The law of sacrifice is also progressive, the more you sacrifice, the more you get.
Messi sacrificed his youthful years kicking a football around, he got better, now he is a world champion.
Same with doctors, they sacrifice partying to read, then get a "Dr." and earn big bucks
Sacrifice is universal, it works on good and bad
In 2 Kings 3 vs 27, we read about a King of Moab who was about to be overrun and defeated in battle, he takes that which is dearest to him, his oldest son, and sacrifices him, the Israelites withdrew from the battle.
Easter sees another sacrifice. Jesus, God's own son is sacrificed on the cross. He dies, and He rises. He gains followers
One Man dying on Golgota returns 2.2b followers, that's a 219,999,999,900% return on "sowed capital"
Probably the highest return on any investment ever!
Thus we have two principles
1. If you sacrifice something dear to you, your time for instance, you gain something of greater value.
2. The more you sacrifice, the greater your odds of victory.
Let's compare assets during these turbulent times.
I have picked five asset classes:
Gold, represented by GLD ETF
US Stocks, represented by VTI
US Property, represented by VNQ
Digital Assets, represented by Bitcoin BTC
US Bonds, represented by UCITS
Let's track performance for one week, one month, a Year, and Five years.
What if I bought 5 years ago?
One word, Bitcoin. It's not even close; BTC killed the competition, went to the moon and back.
It's risk on, so cash rotated from bonds to stocks and, curiously, gold.
What makes the GDP rise or fall?
.
It's a combination of spending and net exports
1. Consumptuin rises, GDP rises 2. Investment rises, GDP rises 3. Government Spending rises, GDP rises 4. More Exports than Imports, GDP Rises
A recession, two negative quarters, happens when consumption or investment falls.
Take the US, for example. Personal consumption (buying cars, stoves, healthcare, etc.) is about 70% of the US GDP. If there is economic uncertainty or inflation, households stop spending, which causes a fall in consumption that fuels a recession.
The US economy shrank by 0.9% between April and June 2022, meaning a recession, because the earlier quarter was also negative. The Biden team denied there was a recession. Sec Yellen said "growth is slowing"
,
Thus, from April 2022, the US started spending $1t in debt every quarter to compensate for the fall in private consumption.
If you remove the government spending that created most government jobs, the US economy will not be in a recession but a depression.
What Donald Trump is doing is taking out the artificial. Debt-fueled growth from the markets
Let's review the recently published Q4 GDP numbers for Nigeria.
In summary, the headline figures look good
Quarter on Quarter, GDP growth posted 3.84%
Year on Year, GDP growth posted 3.40%
These are good trends, shows the economic resilience of the Nigerian economy in spite of persistent double digit inflation and falling consumption,
But.......the dangers show up when you dig deeper
First of, Nigeria's GDP growth is driven by the non oil sector.
The Non-Oil sector contributed 95.34% to the GDP growth for Q4 2024 in Nigeria
The Nigerian economy is not driven by crude oil, the Nigerian economy is diversified, the Nigeria FX revenue are not diversified.
...stay with me
So what sectors CONTRIBUTE to this Non Oil growth in Nigeria.?
I call them the big three; in real terms they contributed
1. Agriculture 25% 2. Trade 13% 3. IT/Telco 17%
These three sectors contribute more than 50% of GDP growth in Nigeria. These sectors, especially agriculture employ the highest number of Nigerians also.
This means, if these sectors boom, the Nigerian GDP booms
In simple terms, GDP means Gross Domestic Product, look at it like output. If a bakery makes 100 Agege loaves of bread and each loaf costs N100, then the GDP of that bakery is N100,000.00
In Nigeria's case, the total amount of "output" this quarter is N71t, if we factor in inflation, it becomes N20t
good? next slide
If you compare the GDP growth in Q2 2024 to Q3 2024, the growth is just 0.27%. This is anemic
Nigeria needs to grow her GDP faster than population growth which we can estimate to be 3%. Thus to grow at 4% per annum, Nigeria has to post a growth GDP 1% GDP growth per quarter
Looking at annual GDP, Nigeria posted 2.74% for 2023 to compare Ethiopia grew by 7.9%, and Ivory Coast grew by 6.5% in 2023
What drives Nigeria's GDP?
Nigeria's GDP growth is driven by three key sectors 1. Agriculture 2. Trade 3. Telecoms
For Nigeria to grow her GDP, it must grow these sectors. so lets take a look at how these sectors performed in Q3 2024
In May 1998, The Government of Pakistan froze all foreign currency accounts (FCA) estimated to hold $7.56b in an emergency action declared to protect the economy.
The Government of Pakistan instructed banks to pay Pakistanis receiving $ salaries from offshore companies in local currency at inter-bank rates. All dollar assets were converted to the local currency.
The effect of these actions was devastating to the economy of Pakistan.
The primary impact was a loss of confidence in Pakistan's Government, which was evident in many ways, including private sector remittances stopping completely, with Pakistan losing $2.5b in remittances projected inflow for that year.
1. Nigeria needs forex to settle her FX obligations including an outstanding obligation of over $7b; thus, the NNPC arranged a $3.3b emergency loan from AFRIEXIMBANK (AFEX) on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
2. The loan structure involves the NNPC Limited receiving cash today via an SPV called Project Gazelle Funding Limited, sponsored by the NNPC Limited. The NNPC promises to repay AFEX with crude oil, equivalent to the principal borrowed plus an interest element of 11.85% APY.
3. The NNPC Limited borrowing is backed by its future sales of crude oil.