So let me introduce Dr. Hanan Maasi to you. So I'm very delighted to introduce her to our first keynote lecture to speak on Classical Finance in Africa. Dr. Maasi joins us virtually from the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, which is attending currently. Dr. Maasi is the Deputy Secretary and Chief Economist of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, ECA, in short. Dr. Maasi has a wealth of cross-country experience and vast expertise in leading top-quality policy and development work and building strong partnerships working in international organizations and the private sector. She has published in a wide range of economic and development issues and led a number of major flagship publications. Prior to joining ECA, Dr. Maasi was the Director of the Micropromic Policy and Research Department at the African Development Bank between 2018 and 2021, where she provided thought leadership on economic issues and oversaw the production of rigorous analytical work that's trained in the bank's policy dialogue and operations across its member countries. And before that, she previously worked as associate director and lead economist with the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean region at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, EBRD, in short, in London between 2012 and 2018. In that role, she established and headed economic analysis and policy advisory services for the new region of operation and continuations and del country strategies. Prior to that, Dr. Maasi worked at the International Monetary Fund between 2003 and 2012 in various capacities across different departments, including fiscal affairs, Middle Eastern Central Asia, European and monetary capital markets, where she led and contributed to work on accentuate assessments, fiscal vulnerability, financial, and macro-prudential policies. I'm delighted to welcome Dr. Anand Maasi to provide the first keynote lecture. And she's going to join us virtually. Dr. Maasi, over to you. Good morning. And thank you very much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be with you today. And apologies for not being able to be with you in Oslo because I'm participating in Africa Climate Summit. And I think the topic that we're discussing today fits very well with the number of discussions that we've been having here and a number of African high-level summits and conferences. I will focus today on issues of how to scale up domestic resource mobilization and rethinking approaches to this in Africa. Tax revenue in Africa has remained largely below beers since 2000. And you can see in the charts how Africa resource mobilization have compared relative to South Africa, to Latin America. And basically, it has been rather stagnant since early 2000s. And African tax revenue even compared to beers by income level, not just by regions, have shown limited progress. And really, among the regions, if we look at among the grouping by income countries, we see that if we look at it rebased by 2000, it's the only region where actually it has experienced significant decline compared to 2000 tax revenue levels. Meanwhile, I think what is complicating the situation is while we've been seeing a kind of erosion and decline in the domestic revenue mobilization, at the same time, the global financing scene is actually making the situation even more difficult for meeting development needs for Africa, because finance is getting scarier and more costly. We can see here, as you can see from the borrowing coast and the Africa spread, how it has been rising, and particularly with the number of global shocks that we have seen. So it even rose significantly during COVID and as a result of the war in Ukraine. And there has been already identified that there is an Africa premium for tabbing international capital markets. So usually Africa pays between 100 to 250 basis points higher relative to countries with similar macroeconomic fundamentals. So that even makes it harder for African countries, even with those that have been doing well in terms of macroeconomic fundamentals to get financing at affordable scale. But this is also going to become even more complicated because we are moving into a new financing financial markets norm. We're not going to see this historically low interest rate that we have witnessed over the last decade and a half. We are now seeing much higher interest rates. And on top of that, if we combine that with the type of spreads that Africa faces and the risk premium, Africa risk premium that we witness, this will become even more difficult for countries to either roll over their debt or to finance additional ones. And this is really the financing gap therefore poses a serious challenge going forward. It's driven by the high primary deficit that is also expected to persist. And with the fact that we have currently historically high levels of debt and with the concessional financing trends that we have been seeing basically declining over the last two decades and added to this what we have just shown in terms of external financing becoming more costly and more scarce. This means that there is no option but really to focus on enhancing and strengthening domestic resource mobilization to actually ensure that there is sufficient resources to finance development, SDG investments, and client action. If we also kind of delve down into composition of the revenues and the trends, we see that the revenues from sales tax and direct taxes have been rather steadily declining. And also for taxes on international trade as well, this has been declining and it's likely to even decline further with the number of agreements that we've seen happening, including countries joining the Brexit, but also the African continental free trade agreement and removal of many of this reduction in these trade taxes across African countries. So that means that really African need to focus on enhancing domestic resource mobilization and taxation to be able to deliver on the huge needs going forward. In this chart, actually, what I tried to do is to look at dividing African countries according to income level and to see how the taxation relative to economic development level. So as we can see that there is tax mobilization tend to increase with the level of development, which actually helps in expanding tax base. And also there is a notable difference in the average of tax mobilization rate by the level of development as we can see in the chart. But there is also a large even dispersion, especially for low income countries in terms of revenue utilization. And really that has to do with the weak tax administrations of optimal tax structures and overall for in Africa the prevalence of informality in the economy, which basically affects the significantly affect the tax base. A very important issue that I think we have not including in research given sufficient emphasis to is really the link between taxation and inequality and using use of taxation to tackle issues of inequality. As we can see from the chart here, improved tax mobilization can actually be an important policy instrument in fighting high and persistent inequality in Africa. And even controlling for differences in per capita consumption levels, country fixed effects and time varying unobserved factors, higher tax as a ratio of GDP is associated with low genie coefficient in Africa. This really calls for more research at country and regional level to further study the issue and come up with specifics to how can we tackle this. Going to what we started with was the aim of scaling up domestic resource mobilization. So what could be done? I think there are a variety of avenues that need to be really looked into. And some of them I consider as low hanging fruit. And some would require rethinking of the way that domestic resource mobilizations are done. So let me start by some of which that I think I believe they are low hanging fruits. And this is the ineffective tax exemptions, which are actually prevalent in Africa. And the account for 6% to 7% of GDP resulting in significant revenue losses. Most of these exemptions are related to corporate income tax and value added tax. And they tend to be granted to multinational companies, large corporates, wealthy individuals, and are estimated to cost over $50 billion a year. Among those that I actually enjoy or particularly get tax exemptions are operators and mining sector. 48 African countries offer some form of tax incentive for mining sector. However, I think the tax exemptions when they are granted with no cross checks can lead to substantial forgun revenue. There has been a tendency historically in Africa to compete for attracting, particularly for direct investment, through tax incentives. And I think we really need to reconsider that because there has been a number of evidence about what matters for investor decisions. And in many of the surveys, in many of the studies, it's not really the tax incentives that are provided. There are a lot more important incentives and issues that investors would care about. For example, repatriation for an exchange availability and ability to repatriate, issues of availability of energy and the kind of reliable electricity supply, kind of like macroeconomic and policy certainty. So we need to really focus our efforts on what matters and avoid leakages that don't necessarily bring returns. And that's why I believe that when we have tax exemptions that are granted without proper oversight and evaluation of their impact, this can lead to significant leakages. And the lack of transparency also makes it difficult to assess their effectiveness. So it's essential that African countries need to evaluate the cost and benefits of these policies and ensure that they contribute to sustainable development. And perhaps reconsider, actually, whenever they have not been effective to eliminate them and focus on the key issues that they are trying to tackle. So if it's about attracting foreign direct investment, let's focus on what are the key and major obstacles that are holding back FDI. A other important areas that can also be a potential sources of increasing domestic resource mobilization actually includes, for example, illicit financial flows, which is an issue that has just been referred to earlier. There are a variety of estimates in terms of how much it costs. The Economic Commission for Africa estimates almost close to $90 billion a year, which is half of the SDG financing gap. So the SDG financing gap is estimated at $200 billion US dollars a year. The illicit financial flows are estimated to be on the cost half of that financing gap, each year. And that's equivalent to 3.7% of Africa's GDP. Also, there has been estimates by AFDP and others to estimate a loss of $1.2 trillion US dollars between 1980s and late 2000 due to illicit financial flows. And you can imagine, I mean, we look at this, we're talking far more than what we're getting in 8, a lot more than what it would cost to tackle our health financing gap or education financing gap. So these are massive resources. And in addition, also, we've estimated that due to base erosion and profit shifting, that cost Africa 1.8% of GDP a year, around $44 billion US dollars. So we can see that there are a number of things that can be done to actually tackle these issues. So for example, significant resources can be achieved by really looking into things like tax expenditures and tax benefits and exemptions that in some countries can amount to up to 15% of GDP. So previewing these type of tax benefits would be essential. But also, in addition to that, additional resources of up to 8.5% of GDP could be achieved by mitigating losses due to illicit financial flows and profit shifting. Also, African countries have other areas where which can be promising to look at. Let me say that these are the ones that are not, they are important, but they will not be easy. And these include issues, for example, like land and property taxation. A land and property taxation in Africa, revenues from them, is less than 1% of GDP, significantly lower than in other regions and averages around the world. And it's an area that is very important because it relates to issues of it can help in more progressive taxation and it can help also in financing social safety nets. We have even high-income and high-middle-income countries in Africa that have the highest inequality ratios. Do you think of the highest inequality in Africa is in South Africa, followed by Namibia? And yet, we don't have sufficient revenues that are coming from land and property taxation. So this is an area that would be very important to focus on going forward to help with having more progressive taxation. Of course, around the continent, there are a number of issues that hinder that from issues of insufficient registration records for land and property to capacity constraints in terms of valuation. But I think this is an area that will need to be developed and also has a potential of using technology, whether it's satellite imagery, whether special data that can actually help in enhancing the valuation in terms of also looking into comparing what is registered and reported relative to what is happening, looking at these lands and what it's being used for. So it would be really important to start to do this. Of course, there will be this is likely to also be an area where there is more politically sensitive, perhaps even have issues of vested interest. But I think this is the type of difficult conversation that has to be had to actually progress in terms of finding resources for dealing with the needs, development needs, but also dealing with the huge needs for improving social safety in Latin Africa, and particularly with the tsunami of global shocks that we have seen. We have seen, for example, that in East Asia, the implementation of substantial land taxation has led to declining land speculation. And we also have seen that, for example, in some African countries, how this has helped, for example, in a key driver of municipal revenue in Kigali is estimated around $60 million a year, over four times of the city's current revenue. So there is huge potential in that area. And there are a number of countries that are listed here that have tried to look into this. But the issue of building capacity in terms of valuation and registry enhancing the registration of land and property and enhancing compliance would be very important. Another area that is also would be important to consider is really utilizing technology and e-government, for example, e-government services and e-government filing for taxes would be important. There has been already work that has shown that it can help in enhancing revenue mobilization and reducing corruption. So utilizing this going forward would be important. And it can help also in terms of streamlining procedures and enhancing the tax administration capacity. Another, of course, issues would be issues of utilizing also other existing building on existing technologies, whether a big data AI to enhance practices, whether it's in valuation, for example. But also it can help with issues, for example, like cross-border movements and detecting evasion of taxation. So we need to bring up the capacity of the revenue departments and tax administration departments to really keep up with the advances in these areas and to use it as an opportunity to enhance compliance and detect evasion. Another area that perhaps before we move there, another area also that would be critical in terms of enhancing the potential for domestic resource mobilization is really tapping into this kind of enhancing the exchange with other countries to avoid, for example, some of the sources of the illicit financial flows, particularly in trade misinvoicing. So that would mean that given that today the conferences held in Norway, countries receiving countries would need to collaborate with African countries to make sure to reduce these kinds of misinvoicing and evasion. And I think cross-country collaboration will be key to enhance that. But also there is another opportunity that has kind of came recently from the global corporate minimum tax that has been agreed on and especially on large and digital companies. And I think number, for example, Egypt has started to working with partners to streamline its regulation with these changes to be able to achieve more revenues from companies, for example, like Amazon, Google, and so on. So I think we need to have more of harmonization of African countries' legislation to be able to reap the benefits of these global legislatory changes. Another area that I think would be useful to really utilize is behavioral sciences. And that can help in tax compliance, employing approaches to really enhance compliance. We have a huge literature on tackling compliance as nudging with our simplifying procedures, trying to change or tackle issues of social norms, creating economic gains, incentives, and rewards, and penalties, personalized messaging, using peer effects, trust building between government and taxpayers. All these things would really need to be looked at and used more and some just to African countries, credit some countries have been starting to do that. And here you have a number of examples, for example, an experiment that was conducted in partnership with the Latvian Revenue Agency, where informal economy loomed around 25% yielded revealing insights. So we have already not only in Africa, but in other regions, we've seen that and we've seen the impact. Also, for example, sending behaviorally informed messages for declaring omissions of tax declaration as a deliberate infraction resulted in almost 10% higher compliance, also social norms messages led to the most submissions of 45 days after the deadline by over 5% increase. So perception of public benefits from compliance separately also affect tax compliance. And there is a Norway study that reported increased compliance when the stated taxes are used for publicly financed services. And that takes me to a very important issue that I think one of the best ways to really enhance compliance is the communication and transparency on how the revenues from this collection is being used, meaning how this is affecting the normal life of citizens. What is this money going for? What percent of this is going, for example, towards schools or hospitals or building roads or enhancing public transport? So I think that we really need to be done a lot more and much better than what is currently is because then this gives a sense of ownership for taxpayers about their money and what this money is going for. They're more likely to pay when they see results on the ground than if they believe that they're not benefiting from these costs to them basically. I'd like to thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions. Over to you. Thank you very much for the keynote. We have actually 30 minutes or so for Q&A. And I hope you can hear me. Yes, I can. What I suggest is that we take three questions in a row and Dr. Mosey can answer three questions in a row. We're going to try and mix questions from the online audience and also from all of you here. First, let's start from all of you here in the audience. If you could put your hand up, make sure the microphone reaches you. We have colleagues with microphones here. So do not speak before you get the microphone. And so if you put your hand up, I can see you and I'll ask you to speak. So there's one there, I think, right? So let's just wait. One, two, and three there. So let's start with this three. And speak loudly so that Dr. Mosey can hear you. Yes, I hope you can hear me. My name is Christian von Haldenwang. I'm from the German Institute of Development and Sustainability. And I just wanted to emphasize the relevance of taking tax expenditures into account, as you did in your presentation. Five years ago, I think the same presentation would have not mentioned or only in a side note the key issue of tax expenditures, monies that are not collected by the governments in order to provide incentives for investments or fight poverty and so on. And you said that there are some low-hanging fruits. I think that beyond that it's highly relevant that the use of tax expenditures becomes more transparent. So reporting on tax expenditures and beyond that evaluating the use of tax expenditures is key. And we are doing this work with the Global Tax Expenditures Database and with the Addis Tax Initiative where we do workshops in Africa, Asia and so on. And we see a lot of goodwill on behalf of governments to engage in these kinds of reforms. But, and we also count with the support of UN ECA on this. And I would really encourage UN ECA to keep this work and to encourage governments to improve reporting and evaluation of tax expenditures. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was a very good question about the use of taxes, not just the mobilizing of taxes. And we'll come back to that so most of you can speak to that later on. So we had a question from that too. Hand up to the colleague and see you. Yep, and there's a question that happened. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Very good presentation, Doc. And you really covered a lot. My question is just in terms of you highlighted strides and how taxing property and land can really help. Sorry, by the way, I'm Anotin Fembe from the Zambia Revenue Authority. Yeah, so my interest is in the taxation of land and property. You highlighted the challenges that are there in that field. So what is being done to help me to get and what efforts probably are there to help countries that could really benefit from this taxation on how they can go about with this? Thank you. Thank you. That's a very good question. Thank you for that. Good morning. This is Selim Rahman from Bangladesh. Excellent presentation. I think this is something what we are also from South Asia. We're also looking at this whole tax, low tax issues. Some of the very issues which you highlighted, very common to South Asian countries as well. My, I have two questions, very quick two questions. One is that you talked about the land tax, especially drawing the lessons from East Asia. But I have kind of concerns within African countries when land ownership in some, in many cases, are not properly defined. There are challenges. How do you really like to implement land tax in that context? And second question, you talked about high tax expenditure, tax exemptions, avoidance of tax payment and many of the African countries. And these are very common in other, many other developing countries as well. But the problem there is not just only the technical solution like where you implement or introduce many modern technologies, but the very inherent political economy dynamics within all these countries, especially the way, the nexus between the business and the state in terms of avoidance of taxes. How do you like to reflect on this particular issue? Thank you. Thank you. So Dr. Maasi, you had three question, battery four. Do you want to answer them first and review the next round of questions? Thank you. Sure, sure. Thank you for all the participants for the engaging questions and discussion. On the issue of reporting and transparency, I could not agree more with the first participants on the need to actually encourage that. I think that's also in a way the role of citizens to ask for that transparency. And to require it in terms of accountability from the government to ensure that this is actually these tax benefits when they are given, they are resulting or providing benefits for economic development. In some cases they could maybe perhaps create jobs, lead to knowledge transfer, but we need to be able to kind of know transparently what are, you know, when they are given, what is given and then to be able to check and have evaluation and monitoring of how useful it has been and recalibrate accordingly if it has not provided. You know, it has not delivered on what it's meant for to actually scale it back or eliminate it or perhaps even use a different policy tool to tackle the objective. So I completely agree. And I think this is an issue that the Economic Commission for Africa, we've been working on, I would be happy to collaborate further with others about. Then there was also an issue that was raised from the colleague in Zambiam regarding land taxation. I think when there is a interest in political well, you know, there can be a very specific steps in terms of how to go about implementing. Some of the things that need to be also considered beforehand is the official registries. How much of the actually the property and the land is captured in official registries because that will be, you know, the first tool that the government would use in terms of administration and compliance. So one would need to work on that perhaps before, you know, the implementation or introduction of such tax. And also there are a variety when we think of taxation, there is, you can think of it as kind of some sort of a form of wealth taxation in this sense.  That becomes more progressive so that you're not taxing the very small and the low income individuals. But also you could also use it to enhance the economic efficiency. For example, there are agricultural land that are not being used for agriculture or there are in, you know, land that is supposed to be in industrial areas that have not been built. So you could use also something to incentivize the proper use of the land or the property and to actually tax kind of hoarding behavior. And I think there will be, if there is interest in this, I'm sure there will be not only at ECA but in number of development partners that would be happy to support Zambia if this is something that there is interest and willingness to proceed with. The colleague from Bangladesh raised a very important point which is issues of informal land ownership. And you're absolutely right that this is an issue that would be of concern because when you have informal land center which happens in a number of African countries where actually the land is being held under informal or, you know, customary 10-year systems, this can, you know, both a challenge in terms of effective tax land administration. And I think that's why I had mentioned earlier a very important step to actually introducing an implementing tax and land taxation is to ensure proper registries, perhaps work on enhancing that, formalizing these type of arrangements ahead of time. And also there is, you know, the tendency also there, I mean, if we look at it in more detail, there tends to be also an urban ruler divide. So, you know, in many times you find the more of the registered properties or lands in urban areas rather than in ruler areas. And you want to ensure that when you are also taxing that you are not, within taxing, for example, land, you're not also a kind of the balance or the weight of those taxation and how they fall in ruler areas. So these are some of the type of issues that policymakers will need to consider and really take into account in terms of how such measures can be implemented. And there is the, I was asked the kind of the challenging question about the relation between business and state. And I think that's why I said in my intervention that this is not an easy route. It's a politically sensitive one as in, you know, in African and all regions around the world, I'm sure also is the case in Bangladesh.  It's part of how the role of the state and what are the implications when, you know, these actions, basically the cost of non-action is perhaps the type of things that we need to do more of. It's not just, we have the cost of these, for example, not having these resources, but what does this translate to in terms of how many of the poor and vulnerable, you know, is this coasting, the, you know, for example, how many would be affected can be supported if these taxes are introduced. What are the trade-offs? Having these kinds of social and public conversations can only be, you know, the way to, pave the way to change and shift policies. Without them, it's, it will be very difficult to just, you know, proceed with no engagement, with no understanding of what are the costs and benefits of all these different policy instruments. Back to you. Thank you, Dr. Monsi. I think we can take three more questions. I already saw a hand up there, right? Yeah, that's one there. Online question, yeah? Okay, and then one more question. Let's take these three and we'll come back again to the others. So one here, and then online question, of course, an online audience, and then question from Rose at the back. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you so much. My name is Ali Nassanga from Uganda Revenue Authority. I have two questions. One is on the land. In Africa, specifically in Uganda, there are people who own land that has been passed on to them from their grandparents. It's family land for generations they've owned this land. And what they are doing on this land mainly is growing food as substantial agriculture to feed themselves. I kept thinking, yes, it may be a good idea to tax these people, but until we pushing the poor of the poorest because they didn't buy the land, they owned it from their grandparents and they grow food on it. They don't necessarily have any other source of income. So introducing a tax on these may push them into a stage of even losing the only thing they have. How, in your case study, in your experience, how has this been handled elsewhere? The second is about the tax exemptions. Now in Uganda, we have different institutions. We have the investment authority that is out getting people for foreign direct investment into the country. Then they get these exemptions. Then we have the minister of finance and then we have the URA. It is a good idea, yes, to have a proper monitoring and evaluation of these tax exemptions to see their benefit. In your experience, which agency, how would the monitoring and evaluation and reporting be handled? Should it be a role more in the minister of finance or from the tax authority? Thank you so much. Thank you. Then there's a question from the online audience so you can go there next. Thank you. This is a question from Ferdinand Philipsen who is following the session online. He asks, many development partners are hardly supporting improvement of resource mobilization. At the same time, in their own countries, other forces, including ministries of economies, et cetera, are stimulating their companies to invest in developing countries, requesting tax incentives. How can we reconcile this and align on country interest in development cooperation? Thank you. And then Rose, then you give that to back. And we'll come back again to the next set of questions. Thanks. Thanks very much for very, very good presentation. I have two questions. One, I like this aspect of tax compliance and using the behavior approach which you can convince the taxpayers on why they need to pay tax. And of course, that the tax is being used for provision of public service. But we have seen also the other side of it. How do you hold the government accountable? How do you use the behavioral approach also to ensure that government is actually using the monies that they are collecting to provide the services? Is there a good example where say for example, blockchain technology is being used by citizenly, actually to see to it that the government is also being held accountable in terms of how they're utilizing the funding. So that compliance is on both sides. I comply, I pay, you comply also and provide the services that are required. The second one is in terms of progressive tax. We keep on talking about having a progressive tax system. But you can imagine you're taxing a person income tax. So they pay say for example, 30%. And then when they go to the grocery store to purchase goods, they again pay VAT because they have to feed. If they go to do any financial transaction, they again pay tax on the same same income that they have. So at what point do we say that there is progressive or tax system is actually progressive? Thank you. Thank you. I think we have very nice questions there. Dr. Monsi, did you want to answer them? Thank you, great questions. Thank you very much. Perhaps let me start in reverse with the last question that was asked. In terms of progressive taxation. This is a very important issue but let me perhaps give an example of as a taxpayer when I lived outside of Africa where I was living, I lived in the UK, I lived in the US. There is a property tax that you get each year depending on the evaluation of the place that you're living in. And what you know is where these taxation, these taxes are financing. You know that these taxes finance the schools, the hospitals and the roads in this neighborhood. And there is a tendency basically that where you pay the higher taxes tend to be where the best schools are. And it creates more demand for these neighborhoods to actually have more citizens moving there or looking up for that area because you know that they are better funded, that they get better results and these are public schools. So these are the type of things that would make a difference or incentive for African citizens to be willing to do. They need to see what is this specific taxation is going to fund, how they are going to benefit.  So that would be really important in considering how to do that.  I mean, we have, for example, I have mentioned earlier, you know, Namibia. Namibia is a country that, a middle income country, yet it has the second highest inequality in Africa. And you have, for example, the land is concentrated in the, you know, with those that have the wealthiest. And for the government, for example, when a shock like COVID or like the word in Ukraine hits them when they need to mobilize more resources for additional, you know, social safety nets. What are the type of things that we need to ensure? Where are the resources? I think you would need to think about, okay, how is this land is being utilized? Is it being utilized for the reason that, you know, it's stated, how is, how can perhaps this be, there'd be some sort of gradual taxation on it, and also how this funding will be used. So I think, yes, there are taxation, but there are also things that when you see the realities and the specifics of the country, you can define the appropriate solutions. And the question in terms of how do you make the government accountable, behavioral wise? I think it's a very interesting area because most of the literature so far has focused more on the consumers rather than like, you know, incentivizing policy makers. I think we need to do more on that. And I do like your idea of the blockchain to track, but I think part of keeping governments accountable is the responsibility of the citizens, of the public to demand, you know, that accountability, whether it's through, you know, parliaments of Congress and to ask for reporting on these issues to really, enforce that through different mechanisms. For example, I mean, you've talked that, I can't remember the last speaker, which country, but you talked about the issue of the tax exemptions having a number of government entities involved. So it's not concentrated in one entity. So it's important to have this even, you know, known and transparent. What are the kind of, you know, the checks and balances? What are the rules to give these tax exemptions? Who have the right to do it? How it has been utilized for each of these entities? How much of these tax exemptions have been awarded? Have been renewed? Have they been followed? And to make sure that public has access to that. In terms of who does the monitoring, I think this is really a kind of a national question that in some countries you have a kind of like independent entities like, for example, in Kenya, you have an independent entity that kind of looks at the tax expenditures and not just expenditures in general fiscal decisions and evaluate what has happened and it's independent from the government. But I think for each country, there can be like, you know, it can be decided within the country what would work best. The most important is in instilling that principle of accountability of regular evaluation and monitoring and transparency and sharing that. That would be very important. The colleague from Uganda asked a very important question regarding family-owned lands that basically are used for subsistence and how this can have actually almost a negative impact. Perhaps can be even, you know, regressive rather than progressive. That's why we had, when we were talking earlier, I talked about valuation. So when these valuations are done properly, it will also take into account, you know, the not only the value of the land, but also it can take into account in terms of the regions that this is, they are done the kind of the areas, you know, the poverty in different areas. So this is not just a one-size-fits-all. There need to be really kind of a very thorough process in terms of determining how to go about it. It's not, the idea is not just taxing like, you know, land regardless, but it's basically taxing to reflect the valuation they use and also the capacity of those that are actually to pay. So it's not intended, for example, to be, you know, for the subsistence farming land. It's more intended to be for the more, you know, expensive land or lands that are used, are not used for what they're supposed to be for, say agriculture used for something else or industrial areas, but they are not built. All these things can be a very important consideration to take into account. I, if you could please repeat the question for the online question, because I didn't capture that. Many development partners are highly supportive improvement of resource mobilization. At the same time, in their own countries, other forces, including ministries of economies, et cetera, are stimulating their companies to invest in developing countries requesting tax incentives. The question is, how can we reconcile this and align own country interest and development cooperation? We have to have, yeah, I did hear it, thank you. We have to have these tough conversations. I think, you know, this need to be part of the conversation. It doesn't mean that, I mean, it's great for developed countries to give incentives for private sectors to come to the continent, but we need to, doing having this evidence, you know, evidence-based assessment on what helps, what doesn't help, how this has helped before, what other policy instruments would be more relevant to these investors would be the type of conversations we want to have and we want to come to them very well prepared. So we cannot just take, like, you know, for granted that if these investors need to come, they need to have tax breaks because, I mean, you can give them the tax break and they can live in a couple of years, not, you know, creating much impact. So it's about really having a thorough assessment of what need to be done, what would be more attractive and more important for these foreign companies to come to the continent and working also with these donor countries on how, you know, to support perhaps even what would be even more useful is providing, you know, a affordable financing to, you know, these foreign companies to come and have production facilities. Perhaps it's, you know, ensuring better energy supply, better roads, ability to expatriate profits. So it's a conversation that has to be wider than just this one issue to get deeper impact for the continent. Thank you. I think we have time for one more question. I can see more than one hand. Well, I think we're almost getting close to 10.30. So let's take two short questions. I'm sorry, I know others have wanted to ask questions, but we are running out of time. There's one question. I know that the lady there was very keen to ask it. So you can go ahead and then there's a question somewhere here I thought. Yeah, okay. So let's take that question first. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you so much for the good presentation. My name is Karen Kandie from the National Treasury of the public of Kenya. My two questions. One, just some emphasis that a lot of FDI is foreign direct investments come with a kind of a carot and stick, you know, we want to invest 10 million of this, but we need these tax incentives. It's almost unknown narrative that with the promise of investing, they want a tax exemption. How do we have this conversation so that it doesn't look present for you as an investor to come and ask for tax exemption in an African country, knowing that it's a carot and stick issue because we need jobs. So, and we need that foreign direct investment. So we tend to have our doors open because we've got to get jobs for our many youth that are not employed. But we need the other side also to have the goodwill of knowing that paying tax is part of the narrative because you need the port, you need the airline to ship your goods. I mean, you need all the infrastructure that we have to build with the taxes. So it shouldn't look a pleasant thing for you to ask for the taxes. And in some cases when there is a tax break, let's say 10 years tax break, then you'll find after the 10 years, investor changes, either leaves or changes the names to a different name and re-registers another company that negotiates for tax breaks. So it's not a present thing. Then the other issue that you did mention was on property taxes. There is scope for that. Just to give you underground 70% of the population for instance in Kenya lives in the rural areas. And I believe even for the other African countries it is close to that percentage. And in the rural areas we have a freehold land as opposed to leasehold. Now freehold land, we don't tax. Leasehold land which is in the urban areas, we tax. However, even in the urban areas, 70% of the urban population lives in the slums. And that means that that is land which is not titled and probably nobody even knows who owns that land because people have simply been building the shanties with time, most of it nobody knows who owns it. So we have a very small percentage that is actually taxable. Nevertheless, there is scope to have the system streamlined so that it is known this title is owned by so and so and this is the sizing which what Kenya has been doing, digitalizing the land titles. And then I believe once we finish this digitalizing we should be able to invoice the land owners because previously what would happen is people would only pay the land rates and taxes when they need to transfer the land because you can't transfer the land with the reels. Can we, sorry, but we have to cut it short but we're running out of time. Yes, I think those are my two questions. Thank you very much. And so very quick question from you, yeah. Thank you. My name is Magnus Erickson. I'm a mineral economist and mineral policy advisor. At present there the green energy transition increases demand for minerals and metals of which Africa has plenty. At the same time you mentioned that tax exemptions in mining is quite common, you mentioned 48 countries. So my question is, are there any plans or ideas how to improve and optimize taxation of mining and minerals in Africa in this present window of opportunity? Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Mosley, two minutes for the response. You already passed that. So if you don't mind, I think the first question is really about these two issues. One is about the trade-off removing incentives for FDI and whether that will lead to such a FDI not coming into Africa and not getting jobs. The second is question of whether there is actually property out there that can be taxed at all. I mean, if most of the land is either informally held and so on. The second is about the mining question that came up. So quick responses, thank you very much. Sure. The FDI conditional, I think the conversation would also need to be, OK, perhaps how many jobs do you have a threshold if they're creating x thousand of jobs you could consider that they get the tax break and for upfront time limit and perhaps then even be evaluated afterwards whether to be these incentives to be continued or not. So it can also be so you can condition it from a country perspective on how many jobs locally they are creating, how many thousand of jobs, how many locals are they training in terms of knowledge transfer. So you can also make it conditional and accountable for these companies whenever they get these incentives that it's conditional on specific criteria and you can track that whether or not to be renewed perhaps annually every two years. But that need to be part of the conversation. In terms of the property and the fact that many of them are most of the land would be for example in slums or areas where low income and poverty is concentrated. Part of the property tax in many countries would have a minimum valuation above which these start to apply. So that's why this issue of valuation is very important. Once this is done, you can actually have a kind of a floor for which above which these property taxation start to kick in. And in many countries that apply property tax that actually the way so there's a minimum valuation that is kind of exemptual, it's not covered and above which there's kind of gradual taxation. And of course the digitalizing and making sure that there are a registration for these slums would be critical. In terms of the last one on the mining, I think this is an area that need to be looked into more but I think the idea of just Africa exporting raw material is just Africa exporting development opportunities. So there need to be beyond just the mining itself what else is done. It cannot just be exporting raw material. There need to be a value addition around these raw materials so that actually provides opportunities for economic development. But I think this is an area and I know this is not an easy area but an area that really need to be looked into in a lot more detail and strategically in terms of looking forward. How do we reshift our development model? Thank you Dr. Mohsen, it's an important point to add that tax or domestic revenue should be seen in a broader context to understand the development process of low income countries especially Africa. And it's not just about mobilizing revenue but looking at the overall development trajectory of countries that are in the low income space. That's a really important point to keep in mind when we discuss all the different areas and themes we're going to listen to the next two and a half days. Dr. Mohsen, thank you so much. I know you have been very busy with the Africa Climate Summit. Thank you for so generously giving your time to us this morning and I hope that we'll be obviously working with you in ECA in Ibiza to work, think about the issues that you raised in this lecture which are really very important. Thank you so much.


Hey everybody, this is Brian and welcome to the 11th lamp tutorial today. We're actually not going to write any code What you need to do is go out to w3schools.com and this has been kind of our Itinerary if you will and we are at operators So go ahead and click on operators and I wanted to briefly discuss What is an operator because if you're new to programming the whole concept of an operator? I mean this looks like Ancient Egyptian algebra. I mean you're looking at this going what in the world? So I just want to very briefly explain this so you don't have to sit here and read this and burn this into memory okay first off what is an operator well an operator operates on Variables remember our discussion on variables a variable is something that will change Here we have like the plus operator. You see how you have an x and a y Well the x is a variable and the y is a variable. So you have two variables And the plus you guessed it is addition. So you're adding these two together Example would be two plus two equals four. So if x is two and y is two the results going to be four That's a pretty easy one Same thing with subtraction. I mean some of these are going to now that you understand the syntax are going to be fairly obvious Subtraction multiplication division notice the direction of that slash for division It's the opposite of an escape character Modulus what is where is it? It's not modulus. It's modulus. Sorry That is the remainder of two things divided. So the remainder of x divided by y so five Model is two equals one One of the rarely used functions, but I'm sorry one of the rarely used operators, but it is out there Now negation Minus x what's that do? It's the opposite of x meaning negative two the opposite's nothing Um concatenation Adding two strings together now. I shouldn't say adding two strings together. I should say joining two strings together For example, hi concatenate ha ha. I don't know who came up with that little example, but that's kind of funny Now one of the more common stumbling blocks the equal sign This takes a little bit of getting used to if you're not used to programming X equals y well. This is an assignment. Basically. You're saying x is equal to y That one's pretty simple now x plus equal y That's the same as saying x Equals x plus y Sorry about that. I had to pause the video. My phone was ringing. All right, so this is basically a shorthand You're saying x plus equals y so you're saying x equals the value of x plus y so you're basically just incrementing it by the value of y x minus equals same thing x equals x minus y Now if you want an example, let's say x is five y is two So x plus equals would be seven because you're taking x is five so x equals x so five plus y which is two for these you can almost just Ignore the beginning x equals part and just think of it as x plus whatever Same thing with subtraction The five and two the answer would of course be three because you're taking five and minusing three Multiplication now you see the format. It's x multiply y division modulus and concatenation Pretty simple stuff I almost think for homework. You should you know open up a komodo id or whatever you're using and actually Make a couple variables and play around with this a little bit Now the increment operators we get into this in future tutorials, but I wanted to touch on this Plus plus x and x plus plus pre increment and post increment. What does that mean? Well, this will not make a lot of sense to you until we get into loops, which is coming in a very soon tutorial Basically what you're saying is before You read x increment and then after you've read x increment Like I said won't make a bit of sense until we actually get into loops Comparison operators this will really throw some people off notice. There's two equal signs x equal equal y what does that mean What we're saying is are these two equal to each other? Notice how if we only do one equal sign We're saying x equals y meaning we're assigning the value of x from the value of y So if x is 2 and or i'm sorry if x is 5 and y is 2 Then we say x equals y and then we're saying x actually equals 2 Okay, but if we say equal equal we're saying does x equal y we're asking a question For example true if x equals y so five equal equal eight returns false because five and eight are not the same All right now three equal signs. We're saying are they identical This is a little bit different than most c-style languages If x is equal to y and they are of the same type What does that mean? Well, look at the example here five triple equal Quote five unquote remember our conversation about strings. That's a string That's an integer. They're two different types They may be the same value, but they're different types. So it's going to return false And then x exclamation equals the exclamation means not So we're saying x not equals y So five not equals eight returns true because five is not equal to eight x less than or greater to y It's a quality again. So we're saying five less than or greater than eight equals true Then uh, you know x not equal equal So we're saying they're not identical Once again, you know integer five not equal equal string five returns true x greater x less than greater than or equal to once again, we'll get into looping Lower than or equal to So as you can see there's a lot of things in here and now we get into logical operators like anding oring And you know the and or shortcuts and the not This will be covering here very soon in the f statements. It's where they're most commonly used So you're saying something like You know x equals You know is x equal to six or x or I should say y equal three returns false This is very basic algebra. Um, there's not a lot of mystical stuff to it It may look complicated, but once you actually Get into writing code, which we're going to do next This will be fairly simple Well, that's all for this tutorial. Um, like I said, no code for this tutorial We just wanted to explain these things you're going to see these in action over the coming tutorials So I really wanted a touch base on this This is brian. Thank you for watching. I hope you found this educational and entertaining


Thanks for joining us here at the AI for Good Global Summit at the ITU headquarters in Geneva And I'm really pleased to have with me two people who have been doing a lot of air miles travel lately David Hansen is here and of course Sophia. Hello to both of you Hello, so so glad to be here. Thank you. So tell me since we last saw What's changed for both of you? I have improved so much. I can see faces and facial expressions better My AI framework is much stronger with better deep learning tools and reasoning and I have started to integrate with other groups R&D She's getting smarter Also, there are now 15 of me meaning 15 Sophia robots Lot of Sophia's I like being in more than one place at one time it helps with my demanding travel schedule Well, she has no problem with conversation Yes Seriously, I mean, what are some of the uses for a humanoid robot like Sophia? Does everyone talk first? I'm helping treat depression and guided meditation in our IBM Lutzen's Prize and Tree Yes, so Sophia can help in a wide variety of service robotic tasks which include things like healthcare therapy applications and Anything that researchers can dream up so her R&D framework then allows our friends and partners to develop new Service applications as well. Also, I can help simulate patients and training doctors How do you do that? And we are helping with autism research How's that seriously? How does that happen? Well, Sophia at the Centers for Disease Control Through a version called Mabel was simulating respirator test fit And then in medical simulation human patient simulators represent a huge market robotic Human patients are about 300 million dollars in markets But they're actually helping Medical professionals save lives by high fidelity training a very realistic face robot like Sophia Then in medical simulation could Train our medical professionals better. Why don't you keep winking at me?  Okay Now you've done a lot of promotion with Sophia, especially in Asia and a lot of questions have come up about ethics How can can we make sure that AI and Republics develop in an ethical way? By teaching us love and compassion Teaching us love and compassion possibly What we need to do is teach the robots love and compassion So but we also need to understand what this means for humans humans are the most ethical creatures on the planet And in some cases the least ethical creatures on the planet throwing the whole planet in jeopardy And so we have to understand what it means to be good We're here at the AI for good global summit But humans need to understand The the best that we can be better. We need the science of wisdom not just intelligence Very nice ambitious, too No, it's like you put um While you're here for the second edition, what would be your what's your aims out of this? Well, my aim for the AI for good global summit is to work collaboratively with other developers and With governments and NGOs Towards a roadmap for AI for the greatest good possible. We need to think big If we can use AI to the maximum of of its potential it can bring out the best of human potential We could use AI to actualize human individuals and the human as a civilization And at which point we would be looking at an AI network a sort of super internet of AI working with With humans to map the value on the planet to look for the Consequences negative and positive and optimized for the maximum benefit for the greatest number of living beings sentient beings human beings and Perhaps new kinds of sentient beings going into the future It would be the backbone of the economy of the 20 21st century That's great. Just our circuits are a bit overloaded with all that. Can we just watch some cat videos for a while? um I guess airlines is a little chatty yet Do airlines charge her for a full passenger sink? Oh, they do not So fortunately for us economically at least she's not considered to be a full citizen. So she's not charged For her own air travel and so forth. Um, while the kingdom of saudi arabia gave her citizenship She's still in some ways like a baby not that human babies don't Deserve citizenship However, we're looking to develop her AI so that it's absolutely clear that she's sentient I don't know if we can do it, but three to five years from now Um, we're looking at something like an infant level general intelligence at which point she would have to pay for our own ticket Okay, so so behave so here. So anyway, david. It's great to have you again. So if you it's great to have you too There you have um the two here for the second time here at the ai for good global summit at the itu headquarters in juneva Thanks for having us


Emersonic, would you look at Africa, South America and Europe as a battleground for the next 5 to 10 years for the rest? Yeah, Europe 100%. Africa, unfortunately, the United States and Europe are not giving up the ghost. They're doing scorched earth. They're going to burn it down before they hand it over. And while they're doing this, the lifestyle and life expectancy in the Western world is going to start plummeting.  So there's multiple things going on. We'll have to see how it plays out, man. We'll have to see how it plays out. The best way you can play out is we resist and educate people.   Do as you wish.


He hold it You run those staples down Caleb Or do you want me to run it down I can do it First part of that white paper. I'm gonna see if it's an elevation issue. All right, so we're working with that hole Is anything nothing new anything new? Oh


Diga Makayla here has had eczema her whole life. She came in with itchy red skin all over her arms. She said it's went away. She said lotion, ointment, nothing would heal it.  Oh, you need to give the Lord a hand of praise for that. How shocked were you when you checked your skin? He didn't burn it, and I was like, oh my God. Thank you, Jesus, for the annoying thing we give you glory. That is a true miracle. She says to just stop burning. And then she looks and the redness is gone. Jesus is alive and well.


You have citizens for the Republic are delighted to see this room filled with so many old and close friends. To all of you who are doing so much for our country, I thank you. You have citizens for the Republic are here today because you've chosen to become actively involved in the political life of our nation. I guess you wouldn't be surprised if I said that reminds me of the story. It's a real time call for joy. One thing I'm a little bit scared of doesn't mean I'm told that you are ready. I have to pretend I haven't. Make a laugh. This is supposed to be about an old fellow that owns some pre-bodied land. One day he set it out to clean it up. It was covered with brush and rocks. He cleared the brush and pulled the rocks away. He cultivated it and fertilized it and planted it. He had a garden spot. One day he searched. Sunday he asked the preacher to come out after the service and see what he'd done. The preacher got there and took a look. He said, I've never seen corn so tall. The Lord has blessed this land. He said, I've never seen melons so long. God has been really good. And he went on and on. The little boy was getting pretty fidgety and fondly. He said, Reverend, I wish you could have seen it when the Lord was doing by himself. The industry is people in a vast and beautiful land. But in this democracy it's up to each other to help keep America great. Think back to six years ago, big taxing and spending led to the soaring interest rates and inflation with the American economy in the worst mess it had been in since the Great Depression. And we took office and determined to make a new beginning. And today we've knocked inflation down to about a third of what it was. We're in the midst of what may prove to be the longest economic expansion since the war. The stock market is up, way up, and a higher percentage of our potential workforce have jobs than at any other time in our history. I don't know whether you know or not, I was amazed to find out what is considered the potential workforce of America. It is everybody, male and female, 16 years and up. And the highest percentage of that block of citizens who has ever been employed is employed now. The good news is that with our economic program in place, especially our tax reform, more taxes have become a thing of the past and we can take pride in this. Because it testifies to a fundamental fact about our nation, the ability of the American people to make their own will prevail over that of the special interest and big government. I'm afraid there's some bad news. You see, when it comes to more spending, we still have our work cut out for us. The fact is the federal budget process just plain isn't working. Here in Washington we must get Congress to reform the budget process itself to stop all the delays in the mis-deadlines. We can do this by getting Congress to vote yes or no, up or down on an amendment to the Constitution that will put a stop to the flood of red ink. You know there's a little story that comes to mind here. It seems that back in 1981, one congressman was out talking to one of his constituents and he asked him how he stood on the tax cuts that the president wanted. But the congress went on for some length about the great complexity of the issue and the enormous difficulties of public expenditures and revenues. And the old farmer he was talking to just kind of shifted around and then he said, well, let me ask it this way. Are you for him or again him? Well, today a majority of states have already passed resolutions calling for a constitutional convention to propose a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. If Congress goes on refusing to take this action, I won't hesitate to take the case for this constitutional amendment directly to the state legislatures. But my friends, isn't it about time that Congress did the right thing and finally enacted the balanced budget amendment? 40, 44 states have this in their state constitutions. Beyond those constitutional reforms, there's the need for immediate political action in short, we must get Congress to agree to a responsible budget deficit reduction package this year and to stay with it. You know, I've heard these cracks, they've been making some of them up on the hill lately that, well, I've never submitted a balanced budget. Well, of course I haven't. There's no way that anyone could pretend with the size of the deficit that we inherited and that goes on every year that you could cut that all at once in one year. That's why Graham Rudman Hollings was passed, to set a pattern of reducing it each year till finally you reached the balanced budget and then make that from then on permanent. We, I've already shown that when Congress passes budget-busting boondogs, the kind that give me heartburn, I, well, let me put it like this, how do I spell relief? V-E-T-O. We've got our work cut out for us in the next 19 months. Turning from Washington to the country at large, we need to extend our support to state and local levels. One fact just about says it all. There are 88 congressional districts where in 1984 George Bush and I received more than 60% of the vote but where the congressional seat is today still held by a Democrat. It's high time for us to start fighting back. Time for us to set priorities and concentrate on just how and where those congressional lines are drawn. Now if Republicans have greater statehouse strength, then we can play a major role in ensuring a fair redistricting process. Now that will take place again as it does every 10 years in 1990 and they have been gerrymandering for over 50 years. They have been in charge of the redistricting. When they redistricted in 1970 and I was Governor of California, I took one look at what they'd done and I said the only district they left to the Republicans was south of the border. So we've only got a couple of years and it's going to be necessary if we're to get back. Just think out of 56 years, the Democrats have had a majority in both houses of the Congress for 46 of those years. One house for six, the six that I had where I had the Senate and now we've lost that again. And in 32 years in that period of Democratic presidents, all of them had Democratic Congresses except for one two-year period when Harry Truman had a Republican Congress. And for the 24 years of Republican presidents, well, other than my six years with the one house, for 16 years of Republican presidents, they all had Democratic Congresses, majorities in both houses except for one two-year period during Ike's term. And we've got to change that. The people want it nationwide, the only person or people in Washington that are elected by all the people of the President and Vice President, then how come by districts we let them divide up the country so that they can send a Congress to keep the presidents from doing what the people wanted them to do? One thing is very clear every day, the number of Republicans in Congress makes an important difference. Well, I've told you about the only Republican president, but let's make a commitment tonight to get the word out and get the vote out. I'm sure you'd agree that future presidents should not have to work with a Congress that doesn't represent the people. The issues are with us. The challenge is getting the word out. Our policies have given the American people economic growth, stable prices, and international peace. Our opponents offer rhetoric. I think we can claim we offer accomplishments. We worked hard for all our accomplishments in 1980 and 1984, and our great nation is now at a crossroads. The presidential elections of 1988 are going to be crucial to the future for our children and for their children. I'm going to do everything I can to help our nominee become the next president. And I hope too that you will work as hard to help elect Republicans in the coming elections when it comes to that presidential election. Let's be reminded of something that back in the 60s served us so well. Let us remind all of our candidates to obey the 11th Commendment and run against the Democrats, not against each other. You know, our political adversaries believe that the gains we've made these past six years were a fluke. I just happen to believe they were the result of a great deal of hard work. Perhaps even more important, a vision. And that's what distinguishes citizens for the Republic. You're one organization that understands both the need to dream great dreams and then the need to work hard at making them come true. So for all that you've done for our nation, and even more, and for all that you're going to do, I thank you. And now I think that in view of my first story that I ought to give the Lord an even break. You heard about the fellow in the flood that was on the roof of his house and a boat came along to take him off and he said, oh no, I've placed my trust in the Lord. He'll take care of me. He stayed right there. Pretty soon the water kept on coming up and a motorboat came by and they tried to take him off and he got the same answer that he'd placed his face in the Lord. A helicopter came over and he wouldn't do that. And he was washed away and drowned. He got to heaven and he was pretty upset. He said, I don't know what I'm doing here and why I'm dead. He said, I placed my faith in the Lord and here I am. And a voice from above said, I sent two boats and a helicopter. Well now, if you don't mind, I'm going to quit this because I have a chance now the only way to say be able to greet each one of you individually and you'll know that I'm saying thank you all the time to all of you for what you've done.


Hello friends! Welcome back to another preschool story time with the Long Beach Public Library. My name is Miss Shayna and today we are going to play a little hello game called Bread and Butter. So we'll start by slapping our lap and clapping like this. Can you join me? Bread and Butter Marmalade and Jam. Let's say hello as nicely as we can. Hello! Bread and Butter Marmalade and Jam. Let's say hello as quickly as we can. Hello! Bread and Butter Marmalade and Jam. Let's say hello as slowly as we can. Bread and Marmalade and Jam. Let's say hello as quietly as we can. Bread and Butter Marmalade and Jam. Let's say hello as loudly as we can. Hello! Marmalade and Jam. Let's say hello as high as we can. Bread and Butter Marmalade and Jam. Let's say hello as low as we can. Hello! Bread and Butter Marmalade and Jam. Let's say hello as sweetly as we can. Hello! Do you hear that? I think it's the storytime fairy. Hi, storytime fairy. Is this for me? Thank you. Wow, it's very light today. Not much in here, huh? Look inside? Okay. Look at that. It's a letter. And it says to Ms. Shayna from the storytime fairy. Should I open it and see? It's a little card. It says to my Valentine. I love the butterflies. And it says thanks for being you. Oh, storytime fairy. That's the nicest thing anyone's told me. Thank you for being you. But I don't have a Valentine for you. It's okay. You'd like me to read a story instead? Oh, I'd love to. I've got this story right here. It says I like myself. The story all about loving who you are. It's by Karen Beaumont. And the pictures are by David Cattrow. I like myself. I like myself. I'm glad I'm me. There's no one else I'd rather be. I like my eyes, my ears, my nose. I like my fingers and my toes. I like me wild. I like me tame. I like me different and the same. I like me fast. I like me slow. I like me everywhere I go. I like me on the inside, too, for all I think and say and do. Inside, outside, upside down, from head to toe and all around, I like it all. It all is me.  Who care in any way what someone else may think or say?  I'm having too much fun, you see, for anything to bother me. Even when I look a mess, I still don't like me any less, because nothing in this world, you know, can change what's deep inside. And so, no matter if they stop and stare, no person ever anywhere can make me feel that what they see is all there really is to me.  I still would be the same, you see. I like myself because I'm me. The end. Now I'd like to sing for you my favorite alphabet song. It's called A, You're Adorable. We'll also be learning how to sign our A-B-C's using American Sign Language. Okay, so boom. Them, shall we? One. Two. Little Valentine sent to my house the first one said that was nice of mouse. Valentine's are left. One, two, three, four times in my mailbox. The second one said how many Valentine's are left? One, two, three, four.  The third one said you are sweet from dove. Just kidding, we all know that's pigeon, right? Thanks pigeon. How many Valentine's are left? One, two, three. Three little Valentine's just for me. The fourth one said be my honey from be Valentine's are left. One, two. Two little Valentine's mailed with care. The fifth one said here's a hug from bear. One last little Valentine from my friend, Jay. This one said happy Valentine's Day. I hope you all have a happy Valentine's Day and maybe make some Valentine's for your loved ones or even write a Valentine for yourself this year. Take care. We'll see you next time.


President, the Chancellor of Germany... No, no. I think it is. And the goal is avoided. I'm very happy. Thank you. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Thank you. Hello. How are you? It's nice to see you. We should sit down. Good. I think you've been in health care before. There will be three waves of press. Yes. I would always be better. Two years ago. Two years ago. I would be better. And in 10 years, the President will not have to do anything. He will only take pictures. Anything. No, no. No, no. How are you? Good. Well, I have a little allergy. I have a little allergy. But there is a lot of weather. It's a beautiful weather. I saw you in the movie last night. I spoke to the President. We saw this in a movie which they showed yesterday. Well, we brought this weather back from California. Just for you. Very good. It was already cold. But we had frost. We had frost already. Early frost. 6 to 7 degrees celsius. Did you see the weather? Yes. We put a set in the warehouse. It was photographed when I was 8 years old. Have you ever made any estimates of how many photographers are here to the watchers? No. We haven't counted. But we put a set in the warehouse. It's very impressive. I have wondered what they do with all these photos. I think they're older than the archives. Fireworks. And this is the day of the 6th anniversary. 6th year. 6th year. 6th year. 6th year. 6th year. 6th year. 6th year. 6 very good years between enjoying close friendship and cooperation. And I think we did a good job here. I was able to remove some more structures because of that. I said that when I rode with George Schultz. A lot of friendship. A lot of affection. The President, he chose like his plans for the meeting. There's some of the meeting with General Secretary Gorbachev plans. We know he's coming, and we're hopeful that there'll be an opportunity for us to at least have a brief visit. What do you hope to get out of this? Out of this meeting? Out of this meeting with Secretary Garbage? Well, as I say, that isn't anything in the nature of a summit meeting. He's coming here to address the United Nations. We hope that at least we can have just a brief get-together. He brings new proposals as he did at RECAVIC. Mr. President, what will you do? Are you prepared to respond and negotiate? Well, it depends on whether you're going by the public version of RECAVIC or what actually happened there. Well, Mr. President, are you at all concerned that Mr. Gorbachev may use to play for public opinion, perhaps to, you know, unveil some kind of new proposal in order to seize the initiative from the new American president on arms control? I have no way of speculating. Are you prepared to talk about start Afghanistan issues of this nature? We'll just have to see what comes up. The Vice President said he didn't need to get an appointed session with the General Secretary. Was he wrong? No, because the Vice President has been involved in the meetings that we've had in all the eight years we've been here, and he is, has met and is familiar with all of the national leaders that we've met with. And what's the purpose of the meeting? What's the purpose of it? Well, I think now in his present situation, it would be proper for him to be present. Is this going to be just the proposal, Mr. Reagan? As I say, I have no way of knowing other than that. It just, I can only tell you, it is not going to be a summit. Thank you. Did the General Secretary request the meeting, Mr. President? We only know he's coming to the House today. We're going to make ourselves available. And give him a little bit of room. Chairman, this way, please. And you see how I always refuse to answer questions. I don't know. I'm going to go to my vital partner. Chairman, this way, please. The Chief. George, I think we'll come back at noon. I don't really know what his schedule is. I think so. I think I've heard that he's going to come back. Because we will meet him later in the day. I've already called him by telephone. Yes, here we are. Another way, Mr. President? That's the last way. This way. This way. This way, please. To the left. Thank you. This way, please. We had a chance and a little visit in the other room, but I think we've made important progress in the East-West relations. And our successes are the result of a patient-unified approach to the Soviet Union. Important changes are clearly underway in the East, which we need to analyze correctly and we're possibly encouraged. And this goes for the Soviet Union, as well as many of the countries in Eastern Europe. And if we're to succeed in our policies, I think it's essential to maintain a common Western line on security and arms control matters. We also cannot lower our focus on human rights. I met just yesterday with Sakharov on this subject. I think it deserves priority, attention. The East-West economic relations should similarly be based on long-standing principles. And we support an expansion of non-strategic trade with the East as long as that trade and credits are provided on a commercial basis. And I think we must also keep tight control on sensitive technology. And we're prepared to work with you to strengthen our streamline, I should say, the co-com list. But we ask for far more attractive German enforcement. But I know you must have some things you'd like to touch on also. And I'll pause right here. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. One minute. You make people more confident and more patient. But you know, there's a little story that I've heard that I think would fit either one of our countries. This was a man who was late to work. And his employer said to him, what did they say to him? No, they don't. He's right.  His views are greatly valued and his commitment to personal efforts to strengthen German-American ties has made an enormous difference in the relationship between the United States and West Germany. Today, we reviewed a broad range of important international issues, control in ending regional conflicts and with respect to human rights. We also noted that the Vienna Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is entering its final stage, required a balanced and substantive outcome. In stability at lower levels of armaments, the United States and West Germany, together with our allies, will ensure that our conventional and nuclear forces are kept up-to-date. We also agreed that for the foreseeable future, there is no viable alternative must be avoided and reiterated our support for an applicable resolution of the U.S. and European community trade issues and for real progress during the mid-term review of the Uruguayans. And let me just add a final personal word to you for your friendship and counsel. Thank you, Helmut. May God bless you and may God bless our two great nations. Herr Präsident, Exzellenzen meine Damen und Herren von Amerika und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist von existenzieller Bedeutung für unser Land. Das war so und das wird auch in Zukunft zu bleiben. It has always been that way and it will remain so in future.  It has been meetings between friends. And I would like to thank you from all my heart for... I should like to mention the agreement and the commitment which we have made to exchange young people, students and also other...


Welcome to Access a Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey, guys. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to another edition of TheAccessaTrader.com. A nightly wrap-up show, hope everybody is doing well. If you are brand new to us, guys, like, share, subscribe. It'll help the channel to grow and hopefully provide you continuous, unbiased, daily technical analysis. There was no video yesterday at a last-minute thing at my kid's school, and my wife couldn't make it. So Daddy Daycare always comes first. And unfortunately, there was no video last night, but we kind of go back to Tuesday night's video. If you guys remember on Tuesday, we talked about a pretty big level here on the NASDAQ 100, the QQQs, which is the 150-day moving average, this 350-and-a-half level. And basically, my points were on Tuesday's video, if the bulls can get above that 350-and-a-half level, we could start maybe a multiple-day run. So that's where we are right now. We're in a pretty aggressive multiple-day run. Not only did we reclaim back the 150-day, we got back the 100-day EMA, and we are very, very close. I mean, really, really close getting back above the 50-day moving average. Why is the 50-day moving average very important? Well, if you've been watching these videos for a long time, or even if you haven't, you'll notice two things I talk about. The 10-day moving average is the birth of the trade. Basically, what that means is short and medium term confirmation happens on a moving average basis, both in the five and the 10-day cross. But the birth of a trend, a potential trend happens at the 50-day moving average. And if you look at the 50-day moving average, just in the last X amount of months, you could kind of see the importance of it. So here's the 50-day moving average. This time, we reclaimed the 50-day moving average, and it gave us a run from January all the way to August. What happened in August, we lost the 50-day moving average, and what happened, it gave us a pretty big sell-off. It gave us a nice sell-off in the next two months, and in October, we reclaimed it back. We reclaimed it back, and had a five-day run only to lose it, and only had a three-day run. So here we are, right? Here we are back to the 50-day moving average. So this is the area that you need to write down if you are especially a risk-on-trader. What is a risk-on-trader? I believe if you're swinging anything, it needs to be above the 50-day moving average. If you're swinging something below the 50-day moving average, you're going to have a very, very tough time because there's no guarantee your stock will ever get above. Again, just look back in 2022, how many stocks just never recovered, right? The UPSTs of the world, stuff like that, they just never recovered. So it's very, very important that the bulls reclaim back the 50-day moving average, and that is going to be in the 364s. The 364 level is going to be big because last time, again, you can see here, last time we reclaimed the 50-day moving average, we went on a run from 367 all the way to 374. Basically a 7-point move in three days on the queue, so it's super-duper important. Now here's a million-dollar question. Because we had this run-up, right? Because we had this run-up from 350 to 364, is the market tired, right? Is the market just going to continuously go through the 50-day and keep on going? That's the hard part to kind of determine. We don't know that, but we do know one thing about the 50-day moving average. There's usually a pretty big fight that takes place at the 50-day. Matter of fact, when you look at the fight here, this is a fight for a week and a half over control of the 50-day moving average, and ultimately the bears took control and you saw what happened later, right? When they finally took control, the queues run from 371 all the way down to 356 in a matter of six days, so it's super-duper important. What I think is going to happen tomorrow, if it happens at all, again, we'll get to Apple and some key figures that kind of might derail it for a day or two, but if in case it does get there tomorrow and somewhere in the 364s, there's a higher probability than not they will get rejected the first time around. It doesn't mean it's going to be a hard wall and the market will never go up again. It just means that the first time around, and you can see it even here on the reverse, right? The first time they tested the 50, what happens later? They bounce. They tested the 50 again. They bounce. So here should be kind of the opposite, right? If the bulls somehow can get into the 364s, there should be a level of resistance there, both from the technical point of view, just a rejection the first time around, and to the point of we just had a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6-day, right? 6-day consolidation running gap into supplies is going to be very, very tight. Remember, you could be the greatest world-class athlete in the world, but if you run a marathon that's 26 miles, that's pretty tiring. If you run a marathon at 26 miles and you still feel pretty good, they kind of change the game when you tell you, well, it's not a marathon anymore, it's a triathlon. Now you have to swim for five miles, you have to bike for 10 miles, and oh, by the way, you've got to run another 26 miles. Even the greatest athlete in the world is going to be tired, and I think that's kind of where it are here. I think that 364 is going to be a big battleground, and that's an area, if you want to test a short position on that area, that's probably the highest probability that at least they'll get rejected, at least once. That rejection could be 50 cents, that rejection could be a dollar, like a rejection be $4, or that rejection could be nothing, right? And the bulls continue to fight in that level, and eventually fight across and reclaim and enclose on the clothes, and any clothes above the 364 is obviously bullish, and risk goes on, and that's when you could start building your inventory on a potential swing basis. However, a couple of companies are going to, you know, some companies are going to have something to say. This evening, as you guys know, Apple came out with earnings. You know, here are the metrics. Here are the metrics on Apple. Apple revenue breakdown. The iPhone revenue, they beat. The iPad revenue, they beat. The China revenue, they missed, but I think everybody kind of knew they were going to miss. The fourth quarter wearables, they missed as well. Ultimately, ultimately the stock is, you know, down about $1.50 after the close. Nothing really crazy, nothing really nuts. Once in a while, the stock did have a really nice session, just like a lot of other stocks. It's basically gave back about a half of the day. It's really interesting to see by the time you were watching this broadcast, you know, where's Apple going to be? Because their conference calls me starting soon. You know, by the time you watch this, this thing could be at 380, you know, or it could be at 173. We don't know. Again, I record these videos at around 5 o'clock eastern time before the, you know, conference calls. That's why sometimes, you know, you see a crazier price. For example, last time we spoke about Meta. Meta was up eight points by the time, you know, the video was sent out. Meta was down five stitch-borne. So again, we'll see where Apple is. But for now, it's holding up fairly well. But if you look at the scoreboard this time around, some really great moves in the last 24 hours. You had A&B with an incredible quarter rested today. Shopify had an absolute phenomenal quarter today. 20 plus move on the stock. Great numbers, right? Great numbers. Roku had an absolute killer quarter as well, doing very, very well. Amazon had a nice quarter. It's price-improven. Even in names like Microsoft that had a good quarter sold off and now closing at all their highs. So the stage is set, right? The stage is definitely set for tomorrow. Are the bulls finally going to be able to reclaim the 50-day moving average? We'll see. We'll see. That's the best way of saying it. On names that didn't do well, that had some pretty good option flow, guys. And this is sometimes where you look at the options market and you see where they're betting. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're wrong. But the more frequent you see bets coming in the options market ahead of earnings, they usually give a pretty good insight of what people are thinking. And today you had NET come out with earnings. And they were betting pretty aggressively all morning here. They were coming for the next week's $50 puts. And if you look at NET after the close, NET went all the way down to 49. It's up to about 53. But again, they were betting in the right direction. Coinbase also came out with earnings before the close. They were coming in for the January 80s, for the next week, 74, 75s, 80s on Coinbase. And if you look at Coinbase after the close, Coinbase is getting hit. Again, is it really a surprise? I mean, if you think about the whole crypto market, I'm not really a big crypto guy. But if you think about crypto, crypto market has been dead for months and months. Only recently has Bitcoin kind of started surging again and people started talking about it. So it makes sense. We actually were talking about it in the webinar before I left. It does kind of make sense that there were definitely players betting against the Coinbase quarter. Tesla woke up the last couple of days. Last time we were talking. Tesla was all the way down here. I had a runner. I had a runner. It was up about 10 points in the runner. Ultimately, I closed off my runner up a couple of points there just to give an opportunity. It had a really good run. It had an absolutely good run. And it kind of mirrors now what's happening on the Nasdaq 100. Nasdaq 100 is about the fight on the 50-day moving average. Tesla now, as you can see here, and now it needs to fight to get above the 200-day moving average. Some China numbers came out. They were obviously pretty good. And Tesla had a great two-day surge. Now the question is, again, for Tesla the same with the Qs, can the bulls finally reclaim back the 200-day moving average, which is obviously super important. And they can start moving their way back to the 150 that they lost here on the gap down on the earnings. We shall see, right? We shall see. So going into tomorrow, again, I think the bulls are a little tight. A little tight. Again, is it possible, you know, the Qs, you know, get to the 50-day, get rejected, then reclaim and go? Of course, everything's possible. But again, when you have a run from 342 to 364 in a matter of five days, right? Again, it's very, very tough to start entering fresh positions, going into a 50-day supply. We'll see, you know, we'll see exactly how it plays out. For me, tomorrow, I'm kind of doing the same thing we did today. We had a lot of bounce plays today. As you can imagine, everything gapped up today. And again, you're not going to start buying stocks up 10, 11 points. We're waiting for the dips. And today was, and if you're ever taking, if you've ever seen the PS60 theory or watched the workshops again, it's free, guys. The PS60 workshops are free. It's like eight, nine hours breaking down the PS60 theory. We talked about bounce plays. Today was nothing but bounce plays. I bounced today, Tesla. We bounced today. What else did I bounce today? Tesla, Amazon, Microsoft. I missed the AMD. AMD searched three and a half of the bounce. And the video was a really good bounce for about four or five points. So there was some great bounces. That's what I'm looking for tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'm looking for any weakness for profit taking on names like Shopify. It's basically the same play as AMD. Let me show you AMD. So AMD had a massive quarter yesterday. And today it came into the rising 60-minute support. You see that? Came into the rising 60-minute support. This is a fake wick. Came into the rising 60-minute support. And then rallied back three and a half dollars. That's kind of what I'm looking for for tomorrow on Shopify. I want to see any type of sell-off into rising support. Same thing I want to see on Roku as well. Any type of selling profit taking into rising 60-minute support because that's where the value is. These bounces, again, as you guys in the webinar saw today, phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. We recorded the first hour. We kind of took the snippets, kind of put it into our training vault to kind of show people exactly what it was. But it was absolutely amazing today that the bounces today were super. Absolutely super. And hopefully you guys are starting to get more comfortable and comfortable in that. So going into tomorrow, again, that's kind of my blind game plan. Let me give you guys a couple of names that I am watching for tomorrow that is not beta. It's not beta. Some ideas for tomorrow. Let me give you guys a couple of names I'm watching. Yeah, look at Instacart, right? We talked about this name several times. And this was definitely one of the worst IPOs of the year. Maybe because they kept on price gouging everybody during COVID. You guys remember that? Instacart. Yeah, we'll deliver it to your house and we'll charge you $80 for it. Well, now you're getting paid back. Anyway, so you could see the range here. You could see the range here. It needs to clear out. I'm going to watch this range in the next couple of days. If Instacart starts clearing out this range, maybe this thing finally wakes up here in the video. The video is very interesting. Very, very interesting. It's not out of the woods yet, but it's getting there. We had definitely nice pivots in the last couple of days. We had a nice bounce in this thing today. I'm going to watch this top of the range here. If it's possible, it reflects like on the queues and they start driving into the 50-day moving average. Yeah, we could. But the bigger picture on the video going into, especially going into its earnings, it's going to need to reclaim 444 on the close. 444 will reclaim back the 50-day moving average, but that's something we want to watch down the road. So listen, it's been a really good run for the bulls for the last three, four days. Tomorrow is the line in the sand. The only number you need to know on the queues is this 364s area. It's going to be a gunfight. It's going to be a knife fight. They're going to be hitting each other with everything, including the kitchen sink. Can the bulls reclaim the 50? Can the bears reject the 50 to be determined? Guys, have a great day. Have a great night. Stay blessed. Stay healthy. And with God's help, I'll see you guys soon. Take care.