WORLDWIDE - NASA has confirmed that the Earth will experience 6 days of
almost complete darkness and will happen from the dates Tuesday the 16 –
Monday the 22 in December. The world will remain, during these three
days, without sunlight due to a solar storm, which will cause dust and
space debris to become plentiful and thus, block 90% sunlight.
This
is the head of NASA Charles Bolden who made the announcement and asked
everyone to remain calm. This will be the product of a solar storm, the
largest in the last 250 years for a period of 216 hours total. Reporters
interviewed a few people to hear what they had to say about the
situation with Michael Hearns responding “We gonna be purgin my n*gga,
six days of darkness means six days of turnin up fam”.
Despite
the six days of darkness soon to come, officials say that the earth will
not experience any major problems, since six days of darkness is
nowhere near enough to cause major damage to anything. “We will solely
rely on artificial lig
In April 2014, the National Pension Commission,
PenCom, announced that the pension assets has hit 4.3 Trillion Naira, and also
stated that the operators in the scheme has 20 PFAs, 4PFCs, 7CPFAs, 19AES,and
morerecently the Police Pension Fund.
The astronomical increase in pension assets at the
point of writing this article may far in be excess of 4.7 Trillion, may have
been necessitated by the strict oversight functions of PenCom, the body vested
by the provisions of the Pension Reform Act as being responsible for the
supervision and control of the Pension Fund Administrators, Pension Fund
Custodians and other relevant players in the scheme.
The recent amendment of the 2004 Pension Reform
Act, which resulted in its repeal and the subsequent provisions of the Pension
Reform Act 2014 will positively consolidate more on the pension assets as the
relevant portions of the law has increased the coverage to states, local
governments, and employers with minimum of three employees.
What these portends is that of sustainability , a
market deepening and expansion which will definitely results in Larger pension
assets. But market deepening and expansion has its problemswhich includes handling the issue of customer
service delivery and incidence of high technological cost.
Technology is a paramount necessity in all spheres
of business life and pension cannot be an exception, linked to technology is
the issue of customer service delivery as the market deepening will come with
it, a larger customer base waiting to be serviced on a regular bases.
But far from these, the increase in Pension Assets
will definitely results in large investible funds for the real sector and
infrastructure, but the idea of investing in real sector and infrastructure
comes with ita myriad of problems like
corruption, inflation of contracts, kick back just to mention a few, what then
do we doas corruption or fraudulent
practices may results in the retiree not able to access his funds at the point
of retirement.
A man walks past the London Stock Exchange in the City of London October 11, 2013.
LONDON
(Reuters) - European stocks, low-rated government bonds and the single
currency all rose on Monday as financial markets gave a tentative
thumbs-up to euro zone bank health checks.
Fewer
than one in five of the bloc's top lenders failed the tests at the end
of last year and many have since repaired their finances, results
released on Sunday showed.
The bloc's banking index rose 1 pct
(.SX7E) in early trading, powering a 0.5 pct rise in the index of top
European shares (.FTEU3). The euro nudged higher but was contained by
key German data due out at 5:00 a.m. EDT (.FRX).
Italian
and Spanish bond yields -- the bellwether for the euro zone's southern
periphery -- opened down 5 bps even though nine Italian banks fell short
in the tests, with two still needing to raise funds.
"There's
some relief this morning that there were no Spanish banks in the test
that failed. As for Italy -- that was already priced in," said Emile
Cardon, market economist at Rabobank.
While
the stress tests were slightly better than markets had expected, they
serve as a reminder that much work remains. The euro zone banking
sector's long-term attractiveness has been damaged by revelations of
extra non-performing loans and hidden losses that will dent future
profits.
"Banks
face a significant challenge as the sector remains chronically
unprofitable and must address their 879 billion euro exposure to
non-performing loans as this will tie-up significant amounts of
capital," accountancy firm KPMG noted.
Asian
equities also rose on Monday, propped up by the ECB's test results and
buoyant U.S. and British data on Friday which allayed some fears the
global economy is deteriorating.
The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan closed up 0.1 percent.
Data
on Friday showed new U.S. home sales rose to a six-year high, while
Britain's economy expanded 0.7 percent in the third quarter, still on
track to outpace other advanced economies.
Elsewhere,
Brazilian markets looked set to open with big losses after incumbent
President Dilma Rousseff won the election, beating her pro-market
opponent by a narrow percent majority.
Next
Funds' Tokyo-listed Ibovespa exchange traded fund (ETF), which tracks
Brazil's equity index, dropped almost 7 percent to seven month lows.
(1325.T)
Russian stocks
rebounded 1.4 percent (.IRTS) (.MCX) after Standard & Poor's kept
the country's sovereign credit rating steady at one notch above junk,
despite fears of a downgrade.
The
rouble was flat and just off record lows against the dollar following
central bank interventions and a 35 kopeck widening in the rouble's
trading band on Friday. (RUB=)
Among
commodities, Brent crude extended losses, falling 13 cents to $86.00 a
barrel (LCOc1), after Goldman Sachs cut its price forecasts. Crude
continued on a months-long rout as signs of rising global supply
threatened deeper losses. [O/R]
Iraq increased its oil supply in October and Libya's output remains high, despite instability in both countries.
Gold edged lower as robust equity markets and strong U.S. economic data dented demand for the precious metal. [GOL/]
Spot gold (XAU=) edged down to $1,228.90 an ounce.
(Additional reporting by Sujata Rao and Marius Zaharia; Editing by Catherine Evans)
