The following appeared in the November issue of Business Diary Botswana:

Despite the IMF’s recent projection that Botswana’s economy will contract 10.3% this year, the lender expects a 4.1% uptick next year such that emergency funding would not be required. Back in June the country tapped a $1.5bn “budget support loan” from the African Development Bank–the largest such facility ever granted by the Bank–in order to finance part of a budget deficit then estimated at around 13.5% of GDP, and since revised to 14%. The IMF cited a renewal of demand for diamonds as a central facet of its optimistic forecast. Furthermore, it predicted, GDP growth across sub-Saharan Africa will rise to approximately 4% next year and 5% in 2011, up from 1.1% in 2009. “We think it should be possible for sub-Saharan Africa to recover quicker this time around and have a ‘V-shaped recovery,’”

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This post provides links to a number of thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find of interest.

• Fred Bergsten (Foreign Affairs): The dollar and the deficits: How Washington can prevent the next crisis, November 2009. If the US is serious about recovering from the global economic crisis, it must balance the budget, stimulate private saving, and embrace a declining dollar.

• Randall Forsyth (Barron’s): Weak dollar equals strong stocks, for now, October 14, 2009. As long as there is no ready substitute for the dollar, Wall Street can celebrate the currency’s steady decline. And U.S. GDP will be boosted by a cheap greenback’s spur to exports and deterrent to imports. This cannot go on forever, however. The dollar’s fall may not have started on President Obama’s watch, but it may become his problem.

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by fxreport

Money management in the Forex market requires educating yourself in a variety of financial areas in order for you to become a successful trader. The reason that you need to have great money management skills is because of factors such as the stability of the economy of a country, the gross national product, the gross domestic product, inflation, interest rates, and such obvious factors as domestic security and foreign relations come into play. So there are many things that can affect the price of a particular currency.

Throughout the world there are 5 major forex exchange markets, New York, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo and Zurich. Forex trading occurs 24 hours per day 6 days per week, for example when Asia stops trading the European markets open, so on and so forth.

The largest trading markets in the world are the Forex Markets and they turnover in excess of $2 …

In October of last year, Warren Buffett wrote an op-ed in the New York Times announcing his intention to buy U.S. equities. In the months since, we’ve seen the markets oscillate wildly but ultimately head only further down into its trough, sparing no one in its path. Was he wrong? Is it still not safe to get your money back into the stock market? 

For those that follow Warren Buffett, his recommendation is not just a far out attempt to be contrarian as his op-ed piece makes it sound. Yes, the general tenet to be “fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful” will serve most investors well. But, Mr. Buffett has backed up this tenet with a very interesting bit of theory based on the total market cap of U.S. stocks versus its gross national product as outlined

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The Philippine economy grew faster than expected in the fourth quarter, taking full-year growth to a 31-year high of 7.3 per cent and sowing some doubts about the size of monetary easing expected later on Thursday. Officials said the economy grew a seasonally adjusted 1.8 per cent in the final quarter of 2007 from the previous quarter. The figure came above a 1.7 per cent rise expected by analysts and pushed full 2007 growth well above the 7.0 per cent figure forecast in a Reuters poll. The government maintained a 2008 growth target of 6.3-7.0 per cent despite the expected slowdown in the United States, the Philippines’ largest trading partner. Expectations that the country’s growth momentum will carry forward well into 2008 made some analysts trim their expectations for the central bank’s policy meeting later on Thursday and bet on a 25 basis point ...