Wednesday, November 1, 2017

A wishful Thinking that never materialized

During the tumultuous years (2011 – 2015) that rocked the system of governance in Egypt, everyone that wished for that country to go the way of the Levant, came out and published a modern version of the Old Testament's account describing the plagues that the Jews fantasized had afflicted Egypt thousands of years ago. Call these people the professional haters of Egypt because they get paid to express hatred for that country.

They were the crowds that wished to see an Egyptian religious war like the one that nearly destroyed Lebanon, but this did not happen in Egypt. And so they wished to see a civil war like the one that nearly destroyed Iraq, but this did not happen in Egypt. And so they wished to see jihadists from all over the world pour into Egypt, and do to it what they did to Syria, but this did not happen in Egypt. By now the professional haters had proved themselves to be more than just haters; they began to look like certifiable sickos as well.

And so, these highly paid sickos––who get a higher pay the sicker the prediction they make––started to make predictions that got sicker with every new presentation they made to the public. But, having failed to make a single correct prediction in any of the fields they tackled, they were compelled to fall back on their default position. And so, they predicted the imminent economic ruin of Egypt. Poor buggers! The economy being the area of discussion in which all the ignorant charlatans buried themselves, it was the area where the professional haters of Egypt dug a big hole in the ground and lodged themselves in it.

What they did wrong was that seeing the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) deplete its reserves of foreign currency to stabilize an Egyptian Pound that was losing exchange value while remaining stable relative to the local economy, the sickos predicted that once the CBE reserves got down to zero, the country will not have the money to buy wheat from abroad. And so they predicted that there will be mass starvation in the country and all that follows as a result. What the ignoramuses did not know was that very little of the foreign currency was leaving the country. In fact, most of it was shifting hands, going from the CBE to the local dealers and into private accounts at the commercial banks … which is why the reserves at the Central Bank never fell below 15 billion dollars or three months worth of imports.

In addition, when you consider that Egypt buys wheat worth less than a billion dollars a year, and that sixty billion dollars continued to come into the country every year, you can see how foolish it was for the professional haters to make the predictions that they did. Still, the CBE knew it must at some point devalue the Pound, and the question was: When would be the best time to do so? A big debate followed in the country, and the CBE eventually made the move. Less than a year later, the result had been that an avalanche of reports came out the IMF, the World Bank and the international investment houses, all of which expressed absolute bullishness about the Egyptian economy. And the big investors started to move big moneys in Egypt's direction.

Even Bloomberg News could not maintain radio silence about what's going on with regard to the Egyptian economy, thus came up with an article under the title: “IMF Official Says Egypt's Economy Is Seeing Broad-Based Growth,” published on October 31, 2017. It says the following:

Egypt's economic growth is driven by a 'broad-based' recovery across industries … GDP expanded at the rate of 4.6% in the first half of 2017, the fastest pace in 7 years, to the surprise of some economists who predicted slower growth. The IMF expects the economy to grow 4.5% in 2018 … The reemergence of growth is broad-based; various sectors are benefiting from it including export and tourism … Non-oil exports and tourism grew about 16% in the fiscal year that ended June 30”.

Faced with an avalanche of good news about Egypt, what do you think the buggers who get paid fantastic sums to edit the Washington Post, did to fill the publication with hate fantasies about an Egypt they still want their readers to believe is about to descend into hell? The answer is that they searched for and bought articles that attack the country such as the one they published under the title: “How a state of emergency became Egypt's new normal,” written by Nathan J. Brown and Mai El-Sadany, and published on October 30, 2017.

Here is the gist of the article: “For the first time in six months, Egyptians lived for a few days outside of a state of emergency … But what may have seemed to be victories for the people were actually triumphs for the security state.” And the authors want their readers to believe that the people of Egypt know what that is, feeling – not victories – but the pain of a government that gives them jobs, jobs, jobs after 6 years of dearth, and gives them more security than they need.

Well, I throw a challenge at the editors of the Washington Post. I promise to write them a love poem and post it on my blog if they can prove that at least one in a thousand ordinary Americans knows what the Emolument Clause is about. And that for every thousand Americans that give the correct answer, there is at least one ordinary Egyptian that can tell what the editors of the Post believe is bad about Egypt's emergency law.