The following appeared in July’s Business Diary Botswana:

Speaking at a seminar in October 2006 devoted to the country’s efforts towards economic diversification, Happy Fidzani, Executive Secretary of the Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis (BIDPA), warned that the government’s “heavy confidence” in its mining sector–namely rough diamond extraction through Debswana, the joint-venture mining firm operated in partnership with South Africa’s De Beers and dating back to the late 1960s–had created a welfare-like, “parasitic” dependency for revenue upon which the nation’s non-mineral sector was habitually tied. Largely unaware of just how prophetic his words would soon turn out to be, Fidzani told the audience that shocks originating from the mining industry were still “easily felt” across the economy, and that the government, despite its ceaseless rhetoric and campaigning about the importance of diversity, was as reliant as ever on just one resource. Less than three years later

... is getting increasingly difficult at the moment. Take Hungary for example. I take it that most economic commentators and analyst know that it is bad in Hungary and together with Ukraine I would submit that these two face the largest risk of sporting the next global macro blowout (assuming that Russia does not suddenly collapse prematurely).

Hungary's biggest problem at the moment is how on earth to stay worried about a dropping Forint while at the same time realizing that the country is headed towards the worst recession in several decades. As some readers will remember the reason that the Forint today is subjected to full force of currency punters is to be found one year ago. Back in February, Hungary as well as other emerging markets opted to loosen their pegs towards the USD, the Euro or both in an attempt to "allow" the currency to

Russia’s current woes can be readily summed up in just one single variable – the value of the ruble – and this value, as we all know, is falling. Almost uncontrollably so.br /br /blockquoteThe bank’s target will be “very quickly” breached without more intervention, said Gaelle Blanchard of Societe Generale SA in London. “Right now the market is convinced it wants to see the ruble lower,” Blanchard said. “As long as the central bank gives these targets, then speculators are going to have something to aim for.”br /br //blockquoteblockquote“The market is testing whether the authorities see this band as something permanent or something that will move,” said Lars Rassmussen, an emerging markets analyst at Danske Bank A/S. “Our view is that they’ll move it because it’s not worth wasting the reserves for a band that is obviously not wide enough.”/blockquoteblockquoteFirst Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov expressed regret that the general …

The a href=”http://www.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=VWArticleVW3article_id=1434203528refm=vwHomepage_title=Latest%20analysisrf=0″Economist Intelligence Unit warns/a:br /br /blockquoteState handouts cannot continue indefinitely, not least because reserves no longer cover total foreign liabilities: on the basis total debt was US$540bn at the end of September 2008, and that US$73bn was repaid in the fourth quarter, total debt is now US$467bn and private-sector debt US$425bn. Russia entered the crisis with the world’s third largest cache of central bank reserves, but it has been dwindling at an accelerating pace. By mid-January, reserves had declined to just below US$400bn, meaning that more than a third of the total was spent over the past five months./blockquotebr /br /Longer post coming over the weekend.