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Timothy E Kaldas Profile picture
Timothy E Kaldas
@tekaldas
Deputy Director: @timepDC Teaching: @UABBarcelona @UniLUISS Political Economist, Risk Advisor, Wine Lover (WSET L3) & Professional Cynic #RefugeesWelcome He/Him
Apr 4, 2023 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
I spoke with @VivianHYee @nytimes on Egypt's precarious situation, its growing dependence on Gulf & implications for Egypt's foreign policy independence

Financing new IMF package by selling assets under duress to a few powerful buyers has consequences 🧵
nytimes.com/2023/04/02/wor… In its new program with Egypt, the IMF is only lending $3 billion

The IMF anticipates additional $14 billion will come from external sources, much of this from asset sales to Gulf

This cannot be described seriously as "privatization" & may have serious geopolitical implications
Dec 8, 2022 • 23 tweets • 6 min read
Egypt's financial troubles are worrying. Private sector shrank for past several years & its contraction is accelerating. Last month was one of worst in the past decade with PMI at 45.4

Worse still, Egypt's growth model since 2016 is at risk of collapse 🧵
reuters.com/world/middle-e… Since 2016, despite private sector contraction, rising poverty & shrinking labor force participation, Egypt's GDP grew modestly showing how little that indicator tells us

Growth was built on debt driven government stimulus. However, today the govt has great difficulty borrowing
Aug 22, 2022 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
Egyptian talk show host Youssef El Husseiny warns Egyptians to sell dollars to banks & buy Egyptian pounds (EGP) by Sept 15th, claiming investments coming that will drive down price of dollar

It's an example of economic dangers of a lack of a free press 🧵almasryalyoum.com/news/details/2… I have emphasized to officials in meetings for some time now, that the repression of the press in Egypt and the near total absence of reliable critical economic reporting doesn't only harm investors and investments, but also consumers who are often forgotten in these discussions.
Jul 6, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
President Sisi says the company responsible for building the New Capital (which is majority owned by Egypt's military) wants to RENT the govt district to the Egyptian state for 4 billion Egyptian pounds a year

Most states have a military. Egypt's military has a state 🧵 When the New Administrative Capital was announced Egyptians were promised the state wouldn't pay a penny for it. All costs would be covered with land swaps; both from land in Cairo after ministries were moved and the land given to developers in the new capital.
May 19, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Egypt is under enormous financial strain. At the root of the problem is years of economic mismanagement with aggressive anti-competitive expansion of regime owned enterprises and a lack of comprehensive poverty relief coverage in midst of austerity 🧵
bloomberg.com/news/articles/… This left Egypt highly vulnerable to external shocks as it failed to grow its private sector & create jobs. The private sector contracted for 63 of past 72 months & labor force participation declined, especially for women - dropping from 23% to 16% in 2019 data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.T…
May 18, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I woke up to this absurd statement from Gamal Mubarak representing his family and claiming that the EU courts ordering an end to their asset freeze was an "exoneration."

It wasn't anything of the sort 🧵
The assets were frozen to allow Egyptian authorities to investigate and reclaim illicit gains the Mubarak family held in offshore accounts.

Following the counterrevolutionary coup d'etat in 2013 it became clear that the regime had no intention to do so.
Mar 24, 2022 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
This @IMFNews statement makes clear the devaluation of the Egyptian pound was taken to pave way for another loan. By lauding increased "exchange rate flexibility" the IMF acknowledges that the EGP was not free floating & that they knew the Central Bank of Egypt lied about that The statement also betrays the failures of the past 6 years since Sisi went to the IMF the first time. Exchange rate flexibility was a condition of the 2016 loan & we all knew it was gone by 2018 yet the IMF continued to look the other way & finance mismanagement of the economy
Mar 12, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Defending EGP rather than floating it is under more scrutiny & appears increasingly unsustainable

One IFI offical recently told me it was a pandemic response. I explained it began in 2018 as I show below. The official's predecessor had admitted noticing peg

A 🧵 on the problem Reuters documented the mechanism for how the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) surreptitiously defended the pound in this article in 2018. This occurred while the CBE continued to claim the EGP had been floated reflecting a lack of credibility in CBE statements

reuters.com/article/egypt-…
Mar 3, 2022 • 25 tweets • 6 min read
The private sector has contracted nearly every month since the govt's economic reforms were introduced in cooperation with @IMFNews

Here's the past 5 years. Each month below that red line means non-oil & gas private sector was in contraction for that month. 51 of 60. A 🧵 on why Loans tied to the 2016 IMF package stabilized govt's supply of hard currency allowing the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) to rebuild depleted hard currency reserves. This allowed removal of strict capital controls that strangled trade & created large black market for hard currency.
Aug 20, 2021 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
Many complain withdrawal could've been better planned & executed. That's true, but the fact that it wasn't belies a deeper lesson, militarized foreign policy is a blunt instrument, almost never wielded with precision. Smart surgical interventions don't happen for a reason

Thread A lot of speculative pieces are written about undertaking smart precise & limited interventions that will correct for the failings we witnessed most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. What these pieces fail to adequately address is how will they get policymakers to implement them?
Apr 1, 2021 • 22 tweets • 5 min read
Today I published an op-ed arguing that freeing the #EverGiven showed that, with the right resources & chances, Egyptians are as capable as anyone, but they often lack those resources

Today would've been my father Elhami's 74th birthday. He left Egypt due to that reality

Thread He grew up in a working class family in the Masr Qadima quarter of Cairo. As late as 2003, the road in front of their family home still wasn't properly paved. In state schools his grades were quite low. One year his parents managed to send him to a private school & he excelled
Mar 12, 2021 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
While I welcome the joint statement & am pleased the US joined, it will mean nothing without material actions to support it. Repression in Egypt hasn't continued unabated since 2014 for lack of statements

A thread on what works & what hasn't #HRC46

reuters.com/article/egypt-… For years Western govts condemned the repression & violence visited on Egyptians by their govt. Many of those same govts have continued to send assistance to Cairo, sell weapons to Egypt & invite Sisi to state visits in their capitals while refusing to condition support on rights
Dec 7, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
THREAD: President Macron's comments on human rights in Egypt at today's press conference with President Sisi were appalling for a variety of reasons. He propped up Sisi's untenable effort to connect repression to the fight against extremism when we all know this to be untrue. Macron's decision to include in his brief comments about the abysmal rights situation in Egypt acknowledgement of Egypt's fight against extremists bolsters Egypt's false claims that their repression is linked to counterterrorism. France knows this is untrue.
Jun 21, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
For everyone making assertions about whether Egypt will intervene more directly in Libya, the truth is of course we don't know. There's no denying that Libya is viewed by Cairo as its largest external security threat and has built up capacity lest it be required to intervene. Indeed, I suspect planners in Cairo themselves are not yet certain which course of action will be taken. There are clear risks & for now the hope appears to be some bellicosity & flexing may discourage Turks from overstepping but these flexes shouldn't be easily dismissed either
Nov 11, 2019 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
Today Egypt's govt hosted a tour of its notorious Tora prison following a UN report saying conditions were abysmal & medical neglect risked lives of inmates, such as late former president Morsi. Event began with a red carpet ON a red carpet to a tent & then it got absurd - THREAD While most of foreign press I spoke to said they weren't invited including major US papers, @AFP reporter @FaridYFarid got to attend & reported to us the details firsthand. He repeatedly requested access to prisoners & was declined. Read his thread
May 14, 2019 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
Maybe it's time to restate the obvious. Going to war with Iran wouldn't just be wrong, it would be exceptionally stupid. It would make the most disastrous military decision in modern US history, invading Iraq, look like a cake walk. This is for many obvious reasons listed below Iran's population is triple that of Iraq's 2003 population. The US occupation struggled to ever properly secure consistent control over Iraq's population and secure the country for its citizens. Low estimates for civilian casualties of the war and occupation exceed 100,000 Iraqis