Who will Hold the US to Account? Why Banks Collapse "Suddenly". Could a Kitchen Cabinet be Responsible for our Woes?

What does the US want?

The US has in the past led the path of racial discrimination,

this was crystallized in the election of their current President Donald

Trump. The recent remarks by John Bolton to the effect that if the International

Criminal Court tries as much as to question any US citizen regarding atrocities

in Afghanistan or elsewhere, they will attack the Court with all their might.

This is not the first time these remarks have been made. It is time we believed them.

The US is not willing to be held responsible by humanity. They do not care whether their

 mistakes make others suffer or not.

Afghanistan is hotter than they found it. So is Egypt and Libya. Syria is not promising

anything better than a catastrophe. So who will hold the US to account?

It is also noteworthy that climate change issues have also received hostile

consideration from US and China. Humanity will never benefit from economic

growth that strips away human dignity.

John Bolton, National Security Advisor to President Trump / CNBC

Central Bank of Kenya fines banks that handled stolen public cash…

Here lies the reason why some banks have “suddenly” collapsed in the recent

past. Flouting of rules injures public interest and weakens the overall stability of any

bank. You just do not know what other rule has been skipped. However, this it self

puts the CBK at a very awkward place. Commercial banks are to be supervised by CBK

at all times. In a recent report on bank supervision, very mundane items were carried in

 the report. These included things like customer numbers, profits made as well as number

of branches. Supervision ought to be leaning towards consumer protection. For this

reason it would have been useful if compliance to guidelines and good practices were

given higher priority in the report. The Communication Authority of Kenya does a good job

whenever it audits telecoms. Their report never misses quality of service delivered over a

period under review. Our banks will not be clean until the managers responsible get

 punished for conspiring to commit crimes. I hope that the specific banks have already

 instituted internal disciplinary actions on the staff directly responsible. But wait,

this may not happen in the obvious clear way. There could be some scapegoating.

 The banking sector is always highly interlinked with the political class.

It is unwise to blame CS for Treasury…

From whichever way you look at him, Kenya’s treasury secretary Henry Rotich looks like 

modest man in every way. The way he talks and overall countenance, to his utterances in the 

past. Heading the treasury is no mean task. Men have been known to grow thinner while in

 that docket. The Kenyan treasury has evolved substantially over the last decade considering

 the last budget delivered was about Ksh.3 Trillion. Mr. Rotich is busy trying to fix the problem 

resulting from over borrowing.

       The Public debt has grown almost four fold since President Kenyatta came to office in 2013.

 The country is struggling with cash flow issues since the investments secured by the borrowing

are yet to break even. The borrowing has continued to happen without much public participation,

 and there is suspicion that perhaps some of the borrowing was used for recurrent expenditure.

Even now there could be a serious need to cater for urgent government expenditure and if no 

revenues are available, that’s what crisis is. To pour water on this, the additional taxation on

 petroleum products has been introduced. This has caused uproar from the citizens. There is 

no indication that the government will let go. There is no guarantee that the tax will lead to more

 revenue either.

    The treasury as well as the CBK has a host of top professionals who should always be trusted 

with steering the economy. Now, it is not unusual for the political leaders to ignore the invaluable 

input from smart men and women working in government. A case in point- Tourism secretary

 Najib Balala recently ignored advice from wildlife specialists regarding translocation of rhinos.

 The whole lot of  the animals died in the Tsavo as a result. Mr. Balala has not received any 

punishment. For this reason, Mr. Rotich may be suffering blame for a crisis which he did 

not author. Our huge debt may be attributed to Jubilee’s kitchen cabinet, which no one talks about.

    Portion of the blame goes to our sleepy parliament that has been lax on its core mandate

of actively over sighting the executive. Legislators cannot evade blame for they are the ones

that permits the executive to tax the citizen. For the last five years they have approved budgets

with huge holes which were to be filled through debt.  Alex Kosgey, an MP, has proposed

a bill that will halt public debt at six trillion. This ought to have happened earlier.

Worse still, it is unclear how he arrived at the six trillion mark.

Perhaps this bill ought to be designed to shut the lid on borrowing right now.

This will enable government to look inwards for expenditure cutting avenues.

Finance Secretary Henry Rotich reading a Budget statement / Twitter