News & Analysis
Africa ... Next China?
Celebrations are in order on the poorest continent. Never in the half-century since it won independence from the colonial powers has Africa been in such good shape. Its economy is flourishing. Most countries are at peace. Ever fewer children bear arms and record numbers go to school. Mobile phones are as ubiquitous as they are in India and, in the worst-affected countries, HIV infections have fallen by up to three-quarters. Life expectancy rose by a tenth in the past decade and foreign direct investment has tripled. Consumer spending will almost double in the next ten years; the number of countries with average incomes above $1,000 per person a year will grow from less than half of Africa's 55 states to three-quarters. − The Economist
Dominant Social Theme: This is one helluva continent. It has incredible promise and capitalism is going to save it.
Free-Market Analysis: We've written about this emerging trend before but it is such a startling one and contains such great import that it is worth noting again, and perhaps on a regular basis. This Economist article from our point of view is no accident. It conforms to other similar articles that are making the same point regularly.
Africa is a chosen continent. It has been chosen much as Japan and then China were chosen, to be the recipient of US debt and dollars. Much as the Japanese and Chinese governments agreed to buy US debt in return for US consumer purchases, so it seems to be Africa's turn.
We know this not from any announcement – for these things are never announced – but this is the way the world works in the modern era. The US has a debt problem; its government spends too much money and its domestic tax base is not big enough to support its larger globalist presence both from a governmental and military standpoint. Enter a third party ...
Enter several of them, in fact, including Japan and China. The deal is struck and the currency flows. First the country buys up US debt and then US consumers buy up the country's products. The US gets funded and the country gets a huge dollar flow that can be used to build infrastructure, raise living standards and generally modernize. Here's more:
Africans deserve the credit. Western aid agencies, Chinese mining companies and UN peacekeepers have done their bit, but the continent's main saviours are its own people. They are embracing modern technology, voting in ever more elections and pressing their leaders to do better. A sense of hope abounds.
Africans rightly take pride in conferences packed with Western bankers keen to invest in their capital markets (see article). Within the next few months MasterCard will have issued South Africans with 10m debit cards. Even the continent's politicians are doing a bit better, especially in economic management and striking peace deals.
Average GDP growth is humming along, at about 6%. Governance is improving: our correspondent visited 23 countries to research this week's special report and was not once asked for a bribe − inconceivable only ten years ago.
The diminishment of corruption may be accurate, as the article points out, along with a "sense of hope" and better leaders. But if you look at the underlying trend it is fairly clear that what is being presented as progress is also the result of a deliberate policy.
Japan was portrayed in the Western press as an industrial phenomenon in the 1980s – and China like Africa was said to have modernized in the 1990s and thus its emergence as a world-class industrial power was no accident. Now Africa is seen to be on the same course.
We would submit that is the result of policies that emanate from the very top and have as much to do with supporting US debt and the dollar reserve currency as with any sudden surge of African industrial maturity.
There are many signs of what is to come for Africa. These range from the wars that are now convulsing the continent to the signs of emergent African Union that will be important if Africa is to fulfill its role in the coming years and decades. The idea will be to treat Africa as one emergent industrial corpus that is to be developed throughout in a uniform way.
For those who observe the above and grant its relevance, Africa will hold out much investment promise as US policy makers and industrialists get to work seeding Africa with infrastructure, factories and business-oriented urban developments. It is likely that countries like Kenya and perhaps South Africa (if it remains stable) are the proverbial "ground zero" for the next stage of Western debt/consumer swaps.
Conclusion: When it comes to Africa, the proof will emerge – or not – over the next few years. But if articles like this one in The Economist continue to emerge, then it we would suggest Africa is definitely in line to receive the kind of treatment that was put in place in Japan and then China.
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Posted by TerryWriterFromPortCredit on 03/09/13 06:26 AM
Pattern Recognition:
North America (slowly over the last 100 years)
Europe: World Wars I and II
South and Central America: 60's and 70's.
Japan: 80's.
China: 90's.
And now Africa: 5 years to grow and melt (y) back into poverty through debt? (Time-frames are obviously compounding like Sysyphus' rock rolling down the hill - getting faster all the time). ( (.)
Here's the kicker for the Central Banking Strategy (Strsategy): Africa is the LAST continent, but I think it is also the LOST continent. This is where they win or lose for there is no where on Earth left for them to go. And I think this is where they will lose - their "Last Stand" in Western myth lingo'. The last place to dump their debt on the naive.
Here's my Global Strategy:
Dismiss the BIS (who have given themselves authority just as they do digital fiat currency - by conjuring it out of thin air) - dismiss the IMF and The World Bank - all with a simple back-hand while saying: by whose authority? - no one's but your own (well, not on (m) the internet reformer's watch - be sure). Then transform all State central banks through the creation of free-market money. Banks will have to then compete again in the traditional and, yes, moral way they have in the past which is to say, the way we expect them to (and thought they did till TARP woke most of us up)..
In my humble opinion: Gold and Silver free-market price discovery is crucial (not a traditional approach hampered by a set ratio (n) - [let them find their own price naturally [banker's hate that word naturally {like the words " organically" and "grassroots" - to them it is like holy water and a cross during an exorcism - for evil is a manipulator and deciever born to lose in the end but with a purpose (ourpose) - keep the good on their toes and sharp to the old cons (nothing is new - only their forms). (an)}]).
The addition of as basket of sound (d)Free market money will also create digitally sound transacting on the internet without any front running through debt-money creation e.g. Bitcoin (silk road road type privacy (no - I do not agree with all the goods and services offered - but I justify that by saying to myself - are the power elites any better with thier tools of financial/military/industrial complex that they have unleashed on the world, particularly in the last century piling up millions of bodies, any better ?
()d?.)
We all know the human cost (r) there in that hell-pit that Pentagon Man still dogs us with.
Some Silk Road Goods and Services are a far better "lesser of two evils" methinks - personal taking care of personal as opposed to system taking care of millions - one is perhaps sick, but the other is down-right Evil (use whatever metaphor or myth you choose to veil - it - Evil is Evil by any other word).
You are correct, in my humble version of pattern recognizing - to watch Africa very carefully DB - and to those who are interested in an Apocalypse (the end of the world as we have known it historicaly up till now ([{al]) -
Inform the Am-frees: (informed the Af-fress)
(free Africans) not only "not" to be happy about the bankers being on their soil - but don't even go to the meetings.
Start businesses with free-marketers and learn how real wealth is built.
Start with a book of fiction: Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" - the great questions (uins) about wealth building will be inspired in you through that narrative. That book is great because none of the great questions that face us as a race are left unasked in some form or another (in a fun, storytelling way to boot).
I will make a prediction here - 2020 will be the year to look out for. And 2021 will be the year we toast each other and (s) say "Happy New Year - The Year of Individual Man and The Non-agression Principle" is finally upon us -
The Impulse to Freedom within us all and "I" truly wish "I" am alive for it.
(Call me selfish if you (iu) will, but the way I am constructed makes it impossible not to be otherwise [bankers hate that too!).
I'll see you all then.
Meanwhile, back to the grind.
The Canadian Curator.
yers and learn how wealth is really built yewo
The Canadian Curator.
complex iwe t .ditally-
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Posted by shabnam on 03/07/13 07:27 AM
This excellent report puts into words what I have suspected, ever since I saw the very " in your face " AFRICOM logo.
Click to view link
Although the article is talking about America's foot, the Logo image clearly insinuates / alludes to the current Rape of Africa.
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Posted by Joelg on 03/07/13 03:34 AM
Sounds like another scam in the making, along the lines of the infamous South Sea Company. Notice the nebulousness. Nary the mention of the NAME of even one country.
Maybe they are planning to rebuild Libya with factories. But all that oil in Africa could be traded for a lot of debt. Otherwise it sounds like more neo-colonial nonsense. But it would be great market for USA drone exports to hunt down the workers in the bush. Perhaps all those US military bases opening in Africa were intended to start the industrialization process, and get the neo-colonial version of the free market going.
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Posted by jkluttz on 03/06/13 09:42 PM
The grandness of it all is almost too much to behold. In a way it is nice to know that, if true, the elites have that much sense. Unfortunately, if I understand how it works, such a plan means the continuing deterioration of the US standard of living. Except for the elites, of course.
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Posted by fabien on 03/06/13 03:02 PM
Your conclusion makes a lot of sense. The problem is how to invest that potential trend.
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Posted by IndyLyn on 03/06/13 02:49 PM
So, not only have they been destroying nations... but now we're going to destroy an continent! Very very sad, and bad.
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Posted by 1776 on 03/06/13 12:19 PM
General Wesley Clark: Because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11.
About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."
Click to view link
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Posted by 1776 on 03/06/13 12:17 PM
To answer the question you asked, Yes!
Pentagon planning for multinational military operation in Mali By Craig Whitlock, December 05, 2012
Click to view link
