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 week on Consuelo Mack WealthTrack three outstanding financial world figures share their “one investment” recommendation for a long-term diversified portfolio. The guests are: Bob Doll who runs three large cap funds at BlackRock; John Montgomery who heads up a family of funds using computer models at Bridgeway Capital; and Tom Petrie, Vice Chairman of Bank of America - Merrill Lynch, who is a veteran observer of the energy sector. As always with WealthTrack this is excellent viewing material.

Note: The transcript of this interview is not available yet, but will be posted here as soon as it arrives.

Source: Wealthtrack, October 9, 2009.

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The Financial Times enumerates Gazprom's problems: are its ambitions to increase production any more than pipe dreams?  Competition for energy reserves in the Arctic Circle could prompt friction between Russia and NATO, a new commander at the alliance has warned.  Bloomberg reports that the holder of the world's fourth-largest gas reserves, Turkmenistan, is ready to export natural gas to European collaborators if they build a pipeline across the Caspian Sea to transport the fuel.  According to Oil and Gas Eurasia, Russia needs a total of $310 billion to fully carry out its program for the analysis and exploration of its continental shelf, a deputy natural resources minister has announced.  Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko has said that Russia has been invited as an observer to the December meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.  Finnish environmental ...

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

• Matt Taibbi (Taibblog): An inside look at how Goldman Sachs lobbies the Senate, September 29, 2009.

Samuel Brittan (Financial Times): A cool look at the current deficit hysteria, October 1, 2009. In the early Victorian period the debt ratio was nearly 200 per cent and almost reached that level again in the early 1920s.

• Edmund Conway (Telegraph):  An inconvenient truth: financial crises are inevitable, October 1, 2009. The IMF’s new early warning system to avoid crises such as the credit crunch is doomed to disappoint.

• Edward Harrison (Credit Writedowns): The recession is over but the depression has just begun, October 1, 2009. This post discusses why we are in a depression, not

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by Edward Hugh: : L'Escala de Empordàbr /br /According to a once-upon-a-time post on the Economist's a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/certainideasofeurope/2007/07/a_fistful_of_reply.cfm#list-comments"Certain Ideas of Europe Blog/a Edward Hugh “was very cross” about some of the journalism they were serving up over at that prestigious journal. Well, not to worry, since this time he is hopping mad. And the issue which lies behind his wrath is essentially the same one, how to interpret and understand the demographic processes which are currently so evidently affecting our societies. In what is simply the latest episode in a long and sorry saga (if you want documentation, please see the comments Claus Vistesen and I nailed to their "Wall" in the above linked post) this week's print issue contains a href="http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14164483"a research review from their science and technology correspondent/a who is evidently not backward in coming forward with headline grabbing claims. According to the said corresponedent the demographic transition ...

Right before Barack Obama's first visit to Moscow, I recall reading some interesting quotes from a Russian observer - unfortunately I can't remember where exactly - who speculated that although he didn't expect any kind of revolution in U.S.-Russia relations, he had hoped that the visit of the first U.S. President of African-American origin would prompt debate inside Russia:  Why can't we have a Tatar, Bashkir, or even a Chechen president some day?As far as I know, that debate didn't happen, and the Russian authorities did eveything possible to dampen the impact of the visit (speeches were not widely televised).  But at least for one man, the message came through.  A few days back we linked to a ...

At least one observer has argued that the current recession is not as bad as that of the 1980-82 recession, when those two separate recessions (1980Q1-1980Q3; 1981Q3-1982Q4) are considered as one (see [1] [2]). Here is my interpretation of this assertion, updated to use the latest GDP data, and normalizing (log) GDP on the recession start dates.

Figure 1: Log GDP relative to 2007Q4 (blue), log forecasted GDP relate to 2007Q4 (teal), and log GDP relative to 1980Q1 (red). Source: BEA GDP 2009Q2 advance (July 2009), WSJ survey of forecasters (July 2009), NBER, and author's calculations.

Notice that, using the WSJ mean survey forecast from early July, the current downturn will exact a bigger (percentage) output loss than the 1980Q1-1982Q4 recession; if we assume the current recession trough ends up being 2009Q2, then the cumulative loss relative to previous peak will be 9.6 percentage points,

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For two decades, the Japanese economy has been dead as a doornail – in spite of hefty Japanese consumer savings. Why?

Field Reporter: Are they slow-moving, chief?
Sheriff McClelland: Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up.
– Night of the Living Dead (1968)

In B-grade horror movie lore, Tokyo has to fend off attacks from rampaging monsters like Mothra and Godzilla. If the cinema were more true-to-life, however, Japan would be less worried about overgrown fire-breathing lizards… and more terrified of zombies instead.

In response to a recent Taipan Daily asking what brought us out of the Great Depression, a number of you responded with a good question. “What about Japan?” Or rather, “What about Japan’s extraordinary rate of consumer savings – and why hasn’t it helped?”

After putting in a massive blowoff top to cap a truly insane 1980s bull market, Japanese stocks proceeded to head lower… for the next twenty years. The Nikkei is …

For two decades, the Japanese economy has been dead as a doornail – in spite of hefty Japanese consumer savings. Why?

Field Reporter: Are they slow-moving, chief? Sheriff McClelland: Yeah, they’re dead. They’re all messed up. – Night of the Living Dead (1968)

In B-grade horror movie lore, Tokyo has to fend off attacks from rampaging monsters like Mothra and Godzilla. If the cinema were more true-to-life, however, Japan would be less worried about overgrown fire-breathing lizards… and more terrified of zombies instead.

In response to a recent Taipan Daily asking what brought us out of the Great Depression, a number of you responded with a good question. “What about Japan?” Or rather, “What about Japan’s extraordinary rate of consumer savings – and why hasn’t it helped?”

...

Leon Aron at the American Enterprise Institute has a new brief out on Russia following the Summit.  Here's just one section from the report on the use of anti-American propaganda by the Kremlin.

The Kremlin's valiant defense of Russia against alleged plots from the outside evolved into one of the key legitimizing tools of the regime, and deafening and primitive anti-American propaganda became the staple of the state-owned or state-controlled national media. In the words of a Russian observer, the United States is "used as a bogeyman for domestic political purposes."[16] Presiding over the May 2007 military parade to mark the sixty-second anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War (World War II), Putin likened the unnamed perpetrators of "new threats" to Russia to the Third Reich

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