Speaking Personally
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Prerna Mankad who blogs at Foreign Policy's Passport ask the question "Would you invest in Iraq's stock exchange?" There are several interesting photographs of the exchange by SABAH ARAR. The pictures illustrate a crowded manual bourse where clerks write transactions on big whiteboards. No computers. No screens. Its a reasonable way to handle trading in "over eighty" companies. Traders crowed together in a room the size of a hotel ballroom seems crazy in a bomb ridden society like Iraq but its located in a "new sandstone building in southeast Baghdad" which implies, at least to me, as secure a location possible.
Wikipedia has an article which mentions that in 2005 over 100 stocks were listed. Without specific local knowledge its hard to guess what the decrease in listed stocks means.
Now for the back story. Baghdad had an exchange under Saddam Hussein. It was located in a large room about the size of a hotel ballroom. Transactions were posted manually on blackboards. In 2002-2003 during seven months before the US invasion the Baghdad Stock Exchange was up 50%.
So what happened to the Baghdad Exchange? "The exchange was gutted by looters after the war. The first wave of American economic reconstruction specialists from the Treasury Department ignored it. They had bigger issues to worry about: paying salaries, reopening the banks, stabilizing the currency. But the brokers wanted to get back to work and investors wanted their money, so the CPA made the reopening a priority."
Jay Hallen was appointed by Thomas C. Foley of the CPA as "the main point of contact" in reopening the Baghdad exchange.
Somehow Hallen arrived at the conclusion that the old manual model was hopeless and he envisioned a bright new American model with computer networks and screens. The plan rolled on and gathered new details. It became mired in the slow process of writing new laws and regulations for financial institutions again modeled on the best American practices.
Finally in the spring of 2004 regulations governing the exchange were signed by Paul Bremmer.
Out and About on the Net
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Science Foo Camp - Friday ... A happy tribe of geeks at play in the fields of the lord.
Krazy Kar Kaper! -- Josh Root replaces a Subaru after 10 years and almost 200k miles.
Chapter 16: Chris Dodd Draws Cheers for a Murdoch-O'Reilly Double Slam -- Video from KOS annual convention
From Defense Secretary Robert Gates' interview on "Meet the Press" this morning: have confidence in Ambassador Crocker and Gen. Petraeus...and maybe President Bush and the tooth fairy?
Henry Kissinger’s Lessons for George W. Bush -- more which suggest Iran cast for the Communist China roll in a replay of the Paris Peace Accord talks
et alli is cross posted at The Intelligence Forum
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