I guess the Israelis must be laughing about this, even their Gaza escapades couldn't unite Egypt against them!

Quote:

Of course this begs the question of what an asset is worth when the King can steal it? The obvious answer, of course, is zero.

Disagree with you, Karl. It is not worth zero just because the King can steal it. The "King" - whether Pharaoh or President or CB - can always "steal it."

It is worth x - discount of the likelihood of the King stealing it. I think you are basing your valuation in a deep belief in rule of law, which I believe is not binary, but a continuum. There is less in Egypt, more in the US. Its just that the market has a lower discount for such potential theft in the US than in Egypt, although it happens in the US too, as you have well documented.

Someone, in addition to the King, will make money on Egyptian equity.

A 10% drop in a frontier market is big, but not huge. Would have guessed more, unless they stopped trading. Maybe there is no foreign money left in the Egyptian market to speak of, and locals have no real alternative. Thanks.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (but with a democratic veneer).
Worst 8 countries in 2011 corruption perception index - lower number is worse (emphasis mine):

http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/resu....

175 Iraq 1.8 <<<
177 Sudan 1.6
177 Turkmenistan 1.6
177 Uzbekistan 1.6
180 Afghanistan 1.5 <<<
180 Myanmar 1.5
182 Korea (North) 1.0
182 Somalia 1.0

Corruption in Iraq: 'Your son is being tortured. He will die if you don't pay'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan....

Hey, at least we got some oil contracts which would NOT have happened if the embargo against Saddam had been lifted with him still in power. And since the gas pipeline across Afghanistan is now understood to be impossible due to security concerns, we're still there because no administration wants to admit defeat.

Excerpt from Guardian article linked to in my post directly above. Spreading democracy throughout the world:

Excerpt:

"The colonel explained how the country's endemic corruption had resulted in the industrial scale of extortion of innocent detainees and their families. "Everything is for sale, every post in the government is for sale," he said.

"You pay $300,000 to buy a post as a security chief or military commander of a neighbourhood for a year and you have to get your money back. It's like an investment. But you can never trust anyone in this country – they take your money and a year later they conspire against you and throw you in jail. They are like wolves."

One of his subordinates explained how the officers procured their positions. "The commander of the district buys his post from the politicians or the office of the commander-in-chief. Then the commander rents the post of interrogation officer to his juniors for $10,000 to $15,000 per month, depending on the area. For a Sunni neighbourhood you have to pay a lot of money; for Shia not that much, because most of the arrests take place in the Sunni areas. Then you get your money back from the detainee.

"Sometimes you get really lucky and actually detain someone who is in al-Qaida, and then you can get your full investment in one go: you arrange for him to escape for half a million dollars."

Leaving aside for a minute the fact that the majority of Egyptians don't believe in freedom of religion or freedom of conscience (a Pew poll 2 years ago showed about 80% approving of execution for apostasy from Islam), Morsi would seem to have a point: They had elections and an assembly was put together. The judiciary dissolved the assembly. The judiciary was all appointed by the dictator who ruled for 30 years, so what right do they have to dissolve a democratically elected legislature? And if (perhaps laughably) we assume for the moment that Morsi is a true democrat, what could he do but put the judiciary on ignore for a while?

Of course, in the long run whether this particular judiciary is allowed to continue to rule or not will have no bearing on the trajectory of the country. The people want sharia, which is incompatible with secularism, especially since the best-case set of rights for non-muslims is dhimmitude.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/musl....

"At least three-quarters of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan say they would favor making each of the following the law in their countries: stoning people who commit adultery, whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery and the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion. Majorities of Muslims in Jordan and Nigeria also favor these harsh punishments."

Mortgageguymn. Facts that CNN and others never discuss.

Truth # 1: The Islamic world view is fundamentally different from the Judeo-Christian worldview we who spent our formative years in USA/Canada.

Truth # 2: This world view is immutable and seeks the outright destruction of our way of life. Although we seem to be doing a good job ourselves.

Truth # 3: There are no more "moderate" Muslims. They are dead or sitting on the sidelines.

How do I know. I travel to the Middle East frequently. My grandfather was muslim and I acted as his servant on Haj. Too bad this religion has been perverted by these tribal individuals.

The Arab Spring is good... for the Military Industrial Complex.