My Beauty Best Teacher

Ryan Shen-Hoover writing in the Cheetah Index asks the question:

Would a portfolio consisting of equal allocations to each of these 10 African markets be exposed to unacceptable levels of risk? To find out, I back-tested such a portfolio and compared it to the S&P500 and EEM using the most recent 16 months of returns.
The S&P500 returned an average of –0.04% per month with a 3.42% standard deviation. The Emerging Market Index posted better returns of 1.71% but was more volatile with a 6.31% standard deviation. Our Africa portfolio returned 2.90% with a 2.36% deviation. Better returns and less volatility. Could Africa be an investor’s safest and most rewarding bet?

Matthew Green at the FT reports on the Nigerian Capital Markets:

Some banking stocks have trebled in the past six months alone – the most spectacular sign of the shift in the country’s status from marginal emerging market play to star performer.
Driven by a combination of government reforms, debt relief and high oil prices at a time of heightened appetite for new types of risk, the gains have revealed a glimpse of untapped potential and looming hazards...A tougher line on money laundering and a newly-awarded BB- sovereign debt rating added to the allure at a time when global funds were turning to Africa as an antidote to dwindling returns in established pastures.
The sheer size of the country’s debt and equity markets has enticed hedge funds that worry about liquidity in smaller sub-Saharan countries, while strong domestic buying insulated Nigeria from a global sell-off in March

Roma Luciw reports:

According to Merrill Lynch chief investment strategist Richard Bernstein, Africa presents investors with both “tremendous potential” and “tremendous risk.” In the next decade, he believes it should above all provide them with opportunity.
“Traditionally Africa has not been a place where more risk-oriented emerging market investors would invest, but that is changing,” Mr. Bernstein said in a report. “Investors in search of higher returns have increased their risk tolerances and have begun to search for greater returns from so-called frontier markets.”
Africa's economic expansion has exceeded global growth and is expected to continue to do so in the coming years. The continent may be on the cusp of an “unprecedented stage of economic development,” one that will benefit 100 companies in more than 20 countries, he said.

via WhiteAfrican

When I was growing up, I used to love my dad's old books from the 1950's-1970's. He had boxes of them; books that he had read growing up, books that he read in high school, books that he read in college, and books that he read as a young adult. They were science-fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, and adventure books, and I loved all of them. And now that I am getting older, I have been buying books and saving books imagining that someday, my children will inherit these books and treasure them as much as I have. But that dream may have shattered a bit today after my recent visit to Barnes and Noble bookstore, as I now think that perhaps physical books and sellers of them should be replaced.

Honestly, I still read physical books and haven't made the switch to a Kindle, although I am increasingly fascinated and wouldn't mind doing so if anyone would like to buy me one as a late Christmas gift (Kindle DX, 9.7", $379). Mostly this is because I really like my old books, and a lot of the books that I buy are not on the Kindle yet. Even still, my experience at Barnes and Noble was so bad that I may just make the switch.

Barnes and Noble would not take any of my returns, even returns of books that I could see in the store, even though I was willing to take the lowest price of the item in recent months. They could have taken the books from me that I could see in the store, given me a sale price, and then sold it at full price, and everyone would be a winner. Instead, their return policy is so strict that I couldn't return my books there- instead, I'll sell them online at Amazon.com or Half.com, and turn around and buy more books off those sites too, thereby giving someone else my business. Barnes and Noble has no customer service- no one helped me find books and there were no reviews of books for me to read, both of which you can find on Amazon (see links on my site to link to amazon). Barnes and Noble has a poor selection of books- I printed out my amazon wishlist of over 200 books and probably could only find two dozen or so of them. Granted, I have a lot of obscure reads on my amazon wishlist- books like The Ganymede Takeover, The Warlord of the Air (The Oswald Bastable Series), or Lankhmar Book 1: Swords And Deviltry- but still, a lot of well-known authors and their books were unable to be found in this 'bookstore.'

Barnes and Noble needs to go out of business, so that people who currently do spend their money there will be forced to look at the alternatives, which will provide these customers with more selection, cheaper prices, and better service, all from the comfort of their own homes. This is tough for me to say, being a lover of traditional books, but such was my experience and thoughts today.

Mired in grinding poverty and social destitution, Africa cries for help. A cacophonous galaxy of rock stars, anti-poverty activists, and heads of state are calling on the G-8 countries to cancel Africa’s $350 billion crippling foreign debt and double aid to the continent. British Prime Minister Tony Blair will make aid to Africa the centerpiece in Britain's presidency of the G-8 meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland in July. Live 8 is planned for July 2. After meeting with President Bush on June 10, modalities are being worked out to cancel at least $34 billion in debt of 27 of the world’s poorest nations, mostly African. Will this African Marshall Aid Plan work?

Africa’s plight follows a ten-year attention deficit cycle. Every decade or so, mega-plans are drawn up and rock concerts held to whip up international rescue mission for Africa. Acrimonious wrangling over financing modalities ensues. Years slip by, then a decade later, another grand Africa initiative is unveiled. Back in 1985, there was Live Aid and a “Special Session on Africa” held by the United Nations to boost aid to Africa. Then in March 1996, the U.N. launched a $25 billion Special Initiative for Africa. In September 2005, the plight of Africa will again take center-stage at a U.N. conference with clockwork precision. Expect another major initiative for Africa in 2015.

Helping Africa of course is noble but has now become a theater of the absurd – the blind leading the clueless. A recent IMF study estimated that Africans in the diaspora remit $32 billion annually back to Africa, with the main destinations being Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya. About $7 billion is sent to southern Africa (Ghana News Agency, Accra, May 31, 2005). The amount Africans abroad remit back exceeds the $25 billion Tony Blair seeks to raise.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo says corrupt African leaders have stolen at least $140 billion (£95 billion) from their people since independence. The World Bank estimates that 40 per cent of wealth created in Africa is invested outside the continent. Even the African Union, in a stunning report last August, claimed that Africa loses an estimated $148 billion annually to corruption – or 25 percent of the continent's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Rather than plug the huge hemorrhage, African leaders prefer to badger the West for more money. And the West, blinded by its own racial over-sensitivity and guilt over the iniquities of the slave trade and colonialism, obliges. This is the real tragedy of Africa.

Between 1960 and 1997, the West pumped more than $450 billion in foreign aid – the equivalent of four Marshall Aid Plans – into Africa with nothing to show for it. Contrary to popular misconception, foreign aid is not free but a soft loan. Outright debt relief and massive inflow of aid without any conditionalities, safeguards or monitoring mechanisms is absurd. It is akin to writing off the credit card debt of a drunken sailor and allowing him to keep the same credit cards. No African government has been called upon to give a full public accounting of who took what loan and for what purpose since many of Africa’s foreign loans taken in the past were misused and squandered. No government official has been held accountable; instead, irresponsible past borrowing behavior is being rewarded.

More distressing, much of the new aid money will flow directly into an African government budget – a huge black maze of vanishing tax receipts, extra-budgetary expenditure items, perks and off-budget “presidential privy accounts,” redolent with graft, patronage and waste. Over the past few decades, African budgets have careened out of control. State bureaucracies have swollen, packed with political supporters. Back in 1996, 20 percent of Ghana's public sector workforce was declared redundant by the Secretary of Finance and Guinea’s 50,000 civil servants were consuming 51 percent of the nation's wealth. In Kenya, civil service salaries take up half the budget; in Uganda, it is 40 percent. Zimbabwe has 54 ministers; Uganda with a population of 35 million has 70, while Ghana, with a population of 22 million, has 88 ministers and deputy ministers. With bloated bureaucracies, soaring expenditures and narrow tax bases, budget deficits have soared.

They are covered with World Bank loans and foreign aid (Ghana’s budget is 50 percent aid-financed and Uganda’s is 60 percent). If the aid is insufficient, the rest of the budget shortfall is financed by printing money. Even when is aid available for “budgetary support”, there is no guarantee that it will be used productively to generate a return to repay the soft loan. It could well be “consumed” when it pays for the salaries of civil servants. Writing off Uganda’s debt does not eliminate the aid dependency. In fact, when the World Bank canceled $650 million of Uganda’s debt in 1999, the first item President Yoweri Museveni purchased was a new presidential jet!


British Prime Minister thinks he can cajole or browbeat African leaders into curbing corruption and ensuring that resources released by debt relief are put to some good use – such as increased spending on education and health care. But the push for good governance and reform must come from within – from African civil society groups, organizations and the people. However, in country after country, chastened by diabolical restrictions, these groups have no freedom or political space to operate.

Carlos Cardoso, an investigative journalist, was murdered in November 2000 for uncovering a bank scandal in which about $14 million was looted from Mozambique's largest bank, BCM, on the eve of its privatization. The official in charge of banking supervision, Antonio Siba Siba, was also murdered while investigating the banking scandals. Such was also the fate of Norbert Zongo, a popular journalist in Burkina Faso, who was gunned down on Dec 13, 1998, while investigating official corruption. In September 2001, President Isaias Afwerki closed down all the independent media and arrested its staff, quashing calls for democratic reforms. In all, the government shut down eight private newspapers and arrested its journalists, picking them up in their newsrooms and homes and from the streets. They were held in a central jail until April, 2002, when they threatened to begin a hunger strike to protest their detention. They were then transferred to an undisclosed location.

In neighboring Ethiopia, President Meles Zenawi, a member of Tony Blair’s Africa Commission, just held fraudulent elections. Anticipating public outrage, he banned street demonstrations for one month and assumed full control of the country’s security forces. When the opposition rallied to protest the results dribbling in, the police opened fire, killing 26; opposition leaders have been placed under house arrest. Witness the election machinations in Egypt.

The paucity of good leadership has left a garish stain on the continent. Worse, the caliber of leadership has distressingly deteriorated over the decades to execrable depths. The likes of Charles Taylor of Liberia and Sani Abacha of Nigeria even make Mobutu Sese Seko of formerly Zaire look like a saint. In an unusual editorial, The Independent newspaper in Ghana wrote: "Most of the leaders in Africa are power-loving politicians, who in uniform or out of uniform, represent no good for the welfare of our people. These are harsh words to use on men and women who may mean well but lack the necessary vision and direction to uplift the status of their people (The Independent, Ghana, July 20, 2000; p.2).

The crisis in leadership remains a major obstacle to poverty reduction and has many manifestations. It is characterized, among others, by the following dispositions and failings: The "Big Man" syndrome, subordination of national interests to personal aggrandizement, super-inflated egos, misplaced priorities, poor judgment, reluctance to take responsibility for personal failures, and total lack of vision and understanding of even such basic and elementary concepts as "democracy," "fairness," "rule of law," "accountability," and "freedom" -- among other deficiencies. In some instances, the leadership is given to vituperative utterances, outright buffoonery, stubborn refusal to learn from past mistakes, and complete absence of cognitive pragmatism.

Believing that their countries belong to them and only them only, they cling to power at all costs. Their promises are worth less than Al Cappone’s. They stipulate constitutional term limits and then break them: Angola, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, and Uganda. African leaders themselves drew up a New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in 2001, in which they inserted a Peer Review Mechanism (PRM), by which they were to evaluate the performance of fellow African leaders in terms of democratic governance. What happened? To be fair, they acted in reversing the “military coup” in Togo in February but went on vacation when elections were stolen in Zimbabwe and Togo.

Ask them to cut bloated state bureaucracies or government spending and they will set up a “Ministry of Less Government Spending.” Then there is the “Ministry of Good Governance” (Tanzania). They set up “Anti-Corruption Commissions” with no teeth and then sack the Commissioner if he gets too close to the fat cats (Kenya) or issue a Government White Paper to exonerate corrupt ministers (Ghana in 1996). To be sure, multi-party elections have been held in recent years in many African countries but the electoral process was so contumaciously manipulated to return incumbents to power. Four such “coconut elections” have so far been held this year: Zimbabwe, Togo, Congo (Brazzaville), and Ethiopia.

Ask them to place more reliance on the private sector and they will create a Ministry of Private Enterprise (Ghana). Ask them to privatize inefficient state-owned enterprises and they will sell them off at fire-sale prices to their cronies (Uganda). Or ask them to move a foot and they will demand foreign aid in order to do so. In 2003, some 30,000 ghost names were discovered on the payroll of the Ministry of Education, costing the government $1.2 million a month in salaries heisted by living workers. When Ghana demanded foreign aid to purge the payroll of these ghost names, Japan coughed up $5 million.

The reform process has stalled through vexatious chicanery, willful deception, and vaunted acrobatics. Only 16 out of the 54 African countries are democratic, fewer than 8 are “economic success stories,” only 8 have a free and independent media.

No amount of debt relief and increased aid will help Africa until Africa cleans up its own house. But the leadership is not interested in reform. Thus, without new leadership and genuine reform, debt relief and increased aid would compound Africa’s problems and more African countries will implode. The continent is stuck in a veritable conundrum. What can Western donors do?

Smart aid would do one of two things. One, bypass the vampire state and target the people, who produce Africa’s real wealth. An African economy consists of three sectors: the traditional, informal, and the modern sector. The people who produce Africa’s real wealth – cash crops, diamonds, gold and other minerals – live in the traditional and informal sectors. Meaningful development and poverty reduction cannot occur by ignoring these two sectors. But in the 1960s and 1970s, much Western development aid was channeled into the modern sector or the urban area, the abode of the parasitic elite minority. Industrialization was the rage and the two other sectors – especially agriculture – were neglected. Huge foreign loans were contracted to set up a dizzying array of state enterprises, which became towering edifices of gross inefficiency, waste and graft. Economic crises emerged in the 1980s and billions in foreign aid money were spent in an attempt to reform the dysfunctional modern sector. Between 1981 and 1994, for example, the World Bank spent more than $25 billion in Structural Adjustment loans to reform Africa’s dilapidated statist economic system. Only 6 out of the 29 “adjusting” African countries were adjudged to be “economic success stories” in 1994. Even then, the success list was phantasmagoric. Ghana, declared a “success story” in 1994, is now on HIPC life-support system.

At some point, even the most recklessly optimistic donor must come to terms with the law of diminishing returns: That pouring in more money to reform the modern sector is futile. Greater returns can be achieved elsewhere – by focusing on the traditional and informal sectors.

Second, smart aid would empower the African people (African civil society groups) to monitor how the aid money is being spent and to instigate reform from within. Empowerment requires arming the African people with information, the freedom and the institutional means to unchain themselves from the vicious grip of poverty and oppression.

Africa already has its own Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights (the 1981 Banjul Charter), which recognizes the right to liberty and to the security of his person (Article 6); to receive information, to express and disseminate his opinions (Article 9); to free association (Article 10); to assemble freely with others (Article 11); and to participate freely in the government of his country, either directly or through freely chosen representatives in accordance with the provisions of the law (Article 13). Though the Charter enjoins African states to recognize these rights, few do so. When President Thabo Mbeki called on June 3, President Bush should have handed him a signed copy of this Charter to be delivered to President Robert Mugabe of ‘Zimbabwe.

The institutional tools Africans need are an independent central bank (to assure monetary stability and stanch capital flight), an independent judiciary (for the rule of law), a free and independent media (to ensure free flow of information), an independent Electoral Commission, an efficient and professional civil service, and a neutral and professional armed and security forces.

Recent events in Ukraine (November), Ghana (December), Zimbabwe (March), Lebanon (April), and Togo (April) unerringly underscore the critical importance of these institutions. Without them, President Bush’s plan to spread democracy may stall. Democracies are not built in a vacuum but in a “political space” in which the people can air their opinion, petition their government without being fired on by security forces and can choose who should rule them in elections that are rigged by electoral commissions packed with government goons.

On May 13, thousands of Egyptian judges, frustrated by government control over the judiciary, agitated for full independence from the executive in their oversight of the electoral process. “The institutions are presenting Mr. Mubarak with an unexpected challenge from within, one that will be difficult to dismiss. The fact is, major changes in this country are going to come out of those institutions, not from the streets," said Abdel Monem Said, director of the Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo.

In the past 24 years, Egypt has received more than $55 billion in U.S. aid in direct government-to-government transfers. Smart aid would assist civil society in instigating institutional reform. Since this approach carries some risks, the same objective can be achieved by funneling aid through diaspora Africans and their organizations, as was the case with Soviet dissidents during the Cold War.

Africa’s long term growth prospects do not lie in rock concerts and increased dependency on Western aid but on the ability of the African people or civil society groups to instigate reform from within. Assistance to such groups – both at home and abroad – constitutes much smarter aid to Africa than all the LIVE AID concerts Bob Geldof can organize.
______________

The writer, a native of Ghana, is a Distinguished Economist at American University and President of the Free Africa Foundation. His new book is Africa Unchained (Palgrave/MacMillan). This article is culled from his May 10 testimony before the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate of Canada.

In The Inside Deal: Obama's Economic Program I wrote:

The Inside Deal is Democratic President Barack Obama's domestic economic program and is characterized by extensive government spending for politically connected groups within American society. It is aimed to reward those groups that supported Obama's campaign for the Presidency in 2010, such as labor unions, public employee unions, teachers unions, environmentalists, anti-war protesters, Wall Street, and big businesses. Some of the programs that were passed by the Democratic Congress at the time to reward these groups include the stimulus bill, the healthcare bill, and massive annual budgets. Increasingly during the height of the Inside Deal, there is a link between who receives taxpayer money from the federal government and their political connections. Called by some crony capitalism.

The Inside Deal continues to pay off for some groups and those companies and individuals and special interest groups recognize that in order for them to continue to be provided with political and economic support, they need to keep in power a group of politicians who will continue to steer money to them in spite of whether they deserve it or produce anything of value. That group of politicians in the Democratic Party, and so it is not surprising that the Inside Deal is creating a tight relationship between those groups that the Democrats steer money to and those groups rewarding Democratic politicians in the form of campaign finance.

One such group that has benefited from the Inside Deal is the Big Green Machine. Via theblogprof comes this story from the Washington Examiner did a little bit of journalism and reported on the suspected corruption between Democrats and Big Green Machine:

Officials of a dozen top Big Green environmental groups contributed more than $14.5 million to congressional and presidential candidates in 2008 and through the second quarter of 2010 with 96 percent of the total going to Democrats, according to an Examiner analysis of federal campaign data.


...Six of the dozen collectively received more than $160 million in federal grants and contracts, according to their 2008 or 2007 IRS tax returns, with the Nature Conservancy's $110.6 million being the highest, followed by the Trust for Public Land ($28 million), Audubon Society ($17.5 million), the Environmental Defense Fund (parent of the EDF Action Fund) with $3.6 million, Natural Resources Defense Council ($358,072) and Defenders of Wildlife ($205,021).

President Obama was the biggest recipient by far of contributions with a total of more than $2.4 million. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was Obama's main 2008 primary rival, got $86,500. ...Obama's biggest groups of environmental supporters came from the Sierra Club ($917,965) and Defenders of Wildlife ($905,375).

This is the definition of corruption- they give campaign money to candidates who then support their companies and interests with tax money for 'research' or 'oversight' or 'awareness' or some sort of garbage. The relationship is one that use my labor and your labor to strengthen relationships between politicians and those who are politically connected, and that is not what America was about. Republicans do it too, especially with Big Oil and Big Defense, but it appears to be worse under Democrats since they pass bigger spending budgets and spend more money on discretionary items and appear to be a little less ethical about it all. That means anyone with a "D" in front of their name this election should be thrown out- it'll lessen the corruption, although then we need to go after "R"'s that are corrupt too.

In the words of George Ayittey, Africa Unchained is about “unleashing the entrepreneurial talents and creative energies of the real African people…and a blueprint for Africa’s future.”

Dr. George Ayittey, a distinguished professor at American University in Washington, D.C. and the first among his generation to recognize that “African problems must be solved by Africans,” has written this book to help push Africa on to prosperity. His approach to the solution of African problems was much derided by some in the 90s, but is now gaining popularity with reformers and world leaders in the new search for ways to help Africa.

Whether at the front of Congress, in conference rooms at the World Bank and IMF,on numerous radio and television talk shows; or during the various crises which have engulfed the continent, Ayittey has sturdily maintained the “solution by Africans” approach as a departure point for solving the seemingly intractable problems on the continent.

Ayittey, in a sense, has all along been the Jeremiah of Africa, saying things that some don’t want to hear. Will his critics, who are many, now wait for result or would they rush out to call him a false prophet?

In Africa Unchained he sets out to explain why and how Africa ought to besaved.In a characteristic manner, Ayittey is unsparing in his prescriptions for Africa, and in his criticism of the African elite. He has no faith in either the current leadership, or the ones preceding them. Rather, he places faith in the new leaders to come, whom he calls the “African Cheetah,” his version of the term “Asian Tiger.”

Ayittey is often criticized, mostly by his fellow intellectuals, for his brutal assessments of conditions in Africa. They describe him variously as an “Uncle Tom,” a “Sell-Out,” or an Afro-pessimist.

Often, his response to these critics has been to draw “a distinction between African leaders and the African people,” or the field hands who are governed and the men in the state houses who are the governors.

In Africa Unchained, Ayittey’s analysis of the historical facts of Africa’s post independence experience makes his usual harsh style credible. So when he asks in his prologue “if I have a very strong cutlass (machete) whom should I go after?” you know exactly whom he has gone after and why.

For Ayittey, the problems gained their most impetus during the post colonial period, when leaders got their priorities mixed. Cherished leaders like Nkrumah and Nyerere are drubbed for policies Ayittey claims were wrong headed.

This writer would agree that, indeed, some of these policies, as described by Ayittey, were wrong; but differs in thinking that the period was also one of intense experimentation, and, therefore, things were likely to go wrong.

Many things under Nkrumah went right. The grace for his period is that no one would today doubt the sincerity with which he tackled the experiment. As for Nkrumah stashing money abroad, nothing has been tendered as evidence other than the hearsay which started on February 24, 1966 when he was overthrown.

Nkrumah, after nine years in office, never had the chance to self-adjust his policies before being overthrown. Those leaders who came after had the benefit and the responsibility to amend some of his policies. And indeed, Ayittey agrees with this assertion. Thus, it is the failure to do so by these pretenders to leadership that must give Ayittey’s book real vitality.

Ayittey condemns statist intervention in the economy. He commends some governments for recognizing lately the need to move from socialist models to allow foreign capital infusion by making their markets “more open, permitting profit repatriation.”

These governments had hoped to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to spark growth and development . But Ayittey laments that all the good intentions and the innovations are yet to overcome the “negative image” that Africa has acquired over the years. Thus the economies of these countries still remain sluggish.

Africa continues to remain unattractive for the investor; contrary to all evidence of healthy returns on investment. Not even rich Africans prefer to keep their monies there. Ayittey chastises the late president of the Ivory Coast, Houphouet Boigny, for asking “what sensible man does not keep his wealth in Switzerland, the whole world’s bank?”

It is perplexing to read Ayittey’s book and still be aware that some have called him a sell-out. His love for Africa is apparent in this book. His description of the “low level” efficiencies that make Africa work is lovely to read. What he calls the “astonishing degree of functionality, participatory form of democracy, rule of customary law and accountability of the traditional African society,” is respectful and easy to applaud. These are words of facts as well as love. He cannot be the Afro-pessimist his detractors sometimes call him. Otherwise, how could he put so much faith in the simple African peasant he calls “Atingah”?

The critical question to ask is: Is Ayittey being a romantic by placing so much faith in the African peasant and the simple things that so far have provided “low level” efficiencies to the economies of Africa? The notion may sound simplistic to some. But given that the technological and scientific marvels of the West had their primitive beginnings, I will give this approach a strong support. The experiments have been done. The need now is to provide the right environment to nurture the confidence that will make the feats possible. And this is what effective leadership can do.

As Ayittey’s long held view of solution for the African problem suggests, salvation “does not lie…in the crisis-laden modern sector.” It rides on the “backs of the Atingas (peasants) in Africa.”

Instead of investing in the Atingas, who support the bulk of the economy in Africa, Ayittey says African leaders have forgotten them in the shuffle for development and that the low class Atingas (peasants) never featured in the grandiose developmental schemes of post colonial Africa.

For Ayittey, it is possible to turn Africa around. This means empowering the peasants and freeing them to pursue the various enterprises they are already good at. Africa needs “a completely new approach” and an absolute paradigm shift for this to happen, according to Ayititey.

Ayittey describes the attempts so far as mostly disingenuous. And he blames this on the elite, whom he calls “the vampire parasitic elite minority group.” No wonder the majority of his critics, are found in this group.

Africa Unchained is Ayittey’s third book. It is published by Palgrave Macmillan. It was released about a month ago and already has caught the attention of the book world with favorable reviews from the likes of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

For anyone in academe, government or a seeker of solution for Africa’s seemingly intractable problems, Africa Unchained is the book to read.


E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Washington, DC, March 21, 2005

The title of this post isn't mine- Ralph R. Reiland came up with it in his post which I will talk about. But it's a great title- in my mind, I see the American economy hitting an iceberg around 2007 and start taking on some water, enough that it badly listed by 2008 and went into a recession. The iceberg was too much federal spending that soaked up savings and investments, too many federal government policies that encouraged bubbles in investing and housing, and increasing regulations that choked off economic growth, especially in small businesses, and signaled to business owners that now was the time to play it safe and not take risks and create jobs. The tip of this iceberg of federal policy ripped a large hole in the Titanic of the US economy, and soon the boat started to dangerously take on water.

Although I'm no expert of this, I imagine that once your boat hits an iceberg and takes on water, you have two options. Option one is to continue moving forward and patch the hole- in other words, keep America's booming private economy and remove the harmful regulations and policies that caused the damage. Option two is to stop moving and widen the hole, by which I mean to attack private business and those who are successful in it and put in place more harmful policies. Oh, I guess there was a double-secret third option too, and that is to turn the boat around and try to ram the boat on the iceberg again, this time with the intent on sinking the whole thing. For a while, I thought that Obama and the Democrats were just intent on going with option 2, but it looks like they are honestly considering circling back on that iceberg with the goal of sinking the economy of the United States for good.

President Barack Obama was once named by me as Captain of the US Titanic Spending (see my complete list of Obama nicknames)- and now he's going after that iceberg again!

Here are some parts of the article by Reiland called Obama: Circling back to the iceberg:

Only 26 percent of the public approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy in the latest Gallup poll, conducted Aug. 11-14, while a whopping 71 percent disapprove. That's down from Obama's previous low point of 35 percent approval on this top issue.

The public's growing dissatisfaction shouldn't be surprising. Going back to 1890, reports the National Bureau of Economic Research, the only U.S. president with a worse record than Obama in job creation in his first two-and-a-half years in office, measured in terms of percentage change, was Herbert Hoover, presiding over the emergence of the Great Depression.

"Official unemployment is 9.1 percent," stated a New York Times editorial on Aug. 15, decrying the nation's jobs picture, "but it would be 16.1 percent, or 25.1 million people, if it included those who can only find part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work." "Keeping the economy going and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning," Obama said back in March. "It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night."

Now, nearly six months later, the White House reports that Obama is working on a new strategy for job creation that will be unveiled after he returns from vacation. The task of coming up with a jobs plan that works shouldn't be all that terribly difficult. All Mr. Obama has to do is reverse what he's done and change what he thinks.

First, by the government's own numbers, small businesses have created 64 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. economy over the past 15 years.

In fact, that understates the role of small business, since the vast majority of America's medium-sized and large businesses began as small businesses. The Heinz corporation began when 16-year-old Henry Heinz grated piles of horseradish at home, using his mother's recipe, and sold the bottled product door-to-door in Sharpsburg out of a wheelbarrow.

Yet since Obama took office, employment at federal regulatory agencies has jumped 13 percent while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6 percent. Second, 39 percent of small-business owners said in a Chamber of Commerce survey in July that ObamaCare was either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring....

...Additionally, 84 percent of small business owners in the survey said the economy is on the wrong track, 79 percent view the current regulatory environment as unreasonable, and 79 percent believe Washington should get out of the way of small business, rather than offering a helping hand (14 percent).

In its first 26 months, reports The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration imposed new regulatory rules that will cost the private sector $40 billion. In July alone, reports Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., federal regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will add some $9.5 billion in new costs.

Bottom line: What's required from Obama is a complete about-face, the shelving of his flawed economic philosophy and a reversal of his counterproductive policy prescriptions.

For those who want to see which way the United States is going under President Obama and his progressive policies supported by the new progressive Democratic Party, watch this movie- Titanic (10th Anniversary Edition).

Youssouf Koumbassa founder of Les Ballets Bagata:

...attempts to bring the energy, excitement and history of African dance to a wide audience,Youssouf is meticulous in acknowledging the source of this material and insists on a high level of understanding and respect for the form among his students. He travels to Guinea regularly, taking students on dance trips and returns to the United States with the latest developments in contemporary dance so that his teaching is always a mixture of traditional work and the dances that infuse popular culture...West Africa Dance

photo courtesy of slowdancing

Efam Dovi reports on the importance of access to credit for micro-entrepreneurs looking to ascend into manufacturing:

About 80 per cent of women-owned businesses are stuck at the “micro” level. They are unable to expand because they lack properly coordinated support, cheap and long-term credit and sufficient access to new technologies. They face poor infrastructure, low capacity and sometimes obstructive government policies

Christy Banya (a UNDP analyst)

notes that the banks appear more willing to give loans to importers of cheap products than to local manufacturers. The importers sell their produce quickly, at higher returns. But home-grown businesses require more time to turn a profit and to repay their loans, so the financial institutions shy away from them.

via African Renewal

Harold Middleton returns in this explosive sequel to The Chopin Manuscript as he’s drawn into an international terror plot that threatens to send India and Pakistan into full-scale nuclear war. Careening from Nice to London and Moscow to Kashmir to prevent nuclear disaster, Middleton is unaware his prey has changed and the act of terror is far more diabolical than he knows. Will he discover the identity of the Scorpion in time to halt an event that will pit the United States, China, and Russia against each other at the brink of World War III? A follow-up to the award-winning The Chopin Manuscript, The Copper Bracelet brings together 16 of the world’s most celebrated thriller writers including Lee Child, Joseph Finder, David Hewson, David Liss, and Lisa Scottoline to each write a chapter of this pulsing tale. Once again, Jeffery Deaver set the story in motion, and brings it to its shocking finale.

 

Click here to buy from Amazon

Garden Spells To Buy Cheap

   Buy in Cheap Price Shopping Online !! See Lowest Price Here Cheap Garden Spells. This Store is the best place to buy cheap Garden Spells. If you want to buy Garden Spells in the best price, try to see specail offers or read the best customer reviews from this page. That can help you to make easy decision to buy this product. This product Shipped and Sold by Amazon Shopping Store. Usually ships in 1-2 business days This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Order The Best price From This Page - Read more Informations by Click at the Big Links.

Garden Spells

Garden Spells Best Selling Helpful Reviews : ★★★★★  Product By : Amazon  List Price : $20.00 Discount To : Very Low Price! Buy it Now!! Shipping : Usually ships in 1-2 business days   In Stock. & FREE with Super Saver Shipping

Overview Garden Spells

In a garden surrounded by a tall fence, tucked away behind a small, quiet house in an even smaller town, is an apple tree that is rumored to bear a very special sort of fruit. In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it.…

The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers. Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.

A successful caterer, Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants—from the nasturtiums that aid in keeping secrets and the pansies that make children thoughtful, to the snapdragons intended to discourage the attentions of her amorous neighbor. Meanwhile, her elderly cousin, Evanelle, is known for distributing unexpected gifts whose uses become uncannily clear. They are the last of the Waverleys—except for Claire’s rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could, abandoning Claire, as their own mother had years before.

When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire’s quiet life is turned upside down—along with the protective boundary she has so carefully constructed around her heart. Together again in the house they grew up in, Sydney takes stock of all she left behind, as Claire struggles to heal the wounds of the past. And soon the sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy—if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom—or with each other.

Enchanting and heartfelt, this captivating novel is sure to cast a spell with a style all its own….

Available : In Stock.

FREE with Super Saver Shipping Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Although domestic policy results are a mix of Congress and the President, the results of foreign policy is almost inevitably the result of purely the President. So trying to blame Bush or the Republicans for the results of any major new policy decisions is useless- these results and actions can be laid directly at the feet of the President of the United States and Democratic nominee for 2012, Barack Hussein Obama.

Via Legal Insurrection's post We know who lost Egypt:

Obama’s foolish policy of forcing Mubarak out of office precipitously without giving non-Islamist parties time to organize has resulted in Islamists achieving a sweeping victory in the first round of parliamentary elections. Strength by the Muslim Brotherhood was expected, but the extremely hard line Salafists had a very strong showing.

As reported by The NY Times:

Islamists claimed a decisive victory on Wednesday as early election results put them on track to win a dominant majority in Egypt’s first Parliament since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the most significant step yet in the religious movement’s rise since the start of the Arab Spring.

The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.

Analysts in the state-run news media said early returns indicated that Salafi groups could take as much as a quarter of the vote, giving the two groups of Islamists combined control of nearly 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.

That victory came at the expense of the liberal parties and youth activists who set off the revolution, affirming their fears that they would be unable to compete with Islamists who emerged from the Mubarak years organized and with an established following. Poorly organized and internally divided, the liberal parties could not compete with Islamists disciplined by decades as the sole opposition to Mr. Mubarak. “We were washed out,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, one of the most politically active of the group.

The Times article points out that this first round of elections was in the most liberal areas of Egypt. As voting moves to more conservative rural areas, the Islamists likely will gain an even more overwhelming majority.

This all was very predictable. In fact, I predicted it while Obama was insisting that Mubarak leave ”yesterday,” NY Times columnists were writing delusional columns about the Arab Street and the Arab Spring, and venomous anti-Israeli pundits at Media Matters and elsewhere complained that the “Israel Lobby” was trying to stifle freedom.

On Feburary 20 I wrote The Yuppie Revolution In Egypt Is Over, The Islamist Revolution Has Begun. I wish I had been wrong.

The liberated women of Egypt will be the first to suffer. The Times notes:

The Brotherhood has pledged to respect basic individual freedoms while using the influence of the state to nudge the culture in a more traditional direction. But the Salafis often talk openly of laws mandating a shift to Islamic banking, restricting the sale of alcohol, providing special curriculums for boys and girls in public schools, and censoring the content of the arts and entertainment.

Obama lost Egypt, and he had plenty of help.

This post echo's my own thoughts on this issue- see my posts The Rising Threat of Fascism: Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Other States or Evidence is Pretty One Sided Against Obama's Foriegn Policy, Don't You Think?.

2011, regardless of what happens in the 2010 elections, will be a bad year for America due to the avalanche of tax increases that will hit everyone, specifically dead people, married people, rich people, investors, poor people, those with kids, those who save, those who buy medications, and small businesses. New tax increases of varying amounts will be levied on these groups starting in 2011, and the result of these tax increases will be lower spending, lower saving, lower investment, lower business activity, and increasing hiding of taxable income by those that can, with the end result being falling revenues to the government and less economic activity. That will mean less jobs, less income, and a lower quality of life for you. The blame for this can be laid 100% on politicians, namely anyone who voted for Obamacare and anyone who refused to vote to make permanent the 2001 tax cuts, both of whom are almost all Democrats and who are all liberals.

There are so many new taxes and taxes that are going to come back from the dead that it is tough to know where to begin, so let's start at the end- on midnight of December 31, the death tax returns. If you die before than, there is no tax on your beneficiaries property simply because you died, but if you die in 2011, the government will swoop in after you die and take more of your already-taxed before property simply because you are dead. They will take 55% of the property of those who have left behind $1 million or more in savings and redistribute that property to favored political groups in society. Of course this is immoral and unethical, but that's what you get when you vote Democrat. If you are a small business owner or farmer, you may very well have an estate that is valued in excess of $1 million, especially if you have worked hard your whole life and been successful, and after you are dead government agents will come in and figure out how to destroy your life's work and break it up and redistribute it to those who didn't work hard and earn it. This will obviously hurt our economy.

The Bush tax cuts are also set to expire in 2011. These tax cuts are not just 'for the rich'- the lowest bracket for the personal income tax, or the tax cuts 'for the poor', will jump 50% from 10% today to to 15% under Obama and the Democrats. You read that correctly- Obama and the Democrats will have worked to raise taxes on the most poor in our society by 50%.

The next lowest income bracket, we'll call that 'taxes on the lower-middle class' or 'taxes on the working class', will be increased from 25% to 28%, and 'taxes on the upper-middle class' or 'taxes on the hard-working class' will be increased from 28% to 31%. Again, these tax increases will strike the middle class as well, meaning that more of your money that you work hard for every day will be taken to you and transferred to the government who will then transfer that money to various politically connected groups. You will have less money to spend on goods and services, which will mean lower demand for those products, which will mean someone will lose a job who provides or makes those, which will mean someone else on welfare sucking down tax money. Unemployment will raise, consumer demand will fall, and our society will be more poor because of these tax increases.

Oh, I guess 'the rich' also will be taxed at higher levels too, although once you become rich, you are able to hire good tax attorneys who figure out how to hide your wealth from the government anyways. And I imagine with a more confiscatory government swooping in to take more of your wealth just because you are more successful will encourage more people to seek to hide their income and assets behind politically-engineering loopholes and accounting tricks, leading to the tax increases 'on the rich' not taking as much of their wealth as liberals and Democrats hope. The details are that those currently in the 33% taxable income bracket will have their taxes increased to 36% and the 'taxes on the super-rich' will be increased from 35% to 39.6%. I predict that the results of these massive tax increases on the rich will not provide the revenue that the government hopes it can steal from these people, and so they will demand higher and higher taxes on 'the rich' out of envy and greed. This immoral theft will result in more money and effort spent in hiding assets from an unethical government rather than in doing anything good for society, less money at the top for goods and services resulting in less demand for products resulting in unemployment and a falling economy, considerably less 'play money' for the 'rich' to put in the bank where it can be used for mortgages or small business loans, or less 'play money' for the 'rich' to invest in the stock market leading leading to depreciating assets and less business investment.

Democrats, liberals, and anyone who votes for them, are bringing this falling economy on us in 2011 by letting the Bush tax cuts expire and the death tax revive. But that isn't all- those who voted for Democrats in 2008 also share the blame for the massive amounts of taxes that come with the new Obamacare bill. That will be my next post.

Source: Investors Business Daily.

No TRO For WTU, Yet

"The Washington Teachers' Union (WTU) failed today in its bid to secure a court order barring the District from formally discharging the 266 public school instructors and staff it laid off Oct. 2. But a D.C. Superior Court judge left the door open to taking action next week.

The educators have been on administrative leave, collecting salary and benefits for the last month, but are scheduled to be dropped from the city payroll this coming Monday.

WTU has sued, arguing that the action was an illegal mass firing and not, as the District contends, a budget-driven reduction in force. The union wants a permanent injunction that reinstates the teachers and returns them to the classroom while the matter goes before an arbitrator.

But an initial hearing on the suit is scheduled for Nov. 5, three days after the final ax drops on the teachers. Union attorney Lee Jackson asked D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff for a temporary restraining order (TRO) compelling the District to keep the teachers on the payroll, arguing that once the teachers are off the books, it would be far more difficult to force the District to return them to their jobs.

Bartnoff wasn't buying, however, telling Jackson that keeping the teachers on leave status would not make any material difference to District schoolchildren, who have been without their services since Oct. 2.

"If you were a student at Spingarn High School when teachers were let go on Oct. 2, the reality [now] is no different than it will be next Monday," she said during the 90-minute mid-morning hearing.

Bartnoff was also more than a bit annoyed with Jackson for the union's decision to wait until this week to file for the TRO, when it had known for a month that the teachers would receive their final discharge on Monday, and the Nov. 5 hearing date had been set without objection.

"You could have asked the court to have a hearing...prior to Nov. 5. You never did," she told told Jackson.

The District's attorney, Robert Utiger, said that the machinery of discharging the teachers from the payroll was complicated and time consuming. At this point, he said, the process was far enough along that a restraining order would make little difference. In other words, restoring the teachers to the rolls would be no more difficult after Nov. 2 than it is now.

After hearing that, Bartnoff said she would consider the TRO and the permanent injunction together at next week's hearing. But she extracted a commitment from Utiger that the District would not use the passage of the Nov. 2 deadline as an argument against restoring the teachers to the payroll if that's what she ordered.

And she added: "The District should be prepared for the possibility that the teachers be put back on the rolls." Bill Turque

Posted by The Washington Teacher, featuring Candi Peterson - blogger in residence, story courtesy of DC Wire.

Every single year there is an event called The White House Correspondents' Dinner. The White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) is an organization of journalists who cover the White House and the President of the United States, and every year they host a dinner reception, which in recent decades has become more of a roast of the President, where comedians and the President himself take turns making fun of the President and his policies. It's all in good fun and the humor is light and playful- or at least it used to be.

President Obama has brought change to the The White House Correspondents' Diner- it is no longer light and in good fun and the target of jokes is no longer the President himself, now under Obama, the dinner is all about making fun of everyone that the President doesn't like, taking personal shots at his rivals, and using the power of the office of President to make bitter and mean attacks on other people.

A google news search of "White House Correspondents' Dinner" from 2001-2008, which was the time period that Republican George W. Bush was President, reveals the picture. Way back then when politics was less bitter and partisan and vindictive, the stories that the dinner generated included:

• In 2006, laughter and discussion regarding Stephen Colbert's mock tribute to President Bush at the dinner, where Colbert mocked Bush and his policies and the whole room laughed in good humor.
• In 2007, Bush said it was important for people in Washington "to learn to laugh" and that the ability for a nation to poke fun at its leaders is good for democracy.
• In 2005, Laura Bush ripped off a series of pretty funny jokes on the President, mocking her husbands TV habits, laziness, and mother-in-law.
• In 2004, Bush has a serious message, because he was being criticized by Democrats over a performance a month earlier at the Radio and Television Correspondents' dinner in which he made a humorous slide show of his personal search for WMD's in Iraq.
• In 2002, Bush did an extensive routine that ranged from mocking his ability to pronounce names to his policies in the Middle East.

A quick scan of results from the Clinton years also returns results that show that the dinner has in recent years been an opportunity to make fun and light of the President and his policies. Obama changed this tradition.

Via memeorandum, we see that Obama once more used the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner to rip into his opponents, mock his opponents policies, roll off a series of non-funny and mean jokes, and generally turn the event into a cold exercise in bitter partisanship. There was no 'learning to laugh' at Obama and he continues to demonstrate his inability to learn anything about being a better person, directing his attacks and jokes and mockery outward rather than inward. Our democracy was not improved by demonstrating its ability to make fun of its leaders, since under Obama this democracy is moving more towards tyranny, where you don't make fun of your leaders because there will be retribution.

Obama took his time at the dinner to systematically work his way through all of his political rivals and potential challengers in 2012, mocking each and ripping each as the adoring crowd lapped it up, except for the people who were being ripped and mocked, who sat there in cold silence and anger that the President of the United States was ripping them. I know, comedy is hard, and that making fun of other people is difficult and requires skill and tact and grace, but once again we see that President Obama lacks skill and tact and grace and turned this dinner into an exercise to send people home angry and upset and lessened by his comments.

Unlike past events when the target of the jokes and humor was the President, this dinner was an attempt to turn his main rival Donald Trump (according to recent polling) into a punching bag. I've seen the video- at one point, the joking does go too far, and everyone can see that the line was crossed from gentle making fun of a person to personally attacking them in a mean spirited manner, and it's at that point that the room looked for leadership to our President, but he was busy laughing too, enjoying the slicing and ripping on a rival and sucking in the vileness of the room.

President Obama and those who laugh and joke in such a manner deserve to be thrown out of office. Our nation has no place for such meanness and smallness.

UPDATE: TheBlogProf sums up what the dinner has become under Obama:

I think most people would agree that repeatedly punching someone in the face while your friends hold that person from responding is less than fair and amounts to bullying in the extreme. It is also gutless. Yesterday, it was pretty much the same thing as Obama attacked Donald Trump from the bully pulpit without Trump being able to respond. This was simply classless and has become Obama's MO.

UPDATE II: I agree with Trump- Obama's use of the White House Correspondents' Dinner as yet another forum for him to engage in his bitter partisanship attacks is 'not the greatest' and 'inappropriate.' It is worth noting that Donald Trump appears to have more class than Obama in this situation- but at least when Donald dropped inappropriate F-bombs earlier in the week that was at a partisan event.

UPDATE III: To all of those liberals and Democrats commenting, here are some more jokes that I am sure you will find witty, clever, and all sorts of funny. There are dozens of jokes like this over at Big Hollywood- here are some of the best:

• So, have you heard about those Republicans? Yeah, I hate them and I think they’re stupid.
• The funniest thing about Obama is how SO MANY people don’t get how cool and smart and physically attractive he is.
• Q: Why did the blonde get confused by an ordinary household object? A: Cuz she was a Republican. And Republicans are stupid.
• “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Republicans.” “Republicans who?” “Republicans sure are stupid and evil.”
• So, a Republican walks into a bar, and I get super upset.
• A black man, a Hispanic, and a Jew enter a bar. They all say in turn, “Voting Republican would make us traitors to our races!”
• So, what’s the deal with the Tea Party? Is it racist, or is it SUPER racist?

Jean-Louis Warnholz at Bottom Billion:

Africa, all too often, is seen as a place do to charity, not business. Returns may be high, but there is a degree of discomfort to take profits out of the country amidst widespread poverty. Jeff Chu, Senior Editor at Fast Company Magazine traveled to Rwanda and sheds light on President Kagame’s investment strategy and the quest to change the country’s reputation. Rwanda’s development vision requires substantial foreign investment to create jobs and raise standards of living. This strategy rests on entrepreneurs taking the country seriously as an investment proposition...[continue reading]

In an interview with the African Banker, Tutu Agyare stated:

“The capital markets in Africa are beginning to open up and open up significantly. That has surprised many bankers. For example who would have forecast 12 months ago that, by this time this year, Nigeria’s markets would see $3bn worth of new issuances? Countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, even Zimbabwe are all offering investment opportunities.
“Nigeria’s market has made average returns of over 30% this year and Zimbabwe’s returned over 100% this year even after adjusting for inflation, so there’s a lot of interest, a lot of investment. Yes, there is strife and there are problems in Africa; problems in Côte d’Ivoire, in DR Congo, in Guinea, in Sudan, in Eritrea, in Somalia, but the risk/potential balance is right in many countries.

On Thursday, my cell phone was all ablaze with text messages about the hearing on DC teacher layoffs. They ranged from "not looking good" to "I wasted my time coming here" to "I shoulda' been job hunting " to "our lawyer's not proving our case" to "we're about to hear closing arguments & the judge will make her decision in  writing next week." This evening WaPo staff reporter, Bill Turque wrote a piece on the DC Wire about what happened in court. For those of us who could not attend, here is it is in its entirety (below). You be the judge of where things stand on the WTU preliminary injunction front.  What's interesting is that the WaPo covered Barbara Bullock's official release from prison in the paper today. I somehow get the feeling that the hearing on DC teacher layoffs will only be reported on the Post's DC Wire blog versus the metro section of the newspaper. Go figure. Whether you attended the Thursday's hearing or not, I'd love to hear your comments .