Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Ponzi warming ponzi warning

Last saturday i went to the home and living expo at the sarit centre. unlike other home expos this one was free entry but the exhibitors were quite few. the most striking was the dubai real estate investment schemes. investors were required to pay a deposit of 3.5 million Kshs to book the investment. and own a piece of dubai. believe it or not, many kenyans were lining up to take up the investment. the dubai houses were looking heavenly, its looks like these guys have really put their imagination and creative to concrete or is it glass? moving on there were other 'common' exhibitions but another place i found interesting was hfck , they could not answer me why they charge processing fees. like i have argued before i find it akin to paying for customer service. they also could not tell me why the processing fee is a percentage of the value of the loan. does it mean the bigger the loan the harder it is to process. doesnt the computer just follow set logic? but while i was 'complaining, KCB had sold all its simba villas in emabakasi. ok they were sold way back even before the expo. so i suppose they only came there to show off. and the pple around me found that very shocking. one person asked how is that posible. coz the lady at the stand said most guys had paid cash. 4 million cash! yet they hadnt moved in. another person volunteered that it was because of the NSE, a third said it was because of the wise leadership of kibaki hence the economic growth. but someone insisted that it was due to DECI, he promised us all that he would join DECI the following monday to enable him buy houses on the fly like that and even invest in the real estate in Dubai!

i think it was at the same time that DECI was evolving into CLIP, SASANET,PESANET and even INVESTOCK and also it may be the same time that CBK was drafting the warning letter to the 'owners' of these schemes. unfortunately this comes after the schemes have really run deep.
but ponzi schemes really and truly 'work' for the initial investors, but someone is going to burn fair and square. problem is how do you know you are among the first?

easy way out is to remind yourself that nothing comes from nothing. nothing ever could like in the sound of music.

On a lighter note the nuns at Lwak girls catering college has given the girls a unique punishment. after one of the girls was tempted to steal one piece of chicken during a practical,(those girls have a standard menu of githeri for lunch and ugali-mboga for dinner) all the 40 girls were sent home to go and come back with two live chicken. some girls went and came back with young or female fowls. these were sent back because the headteacher said the punishment required the girls to bring 2 jogoo (thwon) and not the famale also called in these parts as gweno ma sii.

odegle tip of the day ... it helps to read wide on any subject before investing in its area. it helps to find out all the information about an investment before commiting your hard earned money.

9 comments:

  1. Odegle:

    Ati each girl was to come back with "two cocks" (No pun intended) for the nuns!.....hihihihi .... where is the world heading to?

    CBK'S belated response to the Ponzi schemes is equally suspect.
    What was the Banking fraud investigation unit doing all this time?

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  2. Shocking that even as one ponzi collapses, investors are flocking to recover their money to put into new ones that the CBK has not yet identified.

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  3. Our love of a quick buck will be our undoing. These schemes are mushrooming everywhere-they are the equivalent of internet hacking to the financial system e.g. Swiss cash has already been in Malaysia & Singapore. Where regulation of the financial systems is lax or disjointed like ours is, well, Mungu atusaidie.

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  4. outfoxed ... you know , the rate of return on that stollen piece of chicken was even higher than what you can get from any ponzi scheme!

    but i also wondered like you how come CBK was so late in responding. and again if you looked at the ad it was 'weak' it wasnt authoritative. it was almost advisory. do u think so many this many illegal schemes can exist without the knowledge of govt authorities?

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  5. bankelele ... am begining to think that investors are actually selling their shares to put their money in ponzis. maybe thats also contributing to the decline at the bourse

    mainat ...you couldnt have hit it better. kenyans want to get rich like yesterday, but i think it has a lot to do with the difficulty of life and poor provision of services. this country belongs to the rich

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  6. nimechoka ... my inbox is full of stories of the sex scandal at nation. what i know is that where men and women are put together, sex will happen and nation media group is not an exception. additionaly i think these letters and blog posts on the scandal complete with names are grossly unfair to these men be they true or false.

    further i always feel that trying to stop sex in such places is like trying to navigate river nyando upstream on a cut out jerry-can!

    and have u ever considered that having extreme interest in the sexual behavior of others amounts to voyeurism -- a form of sichness?

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  7. outfoxed,,, the first time i did not get the joke, now i do. am rolling with laughter. hehehe

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  8. Yes-we outfoxed.
    Od, I was trying to see if there is cause and effect here i.e. we are poor so we want easy money or we want easy money so we are poor. Mmmh...

    Btw, re the shenanigans at the Daily Nation, what if it leads to poor morale, staff leave and the the company stops performing? Or all these compromised pple are blackmailed it writing/editing certain favorable stories for say (as e.g.) Michuki? And what does it say about the new CEO?

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  9. mainat ... i totaly agree its an interesting debate. the chicken on the egg!

    i also agree about the sex scandals at nation. but the email does not talk about staff morale being lowered or the perfomance of the firm at the NSE being checked. in fact when u read those things you see only jalousy and gory details that do not help our course. but women who climb the cooporate ladder on their backs as thinkers-room puts it are all over the world.

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