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Codexa Capital: Access to Global Capital  

Posts Tagged ‘opportunities’

Tartar Cameleer: Georgia as an East-West Trade Bridge

by Douglas Clark Johnson

25 January 2010

The visitor to the nation of Georgia continually encounters images by Niko Pirosmanashvili (1862-1918), known as Pirosmani and considered a master of naïve painting. His portraits of Georgians enjoying daily life a century ago—peasants, fishermen, musicians, even millionaires—pop up everywhere as restaurant murals and tourist mementos. And even occasionally as the original artwork.

Niko Pirosmanashvilli's painting The Cameleer

It is noteworthy, then, that Pirsomani’s sense of the ordinary extended to a man in oriental costume holding the tether of a Bactrian camel. Tartar Cameleer evokes the Silk Road, suggesting that the commonplace extended to caravans passing through Tiflis (now Tbilisi). In view of the painting’s 1914 date, the cameleer image may have been nostalgic, but it is a vivid, if rustic, indication of Georgia’s longstanding role as trade junction between Central Asia and Europe.

From the perspective of global investment strategy, Pirosmani’s portrait of the camel driver conveys the cosmopolitan nature of the Georgian economy. His worldview prevails into the present day as Georgia looks both East and West to affirm its progressive identity.
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Calcutta Madrassah: Portfolio Management in a Post-Crisis World

by Douglas Clark Johnson

16 October 2009

Calcutta Madrassah CollegeKolkata is a proud multi-cultural city, a fulcrum of the Indian intellectual tradition. Its personalities have included Subhash Chandra Bose, a freedom fighter, Rabindranath Tagore, a Nobel Prize-winning poet, and Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu spiritual leader. For legacy reasons, the National Library of India is housed here, not in New Delhi. It is also home to the Calcutta Madrassah, the oldest educational institution in the city.

The Calcutta Madrassah is a proud building, sensibly designed. It opened in 1824 off Haji Mahammad Mohsin Square, some 50 years after the founding of the original Islamic college. On approach through the compact urban turmoil surrounding it, the building looks like some sort of Alexandrine temple complex. Overpowering Doric columns flanking the main entrance direct you inward, where two floors of classrooms surround a courtyard. At the far end of this attempt at a grassy space, there is a lone water hand-pump. Despite its somewhat topsy-turvy condition, the Calcutta Madrassah is a haven of peace in the tightly-knit urban landscape.

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Cave Dwelling in Malaysia: Reflections on the Credit Crisis

by Douglas Clark Johnson

11 June 2009

"Why would you want to climb all those steps?"

After some 15 years of travelling in and out of Kuala Lumpur, I finally had a chance to visit nearby Bukit Batu and its famous caves. My Malaysian colleagues had little interest in joining me: “Why would you want to climb all those steps?” A visitor does indeed navigate 272 of them to reach the principal cave; fortunately, they are divided into groups
of 17.

“Bukit Batu” means “Stone Hill” in Malay. This limestone outcrop is best known for a labyrinthine complex of some 18 caves. Of the few open to the public, the best known is the enormous Temple Cave. The complex was discovered by Europeans in 1878 and was heavily quarried until the 1970s, when the government began to protect it for tourism.

The half-day trip to the Batu Caves offered some reminders of our own global investment strategy. Metaphorically, we see themes in geology, archaeology, and ecology. These may be worth exploring as we look deeper into 2009 and a probable economic recovery in 2010. …continue reading

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China: Alone in Its Confidence

by Douglas Clark Johnson

05 February 2009

In an inaugural week, you would expect the international news weeklies to carry a cover story on the incoming US president. Time ran a feature on President Obama entitled, “Great Expectations.” The Economist did the same, but called it, “Renewing America.” Newsweek? Well, their editorial board decided to publish a special issue, labeled “Why China Works.”

Maybe that says two things: that the world does not revolve around Washington and that the global economy may be a bigger issue than who is in the White House. The subhead to the Newsweek cover story certainly had a sobering message for many US-focused economists: “Inside the command-capitalism model that will outrun all rivals.”

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