Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (65145)	8/11/2010 5:50:34 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 217773

The guys here in Africa are living their Middle Age. Infrastructure ravaged by Civil War. Only doing an overlay, thus railway like the ones done 70 years ago. We need the resources but as always we have the locals getting on te way. Resource curse inflames W Africa suffering By Tom Burgis in Abuja Published: August 10 2010 22:13 \| Last updated: August 10 2010 22:13 It is no coincidence that the kind of horrors that Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, is accused of perpetrating, and mineral riches, such as the diamonds he is accused of plundering, are often found together. West Africa’s soils groan with gold, ores and gems; they yield cocoa and timber in prodigious quantities. They have also been suffused with blood spilt in pursuit of the mineral revenues that are often the only glimmer of wealth in a region beset by poverty. Mr Taylor denies 11 charges related to the 1991-2002 civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Dramatic testimony from supermodel Naomi Campbell and others has yet to establish that Mr Taylor supplied a rebel group with weapons in exchange for diamonds. But the prosecutors’ argument goes to the heart of west Africa’s woes. While the idea of a “resource curse” has its critics, for many analysts the child soldiers, sex slaves and severed limbs of Sierra Leone’s war were the collateral damage of a scramble to control its diamond fields. Elamat.AND NO WORD ABOUT ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR!!! West Africa has since enjoyed a few years of fragile peace. But violence has plagued Nigeria’s oil province and the fringes of the Sahara under which lie Niger’s uranium stocks. Coups are also coming back into fashion. What troubles many in the region is that the economic system that foments conflict shows little sign of changing. “It’s a general pattern in almost all west African countries,” says David Zounmenou, a west Africa expert at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa. “The economy is structured in such a way that the political elite will do anything to capture the state and control the resources.” Many of those economic structures have scarcely altered since independence, comprising a small elite composed of vying factions, a negligible middle class and a vast majority in the sprawling informal sector, farming, hawking or just somehow getting by. In many countries minerals or oil account for 80 per cent or more of government income and an even bigger share of hard currency earnings. For disenchanted sections of the elite or the military, the prize can be irresistible. February’s coup against the authoritarian president of Niger added to a resurgent trend in putsches that appears to have tracked the boom in commodity prices. As a recent report by the African Development Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development noted: “Obtaining natural resource rents distracts governments away from more politically demanding forms of taxation.” Economists warn that the generally low share of income taxes in government revenue undermines the basic contract between rulers and ruled. Because they do not rely on the population for funds, governments feel scant obligation to provide basic services. Instead, some analysts argue, governments are more bound to the handful of foreign mining or oil companies that fill the coffers – often under contracts shrouded in secrecy, allowing corruption to thrive. Efforts to increase transparency have made some progress. The Kimberley Process, introduced after advocacy groups such as Global Witness documented the role of “blood diamonds” in Sierra Leone, has seen producers start to certify stones’ provenance. But few countries trapped at the bottom of the commodity chain have proved capable of converting their resource wealth into infrastructure that could engender a more diversified, stable economy. Even Nigeria, a key oil supplier to the US, fails to generate enough electricity to keep the lights on, let alone allow manufacturers to thrive. Until that cycle is broken, the incentive for unrest looks likely to abide. Said Djinnit, the senior United Nations official in the region, says: “When you are in the government you have access to power, to wealth; if you are excluded you have no access, you are excluded from wealth. “In that sense it’s a struggle for survival at the highest level.”

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (65145)	8/11/2010 12:49:27 PM
From: elmatador	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217773

RIP peak oil guy: "...he bypassed the state's legendary secrecy to unearth 50 years of technical papers submitted by Saudi oil geologists to the Society of Petroleum Engineers, and uncovered what he called “the biggest energy illusion ever in the world.” That's how Simmons should be remembered - for cutting through the lies and secrecy. As the wayo seeking man of this thread, I could not let pass without mention the peak oil guy.

To: Elroy Jetson who wrote (65145)	8/14/2010 1:36:50 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 217773

Look further afield for income If further proof were needed of the inexorable shift of economic power from West to East, it can be found in the advent of funds and investment companies whose primary aim is to earn income from emerging markets ... Other positive factors are that emerging markets have much lower individual, corporate and government debt than western nations - in some countries, particularly Latin American economies such as Brazil and Chile, companies are legally obliged to pay 25% of profits as dividends. ... The attraction of emerging market bonds In one hugely significant respect, emerging nations surpass their western counterparts in the quality of their debt. While we in the West have spent like drunken sailors who won the lottery and have long forgotten where their ships are, developing markets have quietly established strong balance sheets. Their debt to GDP ratio is about 40% compared with more than 100% in many developed countries. This new world order is enticing investors on an unprecedented scale. So far this year emerging market corporate and sovereign bonds have been issued at a record pace. Borrowers, including governments and companies, have raised almost $300 billion to date - a 10% increase on the same period in 2009, which was itself a record year, according to data from Thomson Reuters. The rationale behind this wave of investment tells the same story as the enthusiasm for dividend income from developing markets. iii.co.uk