Fear of failure

We might think that angel investors and venture capitalists are brave superheroes who do noe fear failure. We are misguided.
Almost every single one of them insists on investing with other "partners", for some obscure reason. But the red on their faces indicates clearly they are just afraid of going it alone, like the entrepreneur would. They all need to huddle together and feel warmer so that their money is protected.
A healthy does of fear of failure.

Did you think the RMB to USD exchange rate would hit 6.5 by the end of 2008?

71% of you did. A sign that no one saw the woes coming at the end of 2008... and the ones to come.

The politics of the carbon markets

This is like applying anti-aging cosmetics to my right arm in order to heal the wound of my left arm.

BAIDU fair weather friend

"I just want to say one word to you - just one word. Are you listening? Healthcare. Think about it. Will you think about it?"


News don't make sense... But sometimes the dots connect, and mashed up news start making more sense than facts.
I posted a couple of days ago that healthcare - no, Healthcare - is the cornerstone for boosting consumption and internal markets in The People's Republic.
Seemingly on another planet - that of media, technology and certainly politics - CCTV was bashing the Chinese search giant Baidu over the weekend for posting search results of fraudulant medical websites.
What do Healthcare, CCTV and Baidu have to do with each other?
Well, the answer was this morning: Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) shed 25% of its market price.
Clearly, it was a mix of hedge fund dumping their positions and sentiments over the bad piece of news. However, the fundamental effect on Baidu is that people will distrust the search engine for a good time to come, as provider of fraudulent information (Baidu's innoncence notwithstanding), and that was factored in to the market reaction, for sure.
Would Baidu have lost this much if the fake information did not have to do with healthcare? Maybe. Maybe not. But one thing is clear: the attachment that even lazy surfers sitting on their hands eating potato chips give to healthcare.
That should be enough of a signal for authorities to realize where they should dump the $600 billion they want to save the world with.
Keep Baidu on your side as your good fair weather friend.
Oh, also, go long on BIDU...

OBAAAMAAA

Obama made it. The files of the Middle East are transferred from the hands of Eliot Abrams to Denis Ross. So what?

What is amazing about this video?

It is this a time a year that Time magazine chooses its person of the year. What is absolutely fascinating is that every other YouTube comment supports Ron Paul, and these comments are the best rated...
The mainstream corporate media has barely given Ron Paul any airtime, and the Time magazine is no exception...

People's Republic versus Microsoft

Best defense strategy is to attack: China wants to fine Microshaft for not allowing it to use pirated software!

"قامت شركة البرمجيات العملاقة مايكروسوفت باطلاق تقنية جديدة لمقاومة القرصنة، تؤدى لإظلام شاشات الكمبيوتر التى تستخدم برامج مقلدة،"الأمر الذى أثار حفيظة وغضب المسئولين بالصين."

As the People's Republic is attacking from the flanks, Rich is predicting a steep uphill battle for Microsoft to invade Google's online enterprise software space; but the woes of Goliath will not stop here:
Very soon it will be back on the defensive as Google et al. will be invading the giant's precious operating system space.
Ever thought of the obsolescence of complex OS softwares and their replacement by simple rich internet applications-enabled browsers?

Until Microsoft changes its very DNA, soon Somalia and Djibouti will sue it for infringing upon their rights to pirate MS software...

Confused emerging signals or how reality does not exist

What is intriguing about reading a piece of news both in English and Arabic is that sometimes I feel I am reading about two separate planets, or two separate worlds, or about events in different times, or that I am using my left brain for a language and my right brain for the other. And then it takes me a while of fermentation to realize it is the very same event... or maybe the very same event after I construct my own reality? my third hemisphere?

So The Economist is making it sound like a meatless ritual that China is going to a pow-wow of Asian leaders after the Asian European Economic Summit ASEM in Beijing, by mildly skimming over the fact that it is ready to dump the US Dollar in sizable chunks of its trade (with Russia and Asian countries):

"In Russia, with whose leaders China shares strong misgivings about America, Mr Wen did allow himself to say that developing countries should have a stronger say in a new financial system. He also said there was a need to “diversify” the global currency system, a tactful way of saying the dollar’s sway should diminish."

Meanwhile, on another planet, China in Arabic Eyes is cataclysmal in reporting (from Voice of Russia) that China is gearing for a change in world order, and that a decision has been taken to rid of the Greenback:

"اتخذت قمة بلدان منظمة شنغهاي المنعقدة في مدينة أستانة عاصمة جمهورية كازاخستان قرارا بشأن التخلي مستقبلا عن الدولار الأمريكي "ي التبادل التجاري"

As absurd as this may sound, China has been indeed frantically losing value on its pile of sitting US Dollars, and even more "scary", the Kazakh-China pipeline is imminently close to the Caspian:


Who could imagine that Shanghai and Baku could be neighboring cities? The gateway province of Xinjiang already has a staggering trade growth of 90%...

So where am I going with this conspiracy theorizing? Nowhere further than it is a FACT that the world is just a collage of what we IMAGINE it to be, each in her own lenses, and the media does NOT report facts, just the imagination of the writers, which makes The Economist and China in Arabic Eyes equally wrong, as wrong as a lonely blogger closing his eyes and imagining an Obama presidency as dangerous as a McCain presidency for all the further interference Obama intends to bring to Central Asia, where "swing nations" are in the making. At least in the electoral college of my own world collage.

Recession: what it means to the Middle East or what the Middle East means for the recession

How, how, how, could we believe in geographic diversification of risk and globalization at the same time?



No money, no buying of oil, falling oil prices... and this:

Inversely, I was listening to Paul McCrossan yesterday and at this point it is ironic to note that next shock in the liquidity freeze may come from the Middle East.
Everyone pulled out, from yen-denominated funds to hedge funds. Everyone? well, almost. The last to come in were the sovereign funds and they could very well be the last to move out.
Like all the other shockwaves, no clue what the effect of the SWFs will be. Even no clue where the money is.
SWFs are big enough, and very, euuh, experienced in taking losing investments, that they are very well positioned to take in heavy losses. But the problem is they have addicted some to leverage like crack addicts: what about super-leveraged Dubai, super-leveraged Saudi, and super-leveraged Qatar, who will start deleveraging?

A mirage of this deleveraging may be the beginning of the end. All eyes wide shut.

Recession: what it means to China

"I just want to say one word to you - just one word. Are you listening? Healthcare. Think about it. Will you think about it?"

One of the most striking developments of the latest financial meltdown is that the media finally found a new record-breaking expression: "government bailout" seems to be replacing "attacks of 9/11" as the most printed and read phrase; seven years later.
What does this new-found obsession mean to China?
The Shanghai index has indeed been enjoying divine grace each time New York was breathing healthy; and catching a cold each time New York sneezed. A very accute one.

But no need to point that this exchange counts peanuts within the grand economy, and only the few Chinese housewives posting as retail investors (remember, gambling is banned) will be affected.

Sadly, the bankruptcy of the American consumer means the bankruptcy of the export sector of China. We can take a Greenspanian approach to this sad tale and advocate that, well, the reduction in the growth of the balance of payments of China will only affect 1-2% of the GDP. True. But this, again, means nothing in light of "harmonious society" objectives. The exacerbated razor-thin margins of the manufacturing and export sectors will send millions of migrant workers home.

... the sector that employs the most Chinese will start lay-offs

... Laid-off workers will go to their home provinces out West

... And this is bad news for a government that has been trying to jump-start domestic consumption

On the bright side, this may be a wake-up call for a serious attempt to promote domestic consumption: we all knew (1) positive trade balance, (2) growth and (3) under-valued currency cannot be simultaneously sustained forever; we always wanted to do something about it so let's do something about it! "Yay!!"

Do what??? Tell the people to stop saving, start shopping for ridiculously expensive Hallmark cards and send them to all the people they love and to whom they wish good health??

Not before a proper healthcare system is in place. People just prefer actually taking care of their health instead of just wishing good health and shopping.

Lesser of 3 evils...

After last night's Vice-Presidential debate, I am convinced Americans should vote Nader...

ICT, again...

Have been focusing on the attractiveness of ICT in the Middle East, and neglected the forray of the Middle East into other ICT markets (India anyone?):

"Dubai: Swan Telecom, a new Indian telecom venture in which etisalat acquired a 45 per cent stake for $900 million last week, has received clearance from India's Department of Tele-communications to offer a complete array of telecommunications services.

Company sources said yesterday that Swan has clearance to operate national and international long distance (NLD and ILD) services. It has also got clearance to provide mobile, fixed-line and internet services."

I must say...

... I do love nai cha (milk tea), and miss it already - but I am sure Emiratis do not import it, and especially the niu nai (cow milk) version of it.

So how much less export will this be for China?

I rarely see Chinese drinking milk anyways, and even more rarely see Emiratis consuming Chinese dairy products.
A great message of caring for health that costs nothing. Let's see the reduction of Chinese exports to the UAE... Any guess?

"ABU DHABI -- The General Secretariat of UAE Municipalities, Public Health and Environment Affairs has issued a decree banning entry of all kinds of Chinese dairy products into the country. Copies of the decree have been sent to all municipalities. "

However, Mideast ICT continues to grow...

... Yes, I call it Mideast.

"Riverbed Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: RVBD), the technology and market leader in wide-area data services (WDS), has announced that it has opened offices in the Middle East. The new office, located at the Business Central Towers in Dubai, will support the local Riverbed® team and will be managed by Dr Mohammed Anwar Karzazi, regional sales director for Middle East and Africa.

"The Middle Eastern region is characterized by a growing number of distributed organizations," said Karzazi. "The new Dubai office will allow Riverbed to respond to the wide area network (WAN) application performance requirements of those organizations."

Things do not exist until you name them... Middle or Near?

A wonderful debate over what to name the Eastern Mediterranean region:
If you look at it from Europe, it is the Near East.
If you look at it from America, it could be the Middle East.
If you look at it from The Middle Kingdom, it would be the Middle West (even though it is called zhong dong).

So let's stop arguing... please.

Hypocrisy

I am not sure why I am lashing at Dubai today, but there is some reason for it here: someone is trying to portray it as feminist-friendly with the first women-only office space, whereas this is simply a manifestation of marginalization of women.

"Hydra Properties has completed excavation work on what is being billed as the world's first tower exclusively for businesswomen, the Abu Dhabi-based developer said on Monday.

Eve's Tower, located within Dubai's Business Bay development, will be the first tower where only women can own office space. "

And yes, a manifestation of the whole of marginalization of women, not just a component of it.

So is this guy saying it is good or bad?

"With project costs, salary demands and housing expenses continuing their upward march right across the Gulf, it seems the global credit crunch has had little impact on the rampant development of the Middle East’s upstream sector.

However, with global markets in turmoil, it is anybody’s guess as to where the market will be in six months time, and with September’s rollercoaster slide and gain of oil on the spot market, the question of what impact a much lower price will have on planned projects has crept back into discussions again."

Is Dubai about to face a real estate burst that will hurt more than that of the US?

“Seventy percent of Dubai’s population has been priced out and there are very few products that do target the low and mid income segment, which is effectively where the bulk of demand is.”

70%? Let me guess... low and mid income segments in Dubai is the foreign workforce (or workhorse), mostly Indians and Pakistanis, and they are about 50%; If the crisis is actually worse than the in the US, no one will even notice the plight that they will face. This Is Dubai. TID.

Gulf banks getting the hit from the credit crisis and Dubai worst performer

The music will stop at one point, and not all will be able to get to their chairs...

"Overall, the credit outlook is less positive in the Gulf than it was before but it is not negative, it is stable," Mardig Haladjian, general manager for Moody's Middle East, said.
"But in Dubai in particular...it is stable to negative."