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Post by jakaswanga on Jun 21, 2015 15:31:12 GMT 3
THE DIKTATS OF THE IMF AND THE POLITICS OF THE KENYAN TREASURYLOOK EAST FACE WEST!
Tell me, O Kenya, If Beijin is where you look for your vision 2030, Where is your heart and where is your head as you go to bed?
Where are you, O Solomon, that you teach me to divide myself adequately, For being Kenyan feels like a wh-ore of twain loyalties, The body busy with another, the head busy with the other! The head belonging to koni, the heart beating only for kocha! LOOSING THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN, when high priests stumble. That is the tip of the iceberg. The game is always rigged. Market fixing is the rule. But in the USA the revolving door between the Treasury in Washington and Wall Street ensures what the Banking Lobby wants, gets done. They do not rig indicators as such, they rig the game itself. Total Control. That is how it the Palace at Olympus rules the fate of mortals below. All cards in their hands, or so they think. Note that citi group, a wall street outfit, wrote new derivative trading rules underpinned with taxpayer money; and the banking lobby had these rules passed in Washington without debate in congress! Take that for lunch! See how the free market game is played? You do not have to have gone to Harvard to read that right, do you!? Just a bit of thinking and you recognise co.ck and pu.ssy tend to be willing sinners, ie money and politics, Washington and Wall Street. Lower down the pecking order of Central Bank gods, we have our local carvings, of deities I should say. And it is a mixed image. T his (above) is an artistic representation of (Yoruba) Ogun -the god of war and Iron.I was looking for an AUTHENTIC carvED deity representing an African god of money! Below is one from Asia.Tshai Shen Yeh (Chinese god of money/wealth)Now ... at a first glance, no worries. The Kenyan economy is in good hands, for between them, the Harvard-Yale impi formation of Drs. Patrick Njoroge and Henry Rotich, at the Central bank and the treasury respectively, is really no evil the enemy could work on the shilling which would be beyond their competence. Officially. No, they would engulf, neutralise and outmanoeuvre the financial al-shabaab! Behind the two sentries is of course the IMF doping up their resolve with whatever those jabs of cash are called. (temporary facilities). Out there in the big bad world, enemies abound who do really can work evil on a currency of their choice. Free falls can be induced. Recently, very very powerful forces took on the Russian rouble and, for some reason or other, they did it worse things than have been the fate of the most well beaten opponents of Floyd Mayweather. The Great and big Russia writhed until the President himself, Vladmir Putin, had to take matters into his own hands. I suppose unlike us they do not have Harvard-Yale tandems running their money system over there in Moscow, do they!? otherwise like their counterparts at the ECB (European Central Bank), the Fed in New York, or the Bank of England, they would just have run the printing press, or thought of something with a fancy name like Quantitative Easing and got going. But Putin, not an economist, thought it was a game of nerves based on geopolitical poker. In a game of nerves one can be bluffed. He looked at the Eurozone, ran by the ECB, and noticed a decade of recession, stagnation and threatening stagflation; and the unemployment figures in one half of the Union were reminiscent of a great depression. He also noticed the banks looting taxpayers to recapitalise themselves, and Greece, dying pathetically. Putin slapped his central banker awake, poor woman. Then again Putin took a look at Far-Away USA. He saw opinion was divided as to whether the national debt was sustainable. Even the best of homeland economists had models warning of an inevitable sovereign default, if no massive restructuring of the USA economy was embarked on. The Russian tapped his nose, ' Obama's military arsenal should scare me more', he thought, 'economically he is as groggy as I. I can call his bluff!' And so those of us who did not study economics looked in amazement, as the gods of money in New York, Frankfurt, London and Paris, started to draw back from their attack on the rouble, preferring kindergarten playfield sanctions like bouncing Russia off G7 summits. So where am I going? -THE NEW HEAD OF THE KENYAN CENTRAL BANK HAS SPOKE' A CLEAR WORD OF MEANING! It made me remember the old days when the good old god Alan Greenspan ran the FED. He spoke a language - greenspeak-- which needed experts to decode: oracular incantations in the game of mysticism. But, behold, blessed is the lord that our new kid in town Dr. Patrick Njoroge, who succeeds prof. Ndung'u at the helm of the Central Bank of Kenya, is a down to earth type. A layman can hear him straight. For the most significant statement he has uttered is that he will let the market determine the interest rates. Now that is a straightforward marker. We exactly know what the Harvard/Yale axis at the CBK and the treasury, the doctors, ordered for the patient aka Kenya's finances. Everybody's learning curve. (An aside is, speaking of learning curves, he Patrick has worked in Washington but never heard of the great scandals of the market which have usurped the effectivity of the tools of trade of great market central bankers. Neither the Libor scandals nor the decade-long fixing of the interest rates by all leading Western Banks inserts a seed of doubt in his preprogramed neo-liberal orthodoxy. And, apart from hearing of it in economics texbooks and bank-sponsored newspapers running sponsored content, who in the saner, wider world ever used a market-determined rate of interest!? Aint that always been fiction -- crystal clear to Asian performing economies, hidden to Subsaharanites with too much boko in the head? ---I just went to look at a history of financial crimes in the post world war II period! Nobel price economists themselves tell me -thinking of Stiglitz, that even the third world's 'best friends' like the World Bank and the IMF, are all but your dirty old sugar daddies swinging in town with teen-age girls. The trade is candy for honour, under total subjugation. the bad advice from the IMF is deliberate. Debt servitude, designed outcome. But there are also lesser crimes of which, if you have been watching artistic productions -books and films--- tackling wall street and greed, couldn't have escaped you. Hubris, pathological greed and financial power unchecked, like most of us historians know, leads invariably to political despotism sustained by the illusions of grandeur, more hubris, or fallacial invincibility. This is how it comes that the corrupted duo of Mario Draghi of the ECB and Christin Lagarde of the IMF, expect the elected leaders of Greece to unconditionally obey their orders against the will of the Greek electorate. -The imperial money company aka IMF is of course used to getting its way in its debt colonies litering the African continent. RUNNING THE SHOW IN NAIROBITwo examples from Kenya will suffice: 1. Using the principle of ' conditionality', a blackmail tool which embeds prerequisites to legibility for further IMF services like emergency loans to defend currency from free falls, the IMF experts cocooned in the ministry of finance in Nairobi, coerced the GCG to write an Integrated Public Financial Management Bill, 2011, (establishing the Single Treasury Account) which, even as operatives in the ministry of government pointed out, laid a bomb under the devolution consensus, as it made county governors state subsidiaries, contrary to their constitutional mandate and the understood spirit of devolution! (I remember running into an architect of the popular constitution in a hotel in Kisumu and grabbing him by the collars: omera, dak inyiswa ni Raila ao dwar okelo le miluongo devolution to, rachne, Joka-IMF osediero le duto! -why don't you tell Kenyans Agwambo's victory to Kenya, devolution, has become pyrrhic, after IMF pirates hijacked the meat!' He was not worried: 'governors will be elected at the grassroots and they will be with the people. Dictators from Washington and their local lackeys will ran into the people's wrath with their machinations. The world has changed.' The IMF bill treated governors as Provincial Commissioners of a kind. And, bingo, no sooner were their excellencies ELECTED and inaugurated, than, as Onyango Oloo il Sung, openly predicted in a landmark essay, the first shots were fired under their combative chair, Isaac Rutto of Bomet. This issue is the real GENESIS of the CLEAVAGE between the two Ruto's from the Kalenjin Heartland. But, curse the devil, One being Nandi and North Rift, and the other being Kipsigis and South Rift, the issue became a tailor-made fit for sub-ethnic narratives! AND -O Kenya! we swallowed the distraction wholesale because of our 'ethnic obsessed' ideological prism! 2. When the GCG wanted to use foreign currency reserves to finance some electricity generating projects at Turkana, Olkaria, Tana, Nairobi etc, the Cental bank refused in a show of independence. No one believed Professor Ndung'u had that kind of backbone before Kibaki, so a better explanation was needed. On a closer reading, it was an IMF diktat. The enigma and the Othaya-born genius stooped away. They were in power, but they did not have it. lUNCHT TIME, who pays? WHERE IS MY BROTHER IN LAW MANK? -TELL ME NOW! MANK: WHICH MARKET DETERMINES WHICH INTEREST RATES? (that matchete I sheathed after our rebate truce, I still have it somewhere amigo!) I am told, elementarily, banking starts with a BENCHMARK rate set by the Central bank whose brief is to control currency supply, manage inflation, etc etc. The central bank has some levers to pull in going about this business. Manipulating secondary interest rates by fiddling with the primary benchmark rate behind the scenes, is traditionally one of a central banker's holy equipments, ( though there is now doubt this instrument still works, given major western central banks are currently into experimental policy, after a decade-long recession in which every traditional tool failed! -there is a new, ' mutant' market out there or what, Mank! One resistant to old therapy's?) On the other hand me-reasons the 'free market' has only been a lip service .. an academic exercise in books taught as a confusionist, obfuscarist, fetishist doctrine! Behind the scenes, however, 'deregulated' bankers have always formed an unholy curia running the financial markets as a secret order. An international crime syndicate as we have seen, distorting the market to the bone in a racket of extortion, backed by corrupt and war-making politicians running empire. Tow the line from Rome or be damned and hanged! (like Saddam Hussein and Gadaffi). it took public revulsion to come here Dr. Mank! How is the benchmark rate determined? Continued!
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Post by jakaswanga on Jun 22, 2015 18:36:01 GMT 3
INSTALMENT 2. THE THING ABOUT (CENTRAL BANK) INTEREST RATESIn polite terms it is an instrument used to nudge Banks to lend on more friendlier terms to business and individuals. But the reality of the economic history of human society, slave-owning or not, has shown money-lenders never miss an opportunity to rip-off clients; and that is not inconsistent with the principle of profit maximisation. This fact, this cut-throat practice, would inform the invention of the first (farmers/peasants) cooperative movements which, at least as far as modern Europe is concerned, we will witness ## (in the course of this essay) to have launched the modern banking industry. NB: it is also a fact that, even if the base interest rate is 0%, in which case banks get money free from the central bank, the i-rates at which they lend it out will still be relatively prohibitive, and without supervision, scorching. And bank executives are wont to form a cartels --which is the structural scandal of the banking sector, since time immemorial. $$NB: Some details which lead to the famous Glass-Steagall act of 1933 are worth a close inspection. Like when banks find it more profitable to engage in speculation than lend money to corporations to invest for growth. Footnote is, under President Bill Clinton, this act was repealed, arguably paving the way for the banking crisis which started with the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008. But, Dr. Mank! How is the benchmark rate determined? First a standard official look. financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Central+Banks So the central bank is actually a ''market regulating nerve centre''? Regulator, huh!? Umm, watchdog over the economy, huh!? Prefect over other banks and a fine-tuner of monetary policy!? So after processing economic data, or the so-called performance indicators, they SET a determinant rate, calculate the best basal/benchmark rate, to influence stuff. Stuff like inflation (which is also a political imperative to sort out!?) --Right! And while at that activism: how come when a finance minister like Henry Rotich is fiddling with the INTENSITY of taxes on food stuffs and else, -----raising prices which the supermarkets and retailers immediately pass on to the consumer------, I never seem to hear this sh!t about 'markets know best what the prices should be!' On the contrary, this is when learned guys suddenly start telling me about deficits which need must be financed by DELIBERATE STATE ACTION OF INCREASING TAX! The budget seems to me to be the necessary evil, an artificial manipulation or interference between demand and supply, to serve a collective and recognised, legitimate public good. I will consider government intervention to set the range interest rates can fluctuate within, a necessary evil. Given the history of bankers. If the market is irrelevant on budget day, taxation (state revenue generation) takes priority over all else, I do not see why the government should be ideologically paralysed and watch helplessly when it comes to interest rates, a key instrument in economic propulsion. So forgive me if my eyes move slowly and coldly from the Harvard tonal ranges of Dr. Rotich, to the Yale polish of the Opus-Dei adherent Njoroge who condescendingly says: ''no state action on interest rates! The market knows best! I leave it all to it! Public good my foot!' I feel like Ayayayayayayaya! these guys are out to gangrape Wanjiku for ideological fun! I looked at the genesis of some big modern banks of Europe. I was asking myself: have they always been market fundamentalists? ---Man, I was shocked stupid!) More about that in due course. Meanwhile me reckons: if he insists on being passive on the commercial interest rates thing --leaving it to the invisible hand of the market to correct or set, the new CBK chairman (Dr. Patrick Njoroge) is obviously an ostrich in a certain theoretical pose. Now, those may be his IMF trojan-horse orders, or, closer to home, his brief from the appointing authority who, after all, is a big commercial banker. On the other hand it could be just a case of orthodox indoctrination, solidified into an rote automatics. Yes, they have a saying of old dogs and new tricks, and whether they mix! THE GAP WHERE MPESA SPRUNG: (subtext: the European peasant crisis and the rise of the cooperative banks, over a century ago). Within ten years of its launch, the runaway dynamism of Mpesa was a historical event I am sure will be studied in future as the Big Bang, dare I say, more significant than the second liberation and its new but lame-born constitution. But the lessons from the success of Mpesa do not seem to have been learnt with care, nor have the lessons of history. Three of the current biggest commercial Banks of the Eurozone, Credit Agricole of France, DZ Bank (Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank German Central Cooperative Bank), Rabo bank of Holland, were launched more than 120 years ago to solve exactly the problem many small business face in Kenya today. Lack of credit, or if available, prohibitive rates. That time in Europe, it was the farmers/peasants who were most stricken by misery, yet wholly starved of necessary inputs. It was a crisis. But need breeds creativity, and so they had to invent the COOPERATIVE SYSTEM, which is what served as the foundation of all these (now) multinational banks.Here is a bit of the promised history. ## www.dgrv.de/en/cooperatives/historyofcooperatives.html Now if you check the French bank Credit Agricole and Dutch Rabo Bank, you will find the same story. (The bottom line was: Peasants leveraged themselves to private money-lenders where upon they only got deeper into debt and often lost their livelihood! -uncannily similar to the modern story of the African state mortgaged to creditors under IMF and WB enticements, and, at the micro-economic level, the story of the one-man enterprise cash starved! Meseems Njoroge's Central Bank is in the mode of those 18th century European private money-lenders! Expropriators of the small man!) $$ www.economist.com/news/schoolsbrief/21584534-effects-financial-crisis-are-still-being-felt-five-years-article (but from this vice we will make a virtue in the final instalment of our this missive!) NEXT: a review of some statistics summarising the nation.
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Post by jakaswanga on Jun 24, 2015 21:09:14 GMT 3
PART 3: MAKING SENSE OF SOME STATISTICSCitizen news (24-06-15) reports a woman has committed suicide in Narok county, because of failing to pay ksh. 30,000 accumulated debt. The area chief, Jonathan Sialo, said the loan-sharks had visited her home to assess the goods to be attached (and confiscated). They settled on a pregnant heifer, the price family possession. Distraught, fearing the collapse of her marriage in addition to the economic ruin, she took her own life. A Ksh. 30,000 debt sends a rural Kenyan to her grave. But Nairobi is a citadel of graft, and this story does not even register with the elite. That is the micro-level. How about this at the macro-level? Ambitious infrastructure projects? like private hotels and lodges? and inflated construction tenders!? --Mismanaged, wasted loans, we have been there before: the debt servitude which came with SAP! (I want to hear the new man at CBK doing some sooth saying on how we will avoid debt servitude if, as is presently clear, we pilfer the loans with impunity!) Does he believe in miracles of the cult? When the loan sharks, long after Rotich and Jubilee are no longer in power come for the family silver and priced heirloom, how will our suicide look like? --I have a pretty good idea: I have been following the current tribulations of Greece, prostrate before her '' kachinjachinja'' creditors, aka the Troika. Sawa. It would appear every business needs credit to grow. So does our country. That is an iron rule. Market-rate creditors have conditionalities, of which some are screened through stuff like cash-flow profiles, guarantors, and ratings of credit worthiness. Lower down the food chain, you are a meal for loan-sharks, doomed like that poor Narok woman if undefended, and at +15% going interest rates, Kenyan commercial banks are exactly that, loan-sharks making a killing. (Haha 32% April 1994!) Let us remind ourselves how banks laugh all the way to the central bank: And if you consider the average income of But if, after the recent rebase, 25% of the $54 billion GDP is still contributed by farmers, what % of the Kenyan labour force does this sector employ? ( a trick question whose statistic I will hoard for now!) Other macro indicators can be stunning. For instance the average Kenyan salary is 150K. That is good loot, statistically speaking at face value. yet, when the finecomb is run through these wonderful aggregate figures, it is like peeling back the mask of a dandy to reveal a shrivel. www.businessdailyafrica.com/Graft--rising-cost-of-living-top-Kenyans-concerns-of-2015/-/539546/2575370/-/gdhdji/-/index.html 95% of public service workers do not come ananywhere near the 100K net, but the aggregate figure is, average salary ~150K!Using those aggregate figures, a 15% interest rate does not look that bad! No? But if you take your time to demystify them, then, Yesu ibiro duogo karang'o yawa ires piny! -Come back save the world Jesus Lord, meeting the eye is but a vicious reality propagandised as a middle class paradise. Unbelievable superb from a bird's eye view! And flip side ... The city in the sun is a swamp of slums in the main! Okay, a middle class swamp if you insist! T his is Ahero city in Kano, Kisumu county? Dr. Patrick Njoroge, are we still together crunching away at implications at the frontline of the real economy!? From another summary @kenya Post Even buying a new bicycle, let alone a second hand motorbike will be a challenge. (42+33+11 = 86)% households earning less than 40K! But WE is a middle income country! And a middle income country is define as
( Ha Ha Mank!) AGGREGATE ININDICATORSNLY! (I billionare running a 1 million slaves in a plantation sure would qualify, aggregate figures only!) This micro economic picture of Kenya is PLANE MISERY, and it needs an outside THE BOX intervention, a solution outside the formal market determined interest rate of pious Dr. Njoroge; yes indeed, just like the miserable farmers of Europe Over a century and a half ago: the misery for which they launched coop banking to escape.-That is how they CONTROLLED THE CONDITIONALITIES OF LENDING, to avoid loan sharks, and the servitude which was wont to be their lot, had they left their fate to seal according to the unmitigated model of Dr. Bretton Woods Njoroge! DOES IT MATTER? OPUS DEI PIETY AT CBK? Now we can go tabloid! and call him an Opus Dei neo-liberal fundamentalist creep in the service of a financial aristocracy! A local quisling! Even in industry, every sector, realising commercial bankers in it for profit were going to fleece them to death, developed their own cooperative banks --the so-called industrial banks! Aim? friendly terms outside the sharks who preach free market, but slam you with rigged rates like the LIBOR and the others recently fined! Why is China launching the Asian Industrial Investment Bank!? They want to CONTROL their won INTEREST RATES when they borrow money for some mammoth investment project! No? Now, everybody for free market interest rates say Aye, and everybody for controlled interest rates say BYE!
...... Part 3: MAKING A VIRTUE OF A VICE. And how the cooperative movement was killed in Kenya (remember KFA and KPCU). and now the SACCO craze again. The cooperative bank would now be our Industrial financer bank! had all gone relatively well! Not yet edited. Gotta go. later.
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Post by jakaswanga on Jun 26, 2015 23:02:41 GMT 3
Conclusion: Bankin is not a public service. One of the great middle class dreams, and working class hopes, is an own home. Obviously the majority of Kenyans will own homes without official banks! That is wiping the floor with the Central Bank. Me says 70% of all working Kenyans should have their adequate houses through official banking. Well, lets see if another Michael Joseph is out there, to start a service to do to our banks what Safaricom did to our Telekoms! --wipe out! A decent house is a human right. Walking through the slums of Kenya, that right is a kind of joke. Aaah, Njoroge! take that for a working lunch and lets have a run on your Yale-shaped brains! www.businessdailyafrica.com/Average-home-loan-soars-to-Sh7-5m--locking-out-many-/-/539546/2744858/-/brw32lz/-/index.html Geet to work Njoroge. That last line above there is enough homework for 3 years! it is an antic system!
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Post by jakaswanga on Jun 29, 2015 20:33:02 GMT 3
Knowing the financial bills were dictated by the IMF, i found the following passage fascinating. Dr. Njoroge will have to shed light. In the best case scenario, it may be a step in keeping a tight reign over spend thrift governors and wasteful MCA's --in which case the Central bank can just say so! (glasnost) Or In the worst case scenario it can be a exercise in political chicanery, reining in devolution, while at the same time making a killing, temporarily or otherwise re-routing the retained funds to other private or public business. This is big money, a bank could speculate with it at the financial markets abroad or local!
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Post by kamalet on Jul 2, 2015 9:49:02 GMT 3
And the good Governor has shown some of these egomaniacs how one can be a public servant without living large! Forget the luxury of Muthaiga and live in a community. Forget about the penchant for large limos, chase cars and a bevy of security men which we see with some of our leaders - this man will take himself to the office in a small car!
I saw the CJ going in for coffee at a Java on a weekend and the man of the stud had a chase car and security men following him and I wondered how power gets to someone that led an ordinary life prior to the perks and who today has his motorcade harass motorists the way some big headed governors do!
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Post by jakaswanga on Jul 11, 2015 18:30:55 GMT 3
And the good Governor has shown some of these egomaniacs how one can be a public servant without living large! Forget the luxury of Muthaiga and live in a community. Forget about the penchant for large limos, chase cars and a bevy of security men which we see with some of our leaders - this man will take himself to the office in a small car! I saw the CJ going in for coffee at a Java on a weekend and the man of the stud had a chase car and security men following him and I wondered how power gets to someone that led an ordinary life prior to the perks and who today has his motorcade harass motorists the way some big headed governors do! Kamalet, The Canadian Mutunga has been a disaster, lets forget him, lest we are forced to lock him up at Kamiti for embezzlement. At kamiti he can indulge himself of course. In deed Dr. Njoroge was a shock to our Mpigs. In fact they were so shocked over his austere life-style that they collapsed into childish tattle. I thought about it, and have this to say. Often we hear the unthought-out banter of state-looters like William Ruto talking about Kenya being a Christian nation which need must raise the banner of The Lord. But here were national political representatives faced with one of the oldest Christian tenets, an adherent thereto, and they were unable to comprehend nor recognise it. A Monk. (Celibacy is a basal religious/spiritual trial). Monks were/are wo/men who turned their backs on wordly possessions (and fleshly pleasures) in exchange for intense spirituality. Most religions offer variations of this theme - Buddhist monks who own not even their bodies; Sikh/Hindi gurus who never leave their temples and live on alms, freeing their minds for meditation. This kind of stuff has apparently gone outside the mental ranges of your average Kenyan Mpig. It is an intellectual degeneration, vacuum which hints at a parliamentary generation wholly rootless in every definition of the word. But Opus Dei remains controversial of course --it is not the only secretive and conservative movement around of course (intelligence services are worse), nevertheless a significant opportunity was missed in parliament to interrogate the new CBK governor as to what his coping mechanisms would be, when God's work conflicted with the demanded work of political office, man's work. -using interest rates to loot low income people, facilitating international syndicates to enslave nations by debt servitude, fundamental belief in authority even as the authority effects tyranny may be God's work or not, but still it would be nice to know if there are any doubts in the mind of the governor as to whether God's work is always in the interest of Kenya, or whether he can, assuming God is too perfect to be wrong, be persuaded to think man's interpretation of God's work is a work in progress! (We the people; they the politicians; they the marketeers; or Thy My Lord God!?
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Post by jakaswanga on Jul 13, 2015 20:28:59 GMT 3
I am shuddering as I grasp the details of the accord which Greece's Premier, Syriza's Alexis Tsipras, has had to swallow from his compatriot Eurozone leaders. There is no such thing as a Greek state exercising sovereignty as I write this. Greece is a carcass under receiversship, to be dismembered at will by the vultures from the North. The Greek elite has concluded there is no life outside the Euro, so they sold their national dignity to stay within. Talk about hard choices in life! We will see about that: Life without dignity for the nation that gave us the concept of democracy. So, for me is to ask, Is life outside the IMF and the World Bank thinkable for the Kenyan mandarinate, and the African political elite running Kenya's finances, or is it so, that like the Greek elite, we will be sold at a throw away?And, what policy and financial mistakes does a nation make, that it becomes so hopelessly indebted, and has to end up throwing itself away at rock-bottom auction prices, and willingful slavery becomes her only option of a meal, like today's Greece? And -yes, this is my preoccupation: are we, pray tell, making haste at avoiding such deadly mistakes? Are we busy inoculating ourselves against the same? Or are we in the 'yawa dhi kode group' (we leave it all in the hands of Opus! Or Allah, Amen!?) -Well, none other than the two brilliant kids on the block will have to convincingly answer that one, yes, Rotich and Njoroge (with their Andrea Chilulu disease!) NB: Somehow I do not think neither Uhuru nor Ruto would know what it is, making my mind jump like (some proverbial Achebe frog) with something narrowing on its life in broad daylight. So Dear Central Bank of Kenya, dear Ministry of Finance of the republic of Kenya, RE: AN OPEN WARNING TO DR. HARVARDS ROTICH AND PROFESSOR YALE NJOROGE (After the warning will I run by, and flash at you the tabloid tale of the Reinhart-Rogoff 90% debt/gdp ratio-rule, and the Skylla of an austerity-orchestrated recession which has sucked the Aegean nation to economic oblivion and, now, precipitated a re-occupation by foreign powers holding brief for creditors.). First part of the warning: how the old dictator, the Ankole Longhorn YKM7, is stealing a run on us Kenyans, in delivery. -Imagine! Let us cut down to the chase before we relax and take a drink on the other side. Now Drs. Rotich and Njoroge, you guys studied in the USA, and are aware of the unintended consequences of the Prohibition. (when alcohol was banned). Mesays taxing Kenyans to the bone on bare essentials, while across the border -in a free trade region, the state of Uganda isn't as greedy as our Tax-regime, is asking for it. No, not smuggling, that would be if the border is NOT OPEN. I rather mean that is asking for Kenyans to move where life is cheaper for the same income. Move their money and themselves, and their souls! Ojaamong is hysterical. He is in denial. He is blaming a 'carefree system in Uganda!'. He is a fool and a layman. When taxation systems are not harmonised in a 'trading region'', nomadism is natural and logical, predictable. Artificial attempts to arrest the situation leads to a booming trade known as
(my memory is Waragi eroded!) In the last days of the cold war, alcohol tax in Scandinavia was 80% or higher. In the Baltic states and Poland, making the fist tentative steps to market economy, barely 1%, so for one beer in Copenhagen or Malmo or Helsinki, one could get 20 equivalent units in Gdansk, a doable ferry ride away in a day. (Helsinki to Tallin). So on Friday night through Saturday night, Scandinavian cities would be dead. Mega Ferries ferried the populations across the water to go get drunk on the continent, and the weekend Swedish and Danish entertainment swarms returned on Sunday afternoon, ready to work the next week. MS ESTONIA This 1994 ferry-boat disaster in which over 800 mostly Swedes died, lifted the veil some, in these weekend migrations. Now, coming back to Ojaamong's woes, let us have a comparative price list, Kenyan side vs Uganda side, same products. You got to be kidding, if you think people with a disposable income of less than $80 (ksh. 8000) will ignore such a price difference within a 20Km radius free travel! The Ankole Longhorn wins! A bit like the old fox Baroka over the boko-dripping Lakunle! For those who want to know the truth! Find out much ksh. per kilo Uganda sugar sells in Kisumu? Gotta know what is on and about before you think ksh. I billion is gonna save Mumias sugar! (that is why I looked at a beaming Ababu Namwamba and did not know what he was all about with the deal. -60km away, 10km away from Budalangi, in Busia Uganda, you will die of shock! Sugar is half price!) -How do they do it? Guys from ivy leagues should know! (But if you have read Soyinka, you could work it out in a flat minute!) But let us see more of what makes Ojaamong' so sleepless. Here is a killer line: PAPER WORK MINIMAL, BUREAUCRATIC RED TAPE ZERO! -Ojaamong is nonplussed! He can not see the sense! But wananchi can, investors can, probably everybody else too! And they are not waiting for him and his cabinet to man up! The county CEO for Busia, Hillary, talks of dirty and immoral avenues! I rest my case because only an UNJUKWAA-LIKE word can describe this trade commissioner! His Ugandan neighbour beats him pants down! But I know a poem called Nalongo from Uganda. (Nalongo and Salongo --Cu'nt and Dick) It is an old Buganda rhyme about various sizes, widths and depths of vaginas and dicks, and how their owners know how to moderate them according the demands of that night. One line goes: If the mmm this day is as big as the champion cassava tuber from Mbale Nalongo will lie in a way which makes the vagina yawn like the mouth of the Nile!I am sure many Kenyans are not conversant with classical Kiganda poetry! but now they are living it, no need to read it! I will be back!
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Post by jakaswanga on Jul 16, 2015 20:01:49 GMT 3
I am shuddering as I grasp the details of the accord which Greece's Premier, Syriza's Alexis Tsipras, has had to swallow from his compatriot Eurozone leaders. There is no such thing as a Greek state exercising sovereignty as I write this. Greece is a carcass under receiversship, to be dismembered at will by the vultures from the North. ........ So Dear Central Bank of Kenya, dear Ministry of Finance of the republic of Kenya, RE: AN OPEN WARNING TO DR. HARVARDS ROTICH AND PROFESSOR YALE NJOROGE (After the warning will I run by, and flash at you the tabloid tale of the Reinhart-Rogoff 90% debt/gdp ratio-rule, and the Skylla of an austerity-orchestrated recession which has sucked the Aegean nation to economic oblivion and, now, precipitated a re-occupation by foreign powers holding brief for creditors.) First part of the warning: how the old dictator, the Ankole Longhorn YKM7, is stealing a run on us Kenyans, in delivery. -Imagine! Let us cut down to the chase before we relax and take a drink on the other side. Here we go with the promised tabloid tale of the REINHART-ROGOFF doctrine. 1. OF PROFESSORS FROM HARVARD. Yale produced presidents Bush and Clinton, Noam Chomsky ground his teeth to bloody gums. Then he heard the long-awaited Messiah Obama was, too, from Harvard. And he went into 'retraite'. May be he will emerge if Jeb wins. (Jeb went to a more modest college in Texas where, one hopes, the rigours of exacting academia do not completely erase the faculty of common sense. -Anybody with an iota of common sense would not group Iran with the axis of evil, much less a state sponsor of terrorism!) And now take two: Reinhart and RogoffAnd the Troika -the ECB, the European Commission, and the IMF, would use this Reinhart-Rogoff as their bible to baptise Greece as in born-again, free at last, free of the recession! But something would come up to spoil the party. Professor Michael Ash and his student Thomas Herndon. [/i] [/quote]Do you see what I see!? Suppose you were a medical doctor and you made the kind of mistake Reinhart and Rogoff made! You loose your medical certificate to practice any medicine. But we know, their oath apart, doctors can be hired to torture a human beings -that is what has been happening in Guantanamo bay for instance. So it is possible the giant Harvard brains Reinhart and Rogoff DELIBERATELY falsified data, deliberately became false prophets. To ruin their reputations like this, the remuneration from the quarters who used them, --the financial predators out to own everything, even public beaches where populations go for walks----, must have compensated the duo several fortunes. Professor Michae Ash continues: From here it of course becomes an insider battle with no camp giving a quarter. There are 1 million methods of processing data (methodology), and your results depend on which one you use! So, where do you go from here, if you want to make an important decision based on economic science, decisions like the future of a country of millions? (NB: economics as a science is stretching it these days!) 1. I want to see the data on which the new Chairman of the Central Bank, Dr. Patrick Njoroge, bases his conclusion that the market determined rate of interest will best serve the Kenyan economy.--and ask some other whizzkids to use an alternative methodology to process the data! (I recall within two months the Central Bank has fiddled twice with its basal rate, to so-called defend the shilling!) That was our first tabloid story. (is economics a real science?)
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Post by jakaswanga on Jul 16, 2015 23:15:59 GMT 3
The Kenya Shilling as Mr. KarubandikaIt is a legendary cartoon, the then chairman of the central bank at the end of his wits, depicted as a forlorn laboratory technician abandoning science, reverting to prayers to mediate the situation: Shiringi Shiringi! Priiz Ngro up! (i think it was professor Ndung'u, the immediate former governor. He is a man who, without a protecting angel higher up in the mandarinate, would have been remanded in custody for thievery!). New kid at the trenches, Dr. Patrick Njoroge then, is neither the first, nor will he be the last, to wrestle with the value ranges of the Kenyan shilling. And signs are, it has been a baptism of fire for him.And now the fuel price at the pump has been hiked. More about that inflationary multiplier effect later. First: where is our resident econometrist, my brother in law Mank!? How is the African currency value determined, relative the so called hard currecies (euro and dollar). This is important to ponder. I remember the days when the exchange (or consumer procurement) of foreign currency was the monopoly of state banks in Kenya. There was a thriving blackmarket in dollars and sterling pound, and the blackmarket rate was the better rate for the consumer. Understanding this discrepancy in rates did trigger my interest in financial economics, but not enough to take it professionally. This was because I thought the explanation was easy. The government was enforcing a monopoly, and misusing the monopoly to screw people who wanted to interchange currency. Such a blatant raw deal created the blackmarket, as justice. Of course the government held up this stupidity until it no longer could, then FOREX bureaus mushroomed all over the city. And the bureaus too, began to form a cartel and fix the price of the shilling behind the scenes, to screw the consumer! (likely screwing him or her less than would be under state monopoly!) Nothing new there, cartels. One got to have lived in a hole not to have heard of the Libor scandal or the interest rates scandal in which all international banks have been fined for having colluded to fix the rates, and screw the consumers. Free market? Even freelance prostitutes in a free lease brothel collude to fix the minimum blowjob rate I tell you, being a consumer is a terrible thing! What is biting me now? Is why the shilling is falling? Was that rebase in which the GDP jumped up a hoax? The reasons given do not convince me. In June 2014 the barrel price of crude was 110$. Now July 2015, it is just below $60. What did this huge drop in price mean for Kenyan current account? -Huge savings I think. But the Kenyan consumer has not seen any dividends, has he? To the contrary, fuel is now up again. That is screwy. That, mesays, is the cartel of oil dealers in cahoots with the treasury and the central bank roasting the consumer. The central bank can certainly not be worried about deflation in Kenya, such that it puts in place inflationary policies! (raising the price of petrol is a powerful inflationary factor! and when the world market oil price is low, a blatant rip-off scheme. Yes, Rotich and Njoroge are being extortionists!) I therefore think -and this is where I miss Mank to help me out--- that an increasingly weak shilling to the dollar, plus a high inflation rate in May/June/July, in the background of low to rock-bottom oil prices and massive infra-structural spending, is an anachronism. There is something else happening here! There is a racket in progress, and I am being played. (there are comparable economies to Kenya which are registering what the models call dovish monetary policy's, tax cuts and jumps in purchasing power --all explained by the huge dip in world oil prices!) Which is what brings me to Karubandika. Is the shilling actually over-valued, and has been keeping up appearances not its station to keep? Is someone calling the shilling's bluff, peeling back slowly its mask of solidity, finding out the actual productivity of Kenya can not sustain the OFFICIAL value of the Shilling to the dollar? Forcing it to float toward its true value -the 'blackmarket rate!'' as it were! Before we continue, let us take a look at the song Karubandiku by Marquis Original. Up in the city sometime ago, I trooped with the gang to Ranalo Kosewe in the evening in a repeat trip, and there was this live band doing covers, golden Swahili oldies like Shillingi Maua tena yaua of the Original Simba Wanyika. It did not take long before they hit this all time East African favourite, Karubandika. Long ago, in the days when there was only the VOK, and men like Mambo Mbotela were hits with programs like Je Huu ni Ungwana, and the two Khadija's, Ali and Hassan, would read the 1 o clock news and continue with Je Hujambo, and mwalimu James Onyango Joel would interrupt with his schools broadcast programs, the Voice of Kenya idhaa ya Taifa was very Tanzania pop friendly. Singers like Mzee Makassy, Volcano Mbaraka and Marijan Rajab of Dar International were staples, with star Djs like Eddy Fondo, Salim Manga and George Zenogazake (traditional Kenyan choir) keeping track. The Franco-sounding Big guitar in this recording should be Mose Fan Fan who runaway with Kenyans a few years ago with the hit Papa Lolo (tango nyoso I love you). CHECK THIS LINE OF THE PLAYER FRAUDSTER Karubandika. na akiingia kwenye baa, kazi yake kuomba biya x2 hana hata aibu eeh, sigara pia anaomba, mitaani na kwenye mastovu hujitangazia kuwa yeye ni mkurugenzi wa kampuni fulani oh kumbe sivyo hivyo
..... Divination: The Shilling as the flagpost of the Kenyan economy, boasts its Kingship in the neighbourhood -among the slum nations of South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda, Congo and Burundi. (mtaani na kwenya mastovu!) But watch us beg at the big Bars -the IMF, the World Bank, China EXIm! (looking for sigara na biya and small change to shore up the shilling and keep up appearances!)
... Usinione pweke baaba?! (somebody is pulling the rug from under our feet!? And the shilling is nervously rising!) Just kidding. No worries, hayo yote ni matatizo ya dunia! And that was our second tabloid tale.
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Post by podp on Jul 18, 2015 21:13:31 GMT 3
THE DIKTATS OF THE IMF AND THE POLITICS OF THE KENYAN TREASURYLOOK EAST FACE WEST!
RUNNING THE SHOW IN NAIROBI [/b] Continued![/quote] So here is an economy, and I think one of my, sort of, reference points I think is very interesting; you have China and the United States, the number one and two largest economies in the world today. One economy has no democracy, has deprioritised democracy and it’s used state capitalism as its engine for growth. The other economy has absolutely got liberal democracy as its ideological frame for politics, and it believes in free markets. But these two economies have the exact same income and equality Gini coefficient, and therefore, if you’re sitting anywhere else in the world, where income and equality matters, growth matters, China has a pretty compelling story over the last several years. We have not seen the decline in real wages over the period; of course now, there is a lot of pressure, given their population, on wages. We’ve seen very significant, even double digit growth numbers, which are very important in very impoverished economies. We’ve seen them actually roll out infrastructure. We’ve seen them move hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in a very short period of time. There are lots of things to admire and like about that. Of course, it’s not without its challenges, but, you know, if you look at their political system, and I’ve been very lucky; I’ve had the opportunity, as part of a group, to spend an hour with the Chinese President about a year ago, and I think the way that he expressed concern for the currency of the global economy was, in a way, much more sophisticated than what I’d heard elsewhere. What do I mean? It was untainted by political strictures. So let me explain. The income inequality point, there was an acknowledgement that on the one hand trickledown economics has not worked, the idea of keeping taxes low because richer people… or the owners of capital were going to invest and hire people. He said, that’s a great idea, but it didn’t work. Neither, though, did the tax and spend redistribution model; that has also not worked. So it was quite refreshing to have a public policy, you know, head, someone who’s responsible in the political class in China, to say, you know what; we’ve tried these two models and neither of them has worked, and so rather than be hamstrung by one or the other because that’s going to win me votes, I’m actually looking for a third way. His view was, sort of, in that se moneyweek.com/dambisa-moyo-the-trouble-with-democracy/I think the fundamental thing I’m getting at here, whether its capital, labour or productivity, is that we have a political system in place, particularly in the developed markets, that does not match the structural problems that the world is facing. So if you think about it, if somebody goes and does a call outside now and says, what are the big issues that the world faces, most of us will acknowledge it’s around education, it’s around infrastructure and investment, it’s around the cost of healthcare – long-term problems, but we have a political system in place, which is largely liberal democracy, that has cyclicality that’s much more short-term and myopic, and therefore doesn’t address some of the problems that we’re addressing right now. moneyweek.com/dambisa-moyo-the-trouble-with-democracy/
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Post by jakaswanga on Jul 22, 2015 20:08:48 GMT 3
And then what the hell is this again?So where do we go from here!? ostrich position?
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Post by jakaswanga on Oct 11, 2015 13:39:20 GMT 3
SPECTACULAR TALENT AT THE TOP, WORTHLESS RESULTS IN PRACTICE, so what gives? Of course the Swahili live band at the renowned Ranalo Kosewe, just a few meters from Nation Centre going the other direction, -South, offers, apart from hits topically commenting on daily life which is the staple of historical Tanzanian bands, other bests of the poetical world of Tanzania composers. There, recently, and whenever I chance around the city in the sun and has an evening to spare, do I always request for a rendition of the song Marashi ya Pemba. It is a darker, murkier more dangerous delve into the emotions of belonging, than Osito Kalle's famous tribute to his home: Asembo Piny Maber. Marashi ya Pemba by Ndala Kasheba with Orchestre Safari Sound, like Marijan Rajab's Zuwena with Dar International, do jerk the tears out my eyes whenever the saxophonist is good, and plays the long goodbye. The long goodbye is a 'conch sound' from the Island of Pemba, and it is blown for the souls of the fishermen who went to sea and never came back. When the line ''Kuishi viziwani mamaah, kuna utamu wake!''is sung in Pemba, and the look on the eyes of guitarist Ndala is glazy like the wine-dark sea, and the horns section is savvy like the famed fingers of Apollo on the lyre, then will you instinctively catch why the euphemism -' 'living in an island has its sweetness!' cuts to the bone for some ... And doth I Jakaswanga shed many a rolling drop,thinking of Mfangano Island --Rusinga, Ngodhe na Migingo, visiwa vya kwetu eeeh!HERE: [Marashi Ya Pemba OSS] composer Ndala Kasheba. Alfajiri upepo wa Bahari umenijia, Nikaona nyota ya kanda ya Mashariki, Kuishi visiwani mama, ah, Kuna utamu wake, Mafia , Pemba , Zanzibar visiwa vya kwetu eeh x2
Siku nitafika Pemba, ni siku nitatamani eeh x2 Nitembeze sehemu zote hadi mwisho eeeh, Kuishi visiwani mama eeh, Kuna utamu wake, Mafia ,Pemba, Zanzibar visiwa vya kwetu eeh.Etc etc. =- Having thus put my soul in order, my heart and head can rhyme and mount an unflinching and sustained assault at forts. The IMF-anointed TRIAD at the top of the Kenyan Treasury is such a fort. Me means Patrick Njoroge (the Yale-bred the Opus Dei loyalist at the Central bank), Henry Rotich (the Harvard-Kennedy robot), and the charlatan doctor, Kamau Thugge. (PS finance). These are pawns. And that is how their combined would-be formidable technical abilities result into a perfect naught on the ground. The explanation of the financial mess is not that they are stupid nor foolish, but just that they are not decision-makers. For, pray, tell, What is a clever man if he can neither make nor carry out his clever decisions? Me says you do not notice the difference between him, the genius, and any other moron around, yeah, they are flower girls like those attractive babes you see atop the dais at Grand prix winner sessions, kissing the ace drivers and titillating male fantasy gawking at TV screens as Onyango Oloo would have it. Gladiator accessories.I mean: (Waawu! We have a Harvard and a Yale at the treasury -Bretton woods bonafide! match that! We Kenyans boast to other Africans, mesmerised and gawking at our GDP and shilling strength!) But at home, in the privacy of our bedrooms, we are hurting and lonely. HERE IS A TIP OF THE ICEBERG. But which imagery shall we use, as we watch those charged with dealing with the crisis talking a soft walk in the park without a worry? .Ostriches with head in sand? Hard-boiled captains of a sinking ship -they know the ship is doomed, but do not want panic even in death. So they tell fairy tales to the last. No, I think they are just charlatans who know the score, but do not care because their station makes them immune to the effects of economic collapse. -Up the treasury, they do not know what real life is when a teacher @ 30K goes 1.5 months without that salary.Starvation and total loss of decorum, for even the daily sukumu wiki has to be taken on credit from mama mboga. I see that at the daily markets, and so these Opus dei Grades from Yale running the third biggest economies in Africa -(Yes Kenya GDP is that big on the blurb write!)-- are just the latest intellectual litter on the face of Africa passing on. (In Sembene Ousmane phraseology, impotent d.icks facing a nymphomaniac!) gladiator accessories. Ah, Nairobi, twajivuna kuwa Wakenya. (And no Pemba euphemism intended!) More hints to follow.
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Post by jakaswanga on Oct 12, 2015 19:58:49 GMT 3
POLITICAL ECONOMICALLY PONDERING PRIME MINISTER JOSEPH KINYUAIn an earlier episode ---instalment may perhaps be a better choice of word---- at the Anne Waiguru thread here on Jukwaa, this correspondent is fain to reckon with the breaking of surface by the submarine Joseph Kinyua, the prime minister of Kenya and ace architect of grafty treasury shenanigans through the years, albeit with no smoking gun traceable to his cupboard. It reminds me wry of a famous quote from a not so famous French writer now gone, Charles Baudelaire : "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." A brilliant scenario directed by a brilliant director casting a brilliant actor would later give eternal fame to this saying in a blockbuster film called THE USUAL SUPESUSPECTS. It stars Kevin Spacy in the character of Keyser Söze, aka Verbal Kint. Keyser Soze does not exist, so conclude the police investigation. But as in True Detectives, not every cop is a believer in fictitious criminals. But back to Kenyan reality. You have the busy buddies of Boinnet, you have Tobiko, you have Ndegwa Muhoro, and, behold O Lord!, between them they wouldn't have heard of Ruto's case at the ICC-Hague, let alone knowing who betrayed Sir William to that imperialist monster!Was the breaking of surface Routine? or a scheduled rendezvous? or, lord forbid, things are very madongodongo and the heaviest calibre must man battle stations, to hold fort? HERE IS A BIT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MAN; A FOOTNOTE TO PUNCTUATE, FOLLOW-UP, OR CONTINUE THE PONDER.FIRST, a few spurts from the Volcano, actively giving warnings. 49.1% of the revenues went where?!? AND How much syndicated loans from LOCAL BANKS? and [/i][/quote] little room to manoeuvre! FORCED THE GoK to accept HIGHLY PRICED DEBT! That is a loan-shark's ripping interest rate! --Rape! VEIL OF SECRECY IS TO COVER THEFT AND GRAFT! --Of course with girls like Waiguru caught pants down, this veil is like the famous reveal female dress: see-through. The wearer is not naked, but everything is visible. This is where the political economy of the submarine Joseph Kinyua comes in. He knows all, but if you ask him, of course he wont tell. He will never tell. It is all a mystery to him, like Keyser Soze is all a mystery to Verbal Kint. That leaves us with the intellectual exercise of 'glasnosting' him. Glasnost is the Russian word made famous by the communist reformer Mikhail Gorbachov. It means 'to transparentise'; to shed light upon and reveal the hidden. POLITICAL ECONOMY 1. What is happening in Kenya is the transfer of public-generated resources to the private sector. But this private sector is an exclusive, oligarchic, royalist clique. In the old days we used to call this process expropriation of the natives, because capitalist colonialism did not bother to hide its true economic nature nor mode. Its business was naked pillage. But these days history moved on, and sensitivities informed by consciousness must be minded. So you have to complicate stuff engage in Public Relations and massive disinformation to hoodwink a mass which, otherwise, would be scandalised and enraged. This is why for instance, when POTUS Obama went to bail-out Wall Street --(the cradle of the economic recession and financial crisis), it was sold to the paying American people as to their best benefit. 'These banks are Too Big to Fail. If we do not do it, we are gone as a super power! And you do not want neither Putin nor the Chinese telling us what to do, do you, O free people of God!'--'NO!' The good people of God in the exceptional country roared back! And the bankers and banks laughed all the way to the bank. Soon, bonuses paid for by the bailout fund topped 100$M yearly for some select few! That is a net transfer of resources from the public to the 1% who rule and decide. Consensus generated thereto. That is how the big boys do it, --- we can also watch how they dismember Greece: Pensions and savings are confiscated; and private real estate [over-taxed] have to be sold off to repay state debt. Consensus, no alternative. But how does it work for the small boys, that is the comprador nyaparas running the financial colonies like Kenya, where the IMF places her thorough-breds in charge of treasuries to facilitate the looting? (facilitate by intellectual gloss for one!) CO-OPTING THE FIRST FAMILY INTO BANKING Uhuru Kenyatta and the family, evolving from the primitive accumulation of his father Kenyatta I, has, as an appendage to international finance, become huge in LOCAL Banking. And (2) behind the scenes, courtesy of Joseph Kinyua, we know which clique achieved strategic dominance during the liberalisation of the banking sector, like who, for instance, bought the co-operative bank at a throw-away. I told you Joseph Kinyua is in a class of his own. He is an architect of a system. PAWNS IN PLACE. Now, did I hear that Jubilee hotshot of Jukwaa, Red Onyango Oloo remark, that the likes of Henry Rotich, Anne Waiguru and Kamau Thugge ---up to then junior clerks within the mandarinate at the Treasury, were not going to go up the Jubilee scale without the vetting of vested interests? That is a thought to ponder. In terms of political economy: patronage and clientelism. USHERING THE SHEEP TO THE ABATOIR Now, other political economy: the government by mouth of the treasury, is a dmonishing county governments and everybody else dependent on her, to negotiate an overdrat from LOCAL COMMERCIAL BANKS, this to pay for their responsibilities. Howbeit these local commercial Banks boast the family of Uhuru Kenyatta, incidentally the national CEO, as the dominant player.Laughing all the way from bank to bank is the Kenyatta family if you see what I mean. The political economy is, the Kenyan state has being transfixed as the historical debt colony of the first family. And, tabloid reporting, the going interest rate is sky-rocketed.Kenyatta is no longer the land-grabber of yonder. He grew up, moved on. Yet have we not talked of the coming borrowing from local banks to repay and or service the foreign debt: -the weakly shilling, they say, gallops the external debt due to an ever steep exchange rate to the currency's in which the debt is denominated. (Meanwhile, on the other hand, Drs. Kamau Thugge's role and Henry Rotich's role is borrow as cheaply as possible, as a STATE ACTOR on the international scene, and award this relatively cheap money (via Dr. Patrick Njoroge of the Central Bank) to the LOCAL COMMERCIAL BANKS, where, deductively, those of the first family will be the first birds who catches the worms.) These (select and token) commercial banks can then RE-loan the relatively cheap money to the state/government of Kenya at that SKY-ROCKETED RATE which CBK statistics already reported! And once again royalty laughs all the way from bank to bank! That in a nutshell is the political economy at the top. It is a gameplan which requires a dedicated architect, a man who even made Mwai Kibaki uncomfortable. The submarine Joseph Kinyua. A Keyser Szose of sorts. AND THE REST OF THE CHEAP THIEVES PICK YOUR POCKET. Know your country. Cheap land thieves like William Ruto (on whose behalf primary kids ar tear-gassed), or Elephantiasis soapbells like Anne Waiguru whose fingers drip in public with stolen honey, are not calibre worth talking about when the political economy of the Kenyan state is glasnotised with Joseph Kinyua in the star role. These queens and hustlers are silly pick-pockets at your bus park. Social vermin or, in this case, comprador vermin, jiggers at the toe of the treasury. We will revisit them --an the likes of Githinji and Kibet etc-- when we dumb down again. When we leave Kinyua alone. Now we know why Uhuru Kenyatta wouldn't make haste tackling the public wage bill. He is a banker, and aims to monopolise the interest rate regime of a Kenyan state prostrate for debt before commercial banks. His commercial banks. Kenyatta is like a cocaine dealer who has turned a prostitute into his private addict, so he can who-re her out at will and exploit her to his fill.Henry Rotich, kwani how long does it take you to figure that out? (There then, I figured it out for you then, doc!) Now back to tabloid mode. THE TILL DEATH DO US PART CLAUSE for MPIGS! That is two weeks after Ababu Namwamba propose a bill to curb stuff! Marashi ya Pemba! It is a deep song, like the deep sea. But if you are not a sailor, a sea is just a fairy tale. And I will be back!
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Post by jakaswanga on Oct 26, 2015 22:11:07 GMT 3
THE CASE OF ECONOMIC SABOTAGE BY THE BEST OF THE LAND!There is so much confusion around the state of the finances of the Kenyan state, that it looks like a deliberate smokescreening exercise. The purpose of all smokescreens around big finance is known since pre-history: massive theft. Fraud in its various mutant forms, all custom-purposed to have the thieves escape a noose around their necks and swinging in the air.. ...like A possible fate for treasury officials in Nairobi if we mean business with the future of Kenya!?I am out of humour, spent it all elsewhere, so I reckon if a first class econs from Yale heading the Central Bank, sidekicked by a Kennedy Harvard Major as government fin-sec, are going to leave it to lay jackals like Aden Duale to explain the Eurobond usage to the public, then loosing my temper is in order. And then this calibre of man Guys like me have respect, even awe for that kind of stuff. But there is a down side.If with all those world-class Phds and implied expertise I catch some star behaving like a village idiot when such are trusted with the future of the nation, I gonna view such like lice I fished out of my pubic hair. Better off recycling in the nitrogen or carbon cycle. www.nation.co.ke/oped/Editorial/Answer-questions-on-funds-from-Eurobond/-/440804/2930984/-/vins33z/-/index.html Why such a confused performance from you boys? --no cash crunch. --ah yes there is a cash crunch (counties should borrow to pay recurrents) --No wastage of funds (the auditor general is an incompetent idler!) --Oh yeah, there is lots of wastage, there is actually improper accounting too ... --Government accounting has been streamlined -IFMIS system and the rest ... -Government operates more than 10,000 accounts and nobody really has an idea where they are ... But there is enough
I don't know how much
. cash in them to scale a financial year budget! -No, we are forcedly borrowing at sky-high %tages --to pay wages! -Oh we just had to clear a loan with the proceeds of the eurobond, or our ratings would .. Umm, revenue collection? 50% went to debt portfolios! I am thinking I am watching a band of highly gifted and intelligent Kenyan scholars carrying out a masterplan of economic sabotage; chiefly on hire, but a bit on the sidelines for themselves too. With the kind of brains at the top of the treasury now, and the horrible result on the ground for Wanjiku, I think this nightmare is exactly the intended result. National ruin, national impoverishment. Bleeding the land to skeletons, then galloping away like a locust whose business i finished, off to nest elsewhere, far away from the ruined land. Future!? What future!? There is no tomorrow in your heads. And that means you guys should loose your ruinous heads. But since I do not like decapitations, too much ISIS like for my taste, SWINGING will do. Old school conforms to my old-fashionedness. But before then, you boys could also turn the economy around in one year. If that is too short (economic theory has no room for miracles, no?) then you can as well be shot. NB: Soon after Moi in that NAK thing of the first Raila-Kibaki dynamics it was David Mwiraria at finance, right!? Six months it was obvious he had turned it around from Moi's dead end. Just that you new kids know miracles do happen, and not just in Hjalmar Schacht's Hitlerite Germany. now run along boys and get to work. Africa's eye darkens into a mask of rage. Beware.
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Post by jakaswanga on Nov 8, 2015 10:07:44 GMT 3
Dear Patrick Njoroge, chair of Central Bank of Kenya, bear my Sunday humour with me! This episode of the story started for me with this: a long long time ago before the world started ... This is the President of Iceland, Ólafur Grímsson, hosting my hero, General Ababu Namwamba and missus, in Reykjavik, Iceland. OVERSIGHT OVER PUBLIC FINANCE ....accounta
.. The word accountability in relation to Kenya of course gets my instantaneous attention. I do not like the ivy-league ratings Kenya boasts at the global pantheon of the rotten. Otishotish posted a macabre extract from an American paper. Pleading with state robbers to steal just a little, in a country where peanut thieves are routinely lynched like runaway slaves cornered by a white mob!Humorous. Now, Ababu Namwamba is a young star by this account, pale and now perhaps a bit dim, but he sure still up there in the sky, ODM secretary general and all. That is to say Dr. Patrick Njoroge too, is a kind of pale star up there who, similarly, could need some polish. After all you Dr. Patrick is running a predatory financial regime on low-level banking customers; loan-shark interest rates in a citadel of corruption is a double wharmy on businessess. So, that I did not call you neither a dead nor a fallen star is not because I can not logically underpin that argument. The idea is I feel humorous today (checking news items American papers do not report!) Check the following. Coming from the ODM one-party zone which, howbeit, is a mini Anne-Waiguru-like fiefdom of Graft, I thought Hmmm there goes young Ababu to steal the fire and bring light to this Kingdom of Darkness! Behold! That Opus Dei joker in Nairobi is an Oga Brother in disguise! (see the trials of General Buhari and his central bankers!)But now 5 months later, General Ababu does not seem to have brought back the fire from land of ice on volcano's. Ababu has not authored a legal framework as a masterpiece proposal to take the battle to the thieves. He appears not to have gotten the import of his host. Take a look. 2 looks. 1. MwalimuMkuu of Jukwaa, now delegated to NyumbaKubwa from Mukibi's caught the General pants down. why not a bill!? Why not the serious work!? Even if shot down, the template remains for follow-up at a later politically more conducive date! Bluff and blanks!? Why not a legal scholar and star do a state of the art constitution due respect by authoring a state of the art anti-theft bill!? roping in the state of the art econometrics whizkid who went to Yale!?That is how we teachers think. We see straightaway when our best pupils are behaving like brainless morons. 2. Going to the land of thunder and coming back without fire: first degree negligence? Going to war with a gun but forgetting the bullets? If you visit such a man in official capacity, and seriously plan to pair with his party, and five months on you are not briefing Wanjiku on your masterplan to hang the known thieves, then it is reasonable for one to call your bluff and wonder whether the General is retired, and now merely a comedian. I was missing the name of the CBK in that roll call of KEY OVERSIGHT BODIES. You know I think the central bank is a key oversight body. It should have the most accomplished sleuth accountants working for Wanjiku. But from the scandals skinning Wanjiku alive and draining her blood like a giant sucker, methinks the CBK accounting department is really the evil genius. Okay, Fragranced Waiguru need not know the price of the choice yoghurt on her desk ordered from Brookside dairies, she has other things to know, haridresser's appointments and all. But somebody at the CBK really must know and warn in advance the bill to Wanjiku means the messenger flies to France every week to buy Brookside yoghurt. And that is diva behaviour exlusive to the wives of Donald Trump and co! criminal on salary, and public wage bill at that! Now, between General Ababu Namwamba and Dr. Patrick Njoroge, two stars not yet dead, nor, hopefully, bodies not yet turned completely into living zombies by internal colonisation after infection with the larvae of dead-end corruption, should there not be a sign of life!? some dim ray piercing through the thick fog of flies, which is the plague of ichneumon wasps the Kenyan elite has become!? That is the humour. The humour of the pathological optimist. Never loosing faith in humans! Now, you are reportedly a man of deep faith, Dr. Patrick. Suppose you lost it!? Define the vacuum left, and the horror that must fill it. When people like Waiguru boast in public they wont resign even after loosing a billion of tax-payer's money, they sure test Faith. That is fine so long you dealing with pathological optmists like yours truly. But there is another Africa out there. It is pathological, but not in optimism. From your ivory towers far in the sky, it is difficult to discern it. But trust me, there is a beast down there, and out there. And you, the best of our land achieving the worst results for our people, are whetting its appetite. But no worries, I said this is humour. Huh!? Non news!
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Post by jakaswanga on Nov 11, 2015 21:09:47 GMT 3
DISSIDENCE TO THE FETISH OF CORRUPTION IN KENYA? a cultural look at Dr. Patrick. Corruption is of course a fetish in Kenya. And political, and bureaucratic practice in Kenya, a fellowship therein. Generally speaking, action tends to author reaction in equal measure. Kenya would have to BE a very special case of reality to be an exception to this rule. So one looks for symptoms, however vague, that Kenya is a statistical normality. This concept may come from the world of mechanics, but it is a safe bet too in the socials! Here is an example of the absurdity of this fetish of corruption in Kenya. The way it can twist a mind and render it a sorry mess, case study Nkaissery. That is a bunch of baloney, and the General is barmy. But just imagine he believes himself, so much so that he had, John Ngirachu, the parliamentary editor of the nation, arrested, for reporting this But Deputy President, the Singh William, seems to be suffering a bout of unease at the anti-corruption hullabaloo, and has sought to ease fears that he and His Highness The Boss are fully signed up members of the fellowship, if not the actual High Priests of The Fetish. Don't know how Ruto would classify the arrest and detention and harassment of Mr. John Ngirachu of the Nation!We salute the vigilance of the patriot Nkaissery! Interior man! His sharp eyes never saw a loop hole to loose money he didn't exploit. OIron soldier of the fetish! In this Fetish, we can read the words of Ruto, lip service they be, as symptoms of doubt at the course. A suspicion the fetish is a dead-end. It is like at the peak of Aztec or Maya regime of human sacrifice, a blood fetish if ever there was one, some priests grew sickened by the sheer waste of manpower, and wondered if it would not be better the able labour be deployed in the farms, the canals, productively invested terracing jungles for new agricultural territory, instead of their hearts being ripped off by obsidian knives to possibly dead and deaf gods! nb: (Ruto promised interest rates will come down by today. That means he was thinking, FANTASISING, if all these corruption ends and the saved monies are ploughed into ECONONOMIC productivity or cheap loans for Kenyans, surely we would fly as a nation, No!? and I want to become president of that!)[/i] These priestltly uneases at the top of the blood cults of the Andes were the premonitions of total doom, the doom of a society and system which had rotted to the core; One ideologically bankrupt and auto annihilative -- suicidally self destructive. Such neutralises their own defence against a foreign invader even of minor resolve. Such are waiting for a Messiah to rescue it, or an arsonist to set it alight. And in deed adventurers and ruthless pirates like Pizaro and the likes of Cortez set it alight. GAME OVER! (that is a european joke about Greek finances) It was my search for reaction to the fetish culture of corruption in Kenya i came across the curious detail of the religious inclination of the Yale Doc, Patrick Njoroge, now chair of the Central Bank of Kenya. I was alerted to the fact that the Kenyan Parliamentarians interviewing him, Mpigs if you like, could neither fathom nor contemplate the rigour of his religious choice, and its dark message. I found it chilling, this obvious moral shallowness of the best paid parliamentarians in the world, charged with guiding the destiny of the nation by virtue of the laws they make. This is why I took time off to think a thought about the man and his Opus Dei choice in a country like Kenya, and vie for one of its sky-high offices. It is a radical example -if he aint a lip serviceman to that Faith, nor a sleeper. in the odious sense. It is a choice of rejection of the rot we call success in n public life in Kenya, a success which is not the creation of wealth by hard work and innovation, but theft and graft, and rape of public trust. There are enough religious men around Kenya who are as rotten as a committed Aztec ripper of hearts, which only confirms how the church itself is not immune to The Fetish of Corruption; that on this score Dr. Patrick Njoroge would appear to be an exemption, is another feather in his cap. Note: this is a cultural take. Dr. Patrick Njoroge is a warning. A warning of the depths of faith it takes to resist the dominant national fetish -- Opus Dei has its issues, to put it mildly, Dan Brown's book apart. The orthodoxy of Opus Dei is primordial. In fact it is like a sect of basic instincts, which is another word for fanaticism. An insane piety. Now that is the depth of faith it takes to resist the fetish of corruption ruling Kenya. Aint that a warning? go figure. Methinks so. It is a terrifying reaction, to the action of corruption in Kenya. But it proves the statistical norm, and Ruto does well to fear this self-destructive corruption of which he presides together with Uhuru Kenyatta, has, like the blood obsessed Inca or Maya society just before the arrival of the ruthless adventurous from Spain, past its peak by far. And now for the IMF take.
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Post by Luol Deng on Nov 12, 2015 12:57:58 GMT 3
JaKaswanga,
I am no fan of the Opus Dei or the Catholic church for that matter but if the moves of the current CBK governor's moves are anything to go by, he is the best weapon that Kenya has in its fight against graft. More than the EACC, Directorate of Criminal Investigations, office of the DPP and the rest of the judiciary put together. As one who does consultancy for the banking sector, I know that the scam at the NYS was first flagged at one of the small commercial banks and reported to the Central Bank. In the previous CBK regimes, the money laudering that was taking place would have been swept under the carpet at the central bank. This time there was quick and decisive action, the story broke on the Star then two days later Waiguru retrospectively 'blew the whistle'. Under the previous CBK regime what would have happened would have been 1) The transaction is swept under the rag 2) No information makes it to the public 3) No whistleblower & everybody is 'happy'
This current governor has been strict on government lending. The current slide in the T-Bill rate can be wholly attributed to him with the treasury CS having no input whatsoever. If the treasury CS was to have its way the T-Bill rate would be approaching 25%. We are not out of the woods yet, but could have been much worse were it not for the governor's intervention.
What about the banking sector. Imperial bank, managed to keep the Central Bank auditors off its core banking system for 10 years (at a fee of course). They managed to keep the chief regulator in their back pockets for 10 years! Right now the banks are not having it easy, for obvious reasons. Dozens of accounts that have been used to launder cash have been frozen.
Now, let us compare the much that has been achieved by the CBK governor in this short stint compared to the other graft fighting agencies. Unfortunately I think the governor has stepped on many powerful feet and he may be the next to be unceremoniously dumped.
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Post by jakaswanga on Nov 12, 2015 22:03:20 GMT 3
JaKaswanga, I am no fan of the Opus Dei or the Catholic church for that matter but if the moves of the current CBK governor's moves are anything to go by, he is the best weapon that Kenya has in its fight against graft. More than the EACC, Directorate of Criminal Investigations, office of the DPP and the rest of the judiciary put together. As one who does consultancy for the banking sector, I know that the scam at the NYS was first flagged at one of the small commercial banks and reported to the Central Bank. In the previous CBK regimes, the money laudering that was taking place would have been swept under the carpet at the central bank. This time there was quick and decisive action, the story broke on the Star then two days later Waiguru retrospectively 'blew the whistle'. Under the previous CBK regime what would have happened would have been 1) The transaction is swept under the rag 2) No information makes it to the public 3) No whistleblower & everybody is 'happy' This current governor has been strict on government lending. The current slide in the T-Bill rate can be wholly attributed to him with the treasury CS having no input whatsoever. If the treasury CS was to have its way the T-Bill rate would be approaching 25%. We are not out of the woods yet, but could have been much worse were it not for the governor's intervention. What about the banking sector. Imperial bank, managed to keep the Central Bank auditors off its core banking system for 10 years (at a fee of course). They managed to keep the chief regulator in their back pockets for 10 years! Right now the banks are not having it easy, for obvious reasons. Dozens of accounts that have been used to launder cash have been frozen. Now, let us compare the much that has been achieved by the CBK governor in this short stint compared to the other graft fighting agencies. Unfortunately I think the governor has stepped on many powerful feet and he may be the next to be unceremoniously dumped. LuolDeng, Habari ya kupotea bwana? I have noted with interest, that in the recent free-for-all to trash the competence of the auditor General, Dr. Patrick did not chime in. Dr. Kamau Thugge, Dr. Henry Rotich and host of other heavyweight docs and post-docs nestled at the treasury came down like a tonne or rocks on the office of their fellow doc, Ouko. Patrick and the CBK (which I happen to know has a very formidable competence in accounting even if they never bothered to use the potential under the thief Ndung'u) held their powder dry. I couldn't help noticing that. and it convinced me Rotich and Thugge didn't get distinctions in the accounting module in their US ivy-league sojourn, and if at all they did, the worm of corruption that runs riot in many a Kenyan brain had infested the respective lobes of their brains which do the additions and subtractions, and all that remained of their grey matter is cold and porridge --as in nyuka pi! Now again all over the place I am hearing every Tom Dick and Harry saying this debt thing and interest rates are no big deal. But I aint heard Dr. Patrick yet. You know what LuolDeng, I have a sneaking feeling Patrick Njoroge brings a much more formidable thinking pattern to these problems than the rest of these laymen. Not that I have time for Opus Dei. But I would be ruthless and rigorous enough to credit my own executioner with his choice of weapon if he first didn't cut my tongue. Being a secular man, it is a bitter pill for me to rate a religious fanatic above my fellow Lord Pan cultmates!
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Post by jakaswanga on Nov 13, 2015 19:38:02 GMT 3
THE MEA CULPA WITH A STIFF UPPER LIP, INTERST RATES AS POLITICAL ACT AND NOT ECONOMIC FACT!Thanks God it is Friday, and thanks I am currently in the line of trade where the mid-month Saturday is a day off the treadmill of work. Business is slow --so we wage slaves spend time reading and drinking on credit, and of course talking a lot of sh!t in the process. This means today I am in a good mood, and that is not because Mama Mboga, Otishotish's illicit mother in law, thinks the David Nzili deal at state house yesterday means certain liquidity tomorrow! nay, I am in a good mood also because my wife is sending me lewd sms's. That is a hot hint of a status called heat. This good mood means I wont abuse the 'stalwart' governor of the central bank of Kenya for his very stupid official position earlier. (The Holy Market will determine the heavenly rate of interest commercial banks charge Kenyans!) He has now recanted. The pains of shedding off orthordoxy must be saluted and rewarded I say, and thus will I be generously complimenting, even if the recant is after a lot of damage has been done. Which damage? Here is a hint, a lament. But which anger at the earlier not-so-bright official position of the new governor am I talking about? Here is a rehash: In fact I launched this thread to express my fury at the ORTHODOX ideological POSITIONING by Patrick Njoroge when he took helm. This was he would let THE MARKET DECIDE THE INTEREST RATES!I was flabbergasted in the theatrical sense, because I know of course the purpose of the central bank of Kenya is not to develop a healthy Kenyan economy, but facilitate an appendage, a dependent and auxilliary system, one which can be a functional recipient for exported contradictions from hard-currency motherlands. One does not have to be an economist to know the market does not define interest rates in capitalism. In {1} the USA for instance, that is what you have the FED for. Manipulating stuff by money growth or money withdrawal from the market Giving it out for free if necessary, 0% interest rate. And the FED will bow to the economic priorities of the POTUS. So for instance, Bill Clinton run policies which left a surplus ($300 billion), then came Dubya Bush and it evaporated like a fist into open hand. Same Alan Greenspan, same FED, same market outlook. So what give? But honest is to say Alan Greenspan was cowed, intimidated and blackmailed (by hind thought!). Ruthless fixers like Karl Rove promised him the sack (no renewal of tenure), and investigations into his banking past if he did not bend! -- there is always a skeleton, Alan. So Alan, scared, bared his azz to be had. ---wonderful, the art of leading political memoirs between the lines!) And that is the way it is. The FED is a political tool. And those in power wield it to their priorities. They run the market, the market does not run them. If they say a bank is too big to fail, then that bank is too big to fail. Amazingly in political science, no country, even empire, is too big to fail! {2}. Even the famous LIBOR ----the London Interbank Offered rate, which the DETERMINANT rate for all world commercial and non commericial banking,---- is not MARKET DETERMINED FIGURE. It is a gentleman's leisure so to speak. That is speak for a corrupt, rigged, slanted scam. An inner committee defined figure. Therefore, when the smartest kids from our shores, having gone all the way to Yale and Harvard, the best of their shores, come back and climb to the top of the bureaucratic financial pyramid of our land, only to open their mouths and tell Africa --INTEREST RATES? THE MARKET WILL DO THAT, NOT ME! ...... then do I exhaust all the discipline I learnt in the jungles of Africa to contain my temper! that i don't shout: boko haram! boko haram! Take a look: THE DIKTATS OF THE IMF AND THE POLITICS OF THE KENYAN TREASURYLOOK EAST FACE WEST!
Tell me, O Kenya, If Beijin is where you look for your vision 2030, Where is your heart and where is your head as you go to bed?
So where am I going? -THE NEW HEAD OF THE KENYAN CENTRAL BANK HAS SPOKE' A CLEAR WORD OF MEANING!
It made me remember the old days when the good old god Alan Greenspan ran the FED. He spoke a language -greenspeak-- which needed experts to decode: oracular incantations in the game of mysticism.
But, behold, blessed is the lord that our new kid in town Dr. Patrick Njoroge, who succeeds prof. Ndung'u at the helm of the Central Bank of Kenya, is a down to earth type. A layman can hear him straight. For the most significant statement he has uttered is that he will let the market determine the interest rates. Now that is a straightforward marker. We exactly know what the Harvard/Yale axis at the CBK and the treasury, the doctors, ordered for the patient aka Kenya's finances. Everybody's learning curve.
(An aside is, speaking of learning curves, he Patrick has worked in Washington but never heard of the great scandals of the market which have usurped the effectivity of the tools of trade of great market central bankers. Neither the Libor scandals nor the decade-long fixing of the interest rates by all leading Western Banks inserts a seed of doubt in his preprogramed neo-liberal orthodoxy. And, apart from hearing of it in economics texbooks and bank-sponsored newspapers running sponsored content, who in the saner, wider world ever used a market-determined rate of interest!? Aint that always been fiction --crystal clear to Asian performing economies, hidden to Subsaharanites with too much boko in the head? ---I just went to look at a history of financial crimes in the post world war II period! Nobel price economists themselves tell me -thinking of Stiglitz, that even the third world's 'best friends' like the World Bank and the IMF, are all but your dirty old sugar daddies swinging in town with teen-age girls. But hurrah, better late than never! It takes a man or woman of great balls to perform this kind of U-turn in public without thinking of the face he will loose! Because now, Dr. Patrick Njoroge seems to have regained, not his senses, but just pure common sense on the question of interest rates. Let us ride: The daily nation writes the good doctor has ordered the banks to cut interest rates, but Man Kamale of Jukwaa, sharp-eyed on the detail as usual, will remind me nowhere does a verbatim excerpt sustain the verb order, as in Uhuru Kenyatta DIRECTED the TSC to pay September salaries hitherto denied the strikers of KNUT. This week we have been in touch with commercial banks and they understand that interest rates have gone down, he told the Mps. That is diplo-speak for arm twisting. Njoroge said: if these interest rates of yours you insist are market conform, and your econometric models rationalise them such, I still is saying: the market don't tell me the rate, I tell you, and you do --fwack your fuzzy algorithms! or, as most of you are corrupt anyway, and I am not, we see who gets hurt on the rebound! Here below is how that kind of statement is backed up. Luoldeng, Forgive me amigo: this statement: REGULATORS AND SUPERVISION UNIT AND AUDITORS --THOSE ARE THREE DEPARTMENTS--- FAILED TO INTERROGATE TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS. I have been around town guys. When three departments, supervisory departments, check the CV's to get the level of training and education required to man these, ALL fail to perform an ABC routine dry-run, I know the score. You have to come back with a better one. --that is how I mean Dr. Patrick Njoroge's head was limping in that sentence. --gigi tugo gi wi ji! this Opus Dei fella has some footwork. But his headwork is still wanting. I sure hope to hell he paid attention to political economy. --Inflation is a political choice, not an inherent economic fact. That is political economy but not econometrics. Corruption can dismember and distort an economy, ruining a country worse than bad economic policies without corruption. That too is political science but not economics. That is, it may not be clear to an whiz econometrist WHY CORRUPTION is a danger to the Kenyan economy. (Like Italians never understand Germans when the Germans insist things like the Mafia are bad for the economy! the Italians say the Mafia is just another multinational corp, never paying taxes of course, and the leading tax discounter is, yeah, Allemania!)anyway ... The interest rates in Kenya are high because the bankers are using this instrument to loot loanees. It is old fashioned expropriation, age-old parasitism. Njoroge says: I have been in touch with commercial banks and they understand the interest rates have gone down! -that is not very clear-headed thinking, but it will do for now. After all, he is only a few months into the job, and he is an indoctrinated IMF apparatchik. a brainwashed orthodox trying to regain his mind! Let us support him, by ruthlessly thinking along! Kudos Njoroge, from my experience as a teacher, it is a distinction mind who does a honest mea culpa in public from such a top office, like you sort of did in parliament! Better homework in advance next time. --if they let you! orthodox man!
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Post by jakaswanga on Dec 5, 2015 17:50:25 GMT 3
LEAVING INFANTS ALONE FOR THEM MOMENT AND CONCENTRATING ON THE PROMISING ADOLESCENT!Letter to Dr. Yaleman CBK Njoroge,I stated I have of late taken great pains to adopt a congratulatory predisposition toward them, captains of the Kenyan mandarinate, especially thee who ran government finances, like you Dr. Joseph Njoroge, CBK Ayatollah. This positivism was ignited after I received the insight, that it would be better far illuminative in deconstructing apparent reality were I to consider you, top dogs, variously challenged infants; highly educated yes, qualified on paper yes, but mentally of such a feeble calibre, such that, given the historical task beforehand, the correct definition for thee lot is baby. And infantile. When babies run a country you get the kind of self-inflicted crisis/wounds we suffer now. But, on the sunnier side, those of us who are parents know infants need must be treated otherwise than an adult would be. You praise them even for defecating next to the door instead of on the couch, since that difference is a marked improvement in their presence of mind, shows a marginal increment in discretionary cognitive ability. Therefore did I commend Anne Waiguru for resigning, even as her cognitive abilities did not reach far enough to decipher the kind of theft she had presided over as earning a death sentence, if not for sheer incompetence then wilful collusion. It was a moment of comical relief though, that tongue in cheek she asked to be deployed to lighter duties, may be exclusively sucking lolly. Then -woe be I O lord-- did I read this extract from Dr. David Ndii and wonder did I if my complementuous generosity is far misplaced, and should be replaced with the cold, vengeful glint in the eye of a hardened and brutalised Africa taking it no more. and further, even if assuming Dr. Ndii is a malicious liar whose book-keeping talents are as challenged as the Audtior General Ouko's if Kamau Thugge is to believed! Do you known, Dr, Njoroge, that they say Dr. Henry Rotich is the greatest whizz kid to have come out of the Kerio valley, and, for all we know, the only alumni of the Kennedy School at Harvard from the same valley. If you ask me, that would be a REPUTATION to keep. A reputation other than that as the smart facilitator of one more treasury heist in Africa. Yet here we are, Njoroge, the econometric best of the best from the Kerio cannot add up simple Eurobond accounts, a handicap at math he shares with the former director of IFMIS, Anne Waiguru, who couldn't see a billion ksh's. flowing from between her knees at the NYS. On this same score, neither could Ababu Namwamba when he was chairman of PAC -(and had all those Icelandic support clubs to help him out)-- unearth the scam at the books of Parliament under his nose, where dead and former Mpigs continued to be paid allowances and salaries. -Blind young Turk earing along or what!? DAILY NATION: Now, Dr. Njoroge, to make my point. You will recognise, if this is the track record of the best of ones land at work in their qualifications earned from the best institutes around, and one has the horrific experience to have lived in Germany, built from the ashes in phoenix fashion twice in one generation, then to show any GENUINE degree of respect to suchlike treasury brigands as you call colleagues, Herr Doctor, demands either of two things: 1. Intellectual suicide. 2. Natural brain death -thoughtlessness. Now, not having the 2nd option at hand, I do try my best to achieve the former by constantly drinking more than is good for my brain cells. Nevertheless I have not succeeded yet, hard as I do try. So I have had to solve this problem: How do I respect the financial captains in the bureaucracy (as demanded by law too) while I maintain my full senses!? The only intelligent option is to reduce them to INFANTS, and then adopt a parental timeline. This is excruciatingly patronising of course, but really, on a serious note, if one comes from Kennedy, and another from Hopkins, and they are techically as manamba disgusting as Rotich and Thugge, what gives? what goes? If not their reputation? I haven't yet lost enough brain cells to start paying respect to modern day nyaparas looting Wanjiku. Coming to the point of this missive, I have not gotten yet to treating you, Opus Dei fellow from Yale, as the latest feeble-forge or (technocratic forgery) hoisted atop an institutional African commanding height in the economy. But I am watching you. And how! There is this titillating idea flashing at the back of my mind: don't know whether you ever heard of Chinua Achebe, but within the faculties I come from we treat him as a god, may be the way you market economists will treat Friedman or Milton.Now take heed: Just like Nwoye Okonkwo rejected the traditions of Umuofia following an internal moral and conscientious rebellion after discerning the twin fates of twins and that of his adopted sibling Ikemefuna, --left as meals for hyenas in bush, murdered in cold blood because an oracle said so, I have been wondering if you O.D Njoroge, similarly, have had an CONVERSION MOMENT - Saul to Paul they say too. That is you have genuinely grown disgusted with the MORAL ROT of official Kenya and her thievery of public goods, and like Nwoye Okonkwo who decamped from what he perceived in his heart as Umofia backwardness, you have defected to one of the most MORALLY radical sects in Christianity, puritanical O.D. (conservative radicalism). Other ordinary sects of Christianity are of course as rotten as the secular politicians. Check them daily tales of Kenyan churches, apart from the infamous Pastor Ngang'a.You catch me doctor! I am watching you, and running you through the cannon. I consult the Oracle Soyinka on you! Consult the god Achebe on you! Try to decode the P'Bitek Big Drum on you! Is Yaleman Njoroge just another Boko predestined to be Haram? Yo Yo Yo! a thing of the past!May be this Opus Dei thing is like the Moly Argeifontes gave Ulysses on his route to Circe's cave, that you not be transformed into a hog, like all them Mpigs and them other bosses of the land! Succumbed to the charms of Queen Graft. Rotich and Thugge are dead rotten meat at this level. Two more particles of dust added to the ash heap of history. Ndii: Here is the horrible Dr. David Ndii in full. full.
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Post by jakaswanga on Dec 6, 2015 10:48:09 GMT 3
LEAVING INFANTS ALONE FOR THEM MOMENT AND CONCENTRATING ON THE PROMISING ADOLESCENT!Letter to Dr. Yaleman CBK Njoroge,Coming to the point of this missive, I have not gotten yet to treating you, Opus Dei fellow from Yale, as the latest feeble-forge or (technocratic forgery) hoisted atop an institutional African commanding height in the economy. But I am watching you. And how! There is this titillating idea flashing at the back of my mind: don't know whether you ever heard of Chinua Achebe, but within the faculties I come from we treat him as a god, may be the way you market economists will treat Friedman or Milton. LOOKING FOR SOLOMON, SILENT WATCH DOGS, AND OTHER STORIES 1. Dr. Njoroge, if you had not noticed, and that would be uncharacteristically foolhardy, all roads in the Eurobond Saga lead to the Central Bank. THE HEART of the teasury. Why does not that massive burst from the master hose put out the fire? And in the battle of econometrists, we spectators at the games, as a Roman crowd watching royal gladiators in the arena, of course do possess and maintain our native wit, because we do bet on outcomes! Betting men know the other side of the coin is fix! When figures become differences in opinion, there is a vacuum for some Solomon out there, to come and tell the warring women, cut the baby in half! I said I was watching you Njoroge. I don't like this Sherlock quip from David Ndii: the dog did not bark because the beast and the thief were familiar. Why do people go all the way to Yale then shut up when exactly what they have studied is the controversy --the interpreters by Soyinka will give a clue!? Yawa, Strathmore used to produce our best accountants, back to that standard. Next: THE TEN DAYS OF KERIAKO TOBIKO. Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo (left), National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich (centre) and National Treasury Principal Secretary Kamau Thugge before the National Assembly Public Accounts Committee at Parliament Buildings on November 2, 2015 where they were grilled over the Eurobond money. PHOTO | EVANS HABIL | NATION MEDIA GROUP CLOSE RANKS! ROMANS!
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Post by jakaswanga on Dec 6, 2015 11:24:28 GMT 3
2. Njoroge's session at the inquisition continues, (after declaring Rotich and Thugge lost in action, there is only Patrick left as of the three musketeers, or, if you like, left as the last of the Mohican Bretton Woods docs! --He thus must hold fort, like Horatio at the bridge. Now, here is an interesting report. But it is a cast of international financial institutes and houses across three other continents apart from Home. Asia, Europe, the USA. Ten days then looks like a fool's word. This is an international investigation involving banks with very hard eyes. A Tobiko who does not want to be a public fool might ponder the following: Never be afraid to ask for help. Just like with terrorist blasts we ask for FBI lab and forensic investigative re-enforcement; and for our amphibian commando landings on Somali shores the US-navy is our all; and for floating Eurobonds GoldmanSachs is our lead; and for financing infrastructure China EXIM (or development industrial bank) is our daddy; and for higher academic qualifications, just like for parliamentary catering benchmarking too, we go abroad, it might be WISER NOW to obey this well ESTABLISHED protocol. CALL IN THE FBI international fiscal investigative Unit. The guys who, when they knock, then even giants like UBS of Switzerland, ParisBas of France, HSBC and Barclays, sh!t in their pants and cooperate fully. No such sh!it like we do no reveal information about our clients. When Obama was in town he promised he could help on that rampant corruption. A serious Tobiko can CALL HIS BLUFF now. Useless stuff like the Americans denying people visas wont count. -With white cops in America eager to kill any black, it is not like the USA is the first port of call for rich Africans! The other day the billionare South AfricanTokyo Sexwale, FIFA boss contender, was confined to a New York airport toilet cell for days end. And many an African diplomat or visiting minister will tell you tales of ritual humiliation in the USA if you care to know. Being barred from Obamaland isn't that bad for the proud. So Obama must man up in a different way if he was serious about his promise. And Tobiko must be man enough to dare him. That is of course assuming Tobiko means business. A could-be wishful assumption! (where has Tobiko been these past many years! Sleeping dog now woken up I guess!) THE KNIGHT KAMAU THUGGE RIDES! AGAINST DR. NDII: Jousting. Dr. David Ndii is in problems. Kamau Thugge explains. This is called jousting. Originated at the borders of Nubia and ancient Egypt, but that one was water jousting, with canoes. In India they do it with elephants. www.nation.co.ke/news/Treasury-accounts-for-Eurobond-revenue/-/1056/2983308/-/8ow2rx/-/index.html TRANSPARENCY: there is nothing wrong in including a Qatari Bank or Malaysian investment house to do the Asian angle and prepare for the eventual issuance of Kenyan Halal Bonds. However, the trouble starts with the secrecy, last minute shadiness, and, of course, when the facts begin to roll out, nefarious connections which prove elite insider dealings. When these tumble out like the proverbial worms out of a can, natives know who let the dogs out. Remaining is just the reckoning. The elite of course can not punish themselves. NB: Njoroge, this is from the P'Bitek Drum beat: why do you think the founder of your sect admired Generalissimo Franco of Spain? (i will get the staccato rhythm then paraphrase like: this love affair between fascist and Church To whose cost Do we count the loss?)But I am in too much of a hurry now to think it out on the spot!)
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Post by Luol Deng on Dec 7, 2015 14:23:40 GMT 3
JaKaswanga, I am back on this CBK governor issue. First on the point of the interest rate management by the CBK. There has always been a tight rope to walk with regards to the interest rates & the exchange rates. Managing one could be to the detriment of another. That has been the decision that the CBK governor has to take. The exchange rate management will mean that the CBK has to spend its reserves to stabilise the shilling or buy the excess foreign currency in the market to avoid the shilling from strengthening too much. The main reserve currency that is used in world trade is the dollar. When the American economy had its last major crisis the general approach that was used was quantitative easing ,or simply put, printing more cash. So, the US dollar was weak to begin with, the economy was similarly weak. When the US currency started strengthening this year, all currencies were hit hard by the dollar. The only currency in Africa that didn't depreciate against the dollar was the Malawi Kwacha. The Malawi Kwacha is a curious case because in 2012 it was trading at 140 Kwacha to 1 USD, within the span of 3 years it depreciated to around 450 Kwacha to 1 Dollar, so the Kwacha was recovering from a massive devaluation to begin with. Now, if we take a look at the cause of high interest rates, the biggest culprit is the GOK borrowing. In September the yield on the 91 day T-Bills was standing at around 22% per annum. The yield has now dropped to under 10%. The leading factor in the reduction is that the governor has been taking a hard line stance on government borrowing. The treasury has been claiming all the glory in stabilising the high interest rates, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the current interest rates. On the Imperial bank issue. I supported their core banking system in the past and I know their core banking system quite well. First, the banking system has not been doctored at all, the core banking system is fine. There is one aspect of system security that no system can ever be protected from, and this is what the former GM used to loot, it is collusion. The core banking system there has its own set of security measures, audit trails, etc. But the group GM ensured that he had the the CFO & other big shots in his circle. So, the fictitious loans were never hitting the core banking system in the first place. The bank had 3 sets of reports, 2 fictitious ones and 1 real one. The first set was for the CBK, the second set for the board (these 2 sets were entirely fictitious, cooked up by the CFO). Then there was the 3rd set for internal consumption (This was the position of the core banking system, incomplete yet fairly accurate). The bank had been conducting this monkey business for 10 years under the noses of the CBK (under Ndung'u). By the fact that these practices were unearthed under Dr. Njoroge shows that he is serious about cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor. The CBK under Dr. Ndung'u was often paid to look the other way, something that is impossible under the current CBK regime. Finally, on the future of Kenya's economy. Next year will be a disastrous year financially. We have almost KES 800 Billion that are falling due next year, the economy is stagnant and there are other expenses to meet in addition to the 800 Billion. First, we have to raise more money to fund the bigger budget than we've ever been able to. We cannot raise that money locally, so the international financial markets will be a necessity. It is going to be difficult to access the international financing with the Eurobond unaccounted for. So, the money will have to be raised at extortionate interest rates or we'll need a serious austerity programme to rein in the wastage.That is why the Rutos of this world are whining about the opposition trying to cause an economic collapse by making it impossible for the government to access international financial markets. They already know that for the economy to avoid a serious battering another Eurobond is absolutely necessary, let us wait and see. As for Dr. Ndii, he is one of the commentators who have done a good job on the Eurobond analysis along with Jason Lakin of "The East African. Jason wrote a column in late October that makes it clear that whichever way you look at it, at the very least KES 35 Billion is unaccounted for. That is the best case scenario www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Ten-facts-about-the-Eurobond/-/434750/2937338/-/db5ls8z/-/index.htmlOn another note, the Eurobond was deposited to an Offshore account that was inaccessible to the CBK governor & the controller of budget, so, let us cut him some slack here.
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Post by jakaswanga on Dec 10, 2015 0:02:31 GMT 3
JaKaswanga,
I am back on this CBK governor issue. First on the point of the interest rate management by the CBK. There has always been a tight rope to walk with regards to the interest rates & the exchange rates. Managing one could be to the detriment of another. That has been the decision that the CBK governor has to take. The exchange rate management will mean that the CBK has to spend its reserves to stabilise the shilling or buy the excess foreign currency in the market to avoid the shilling from strengthening too much. The main reserve currency that is used in world trade is the dollar. When the American economy had its last major crisis the general approach that was used was quantitative easing ,or simply put, printing more cash. So, the US dollar was weak to begin with, the economy was similarly weak. When the US currency started strengthening this year, all currencies were hit hard by the dollar. The only currency in Africa that didn't depreciate against the dollar was the Malawi Kwacha. The Malawi Kwacha is a curious case because in 2012 it was trading at 140 Kwacha to 1 USD, within the span of 3 years it depreciated to around 450 Kwacha to 1 Dollar, so the Kwacha was recovering from a massive devaluation to begin with.
Now, if we take a look at the cause of high interest rates, the biggest culprit is the GOK borrowing. In September the yield on the 91 day T-Bills was standing at around 22% per annum. The yield has now dropped to under 10%. The leading factor in the reduction is that the governor has been taking a hard line stance on government borrowing. The treasury has been claiming all the glory in stabilising the high interest rates, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the current interest rates.
On the Imperial bank issue. I supported their core banking system in the past and I know their core banking system quite well. First, the banking system has not been doctored at all, the core banking system is fine. There is one aspect of system security that no system can ever be protected from, and this is what the former GM used to loot, it is collusion. The core banking system there has its own set of security measures, audit trails, etc. But the group GM ensured that he had the the CFO & other big shots in his circle. So, the fictitious loans were never hitting the core banking system in the first place. The bank had 3 sets of reports, 2 fictitious ones and 1 real one. The first set was for the CBK, the second set for the board (these 2 sets were entirely fictitious, cooked up by the CFO). Then there was the 3rd set for internal consumption (This was the position of the core banking system, incomplete yet fairly accurate). The bank had been conducting this monkey business for 10 years under the noses of the CBK (under Ndung'u). By the fact that these practices were unearthed under Dr. Njoroge shows that he is serious about cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor. The CBK under Dr. Ndung'u was often paid to look the other way, something that is impossible under the current CBK regime.
Finally, on the future of Kenya's economy. Next year will be a disastrous year financially. We have almost KES 800 Billion that are falling due next year, the economy is stagnant and there are other expenses to meet in addition to the 800 Billion. First, we have to raise more money to fund the bigger budget than we've ever been able to. We cannot raise that money locally, so the international financial markets will be a necessity. It is going to be difficult to access the international financing with the Eurobond unaccounted for. So, the money will have to be raised at extortionate interest rates or we'll need a serious austerity programme to rein in the wastage.That is why the Rutos of this world are whining about the opposition trying to cause an economic collapse by making it impossible for the government to access international financial markets. They already know that for the economy to avoid a serious battering another Eurobond is absolutely necessary, let us wait and see.
As for Dr. Ndii, he is one of the commentators who have done a good job on the Eurobond analysis along with Jason Lakin of "The East African. Jason wrote a column in late October that makes it clear that whichever way you look at it, at the very least KES 35 Billion is unaccounted for. That is the best case scenario
www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Ten-facts-about-the-Eurobond/-/434750/2937338/-/db5ls8z/-/index.html
On another note, the Eurobond was deposited to an Offshore account that was inaccessible to the CBK governor & the controller of budget, so, let us cut him some slack here. Esteemed Luoldeng,Taken into account. One of the mantras I always hear being sung, is that a weak currency is good for exports, because it makes the exports competitive wherever. But if I look at the volume of trade of Africa, and where the several 100 times increase has come from in the last decade or so, it is one word China. The (African) exports have been, and mostly are, natural resources mortgaged against 'cheap' infrastructural loans/projects. The story of central banks in Africa fiddling with interest rates to make African exports more competitive is therefore a tough sell on me. The horticulture to England and the Naivasha flowers to Holland, for example, are all grown by EU companies under special arrangements --EU Agricultural subsidy regime which is very heavy. And the textile exports to the USA too come under special clauses. Which EXPORTS can one list, whose competitiveness our central bank would influence by fiddling the interest rates?And, consider this: I am stating the interest rates in Africa, (and assorted CONDITIONALITIES) dictated by the IMF in whose hands the monetary policy lies, is an exclusive tale/regime of debt management, in essence capital export, ie expropriation --- (you are not going to tell me Rotich and Njoroge have any say in this, are you? Otherwise explaining why the IMF technical team wrote the FINANCIAL BILLS in the new constitution, and, thereafter, stayed in Nairobi to operationalise them, becomes a riddle, just like the parachuting of the IMF standby fire-brigade team from Dar-es-Salaam recently. They came to make sure the Jubilee government reneges on anything but debt servicing, and so the horror of 49% revenue going to debt repay. There are no rationale economies which do that. Only colonial ones, which is why colonialism is unsustainable. Too exploitative. The biggest racket around here is the Export of capital, or, otherwise said, a debt repayment regime of super profits. (ati devaluing the shilling to make coffee cheaper in London to beat Ethiopia to the customers!? that is a bullsh!t tale!) Do this math for me, Luoldeng: that massive fall in the Malawian Kwacha: how does it translate in terms of the shift in the portfolio of the foreign debt of that land? Is it not a sky-high increase in indebtedness? If speculators can crush a currency --like Goldman Sachs was helping Greece get out of debt, but secretly betted Greece would default! And Greece defaulted and yes, the bank made super profits on its correct bet! (all faces on poker!)--- and it is the same banks offering loans which speculate, I will remember an earlier generation economist warning: it is not out of the goodness of his heart that a baker has bread for us waiting in his shop, before we wake up! Outside debt repayment (expropriation) championed and ENSHRINED by the IMF in its so called CONDITIONALITIES --IMF ordered Njuguna Ndung'u to disobey Kibaki and Mwiraria, the trade (export) figures of Africa do not, in my opinion, warrant a fetishsm of the INTEREST RATE as a commanding lever in our general economy outside the financial export! Also the laundering of the Eurobond profits to pay external debts even before the money came to Kenya to do what it was originally slotted to do, was not a Kenyan treasury decision. It was the same conditionality which sabotaged Kibaki. This lack of autonomy with our own money allows me to call Rotich and Thugge toy boys for Madame Christin. When you add theft to it, Rotich and Thugge become slime. I know only yesterday did the IMF agree to using the Chinese Yuan (RENMINBI) as an IMF currency, but this has never prevented our central bank, if it wished, from denominating our Chinese infrastructural debts, in Yuans! The Chinese do not mind being paid in dollars, but they have never insisted on it so far I know in Africa. They take ivory too! And rare metals. NB: Dont you find it odd, that QE is a free-run money printing of the reserve currency, the dollar, and the euro, being given out to banks which then lend it out to Africa and expect huge returns -huge returns for their worthless paper, printed without VALUE ADDITION in the real economy? That is a scam if you ask me ;-- reason Germany never did QE with the D-mark all those years! It would just be devaluation or dilution of value. So I think to respect a Yale doctorate in economics is to ask him for a considered view on his role in allowing worthless paper money, QE, to use Africa as a value-creation slave-belt! He shuts his mouth on that, there aint slack to cut him. For these massive thefts like Waiguru and Eurobond, I cut him more slack yes. He is knew in that office, and I am sure they have not yet briefed him to the detail. If they think he is not Njuguna Ndung'u model, they of course shred documents, so that data is lost or deleted somehow. So, Luoldeng: I do cut Njoroge lots of slack for the moment. And that means thinking hard. I wouldn't mention his name in the same sentence as the thief Njuguna Ndung'u who spent his last days at the helm avoiding arrest! Ndun'gu is scum we can urinate upon his thieving face with peace. No heavens would be offended. Taxes will have to go up some,when these debts are called in!
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