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Thursday 19th of November 2020
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Total collapse in the value of cash globally. Debasement of all fiat currency means cash is worth next to nothing. @DTAPCAP
World Of Finance
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Expect a lot more debt issuance at such extremely low rates. Supply of paper only going up.
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The one consistent Theme is The Print Shop The Spinning Top
World Of Finance
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Let me break it to you…..There is the another major wave underway……That’s the second wave of Fed’s balance sheet expansion. @TaviCosta
World Of Finance
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Yet another pic from the 1958 (yes, 1958) initiation rites of the Kipsigis held near Fort Ternan. @HistoryKE
Misc.
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The Way We Live Now
Misc.
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It certainly is a new c21st that we find ourselves in. There is a luminous and Fairy Tale feel to life in quarantine and as you know most fairy tales have an oftentimes dark and dangerous and unspoken undercurrent.
“Going home at night! It wasn't often that I was on the river at night. I never liked it. I never felt in control. In the darkness of river and forest you could be sure only of what you could see — and even on a moonlight night you couldn't see much. When you made a noise — dipped a paddle in the water — you heard yourself as though you were another person. The river and the forest were like presences, and much more powerful than you. You felt unprotected, an intruder ... You felt the land taking you back to something that was familiar, something you had known at some time but had forgotten or ignored, but which was always there.You felt the land taking you back to what was there a hundred years ago, to what had been there always.” ― V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
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There are now more 18-29 year olds living at home than ever before @followtheh
RealEstate, Housing & Construction
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William Burroughs and Tom Waits: “Cut-ups allow the future to leak through.” Photograph: Frederika Hoffmann/Ullstein Bild
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William Burroughs: A key influence below the radar but nonetheless wildly transformative.
Misc.
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Whoever Controls The Narrative Controls The World
Law & Politics
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01-MAR-2020 :: “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. ”― William S. Burroughs
Misc.
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"Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
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"Language is a virus from outer space" - William S. Burroughs
Misc.
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"Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. " - William S. Burroughs
Misc.
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"The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers" - William S. Burroughs
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"Using redscale film is one of the most creative choices I have in the film world. No post-processing done, this is all in camera and also a double exposure" - 'Red Giants' taken by Graeme Purdy @GreatestMara
Misc.
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Political Reflections
Law & Politics
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President Trump remains bunkered in the White House as the world spins on @CNNPolitics
Law & Politics
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President Donald Trump's agenda listed "no public events" on Tuesday -- the 10th time since the election that those words have appeared on his daily schedule.
He has answered no questions from reporters, invited no cameras into the Oval Office and ventured no further than his namesake golf course, 25 miles from the White House in Virginia.
Troop drawdown plans he long sought for Afghanistan and Iraq were announced Tuesday by a new Pentagon chief whose own hiring Trump unveiled a week ago by tweet -- neither occasion warranting the President's emergence from self-sequester inside the White House
Trump has even canceled his plans to travel to Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving, administration officials told CNN.
The President and first lady were scheduled to spend the holiday at their South Florida resort, but have decided to stay in Washington instead.
"It feels like bunker mentality," a White House official said before the decision was circulated.
Even as workers dismantle and truck away the temporary metal mesh fencing that surrounded the White House on Election Day, the President remains fortified inside the building as he continues to deny losing to President-elect Joe Biden.
When he looks out his north-facing windows, he can see the reviewing stand for Biden's inaugural parade -- the same one he sat in four years ago -- being re-erected on his front lawn.
When he ventures downstairs for meetings in the Oval Office, he often remains late into the evening conferring over his chaotic legal efforts and wondering why more of his lawyers aren't on television defending him.
During a particularly heated session last Thursday, his deputy campaign manager accused his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who was on speakerphone, of being a "f**king a**hole."
Some days there is talk of a public appearance, but few have materialized since Biden was projected the election's winner, securing the same number of electoral votes -- 306 -- that Trump had previously deemed a landslide win when he took office in 2016.
Few previous periods in his administration have featured such light schedules. Trump has rarely if ever resisted television cameras for this long.
His three public appearances since November 3 have amounted to a lie-filled appearance in the briefing room, a rain-soaked wreath laying at Arlington National Cemetery and remarks in the Rose Garden about the coronavirus vaccine, all of which ended without any questions.
Even Trump's publicly listed but closed-press events have been spare. He has twice had lunch with Vice President Mike Pence, and met with his secretaries of the State Department and Treasury Department last Thursday.
But his schedule has not included a classified intelligence briefing in more than a month, even as his administration is denying those briefings to the President-elect, who convened his own non-governmental national security meeting on Tuesday and invited cameras in for a photo-op.
Trump has mostly stopped phoning US allies, particularly as they move toward recognizing Biden's win.
The last foreign leader the White House said Trump spoke with was French President Emmanuel Macron, who he dialed on October 30 after a terrorist attack in Nice.
On Tuesday, two of Trump's closest global friends, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, placed congratulatory calls to Biden.
He has sent smoke signals through some members of the conservative media. His friend Geraldo Rivera, a correspondent at Fox News, said Trump described himself as a "realist" when they spoke last week.
"Time coming soon to say goodbye with grace & dignity," Rivera tweeted.
Trump spent the ensuing weekend making false claims that he "won the election," including in all capital letters, that social media outlets labeled disinformation.
In the immediate aftermath of the election, some of Trump's advisers pushed for more official events that would demonstrate the President going about the job he is now desperately trying to retain.
But the White House did not have any announcements or official engagements in the pipeline ahead of November 3 because Trump and his team were so focused on reelection.
Trump has made policy and personnel moves from behind closed doors, including firing the defense secretary and preparing the Afghanistan and Iraq drawdown orders.
He reportedly asked about options for striking Iran during a meeting last week. And his administration is scrambling to harden efforts on deregulation and immigration before the end of Trump's term.
Behind the scenes, Trump has been eager to accomplish things that fell by the wayside during his first years in office and people close to him have said to expect that the next two months won't pass quietly.
Yet Trump has demonstrated little interest in adding more to his schedule, people familiar with the matter said, and few aides have raised the idea with him because of his dark mood and preoccupation with his loss.
Even as Biden carries out daily public appearances focused on governing, Trump hasn't felt obliged to keep pace -- though he has watched the former vice president's activities from the White House.
Instead, he is spending mornings in the residence watching television, arriving to the Oval Office later in the afternoon and remaining into the evening.
He goes back-and-forth between the office and his adjoining dining room, which is equipped with a large television and where newspapers and magazines are strewn across the table.
When members of his coronavirus task force briefed governors Monday on a nationwide surge in cases from the basement White House Situation Room, Trump was upstairs following developments in Georgia and Pennsylvania, where his team is struggling to gain legal traction in efforts to challenge the election results.
Later, as Pence made his way to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to witness the dignified transfer of American service members killed during a helicopter crash in Egypt, the President was in the West Wing grasping at developments in Nevada, claiming they would have a "major impact."
The President has yet to comment on the deaths of the Americans, who were killed last Thursday while serving as part of a peacekeeping force in Egypt. He has not tweeted about the crash or made any other public comments about it.
The West Wing had been without an in-person leader in the weeks after the election as chief of staff Mark Meadows recovered from coronavirus.
A number of other Trump advisers became infected after attending an election night party at the White House where few guests wore masks.
Meadows returned to the White House on Monday. He had been working while in isolation and spent ample time on conference calls with colleagues and Trump, people familiar with what happened told CNN.
Others in the building seem less certain about their futures. Despite an edict from Trump's personnel chief that anyone caught looking for work would be immediately fired, many resumes from the White House have arrived on Capitol Hill in the past week as staffers look to secure jobs.
Many more said they are looking forward to a day when Trump acknowledges, even obliquely, that he will not be president in January so they, too, can begin searching for their next gig.
Until he does, staffers have been coming into the building later or not at all some days.
In the East Wing, absent direction from Trump on when or if he'll accept the election results, there is a pervading sense of auto-pilot.
Without the go-ahead to start planning for a move out of the White House in 64 days, there is no packing to begin and no moving trucks to book, leaving staffers in the limbo of "do we stay or do we go?" according to one person with knowledge of the situation.
First lady Melania Trump is focused for now on unveiling her holiday decorations, and lists are being drawn up for the dozens of Christmas parties the White House still plans to host.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested the time for Trump's legal challenges was running short and that state vote certifications would present decisive proof the election was over.
"Once those certifications occur, if they occur, based upon litigation that's being tried in various places, those will be final," he told reporters on Capitol Hill.
"The Electoral College will meet in December, and the inauguration will be on January 20."
"We're going to have an orderly transfer from this administration to the next one," McConnell said. "What we all say about it is, frankly, irrelevant."
For now, Trump remains intent on pushing ahead with his legal challenges, brooding over ever-more-conspiratorial theories on why the votes did not go his way.
When he has emerged into public, he has sought out only the most familiar venues.
Before the election, Trump had told people he was eager to visit his Mar-a-Lago club after being away for so long, though noted his rooms were in the middle of being renovated. Officials were told Tuesday that Trump had pulled the plug on his Thanksgiving trip.
Fleeting glimpses from cameras positioned across the Potomac River from his golf club on Saturday and Sunday showed him speeding across the course from behind the wheel of his cart, a caddie hanging off the back.
Trump seemed to gain the most solace from crowds of supporters who massed in Washington over the weekend, many protesting the election results and voicing their support for him.
A day before the rally, he wrote on Twitter that he "may even try to stop by and say hello."
But even then, Trump did not actually emerge into the crowd. He opted instead to roll through the adoring throngs in his motorcade, waving energetically out the window as Secret Service agents jogged alongside his vehicle.
Later, Trump phoned his social media adviser Dan Scavino to marvel at the sight.
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09-NOV-2020 :: The Spinning Top
Law & Politics
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The World has spun at dizzying speed in 2020 and is bookended with the Decapitation of Qasem Soleimani and then the Political decapitation of President Trump by the [not so] ''Sleepy'' Joe Biden and who exits stage left twittering into the wilderness or is it Trump TV?
The demise of the Reality TV Star turned seriously vaudeville with Mr. Giulani mounting the last stand from the Four Seasons Total Landscaping next to Fantasy Island Adult Books across the street from the Delaware Valley Cremation Center.
Some Folks seem convinced that the Prophet of Populism Donald J. Trump is going to lead his 70m Disciples into some major 5th generational chess moves but surely just as likely is an Unfolding psychological breakdown played out in front of our eyes on TV like Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of Salesman
“You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.”
“If personal meaning, in this cheer leader society, lies in success, then failure must threaten identity itself.”
I’m tired to the death. The flute has faded away. He sits on the bed beside her, a little numb. I couldn’t make it. I just couldn’t make it, Linda.
Counterintuitively, The Trump Vladislav Surkov Talking Points which of course always feature George Soros are strangely ineffective and a little like a receding tide.
The American Electoral System has emerged unscathed and in fact looks robust.
“My take on Trump is that he is an inevitable creation of this unreal normal world,” Adam Curtis says. “Politics has become a pantomime or vaudeville in that it creates waves of anger rather than argument''
''Maybe people like Trump are successful simply because they fuel that anger, in the echo chambers of the internet.”
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#BREAKING: IAEA: Iran has begun feeding uranium hexafluoride gas feedstock into advanced IR-2m centrifuges installed at underground Natanz plant @AmichaiStein1
Law & Politics
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Data from #Covid19 worldwide as of November 17: + 609,489 cases in 24 hours, i.e. 55,625,162 in total + 11,101 deaths in 24 hours, or 1,338,706 in total @CovidTracker_fr
Misc.
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Malcolm 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. #nCoV2019
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The virus is moving at warp speed
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World total 56,239,001 #COVID19 cases exponentially growing 1.08% per day on avg. World registered 623,384 new cases and 11,273 new deaths yesterday. @jmlukens
Misc.
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World total 56,239,001 #COVID19 cases exponentially growing 1.08% per day on avg. 1,349,119 total deaths exponentially growing 0.7% per day and accelerating. World registered 623,384 new cases and 11,273 new deaths yesterday.
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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." - Professor Bartlett
Misc.
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States reported 1.5M tests, 164k cases, and 1,869 deaths. A record 79k people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the US. Today's death count is the highest since May 7. @COVID19Tracking
Misc.
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The number of reported global daily deaths from coronavirus hit a record 10,816 on Tuesday, according to a Reuters now one in every 12 deaths reported worldwide each day @ReutersJamie
Misc.
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The number of reported global daily deaths from coronavirus hit a record 10,816 on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally. The U.S. has highest daily average number of new deaths, now one in every 12 deaths reported worldwide each day, according to Reuters analysis.
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Drinking the Kool-Aid The exponential moment is still in front of us. #COVID19
Misc.
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Moderna next week arguing that their vaccine is actually 120% effective, some people they didn't even give it to are protected. @Birdyword
Misc.
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The vaccine group is now hotter and richer than the placebo group, some of the placebo group's wives have left them for the vaccine group participants.
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THE VACCINE STORY IS ANOTHER MYTH
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mRNA vaccines have never been shown to work in a population. It's a totally experimental drug delivery system. @Arkancideisreal
Misc.
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RaTG13 can use mouse but not pangolin ACE2 but SARS2 can use pangolin but not mouse ACE2. Thinking face Is RaTG13 a mouse adapted strain @Rossana38510044
Misc.
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I am convinced that the only ‘’zoonotic’’ origin was one that was accelerated in the Laboratory.
Misc.
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International Markets
World Of Finance
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Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ
World Currencies
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Euro 1.185140
Dollar Index 92.452
Japan Yen 103.870
Swiss Franc 0.910500
Pound 1.324055
Aussie 0.729535
India Rupee 74.25855
South Korea Won 1114.030
Brazil Real 5.3636000
Egypt Pound 15.628600
South Africa Rand 15.503100
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New post-2018 dollar weakness: @lisaabramowicz1
World Currencies
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09-NOV-2020 :: The Spinning Top The one consistent Theme is The Print Shop & The Dollar heads lower
World Currencies
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Euro versus the Dollar Chart 1.185140
World Currencies
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Commodity Markets at a Glance WSJ
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Crude Oil 6 Month Chart INO 41.50
Commodities
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Coronavirus cases in Africa surpass the 2 million mark: Reuters tally #COVID19 @Reuters
Africa
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With over 2,012,000 cases, Africa represents under 4% of the world’s reported cases, which many experts believe to be an undercount.
The region’s COVID-19 fatality rate at nearly 2.4% is the third highest in the world behind Latin America and the Middle East, though total reported deaths is far lower. Africa has reported over 48,000 deaths so far.
Countries such as Sudan, Chad, and Egypt have reported the highest fatality rates across the continent at 7.81%, 6.28%, 5.82%, respectively.
South Africa has the continent’s highest number of reported COVID-19 cases at over 750,000, with a death rate of 2.71%, based on a Reuters tally.
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#COVID19 November 17th 15,688 Daily Infections versus 5,915 September 28 Reuters Graphics
Africa
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#Morroco 5,206 avg #COVID19 cases per day +1.82% each day. #SouthAfrica 2,000 avg cases/day up 27% past 2wks. #Algeria 878 avg cases/day up 170% past 2wks. @jmlukens
Africa
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#Morroco 5,206 avg #COVID19 cases per day exponentially growing 301,604 total 1.82% each day. #SouthAfrica 2,000 avg cases/day up 27% past 2wks. #Algeria 878 avg cases/day up 170% past 2wks. #Kenya now averaging more than 1k new case per day.
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Turning to Africa we all know by now ''viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics''
Africa
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South Africa's daily report: 2,888 new cases from 28,703 new tests. The daily positivity rate is back over 10% in the past two days. @geoffreyyork
Africa
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Kampala on fire, following the arrest, in Luuka, of presidential candidate Hon Robert Kyagulanyi (BOBI Wine). The protests are spreading quickly to other urban centres. @kizzabesigye1
Africa
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Uganda has never witnessed a peaceful transfer of power since independence in 1962.
Africa
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Turning to Africa The Spinning Top
Africa
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So far Africa has dodged the Virus from a medical perspective though it remains in my view a slow burning Fuse and we all know by now ''viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics'
The real challenge is the Economic Emergency. The latest Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa projects economic activity in the region to decline by 3.0% in 2020 and recover by 3.1% in 2021. @IMFNews
The IMF is so bright eyed and bushy tailed and I want some of whatever Pills they are popping.
Ethiopia which was once the Poster child of the African Renaissance now has a Nobel Prize Winner whom I am reliably informed
PM Abiy His inner war cabinet includes Evangelicals who are counseling him he is "doing Christ's work"; that his faith is being "tested". @RAbdiAnalyst
@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province.
Democracy from Tanzania to Zimbabwe to Cameroon has been shredded.
We are getting closer and closer to the Virilian Tipping Point
“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street''
Political leadership in most cases completely gerontocratic will use violence to cling onto Power but any Early Warning System would be warning a Tsunami is coming
10 NOV 14 : African youth demographic {many characterise this as a 'demographic dividend"} - which for Beautiful Blaise turned into a demographic terminator
Martin Aglo, a law student from Benin, told Reuters: “After the Arab Spring, this is the Black Spring”.We need to ask ourselves; how many people can incumbent shoot stone cold dead in such a situation – 100, 1,000, 10,000?
This is another point: there is a threshold beyond which the incumbent can’t go. Where that threshold lies will be discovered in the throes of the event.
The Event is no longer over the Horizon.
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Abiy may be writing his own Ethiopian version 'Petals of Blood' @michaeltanchum
Africa
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@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province.
Law & Politics
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Ethiopia which was once the Poster child of the African Renaissance now has a Nobel Prize Winner whom I am reliably informed
PM Abiy His inner war cabinet includes Evangelicals who are counseling him he is "doing Christ's work"; that his faith is being "tested". @RAbdiAnalyst
@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province.
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Ethiopia which was once the Poster child of the African Renaissance H/T @adam_tooze @FT.
Africa
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Ethiopia’s $107 billion economy expanded more than 9% a year over the past decade as investment flooded in, making it one of the world’s top performers. @bpolitics
Africa
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Ethiopia’s $107 billion economy expanded more than 9% a year over the past decade as investment flooded in, making it one of the world’s top performers.
Prior to the hostilities, the International Monetary Fund forecast that the fallout from the coronavirus would slow to 1.9% this year -- a projection that’s likely to prove overly optimistic.
Besides derailing one of the world’s fastest growing tourism industries, the violence could distract the government from implementing plans to open telecommunications and other state-dominated industries to outside investors.
MTN Group Ltd., Africa’s biggest wireless carrier, echoed growing concerns among investors about Ethiopia’s investment climate when Chief Executive Officer Ralph Mupita said Wednesday the country is looking “materially less attractive.”
Vodacom Ltd., South Africa’s biggest mobile operator, said earlier this week it’s monitoring the crisis before a planned investment decision, while KCB Group, Kenya’s largest bank, has postponed plans to expand into the northern neighbor.
Mounting concerns that the crisis could be a protracted one and spread to other parts of Ethiopia or beyond its borders are evident in the financial markets.
Yields on the nation’s $1 billion of Eurobonds maturing in 2024 have risen 200 basis points since the conflict erupted and traded at 8.25% in London on Wednesday.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates an additional 1.1 million people in Tigray and two neighboring regions are expected to need aid as a result of the conflict.
Insecurity, a lack of fuel and a communication blackout have hampered efforts to accurately assess what supplies are needed and deliver them, it said in its latest bulletin.
About 4,000 people are crossing from Tigray into Sudan daily, with more than 30,000 having made the trip by Nov. 18 , according to the UN.
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Report that the UAE operating from the Eritrean port of Assab is continuing to use drones to drop explosives on Tigray @martinplaut
Africa
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20 JAN 20 :: The Intrusion of Middle Powers
Africa
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#UAE ambassador to #Ethiopia, Mohamed Al-Rashidi, visits the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in Addis Ababa amidst reports of UAE conducting drone strikes against #TPLF forces in #Tigray region @MoradNews
Africa
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#UAE ambassador to #Ethiopia, Mohamed Al-Rashidi, visits the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in Addis Ababa amidst reports of UAE involvement in the ongoing #EthiopianCivilWar by conducting drone strikes against #TPLF forces in #Tigray region.
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Africa
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A fiendishly complicated task fending off the centripetal forces which are tearing Ethiopia apart
Africa
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02-JUL-2018 :: He said “The ppl of Tigray are still begging for a drop of water; TPLF (the party) is not the people of Tigray”.
Africa
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William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war."
Africa
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Tigray crisis: ‘They know how to fight and they can do it ’til the end’ @RAbdiAnalyst @FT.
Africa
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What is Kenya worried about in the Ethiopia-Tigray conflict? Greater Somalia @michaeltanchum
Africa
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Busiest African air routes in November 2020 are Harare-Johannesburg, Tripoli-Tunis, Cairo-Dubai, Cairo-Riyadh, Johannesburg-Lusaka and Addis-Dubai. via @OAG_Aviation @bankelele
Tourism, Travel & Transport
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South Africa All Share Bloomberg
World Of Finance
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Dollar versus Rand 6 Month Chart INO 15.53
World Currencies
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Egypt Pound versus The Dollar 3 Month Chart INO 15.63
World Currencies
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Egypt EGX30 Bloomberg
World Of Finance
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Nigeria All Share Bloomberg
World Of Finance
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Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg
World Of Finance
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Zambian Central Bank Holds Key Interest at Record-Low 8% @economics
World Of Finance
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The Bank of Zambia kept its key interest rate at a record low to allow the impact of previous cuts to filter through the economy.
The monetary policy committee held the rate at 8%, Governor Christopher Mvunga told reporters Wednesday in Lusaka, the capital, after leading his first meeting of the panel.
The MPC under Mvunga, appointed in August, had to balance boosting the economy of Africa’s second-biggest copper producer with attracting inflows and supporting the kwacha as it weakened even further after Zambia failed to make an interest payment on Friday on one of its Eurobonds.
That made the country the continent’s first pandemic-era sovereign default.
The kwacha has weakened 32% against the dollar this year, making it the worst performer of all currencies on the continent tracked by Bloomberg.
The depreciation has added to inflation, which has been above the central bank’s target band of 6% to 8% for 18 straight months and quickened to 16% in October.
While the rate of price growth is expected to moderate over the next two years, it’s likely to remain above target, Mvunga said.
Risks to the inflation outlook remain tilted to the upside, he said.
The economy will probably contract by 4.2% this year and recover at a slower pace than previously thought due to limited fiscal space, he said.
“Successfully navigating the debt-restructuring process to restore debt sustainability and implementing fiscal and other structural reforms are critical to return to fiscal fitness,” Mvunga said.
The kwacha was 0.15% weaker at 20.94 on Wednesday. It could end the year at close to 26 against the greenback, Johannesburg-based Rand Merchant Bank said in a Nov. 16 client note.
“Central-bank intervention might taper the rate of weakening over the next few weeks but we still expect demand for dollars to increase alongside additional fiscal pressure,” RMB said.
Mvunga’s predecessor, Denny Kalyalya, cut the key rate by 125 basis points three days before he was removed from the post by President Edgar Lungu in August.
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December 9, 2019 Time to Big Up the Dosage of Quaaludes
Africa
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14-OCT-2019 :: Ozymandias The Canary in the Coal Mine is Zambia.
Africa
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Kenya Finance Minister says IMF and World Bank are making seeking G20 debt relief a prerequisite to accessing their facilities. @moneyacademyKE
Kenyan Economy
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Government is currently in talks with the IMF on new lending facility
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UPDATE 2-In U-turn, Kenya plans to defer $690 million in debt payments under G20 initiative @Reuters
Kenyan Economy
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Kenya has changed its mind about a G20 coronavirus debt relief initiative it declined to join earlier this year, and is now planning to defer around $690 million in debt payments, its finance minister told Reuters on Wednesday.
Kenya had said in May that it would not seek suspension of debt payments under the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), aimed at helping poor countries weather the COVID-19 pandemic, as it found the terms too restrictive.
“We have been reluctant in the past because of the attendant unintended consequences in terms of those holding private debt,” Finance Minister Ukur Yatani said.
“But now after getting a bit of assurance that it is a matter that can be managed, we are now strongly considering joining the arrangement”.
He said a decision to join the initiative had been made in principle, and a final decision would be made as early as next week.
Kenya would retain about 75 billion shillings ($686 million) in deferred debt repayments over the term of the relief deal.
Joining the arrangement was also important for Kenya, he said, as it will help open doors for further funding from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
“They are trying to introduce this as one of the key prerequisites to accessing resources from the IMF and World Bank,” he said.
The government is in talks with the IMF on a new lending facility, as Kenya faces huge budget deficits worsened by the coronavirus crisis.
For nearly two years now, it has abandoned expensive commercial debt to cut back on ballooning repayments, while revenue collection has been squeezed by the pandemic.
As part of that strategy, it secured $1 billion in May in the second ever such direct lending for the budget from the World Bank, after the first was processed last year.
Kenya will engage China, one of its key creditors, as part of the process of joining the debt relief initiative, the minister said.
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COVID-19 and a Rolling Sudden Stop
Africa
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02-MAR-2020 The #COVID19 and SSA and the R Word
Africa
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A Kenyan doctor died of COVID-19 over the weekend after no bed for him in an intensive care unit was available. @AP
Africa
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A Kenyan doctor died of COVID-19 over the weekend after no bed for him in an intensive care unit was available.
Other doctors say they cannot afford the treatment they administer to COVID-19 patients, yet many work while dangerously exposed without protection.
Some health care workers organize fund drives for colleagues to pay medical bills.
As Africa is poised to surpass 2 million confirmed virus cases as early as Wednesday, it is Kenya’s turn to worry the continent with a second surge in infections well under way.
The death of four doctors from COVID-19 over the weekend, due to neglect and hospital congestion, has sparked anger and pushed the medical fraternity to the edge.
The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union is calling for a strike starting next month for its 7,200 members, who represent the majority of the country’s doctors.
“Our lives as doctors will not be sacrificed in this manner. Doctors will not engage in suicide missions in the war against COVID-19,” the union’s secretary general, Chibanzi Mwachonda, told a briefing on Sunday.
For many Kenyans, the strike notice is the latest warning that they are largely on their own in this pandemic.
Kenyans watched last week as President Uhuru Kenyatta inaugurated a new hospital with COVID-19 facilities for United Nations staffers and “the entire diplomatic community.”
And yet some Kenyans have complained of being turned away for care at public hospitals.
The country has over 70,000 confirmed cases, far less than some other nations, but it has seen a 34% rise in new cases over the past four weeks.
“This has been a very bad week for us,” health minister Mutahi Kagwe said Sunday, a day after the four doctors died.
And yet last week, Kagwe said the government’s health insurer will not assist Kenyans in paying for their admission and treatment and treatment for COVID-19.
And he told lawmakers investigating claims that private insurance companies weren’t covering the cost of COVID-19 treatment that such coverage wasn’t feasible.
''We are on auto-pilot. We are on our own. The government is not interested in containing COVID-19. Their key interest is changing the constitution through a referendum to entrench power,” said political activist Boniface Mwangi.
He was referring to an upcoming referendum for which the government has set aside millions of dollars that many believe it doesn’t have.
The right to health is guaranteed by the constitution “only on paper and not in deeds,” he said, pointing out fundraising drives on social media so that doctors in county hospitals can buy personal protective equipment.
Political rallies to popularize the referendum and campaign for the 2022 election, meanwhile, have been “super spreader events” that further burden the overstretched and neglected healthcare system, KMPDU chairman Samuel Oroko told Sunday’s briefing.
Doctors are working in an “extremely difficult draining, hazardous and injurious working environment,” Mwachonda said.
Ten doctors and 20 other health care workers have died of COVID-19 so far, he said, and their colleagues had raised some $20 million for their bills in intensive care.
The government must provide adequate PPE for all healthcare facilities, insurance coverage for all doctors, dedicated care facilities for health workers and more, he said.
And he vowed that doctors will ignore any court order barring the strike.
“Kenyans have been on their own. The government has relied on coercion rather than consent in managing the disease and has shown little understanding of how ordinary Kenyans are affected by its dictates,” said cartoonist and political commentator Patrick Gathara.
He said people are being arrested and fined $200 for not wearing a mask, yet many Kenyans cannot afford them. “Further, putting people in crowded police cells is completely bonkers!” he said.
“For it to be better, government has to do something that it has been loathe to do since independence: see Kenyans as citizens rather than subjects, work with them rather than brutalize them, explain rather than dictate,” Gathara said.
In Kibera, the country’s largest informal settlement, residents hardly wear masks like those in more well-off neighboring suburbs of Nairobi.
Over the weekend. Sam Ochieng, an aspiring politician, sat with nearly 100 other men without masks as they bantered for hours about life and the state of the nation.
Ochieng says most people in Kibera believe that government officials are exaggerating the pandemic to siphon money from public coffers.
It’s hard for people to believe in COVID-19 when they don’t see widespread deaths, he said.
“They say they are testing people from Kibera but nobody has seen them do so, and it’s very hard to hide such things in a tight-knit community, so it becomes difficult for residents to believe anything that the government says,” Ochieng said.
Such attitudes are a major challenge for Africa as virus infections creep up again in Kenya and elsewhere, the continent’s top public health official says.
“We have begin to see what I call prevention fatigue,” the director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, John Nkengasong, told an online event on Monday. “Some countries have just literally abandoned masks.”
That’s dangerous, he said, and “we don’t know how high the second peak will come.”
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―They fancied themselves free, wrote Camus, ―and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.
Africa
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―In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.
A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.
But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.
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Two air routes btw #Africa & #China temporarily suspended by China's aviation regulatory, due to few passengers positive for #COVID19 China Southern Airline CZ6044, Nairobi Changsha 1 week from 25 Nov @shen_shiwei
Africa
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Dear @shen_shiwei do we have further details on the number of infected passengers on China Southern CZ6044?
Africa
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5 passengers on China Southern Airline CZ6044 tested positive #COVID19. The Civil Aviation Administration of #China said on 18th Nov. @shen_shiwei
Africa
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At least 48.5% (almost half) of Kenya's middle-class are unable to service their loans, a November 2020 report dubbed Indebtness Survey carried out by Collect Pro has revealed.
Kenyan Economy
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The survey targeted 221 households with a Daily Per Capita expenditure of above Ksh 2,187.60, which can therefore be referred to as Upper Middle Class.
According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), a Kenyan middle class person spends between Ksh 23,670 and Ksh 199,999 each month.
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) found that there are about 272,569 middle class wage employees in Kenya.
10% are completely unable to pay a single shilling, with another 13.6% falling significantly behind in their payment obligations.
A quarter of the respondents (24.9%) said they are slightly behind in their loan servicing obligations
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#AbsaResultsQ32020 @AbsaKenya
N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment
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@AbsaKenya share price data
N.S.E Equities - Finance & Investment
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Kenya Shilling versus The Dollar Live ForexPros 109.40
World Currencies
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Nairobi All Share Bloomberg
N.S.E General
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Nairobi ^NSE20 Bloomberg
N.S.E General
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Every Listed Share can be interrogated here
N.S.E General
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