Running with the Giants - Sermon by John C. Maxwell

To start the diatribe, there was a devil in the Garden of Eden in the form of a snake that could talk. This follows that before the fall of man, there was the fall of Satan which followed a tussle in heaven that banished Lucifer to the depths of the earth. Was it earth or the universe? If it is planet earth does it mean that there is no Satan in Mars or at the moon? The fact that Lucifer contemplated evil while in heaven implies that all was not perfect in heaven.

Evil and sin were not created at the Garden of Eden, they already existed, in an imperfect creation and existence. Maybe at the point of eating the forbidden fruit, sin entered the Adamic race. Maybe it was already woven into the genetic code of man. Adam and Eve could contemplate defying God and believing Satan even before the bite, some rebellious imperfection.

I doubt if Adam was a perfect jamaa before the forbidden fruit. He felt lonely (incomplete?), before Eve could be hived out of his ribs. He had to be put to sleep before that operation could take place. So what will happen if the human race is restored in heaven at the end of times? Will it all be perfect with an alter ego agonizing in hell?

The earth itself had been created and destroyed several times before Adam was settled here. Most likely there were earlier versions of Adam in those creations that got destroyed as well. This can be attested by the various stars explosions that are witnessed by astronomers across the universe with our now advanced astronomical equipments.

It is just a matter of time before planet earth among other planets and its habitation are sucked into a black hole of an exploding star and give way to a new imperfect civilization. Imperfection is destroyed giving way to new imperfections in a continuity of imperfections. Maybe perfection is relative or does not exist.

Where will you be? Most likely I will be around, watching.

Was he pushed out or has he become incompetent in a bear market? Maybe he was just a stooge of former chairman Jimnah Mbaru, of Dyer and Blair, and this is a positional realignment paving way for a sympathizer of the new chairman, James Wangunyu of Standard Investment Bank.

This comes a day after Cooperative Bank announced that its preliminary IPO results that showed that there was a 70% subscription rate. This is the first failed IPO, that is, undersubscribed since 2005 Kengen debut. Calls to push this IPO to 2009 when a possible market recovery is expected were ignored by the lead transaction adviser, Dyer and Blair.

With the deteriorating global market conditions, fall of brokerage firms and the aftermath of the Safaricom IPO the NSE is yet to recover from gloom. For the once vibrant stock exchange, the fraudulent dealings by the brokers and price manipulations do not augur well for stock investors either. In a period of less than five months the NSE 20 share index, the barometer of share price movements, has dropped from over 5,000 points to the 3,000 range.

I have a feeling Kenya has not yet felt the heat of the global economic collapse and one wonders what will happen to the stock exchange and the Kenya economy at large when it does.

The CMA has overseen the collapse of Francis Thuo, Nyaga Stockbrokers and near-collapse of Discount Securities and I wonder if the Capital Markets Authority is the body to oversee Kenya's financial markets. I think it should be disbanded and the oversight role be given to the Central Bank of Kenya which is more versatile in regulation enforcement and fraud monitoring and investigations.

This is the best time to overhaul market regulations when the interest is diminishing and there is low transaction volume such that when there will be a boom, the market will be more efficient.

Update November 20 2008
Peter Mwangi, former Centum (formerly ICDCI) CEO is the new Nairobi Stock Exchange CEO.
Business as usual!