17,126 new cases, according to
the tally from Bloomberg and Johns Hopkins University.
Almost 17,000 people have died so far.
“Three health ministers in less than a month; fewer than 3,500 tests
per million people; no clear federal guidance on how to deal with the
pandemic; and varied, uncoordinated containment policies,” Alejo
Czerwonko, an emerging markets strategist for UBS Financial Services,
wrote in a note to clients.
“It’s no surprise that Brazil” is a new epicenter, he added.
Emerging markets now account for the five fastest growing coronavirus
hotspots, with Brazil leading the pack followed by India and Saudi
Arabia.
Daily new cases grew 5.5% on average in the past week to 241,080
infections as of Sunday.
That compares with a growth rate of 4.1% in Russia. In the U.S., home
to the biggest outbreak by far with 1.49 million total cases, new
infections are growing on average about 1.6% daily.
Acting Minister Eduardo Pazuello, who is a military general and not a
doctor, is expected to expand the use of chloroquine to treat Covid-19
patients, the key demand from the president that prompted Teich’s
departure, the newspaper said.
Bolsonaro fired his previous health minister in April amid conflicts
over social distancing guidelines.
On average, more than one in 10 new infections worldwide can now be
traced to the country, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Investors have seized on the political turmoil and spreading pandemic
as reason to bail on Brazil stocks, bonds and the currency.
The benchmark Ibovespa equity index has posted the world’s biggest
drop this year, with a 51% decline in dollar terms. The real is also
the worst performer among major currencies, losing about a third of
its value.

We are witnessing a Spill Over into EM and Frontier Geographies
In Brazil we have a toxic mix of a „‟Voodoo‟‟ President @jairbolsonaro
and a runaway #COVID19
Brazilians aren‘t infected by anything, even when they fall into a sewer
“It‟s tragic surrealism ... I can‟t stop thinking about Gabriel García
Márquez when I think about the situation Manaus is facing.” Guardian

Frontier Markets

Sub Saharan Africa

Kano in Nigeria for example
Western Cape growing at an alarming rate @sugan250388
Someone with close knowledge of the medical profession said it was
almost impossible to secure a hospital bed in several cities.
The Aga Khan hospital in Dar es Salaam had a well-equipped ward for 80
coronavirus patients, but several were dying each night, he said.
The Question for SSA is whether these Transmission Hot Spots expand
and conflate?

22 new deaths and 918 new cases in South Africa today. Total number of
cases is up by 6% today.  New tests were 14,198. The daily positivity
rate is 6.5%. (New cases as a % of new tests.) That's the highest rate
since lockdown began. Of total cases, 61% are in Western Cape.

The Tanzanian government has not released any data on COVID-19 cases
for more than two weeks, so there are no current figures on the number
of people diagnosed with the disease, the U.S. embassy said in a
health advisory released last week.
Magufuli said charter flights fully booked with tourists were lining
up to come to Tanzania because its safe. He said he had ordered the
minister for wildlife and tourism not to put the tourists in
quarantine and to let them in the country if their temperature is
found to be normal.
“God has answered our prayers ... and he should be praised for
listening to us,” Magufuli said at a church service broadcast live
from Chato town in the Geita Region of northwestern Tanzania.
In mid-March he ordered three days of national prayers against
COVID-19. He previously said that prayers could defeat the disease.
Magufuli had earlier said that other countries and the World Health
Organization are overreacting to the disease. He said on Sunday that
his son had contracted the virus and was healed at home by just
drinking ginger and lemons “and now he is doing press ups.”
He said Tanzania’s economy is the first priority and the country
should not agree to be ruled by the disease.
He said on Sunday that his son had contracted the virus and was healed
at home by just drinking ginger and lemons “and now he is doing press
ups.”

Tanzania Magufuli government currently not testing for #COVID19
putting 7 other bordering countries at risk

37% of firms in Addis Ababa earned no revenue in the last month.
Micro-firms were particularly hard-hit, with 41% having zero revenues.

We Know that the #Coronavirus is exponential, non linear and multiplicative.
what exponential disease propagation looks like in the real world.
Real world exponential growth looks like nothing, nothing, nothing ...
then cluster, cluster, cluster ... then BOOM!

Kenya

We are on high alert given the recent floods that there could be more
undocumented sites. The race is on!

Closing Price:           35.50
Total Shares Issued:          3773674802.00
Market Capitalization:        133,965,455,471
EPS:             5.93
PE:                 5.987

Closing Price:           77.00
Total Shares Issued:          279602220.00
Market Capitalization:        21,529,370,940
EPS:             24.27
PE:                 3.173