MANY years ago and when I was a boarder at Westminster school, I used to like wandering the streets of central London on the weekend. My typical circuit would pass by 10 Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, St James and Green Parks, and I would often times end up at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park.
Speaker’s Corner was a place where anyone stand up and speak about anything they chose. I am talking about a period when the then Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was upending the Peacock Throne, when Mrs. Thatcher was upending the Labour Party and Blondie was top of the charts.
The curious thing about these Sunday meanderings around London was that I would always come across a Fellow, a walking Bill-Board as it were and on the Front and the back would be written: ”The end is nigh”
It was like a Paul Auster novel. I would see him in Trafalgar Square, then he might pop up at Speaker’s Corner and once even in the cloisters at Westminster Abbey. This kind of thing can unhinge a Teenager.
Why am I bringing this up from the recesses of My Memory’s Mausoleum.
Well ”The end is nigh” for crude oil and oil producers from Caracas to Luanda, from Riyadh to Abuja who were squealing like pigs are about to be served up as rashers. Oil in New York closed below $44.00 a barrel Friday in New York and has more to fall. Think about this, given South Sudan’s contractual arrangements, they might soon be paying for each barrel they extract from the ground. Oil is now in Free Fall. The End is nigh for the Oil based, rentier economies. President Obama, first Kenyan-American President of the United States and oil warfare specialist has scored the equivalent of a hat-trick at the World Cup in how he has advanced the US national interest by using the price of Oil as a geopolitical spear. Oil based Economies are going to contract, Currencies which have already collapsed are going to be routed and Greek-style Austerity will be the order of the day. The Melt-Down is coming.
Ryszard Kapu?ci?ski said “If the crowd disperses, goes home, does not reassemble, we say the revolution is over.”
The Revolution is only just beginning.
Closer to home, quite a few folks had begun throwing in the towel and thinking the ‘The End is Nigh” with respect to the Shilling and the Securities Exchange. The Central Bank made the right call last week leaving the CBR unchanged.
I said this to Bloomberg before the announcement last Monday:
“He can afford to take a pass this time” and leave the key rate at 11.5 per cent., Aly-Khan Satchu in an e-mailed response to questions on Monday. Higher rates aren’t helping to stem the shilling’s slide and the currency’s weakness has yet to translate into faster inflation, he said. The Central Banker has however tightened the overnight rate to above 22 per cent. I commend the Central Bank on a Job well done. We might even see the Shilling dip below triple digits soon.
The Collapse in Crude Oil is singularly helpful for the Shilling [if not for the Oil based hopes of Turkana – Forget it for a decade].
The Stock Market had been in a Free Dive and through Wednesday closing, the All Share was 10.48 per cent lower in 2015 and the NSE20 Index had shed 15.55 per cent. Throw in another 10% on the currency devaluation and things were not looking good on the streets. The Stock Market has had to absorb a lot of stock. Helios LLP exited Equity Group and a that was a big slug of shares. On Friday, however, The All-Share scored a stunning rebound of +2.74% for its biggest single session Gain in 2015. The NSE20 rebounded +64.39 points.
