Developing countries like Kenya tend to have shockingly high rates of unemployment. But that should not deter investors – rather it is a sign of potential. Worrying numbers When I wrote last week that Kenya has an unemployment rate of 38 percent, a number of colleagues questioned that figure. How could it possibly be so…
Kenya is once again politically stable and is fast becoming the most mature emerging market in Africa. Jambo!* When you go through customs control on entering Kenya you are supposed to surrender all your plastic bags. Last year, plastic bags were banned in Kenya outright. This impressed me for two reasons. Firstly, it shows Kenya’s…
The most important problem facing the UK government in 2018 is that wage growth has stalled. Mrs May needs to give ordinary people hope of a wage rise in the New Year. The Productivity conundrum revisited Productivity is the output recorded per hour worked by the workforce. Successful manufacturing nations like Germany boast high levels…
A massive reform of the US tax code is underway. Britain could learn lessons from our American friends. Mr Trump’s corporate tax cut clears the Senate In the wee hours of Saturday 2nd December the US Senate passed a bill to cut corporate income taxes (taxes on company profits – what the British call corporation…
We think of money as an objective reality – but in fact it is just a conceptual construction of the human mind. It does not exist in nature; animals have no notion of it; even humans managed to live for countless millennia without it. The history of money is the history of civilisation. It has…
This morning a deal has been struck in Brussels. But will the Tory ultras buy it? And will Labour gain ground if they don’t? Sufficient progress? The breakthrough deal that was supposed to happen on Monday (04 December) was supposedly scuppered by the Ulster Unionists. In fact, much opposition to Mrs May’s original deal was…
Which would you rather own – $42,000 in a bank account, four bitcoins on your hard drive or a kilo of gold bullion under your bed? Cash versus gold Cash is useful stuff but you wouldn’t want to carry too much of it: it is bulky and can be easily lost or stolen. Money in…
UK government finances are under extreme pressure. But there is no need to panic – yet. Chronicle of a death foretold Mr Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, rose to the despatch box on Wednesday like a condemned man given one last chance beneath the gallows to plead for his life. It would have to be…
If the United States of America did not exist, it would be necessary to create it. For without America, the world would not be what it is. America remains the unashamedly capitalist dynamo of the world economy. It is the chrysalis of newly emergent technologies that will continue to change the way we live. It…
Has anyone invited you to invest in bitcoin recently? Do you really know what it is? And why did the Chinese ban it? The future of money My lead article in the December edition of the Master Investor magazine will be entitled The Future of Money. Not very Christmassy, you might think. But we need…
