whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

... are important appropriately and businesses will respond. Consider climate change. In the past year company investment into alternative energy research has gone from US$35 bn to US$72 bn and that is...

2.
(Comments)

...? First we must address our attitude to the informal sector, then we must create bridges which allow legal investment back and forth across the two markets. Only then will we \"discover how to add...

3. Overcoming the Conservation of Energy
(Analysis/Analysis)

Walking through London a week ago, I was conscious of how much of the city is built on foundations that are hundreds of years old. The London Underground – the world's first inner-city mas

4. When no-one is held accountable, everyone suffers
(Analysis/Analysis)

... profits away from the company, it also reduces their ability to pay salaries, do maintenance, or make future investments. They can choose to absorb the cost, by firing people or reducing capacity; o...

5. Netscape, the Internet and Creative Destruction
(Analysis/Analysis)

Governments do not know anything about competition, innovation or the power of individual investment. The best they can offer is collective blame shedding and the waste of taxpayers' money on pop

6. Electricity Redux - Electricity Quotas Will Work About As Well As Race Quotas
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ion homes and businesses depend on Eskom for electricity. Eskom is largely state-owned and their pricing and investment strategy are controlled by the government. Plenty has already been discussed i...

7. Higher food prices mean downgrading that Turkey to a Chicken
(Analysis/Analysis)

... battle something that the poor never worry about: obesity. Higher food prices will translate into increased investment into agriculture and food prices will, eventually, stabilise and come down. Th...

8. The Speculator: Pricing in the Future
(Analysis/Analysis)

...s behave in a similar way. They have to decide how to invest their resources now for a future return on that investment. The more risk they imagine, the more conservative their approach will be. Th...

9. Exports and parliamentary laziness
(Analysis/Analysis)

... - that she look to government policy regarding economic policy support to encourage further such large-scale investments. Manufacturing, at 16.3% of GDP, has a significantly larger impact on employm...

10. Podcast: China's expansion in Africa offers risk and opportunities
(Podcasts/Emerging Market Risk)

China is rapidly becoming Africa's largest investor.  They require little in the way of good governance and are aggressively creating new infrastructure in their drive to secure resources for

11. Podcast: The US dollar's decline effects aid and trade in Africa
(Podcasts/Emerging Market Risk)

Aid and trade are essential to Africa's further development.  The US dollar declined by 30% during 2007. This has an effect both on the real value of aid and on the world economy. Download th

12. Searching for objective measures of value
(Analysis/Analysis)

... of money, has always been of critical interest to investors. Most of the time maintaining the value of any investment has left people feeling as if they were running across an icy lake in their be...

13. Trevor Manuel and the "Plunder of Skills"
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t and it must be sold. A nation must be loyal to its people; not the other way round. If South Africa wants investment then it must act to create a favourable environment for those investors. Wheth...

14. Contradictions resolve in ways you don't intend
(Analysis/Analysis)

...o interfere with the productive use of capital. Inflation robs money of its value. High interest rates make investment in new ideas prohibitive. High tax rates and extortionate political policies p...

15. The Miracle of Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...and make and sell. He is experiencing the miracle that happens when investors magically appear. All of this investment has taken place, not because the entrepreneurs wanted to bring hope to a poor a...

16. Killing the Golden Goose, a lesson in Economic Freedom
(Analysis/Analysis)

...en the best in Africa. That's Mauritius, which has made dramatic efforts to liberalise and improve their investment environment. They are the 22nd most economically liberal economy in the world....

17. Africa, China and Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

South Africa receives more than 20% of the foreign direct investment (FDI) placed in Africa each year. Don't celebrate too quickly. Of the US$ 334 billion in total FDI in 2005 only 9.3%, or US$

18. Investment cannot happen if the market isn't private
(Analysis/Analysis)

... Anything considered even slightly strategic is not for sale. The government may have confused taxation with investment. Government has made so much money off formal-sector privately-employed citize...

19. Black Economic Empowerment, like charity, is not investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

South African businesses have become one of the largest investment blocks in Africa.  Many African countries regularly fret that they are losing their local business ownership to their cousins do

20. Black Diamonds and the trouble with statistics
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ecisions about if, when, where and how much to invest.  Without meaningful and reliable information poor investments can be made. In 2001 South Africa was suffering from weak economic growth.&n...

21. Black Swans, Cost Overruns and Industrial Tariffs
(Analysis/Analysis)

South Africa currently has two large Cinderella projects: the Gautrain and the 2010 World Cup. Both projects are astonishingly expensive. When the Gautrain was announced in February 2006 it was to

22. Ending poverty means abandoning charity and accepting reality
(Analysis/Analysis)

...capable of flight they will travel to other nations where they feel safer. If they are not they remove their investments to the informal market. Informal vs Formal is subjective; technically we'...

23. Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, and Rupert Murdoch
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ices. One newspaper more or less isn't going to change the availability of free speech. And, without the investment, it may be gone within a decade. The Beginning of Renewed Competition As fo...

24. Atlas Shrugged at 50
(Analysis/Analysis)

... characters, Francisco d'Anconia, is trashing his own company. No-one notices since now people take their investments on faith rather than actually studying the balance-sheet. You believe that it ...

25. Zimbabwe: the Hollow State
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ormal cash transfers home as well as importation of low-cost goods from China and South Africa undermines any investment into new capacity in Zimbabwe. The latter point is the most explosive. Zimba...

26. Science gone wrong: when self-delusion leads to death
(Analysis/Analysis)

...stock markets would not be at their highest valuations around the world. Traders would be certain that their investments would be stolen; they'd be pulling out, not pushing in. And those self-sa...

27. People, Planet and Profits: the complexities of corporate governance
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ut maybe that's getting ahead too. When the original entrepreneur either retires, decides to cash in his investment, or needs to raise a tremendous amount of capital for further expansion, then t...

28. After Enron: the Corporate Governance of Corporate Social Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ntegrated into the standard auditing and reporting process." There are two ends within corporate social investment, he says: "Number one, what a company says it is doing. Number two, the ...

29. Suburbanise! How aid and trade obliterate unique cultures
(Analysis/Analysis)

...the peoples of emerging nations are losing their cultural identity and self-expression. The creeping wave of investment swallows their poverty and absorbs them into an alien culture. And they are wa...

30. Islam, Shari'ah Law, and Cultural Capitalism
(Analysis/Analysis)

... community's success and invigorated self-confidence. There are three criteria for Shari'ah compliant investments:  i) qualitative - the company must not have any association with alcohol...

31. Unlearning helplessness: how donors reinforce poverty and dependency
(Analysis/Analysis)

"Well, something is better than nothing," said the well-dressed man at the charity launch function. "No it isn't. You're making the assumption that the recipients of corporate

32. Hedging and bundling; improving the efficiency of microlending
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ousing bubble. Part of the problem has been easy access to credit. Banks don't look at the value of the investment, they look at the applicant's ability to pay back the loan and their credit...

33. Demonstration Enterprise Development Consultant B
(Ratings Demonstration/Demonstration)

...ent Service Perception: A Client Service Support: BBB Client Finance Solutions: A Client Investment and Survival Rates: B Link to overview of ratings and scorecard definitions ...

34. Demonstration Enterprise Development Consultant A
(Ratings Demonstration/Demonstration)

...nt Service Perception: A Client Service Support: AA Client Finance Solutions: BBB Client Investment and Survival Rates: A Link to overview of ratings and scorecard definitions...

35. The US$ 5 trillion market at the bottom of the pyramid
(Analysis/Analysis)

...rdquo; says Prahalad.  “It is very difficult to transform that type of thinking into ideals around investment; that the aggregated wealth of the poor is significant.” It is possible,...

36. Demonstration Table of Ratings
(Ratings Demonstration/Demonstration)

...however sectors and sub-sectors would normally be presented seperately. Organisations are listed as either Investment Grade (rating AAA - BBB) or Below Investment Grade (BB and below). Subscribers ...

37. Development organisations need to engage with ratings agencies
(Analysis/Analysis)

...alf of investors, to benefit customers. In a commercial setting, if there were no third-party analysis, then investments would look very different.  Those looking for good financial returns woul...

38. Making money, doing good
(Analysis/Analysis)

...;Theory of Moral Sentiments” written earlier in 1759, Smith makes the case for sympathy in business and investments; the idea of a moral compass. Each generation requires a vision that resonate...

39. The best bridge out of poverty is over the future of cash
(Analysis/Analysis)

... Those nations with financial clout will set the rules that they are happy with.  Nations that want that investment and trade will have to play by those rules. The most developed nations are in ...

40. Mama Jackie - the "Angel of Soweto" - assaults a journalist
(Analysis/Analysis)

In December, when introducing our conference on Responsibility, Reputation and Risk, we mentioned Jacqueline Maarohanye - the principal of Ithuteng Trust in Soweto – as an example of the embarr

41. "On your left is an Orc fighting a Troll" - travels in hyper-reality offer lessons for the poor
(Analysis/Analysis)

...it must be that the circumstances there favour poverty.  Either through government policies that prevent investment, or corruption and legal practice that terrorises business owners, or even that...

42. "Heads or Tails" ... resolution to a difficult choice
(Analysis/Analysis)

...er is the creation of long term value on which we can all build and which we can all ultimately share. In any investment, we must choose those that are best placed to deliver. So too, in development, ...

43. World Cup 2010 asks for big sacrifices from the poor
(Analysis/Analysis)

... future value to the economy has already been priced in and, by 2010, there will be little result for all our investment. Cape Town will become the proud owner of a stadium so large, and so carefully...

44. Enterprise Development and Employment: Experiences in South Africa and South Eastern Europe
(Analysis/Analysis)

...tive success in the South Eastern Europe (SEE) region. Both the Stability Pact for South East Europe and the Investment Compact for South East Europe have been at the forefront of Enterprise Developm...

45. The Martians Really Care: four points to govern development
(Analysis/Ideas and Challenges)

...nected from our daily lives, then we will waste it.  If development is seen as a means towards trade and investment then we will ask for very specific things. These would be: Infrastructure dev...

46. Bringing Capital to Small Enterprise
(Analysis/Ideas and Challenges)

...the equity tranche; so called because this CLN would carry the initial default risk – up to its initial investment of R20m. That is to say, government's CLN would (in this simple form) carry...

47. How do we prepare nonprofit organisations for the long term?
(Analysis/Analysis)

The core principle of social benefit investment is the empowerment of individuals to the point where the intervention by benefactors is no longer required. That is to say, social benefit investment sh

48. So how exactly do you invest in the Fortune At The Bottom Of The Pyramid?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...xclude those products from their markets.  What is an executive to do? And how do they even make a wise investment in poor communities in the first place?  Start with a simpler query:&nbs...

49. May I have the bill, please? A lesson in wilful ignorance ...
(Analysis/Analysis)

...; When offered a reasonable choice they will switch to the service that offers them the most reward for their investment of time, energy and (occasionally) money.  If the relationship has become ...

50. Is the ownership of property at odds with the needs of the poor?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ime spent on conversation.  People who waste your time are, technically, stealing it. It takes time and investment to learn things.  I spend my time on myself to develop my own abilities.&n...