Article Text

FRI0138 The importance of cystatin c as a predictor of accelerated atherosclerosis in premenopausal non-diabetic patients with rheumatoid patients
  1. I. Holc1,
  2. A. Pahor1,
  3. R. Hojs2
  1. 1Dept. Of Rheumatology
  2. 2Dept of Nephrology, UMC Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia

Background Life expectancy in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients is reduced by 3-10 years mainly due to cardiovascular diseases. Cystatin C is a basic microprotein, widely distributed in human tissues and body fluids. Cystatin C has been shown to be elevated in the synovial fluid of patients with RA, compared to patients with other joint diseases. The renal function is an important determinant of coronary atherosclerosis, and serum cystatin C is a novel, accurate measure of the glomerular filtration rate and a predictor of cardiovascular events and mortality, as stated by Maahs et al. Cystatin C has been reported not to be dependent on age, gender or muscle mass. Cystatin C has been demonstrated to be better predictor of atherosclerotic cardiovascular events than serum creatinine.

Methods The study group comprised of 68 premenopausal non-diabetic female RA patients. Forty healthy subjects, matched by age and sex, were selected as a control group. RA was diagnosed according to the 1987 revised criteria of the American College of Rheumatology. Ultrasound examination of carotid arteries was performed. Results of intima media thickness (IMT) and plaques were statistically studied and correlated with cystatin C and some other risk factors for atherosclerosis as well as with CRP and disease activity score-28 (DAS-28).

Results The IMT in patients was 0.63±0.10 mm and in controls 0.51±0.09 mm (p=0.000). Patients had statistically significant more plaques than controls - 17 versus 2 (p=0,006). The mean value for cystatin C in patients with RA was 0.69 ± 0.14 g/L, and in the control group the mean value was 0.67 ± 0.08 g/L. We did not find a statistically significant difference between the groups (p>0.05). We correlated cystatin C and IMT. The Spearman’s correlation coefficient calculated was low (r=0.153) and not statistically significant (p>0.05). We calculated Pearson’s correlation coefficient between cystatin C and plaques. The correlation coefficient was low (r=0.161) and not statistically significant (p=0.165).

Conclusions We did not find any differences between the study group and the control group in cystatin C levels, nor did we find any correlation with the atherosclerotic changes in RA patients. Therefore, we cannot conclude that cystatin C would be a predictor of accelerated atherosclerosis in RA patients as is in patients with chronic renal disease and in patients with diabetes. Considering the statistically significant difference in IMT and number of plaques in RA patients’ group and control group we could conclude that the atherosclerosis is accelerated even in premenopausal non-diabetic RA patients. However, the pathogenesis could be connected with inflammation more than with classical risk factors for atherosclerosis as is cystatin C.

  1. Hansen T, Petrow PK, Gaumann A, Keyszer GM, Eysel P, Eckardt A, Bräuer R, Kriegsmann J. Cathepsin B and its endogenous inhibitor cystatin C in rheumatoid arthritis synovium. J Rheumatol. 2000 Apr;27(4):859-65.

  2. Maahs DM, Ogden LG, Kretowski A, Snell-Bergeon JK, Kinney GL, Berl T, Rewers M. Serum cystatin C predicts progression of subclinical coronary atherosclerosis in individuals with type 1 diabetes. Diabetes. 2007 Nov;56(11):2774-9.

Disclosure of Interest None Declared

Statistics from

Request permissions


Sunday, August 13, 2017

Get Your Hands Out of Those Pockets If You Want to Engage With This World

I’m beginning to grow suspicious of the harmful effects of wearing pocketed clothing items.
It started with hoodies. They’re so darn comfy, right? But I noticed that when I wear a hoodie, I feel like I’m in my own little cocoon, and I have no particular desire to let anyone else into my cocoon. I become more withdrawn, cuz hey, I’m happy in my cocoon. Everyone else can go away.
So I stopped wearing hoodies in social situations.
Then there were pocketed dresses. Designers finally figured out that women want pockets in their dresses (equality with pants!), so more dresses come with pockets these days. I started wearing pocketed dresses to teaching gigs, thinking how nifty it’d be to keep a whiteboard marker in my pocket. It was indeed nifty, but again, I noticed something: I used way less body language when explaining concepts. See, once my hands made their ways into my pockets, they really had to want to come out. They didn’t deem it worth it most of the time, as they highly value warmth. My teaching got worse as a result.
So I stopped wearing pocketed dresses for teaching gigs.
Then there are jackets. I taught improv to a bunch of high schoolers yesterday, and it was their very first time doing improv, so they were understandably shy and resistant. The hardest cases? The teens in bomber jackets. Their hands were clearly very accustomed to resting inside those pockets, and it was a matter of great will to get those hands out in order to pass a clap or catch a sound ball. I injected new games on the spot designed specifically to get their hands out of their pockets, to remind their hands that indeed, the world outside the pockets is a fine place indeed. See, even if the mind and majority-body of those teens wanted to improv, their hands had to overcome an awful lot of inertia to get them fully engaged in it.
I don’t get to tell other people what to wear, of course, but if I was any sort of strict improv teacher, I’d institute a no-pockets rule, AKA a hands-out-and-ready-to-engage-at-all-times rule.
So: pockets. Lovely inventions for storing things, absolutely. Surprisingly effective at decreasing our desire to engage with our whole body in the world though.
And thus concludes a blog post about pockets. 😀

Coding: A Hobby for the Waste-Adverse

I love creating things and I’m a high energy individual. I can spend all day creating things, enjoying both the process and the output.
For most of my adult life, I’ve channeled my creative energy into coding. I studied Computer Science in college, and went on to jobs at Google, Coursera, and Khan Academy. Even in my year of “recovering from corporate life” between Google and Coursera, I spent my time coding web apps and browser extensions for fun and no-profit. ☺
This past year, I got back into other forms of creativity. I learned woodworking and laser cutting, making signs and jewelry out of wood. I worked on a Burning Man art project with a team, turning a giant gumball machine into an LED ring dispenser. I ran art events with my partner, showing other people the joy of painting for fun. I adore the sensory aspect of those forms of creativity —the smell of wood when I sand it, the gooeyness of paint — the feeling of using my body in the creative process.
This summer, I finally returned to coding as my full-time form of creativity. And actually, there’s a big part of me that breathes a sigh of relief: the part of me that doesn’t like to accumulate excess and create waste.
To create things that live outside the digital world, I need to acquire the supplies, shape them into the thing, and then discard or donate the unused part of the supplies. Sometimes, I can “reclaim” the supplies, like when I pick up driftwood on the beach, but then I still need to acquire the tools, like the woodburning iron, power drill, etc. I also need to find a place to store the newly created item or someone to give it away to. I sometimes sell things on Etsy, but then, I need to acquire the shipping supplies.
To create things that live in the digital world, I only need my laptop, electricity, and a bit of disk space. I can share things easily with others (without needing new disk space!), and if I’m done with them, I can delete things to reclaim that disk space. I can acquire “supplies” by a quick download, and easily delete supplies I no longer need.
Isn’t that great? It’s great! A way to use up my creative energy without excessive accumulation and waste! Phew!

This post is not a declaration that everybody should stop creating physical things, or even that I will stop creating physical things. This is also not a thorough analysis of the overall sustainability of a world of digital technology.
This post is simply an observation of a benefit of coding that I hadn’t truly appreciated before. Thank you, coding.☺

Sunday, May 7, 2017

My Morning Practice

(Spoiler alert: it’s not just meditation.)

The Setup: My Altar

The Prerequisite: Waking Up Early

Setting my Intention

Sitting Meditation

“Cleansing Breath”

Neck Stretches

“Bending in the Four Directions”

The Compassion Prayer

May all beings be free from suffering
May all beings be free from fear and anger
May all beings find peace and joy
May all beings have a mind at ease

Closing Gesture

Thursday, April 20, 2017

What is the difference between ambition and discontent?

I am honestly trying to figure this out right now.

“Ambition” is defined as “desire and determination to achieve success.”.

“Discontent” is defined as “dissatisfaction with one’s circumstances”.

Is it possible for one to desire to achieve success, if they are not dissatisfied with their circumstances?

Or, to bring this out of abstract realm and put my skin in the game: is it possible for me to desire to achieve success, without a dissatisfaction with my circumstances?

It seems theoretically possible. I could think “Well, things are alright right now and I’ll be content if they stay this way, but it’d probably be better if I was able to improve this thing, so I’ll try that out.”

Sometimes I do have that mindset. But after I put thingX on my TODO list and the fantasy of finishing thingX taunts me, my mindset soon turns to “Gosh, I just won’t be satisfied until I improve this thing! And look at all these other people and things taking up my time, preventing me from getting thingX done! I really really want to get it done!”

My preference for achievement turns into a desire, and that desire turns into an obsession, and that obsession turns into anxiety.

Why does preference turn into desire? Why can’t I avoid discontenment?

Let’s take a tangent into etymology land, to see what it yields.

The word “content” comes from Latin contentus, meaning “contained, satisfied”, as in “their desires are bound by what he or she already has.” Thus, the state of discontent is when your desires reach outside what you already have. You must achieve that thing outside of you in order to become content again, and hope that you can keep that thing inside your bounds.

The word “ambition” comes from Latin ambitionem, meaning “a going around”, as in the act of going around to solicit votes — “a striving for favor, courting, flattery; a desire for honor, thirst for popularity”. Apparently in its early uses, ambition was always used pejoratively, and the positive sense is only from modern times.

I must say, that was a very interesting detour. So much is contained within the etymology of those two words.

The original meaning of ambition is certainly one that’s bound to end in discontentment. If my desire to achieve things is literally to become popular, then the bounds of my desires are reaching far outside myself — to a possibly infinite extent. Once I’ve gained the favor of 100, why wouldn’t I want to gain the favor of 1,000? I cannot be content — I cannot be self-contained — if my desires depend on the votes of others.

But we could argue that the new meaning of ambition is a different one, and that you can have a desire to achieve success not because you personally need the good favor, but because you recognize a problem in the world and you see that you have the capabilities to fix it. That seems reasonable.

Now let’s go into a Buddhist critique (from an amateur).

Desire is suffering. Desire is a form of attachment. Attachments are dangerous because of how strongly they stick to the mind. They make it hard to see truth, they make it hard for the mind to be free and open to all the possibilities of the world, they constrain the limits of the self.

Desire can be contrasted with preference. You are attached to your desires, you are not attached to your preferences. If the world changes such that you can’t follow your preferences, you can just go with the flow.

What if ambition could be a “preference to achieve success”? What if I could prefer to achieve thingX, but not be bothered if it can’t happen for some reason? That does seem nice, as it’d mean never spiraling from desire to obsession to anxiety.

The risk to it is that, in actuality, I might be able to achieve thingX, but I let some other false belief get in the way of that achievement (like a subconscious belief that I’m not capable). If I am not driven by mad desire, then I may miss out on potential personal growth.

That means that I must be very honest with myself. I have to admit everything that affects my ability to achieve thingX, and question how real those obstacles are. I also have to admit when I no longer think it’s useful to achieve thingX. Finally, I have to admit when a preference has turned into a desire, and when that attachment has clouded my other admissions.

It sounds hard, especially when desire is the standard modus operandi. But I do think it may be possible, to cultivate a form of ambition that is compatible with a sense of contentment.

Thinking through this has been most helpful. Thank you for reading.

Monday, April 17, 2017

I stopped listening to music

…And I didn’t miss it.

I spent the fall on a 4-month retreat at a Buddhist institute in Berkeley. We did a lot during that retreat — meditating, Tibetan yoga, group discussions, work practice — but music wasn’t an integral part. The closest we came was our daily chanting and one workshop on mindful listening.

I wouldn’t actually notice the lack of music until I came back into the real world for visits each Sunday. Then, when a song came on, I would really hear it. I’d often find myself dancing or singing along to it. My body and mind found it such an entertaining novelty.

There were after-effects, though. Song lyrics would stick in my head and stay for days, pulsing through my head as soon as I woke up. My mind would try to understand the lyrics, to figure out what they meant for my life and how their values should be applied. I didn’t mind that for a few songs where the lyrics cohered with the rest of my life, but for many pop songs, that was very much not the case. Pop song lyrics are based on romantic fantasies, oversimplified idealized worlds that rarely exist. It doesn’t serve my mind well to hold my own life up to the expectations of pop song worlds.

I became more careful about what songs I exposed my mind to. When my partner made playlists for our housework, I asked him to prefer songs without lyrics. If I got cravings to dance, I put on beautiful instrumental music or simply danced without music.

Now that the retreat is over, songs are actually a big part of my life — but they are songs that I am singing to myself. They’re either made up songs, like lyrics about hungry cats set to the Muppets Blue Danube, or they’re songs from my childhood, like the entire Lion King soundtrack.

As it turns out, my mind already has enough songs to keep it entertained for this lifetime. I am certainly open to hearing new songs, but I will no longer go through effort to go out and find them.

If you’re curious about how music affects your mind, try spending two weeks without any or just two weeks with non-lyrical musical. Notice how your mind feels, and notice how it feels when you bring it back into your life.

Regardless of how your mind responds, it is an interesting experiment to try and you will learn something about your mind and music.

Enjoy the silence! :)

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Avoiding concept overload on the BART

Walk with wide angle vision

Journey to the land of no billboards

Catch the breeze of incoming trains

Play the consonant game with posters

Meditate the minutes away

What do you do?

Monday, April 3, 2017

Drying out my thought loops

They say that 90% of our thoughts are repetitive. Actually, I don’t know who “they” is, but I say that 90% of my thoughts are repetitive.

The first time I have a thought, it may be quite nice. It might be a new idea or a pleasant feeling of gratitude. It can also be not so nice, like regret over the way I’ve worded something or dread of some upcoming event.

Both of those kind of thoughts repeat, the pleasant and the unpleasant. For me, the idea thoughts are the most persistent. My brain simply adores figuring things out, and when there’s a new idea that’s not completely fleshed out, it desperately wants to fill in all the details. It will even write the code for a program in my head. And when there’s some aspect it can’t figure out, like for something beyond my current skills, it will go at it even harder. For days, weeks, months.

At first, the idea thoughts are pleasant. But as my brain hammers on them, they become tiring. Why won’t my mind let go of them?? I often imagine taking a (metaphorical) drill to my head and just emptying them out. I even painted that one day:

painting of drill to head

It’s hard for my brain to convince my brain not to figure things out. It’s been doing it for 30+ years now, it’s gotten quite good at it, and the skill has gotten it many places. In the competition to be the best neurons in my brain, the figure-it-out neurons have been winning for a long time.

But now I’m on to them. Now I’ve seen that they’ve taken control of my brain, and that they simply have too much control. I’ve got a plan. I’m drying them out. I can’t prevent the thoughts from starting up in my head, but I can prevent them from going on for many minutes. I can interrupt their flow.

My technique of choice: continuous chanting. It’s been a few months since I graduated from a 4 month Human Development Training retreat, and I’ve been chanting ever since, every day, all day, for as long as my roommates can take it. Sometimes that chanting turns into singing silly songs to myself; sometimes it turns into nonsense poetry. But the technique works just the same. You see, during that retreat, I discovered that my mind has multiple tracks. Even during continuous chanting, my mind can keep thoughts going on another track. But at least with chanting, those thoughts can’t go as far, since they don’t have as much time/space as before. There’s also increased awareness of how far they’ve gone, likely due to the cognitive overhead involved in keeping them going. Here, a technical diagram:

Some thought loops are very strong, trying to scream louder than the chant track. When that happens, it’s sometimes because a thought actually needs to be processed. I start with the most lightweight processing I can do, scribbling it on a piece of paper. If the thought still screams because it doesn’t think the paper’s good enough, I can write it down digitally. If it’s still persisting after that, then I talk over the thought with a friend. That’s often the first recourse in our society, but for me, it’s the last recourse, because talking things over can solidify thoughts more than necessary and it involves putting thoughts into other people’s heads, too.

There are other thought loops that don’t need processing; they just need a BIG interruption. These are my top 3 favorite ways of clearing my mind:

  • The Ursonate: A rhythmic nonsense poem. You can watch my favorite verse progression, or read my post about learning it.
  • Manjushri chant: A Tibetan mantra which can be chanted with an increasing tempo until it gets so fast that no thoughts can squeeze in. Usually a teacher leads it, but I also made a little web version for myself.
  • Kum Nye: A form of Tibetan Yoga with slow poses. Some of the poses bring up such intense bodily feelings that they clear my mind as well. You can learn Kum Nye from Nyingma Institute or a book.

To properly use my chant-the-thoughts-away techniques, I’ve found that I also need to avoid incompatible activities. Mostly, that means avoiding listening to music or watching concerts. I’ve found that I can’t chant while listening to someone else’s audio track, but I can still think (A LOT). Therefore, no music listening for me. That’s okay, I make my own!

Now you might be wondering: is it working? Are my thoughts drying out? Yes and no. I’m noticing much less unnecessary negative thoughts, like judgments about other people or about myself. I do still have many brainstorming thoughts, but they’re not as all-consuming as before.

I’ve noticed it’s particularly important that I employ these techniques after a happening, event or conversation. In the past, I’d often get in loops of rehashing and regret, which would turn an experience negative. Now, the experience is what it is, without one aspect of it being multiplied by my mind. It’s also important to dry thoughts out while I’m working on something I find difficult, as negative self-judgments can also easily multiply and get in the way of progress. It’s all about not letting the mind make a thought bigger than it needs to be, if it needs to be there at all.

My techniques are obviously very much inspired by having spent months on a Tibetan Buddhist retreat and experimenting with everything we learned there. But your mileage may vary. Also, your mind may work completely different from mine. Or you may not have any need for these techniques. Who knows? I do not know your mind. But I know mine much better now, and I’m going to try my best to retrain it.


martes, 17 de mayo de 2011

Employee Training: Essential Tool for HACCP and GMP Compliance

In a recent National Institute of Food and Agriculture survey, 65% of the establishments surveyed characterized training as very important, with highest interest in the areas of HACCP regulatory updates, cleaning and sanitation, detection and control of pathogens and Escherichia coli regulations. Reasons given for not having a training program included lack of time, lack of funds and lack of access to appropriate training resources. Higher overall knowledge scores were achieved by participants who recognized the importance of training, had computer access and participated in an ongoing training program at their plant.

According to the study perhaps the biggest challenge in SSOP compliance is managing employees, specifically communication and retention of required training materials. Finding the time and resources to provide successful and relevant employee training is challenging and time consuming. Also the importance of training for new employees is widely accepted and understood, but ongoing training for existing employees is a crucial task that is frequently overlooked

Changes in cleaning staff, raw materials, chemicals, seasons and many more variables impose challenges on any sanitation program and timely, reliable feedback on its effectiveness is vital. In order to obtain this feedback, enterprises should use different evaluation systems that go from simple writing test, to monitoring softwares that can measure if there`s any organic material on a surface which would indicate problems in the cleaning process.

Aporte: Alejandra Avendaño

1 comentario:

Thomas Klinger dijo...

HACCP training


Dolphins may have a spoken language, new research suggests

Rare dolphin birth caught on camera
Rare dolphin birth caught on camera

    Rare dolphin birth caught on camera

Rare dolphin birth caught on camera 01:13

Story highlights

  • Dolphins may communicate in different pulses which resemble words and sentences
  • But scientist says more, open-water testing will be needed to confirm dolphin language

(CNN)A conversation between dolphins may have been recorded by scientists for the first time, a Russian researcher claims.

Two adult Black Sea bottlenose dolphins, named Yasha and Yana, didn't interrupt each other during an interaction taped by scientists and may have formed words and sentences with a series of pulses, Vyacheslav Ryabov says in a new paper.
    "The (pulse) exchanges reminds us of an exchange with sentences between two people," Ryabov told CNN.
    "I think it's very early days to be drawing conclusions that the dolphins are using signals in a kind of language context, similar to humans," he told CNN.

    'A highly developed spoken language'?

     Bottlenose dolphins leap off the Southern California coast.
    Using new recording techniques, Ryabov separated the individual "non coherent pulses" the two dolphins made and theorized each pulse was a word in the dolphins' language, while a collection of pulses is a sentence.
    "Dolphins are producing these packs of pulses without interrupting each other which let's us suggest that each of the dolphins listen to one another before it starts its own pack of pulses," he told CNN.
    In his paper, published in the St. Petersburg Polytechnical University Journal: Physics and Mathematics last month, Ryabov said the pulses could be considered a highly developed spoken language.
    He called for humans to create a device by which people could communicate with dolphins.
    Russian military looks to recruit dolphins
    russia recruits dophins pkg asher_00013613

      Russian military looks to recruit dolphins

    Russian military looks to recruit dolphins 01:46
    "Humans must take the first step to establish relationships with the first intelligent inhabitants of the planet Earth by creating devices capable of overcoming the barriers that stand in the way of ... communications between dolphins and people," he said.
    "If we boil it down we pretty much have two animals in an artificial environment where reverberations are a problem ... It wouldn't make much sense for animals (in a small area) to make sounds over each other because they wouldn't get much (sonar) information," he said.
    "It would be nice to see a variety of alternate explanations to this rather than the one they're settling on."


San Juan, Ibiza

Hotels in San Juan: Casa Naya

Hotels in San Juan: This hotel offers guests a relaxing holiday at the heart of Ibiza island, surrounded by nature, peace and quiet and great views. It is set in a rural area, close to dining options and the most enchanting beaches in Ibiza, the hippy markets and the nightclubs. Balafia, where guests will find the nearest restaurants, is 2 km away and it is 4 km to the centre of San Juan, 6 km to Benirra/Xarraca and 8 km to the tourist centre of Portinatx. The Cuevas can Marça are also 8 km away and it is 10 km to the Cuevas d'Es Cuieram. Ibiza Airport is 22 km away. This country house hotel comprises a total of 10 rooms including 2 suites and 2 junior suites. Facilities on offer to guests include a lobby area with a 24-hour reception and check-out service, a hotel safe, a currency exchange facility, a games room, communal areas and a TV lounge with satellite TV and digital satellite channels. The younger guests can let off steam in the children's playground and there is a taxi service, car hire, breakfasts and home-cooked meals for groups, as well as emergency and medical services. There is a wine cellar with a fireplace, conference facilities including a meeting room, WLAN Internet access throughout the hotel and a restaurant serving breakfast and lunch. Guests can also take advantage of the laundry service and there is parking for those arriving by car. It is also possible to hire bicycles on the premises. The comfortable rooms and suites all come with a private bathroom with a shower/bathtub and a hairdryer and offer a king-size or double bed. They are equipped with a telephone, satellite TV, a radio, Internet access and a safe. They have a small kitchen with a minibar, a fridge, a microwave and tea and coffee making facilities. Furthermore, individually regulated hot and cold air conditioning is provided in all accommodation as standard and all feature either a terrace or a balcony.

Areas of Ibiza


Skinks are reptiles that appear in The Lion Guard universe. They live in the Pride Lands.

Striped skinks are bronze and yellow. Fire skinks have bright colors of red, gold and black. Males are bulkier while females have flatter heads and wider jaws.

Skinks are reclusive lizards that can be found in forests and grasslands. They have a habit of burrowing underground to avoid both predators and prey. Skinks feed on a variety of insects such as crickets that make up most of their diet. They also have the ability to detach their tails to distract predators in order to escape and then regenerate them within a few months.

Notable Skinks in The Lion Guard

Ad blocker interference detected!


The Technology Test is a level in Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. It has no connection to the game's single player campaign nor a deathmatch level.

Serious Sam is warped into a large, outdoor area with a temple on each side and is only armed with a Military Knife and Schofield .45. The design of the temples depends on the game the Technology Test is in. In The First Encounter, it is Egypt-themed, while The Second Encounter version is Mayan-themed. Each temple has different special effects to test if the player's computer can run them. The temples are surrounded by either a never-ending desert or grass field, depending on the game it is in.

The left temple leads to the Temple of Models, which shows off diffuse shading, specular shading, environmental mapping, bump mapping, translucency and transparency, multiply and add blending, particles and various models in fog. The rendering techniques are shown via a Utah Teapot, a model often used to test various rendering techniques.

The right temple leads to the Temple of Effects, which shows off the rendering effects basic texturing, texture layers and blending mode, mirrors and reflective surfaces, portals, haze, volumetic fog, procedural textures, lens flare and animating lights.

There are no weapons, enemies, nor exit in the level, since this level is meant to test out various effects in a safe environment.

  • This level first appeared in Test 1, where it was used for Croteam to test special effects on various computers.

Ad blocker interference detected!


How FG can salvage Naira – Johnson Chukwu

“The Federal Government should seek a $10billion currency support line from its trading partners; set a limit for the falling Naira,  fix infrastructure and pursue the diversification drive with vigour”.
These are the pieces of advice by a cross-section of Nigerians on how best to salvage the Naira, whose worth continues to fall like a heavy Lead at the black market.For instance, as at yesterday, it was quoted at N455 to the dollar on the black market. Even last month,the currency was sold at N495 per dollar. “From a technical standpoint, the Naira is heavily bearish and this negative momentum could open a path towards 500 and potential higher against the Dollar on the black market exchange”, says Lukman Otunuga, a Research Analyst with Forex Time (FXTM) on an online investment note.
But how can the nation reverse this trend?
Mr. Johnson Chukwu, the Managing Director of Cowry Assets Management Limited, advised the Federal Government to seek bilateral or multilateral loans to buffer the currency since the CBN can not do so.
His words: “The only thing government can do is to enter into agreement with a multilateral financial agency or a bilateral financial agreement with one of our trading partners to provide financial support, budget support or currency support line of a minimum of $10billion to the government through central bank so that the government will be in a position to meet legitimate demand for forex. The key thing is that confidence has been punctured. Investors , both local and international, complain that we dont have the reserves to meet all the maturing obligations or all our obligations. So they are not bringing in their money. If we want  that change, we need to get a currency or budget support line that is huge enough, that is large enough to ensure that we, as a country, can meet all foreign currency obligations as they are unfolding.As of today, CBN can no longer convince both international and local investors, that it has the muscle to do that. So it has to leverage on entities such as  multilateral financial agencies like the World Bank, the IMF,bilateral partners like China or any of them to give the investing public that confidence that the country have the resources  to meet all its obligations.”
He, however, warns: “If the situation persists, the contracting economy will accelerate, so you are going to have a high level contraction.If we do not stop the deterioration in the exchange rate because most companies can no longer afford to bring in their raw materials and equipment they need for manufacturing purpose.The cost of consumables is going to adjust upward to the level that  majority of Nigerians can no longer afford to buy basic necessities of life.”
Professor Garba Sheka, Professor of Economics at Bayero University, Kano, advised that Nigerians should shun patronage of foreign goods in order to conserve the scarce forex.
In Good Morning Nigeria, an NTA programme, the universituy don also urged  that diversification should be pursued vigorously.
His words: “There should be vigorous campaign to enlighten Nigerians to start patronising goods made in Nigeria. That will reduce our import dependence significantly.
“Again, we  should set a target. We should not allow the currency to float like that.The CBN should have a target like the US and other countries have. W e should not allow the market forces to determine the currency rate completely. We should also reject completely or drop the idea of selling the national assets in order to support the economy. I dont think that is a very good advice .It is a very wrong advice, and I think government would not take that.
“To boost the value of the Naira is a question of diversifying the economy. Of course, diversification requires huge amount of money to put the infrastructure in place.Then to come up with good policies so that prices of our manufactured goods and other goods can be competitive in the world market.
As for Professor Olanrewaju Olaniyan of Economics Departmnet of the University of Ibadan,the monetary authority should close the exchange rates gap between the official and black market.
“Once you have the gap between the official rate and black market rate at that large,which is close to 35 per cent of the value, then it gives opportunity for arbitrage.”
People understand that they can make profit by just buying that particular currency, holding for some time and sell it.So the solution to that is that we need to close that gap. Unfortunately, the ability of policies to close that gap is also limited during the structure that we have now. The economy is stagnant and there is high inflation.So both policies have to be worked out very carefully and  keenly for us to be able to reduce that.It will not be in the interest of the economy to go extremely floating it now because at the rate at which the Naira is going, if we completely float it, the Naira will soon hit something like N800 to N900 per dollar. But even when the CBN can not afford to float and still peg, you still require your reserves as a background so that it can hold forte for you. One thing we need to do is to find a way of shoring up that our reserves in such a way that we can do that. Those are the quick things that I know that we can do now, but the longer ones are to diversify; increase agric output. But agric output essentially has problem in the sense that the farmers are extremely poor, and they are not poor because they are not producing. They are poor because the farm produce aggregate prices are extremely low.There would still be need at a point in time for government to assure farmers that they will get value for their efforts.
Diversification is key in the longer terms.And for us to diversify into manufacturing that can give us these foreign currencies, our infrastructure has to be improved.In the last couple of years, we have seen some improvement.This improvement must translate into the perception of the manufacturers .


Fullsix Sale

Sekri Valentin Zerrouk advises Motion Equity Partner on the sale of Fullsix, an independent group in communication and digital marketing, to Havas.

Sekri Valentin Zerrouk’s tax, employment, and corporate teams were involved in the drafting of the Vendor Due Diligence report. The M&A team has been retained to negotiate several letters of intent with potential buyers and to assist in the negotiation of the contractual agreements required to carry out the transaction, such as the share purchase agreement and shareholder’s agreement.


Question: A firm has a task to carry out that involves

A firm has a task to carry out that involves opportunities to shirk with little probability of detection. If it can hire a non-shirking employee for this task, it will make a lot of money. Its strategy for finding a non-shirker is to pay a very low wage at first, then increase the wage gradually each year so that, by the time the worker has been with the firm for 10 years, he will be earning more than he could elsewhere. The present value of the wage premiums in the later years is larger than the present value of the shortfall in the early years.
a. Explain how this strategy helps to attract a non-shirking employee. Would the same strategy work if the probability of detecting shirking were zero?
b. Explain why the ability of the firm to implement this strategy might depend to an extent on its own reputation in the labor market.

View Solution:

Sale on SolutionInn
  • CreatedDecember 12, 2014
  • Files Included
Post your question