I am thrilled to bring to the stage to talk about his principles for innovation, to have a conversation about where the Media Lab is going, where innovation is going, my boss, Joey Ito. Thanks, Ethan. So you and John told me two different things to say, so I'll mix the two together. So welcome to the Media Lab. The Media Lab was founded next year. It'll be 30 years. So if you remember 30 years ago, while there was a rudimentary version of the Internet, it was mostly to connect supercomputers together. And it was before the Macintosh. It was sort of before we had social media, anything like that. So the Media Lab was very dedicated back then to empowering the individual. So a lot of taking these desktop CAD-CAM systems and putting it into personal computers, empowering the individual through sort of man-machine interface, coming up with things like multi-touch and Kindle and stuff like that. So the Media Lab has traditionally been kind of a human-computer interface and a rather sort of thing in software-oriented place. Nicholas famously wrote a book called Being Digital about how the world was turning digital, and we have the Center for Bits and Atoms. So that interface between bits and atoms was another thing about the lab. So roll forward 30 years. What's changed? What's changed is that we finished or at least had to make a lot of progress in empowering the individual, connecting the individual. And so now we have a network. And suddenly when you start looking at things as a network, you have to think about things as systems instead of objects. And it's less about empowering the individual and more about empowering the community. So suddenly the, by the Media Lab, my interpretation of Media Lab, media is plural for medium. And medium is something in which you can express yourself. And the expression in the past was things like hardware and displays and robots. But as the medium of what we're expressing ourselves in becomes society and the ecosystem and journalism, suddenly the work that we're doing, which is always very applied, looks much more like social science, like applied social science, things like journalism, and less like fiddling on with things on the screen. And so I think I would divide my life and I think divide the Media Lab's life into sort of two phases. There's before the internet, which I call BI, life was simple. Things were sort of relatively predictable. Economists were even sometimes able to predict things. And then there's after internet where life becomes extremely complex, unpredictable, and it's more about systems and it's more about how do you participate responsibly in a system that you can't predict and whose outcome to your intervention is really kind of almost random. And so that's sort of where we have the Media Lab. However, there's some core DNA at the Media Lab that's sort of stayed the same, which is we're very practice and build oriented. In the old days, Nicholas used to say in the old days, until recently they used to say here demo or die. Nicholas famously said the demo only has to work once because our main pathway to impact was getting big companies to see the demos and become inspired to build things like Guitar Hero or Mindstorms or whatever they would get inspired. Actually, a lot of the stuff in the original Macintosh came from things here. But today, now that the internet has happened, I've changed it to deploy or die, which is that we want our students and faculty to think about how we touch the real world directly. And let me describe a little bit about the dynamics of why I think that's more true than ever. So if you think about the internet, so the internet as a technology and as a set of protocols allowed hackers like me and others to build internet service providers is the first time an entrepreneur could compete with the telephone companies and connectivity. It was because of the open standards and we've been talking about internet being open, but the protocol of the internet itself is open so that me and a bunch of used hardware could create a point of presence and give access to people to connect to each other. And so suddenly, what used to cost thousands and thousands of dollars started to cost nearly zero because there was a forced diminishing of price as the competition drove the price to nearly zero. And what that means is the distribution cost, the collaboration cost, the communication cost went nearly to zero. This allowed things like free and open source software to completely dominate, especially in the backend space. That combined with Moore's law creates an extremely low cost of building a computer system. So before the internet, if you want to build a communication system, there were a lot back then, video tech systems like Minitel and Captain in Japan. You build the network, you build the hardware, you build the software, you build the system, you get the content. It cost billions of dollars to build these network systems. They took forever to construct and they didn't work. What happened now is if you think about Facebook, Yahoo, Google, all these guys, they bought an off the shelf PC or built one themselves, put a bunch of free software in it, wrote a little few algorithms and then plugged it into the network and it would run. So what used to cost billions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars cost nearly nothing in that it just costs some sweat equity in a couple of kids in the door room. And so you had these kids competing with the incumbents. And what that I would call that is innovation cost or the cost of trying a thing went from hundreds of millions of dollars to nearly zero. So what that does is it takes the innovation, the ability to try something from large institutions that have authority and money. So let's take journalism. So in the old days, if you want to put something on video, you had to have a studio and big expensive cameras and a satellite transponder or something to transmit the things into the airway. So it was at a lot of capital. If you want to be a publisher, you had to have a printing press. If you wanted to be on the radio, you had to have a radio station. So everything costs money, which means you had to raise money, which means you had to get it from somebody. So it usually meant you had to make a proposal or if you were in a company, you had to get permission. And so what the internet has or provided was an ability for people to innovate without asking permission because they didn't need money. And what that did is it pushed, so all of the great companies in Silicon Valley these days started after the internet, the ones that started after the internet. Almost all of them started without any capital. So that's why we lost this Annalisa Xenian's book, Regional Advantage, which is about how innovation shifted from Boston to Silicon Valley. A lot of this had to do with the fact that the kids out there didn't need permission. And everybody over here was used to getting permission and granting permission as sort of a key component. And it also, I always call it, it was MBA innovation because you had to sort of have an MBA to be able to raise $100 million. But now it's designer innovation or engineer innovation where you don't need the MBA until you're going public. So what the diminishing cost of innovation did was to push innovation to the edges and then allowed a kind of grassroots innovation. So, and I'm using the word innovation kind of broadly, but we see that here at the Media Lab as well. So, you know, if you want to create hardware, it used to be that you had to have a big company to create hardware, but now we have startups like Form Labs and Little Bits.  So the diminishing cost of innovation allows research that's being done here to go past just the demo phase into deployment. You can create a website that millions of people can see. You can create hardware that can be distributed. It is interesting to note, however, though, that commercial startups aren't the best thing for some ideas because in a way, Nicholas always, so Nicholas Negrefonte and I disagree on this. He says startups can't have any big ideas, which I don't think is true. Some startups do have big ideas, but some, I said, but I have an iteration on his critique which is some big ideas don't work in startups because you need to invest decades of time or you need to think about it in a very non-commercial way or you need to take a lot of risk that a funder wouldn't take. So in that sense, I think you do need an academic institution to shield researchers from the necessity of providing a business plan or a business model and give them time to think about it. And when you map it onto journalism, I think it's also there's this interesting parallel. So, you know, we have a night news challenge and we have a whole bunch of really amazing projects here where you're all out in the world building things because the cost of innovation is so cheap. And it turns out if you like the safecast story, even the hardware is actually, you know, citizen science doable.  But then there are certain things like sending a whole bunch of journalists into Syria or doing data science that requires years and years and lots and lots of computing iron that don't really work with a little bit of grant money or a little bit of startup. And I think that's sort of the chasm that's happening in journalism. Where, you know, so I'm on the New York Times board and one of the things they did to sort of indoctrinate you is after your first board meeting, they send you home with a pile of all the Pulitzer Prize nominations, right? So it's not just the winner, it's just all the... It's like this.  And most of them only occur because you have the power of the legal office of the New York Times defending you. And you may have to have military support going into a space. These are not things that citizen journalists are easily going to do. But the business model of traditional journalism is challenged. We'll see whether the business model of higher ed is going to be challenged. But I think what's interesting is there are certain things that we can solve from this kind of rapid bottom-up agile innovation which I think we're getting better at. But there are certain types of things that seem to be a little bit harder. And so we need to kind of think about what the business model is. Now, it could be that startups like Kickstarter, for instance, I think is a pretty interesting start. I'm an investor, but... And I just say that as a disclosure, not as a boast. Although, I guess it turns out to be both. But there are certain models that may turn out to be big ideas coming out from small companies. And I think there's some sort of sweet spot that we're trying to find here. And so, now putting on my Knight Foundation hat, what's interesting when you think about how money flows. So, in the old days, when it used to cost $100 million, or even $10 million to fund a software idea, the guys who had the money had the power because entrepreneurs just needed money before they could actually do anything. So, sort of exaggerating here. But the venture capitalists used to kick back and say, all right, pitch me your idea. And the people who had the money kind of were a little bit arrogant and expected a full-blown impressive presentation. These days, because the cost of trying something is so cheap, there isn't enough space for everybody to get in for the first round. And a lot of these entrepreneurs go ahead and start their companies without even talking to the venture capitalists. So, the venture capitalists are having to sort of claw their way into little deals, present how they're going to be so helpful. Because in order for them to put real money in later in the company, they have to have been helpful upfront or they have to get into the deal upfront. Now, obviously, it's a seller's market for a particular category of deals. But fundamentally, if you have a track record and you have a good company, the venture capitalists are going to be trying a lot harder to get into the deal because there's just a lot less deal and a lot less money that they need. Similarly, I think in foundations, it's sort of similar, right? So, if I'm a foundation, it used to be that you would get, and we still get, but you used to get big institutions like the opera of XYZ saying we need years of operating support and you'd say, okay, well, you take a year of trying to figure out whether you want to put the money in and then you get your name on the building and it was pretty straightforward. Now, you've got hundreds of ideas. You want to get into the thing and so as Knight Foundation, I think we should be doing this in the way I think we are, is we convene meetings. We try to explain why you should take Knight Foundation money rather than venture startup money or this other person's money because you're joining a community and we have value. And if our program officers aren't adding value to the organizations that we're giving money to, I don't think we're doing our job. That's how we're trying to pick the best people is to create a community, which I think you all are. And so I think in the sense that the diminishing cost of innovation is making people who have money behave a little better. I think it's a good thing. But we still have the same problem. So we do the Knight News Challenge. We come with a lot of ideas, but I do sometimes wonder, well, who's thinking about those ideas that don't start small and how should we think about some of the bigger problems? And I think in a way, part of it is also thinking about it as a community because when you think about a system, so for instance, I boast again, I was an investor in Twitter and when we invested in Twitter, I remember a lot of people say that's the stupidest company to invest in. It's not a company. It's a feature. And what was interesting about that was it turns out that if Twitter were in the days before internet, well, it would be stupid. Actually, I have a faculty member here at the Media Lab who shouted at me when I was interviewing. I invented Twitter 30 years ago. And I said, well, it was pretty useless 30 years ago because you didn't have anything to link to. It's only useful when you're in a system. And so similarly, one idea that I have about tackling the big problems is if you think about it, all of us as an ecosystem, all of you as pieces of the ecosystem, each of you are working on certain problems within the ecosystem, but then to think about it as an ecosystem, can the ecosystem solve the big problems? And it's a complex system with no one really in charge, but somehow we should be able to think about things at that level. So this is where it gets to another piece of the Media Lab, which is I like to think about the future of design. And so in the old days, in the old days, some people still do this, when you design something, you kind of design it for one particular purpose and it's like you're building a thing. But when the world is complex and it's a system, design is gonna feel a lot more like life, like growing, like giving birth to a child in an environment that you don't have control of, so you don't know exactly where that child's gonna go and that child has your DNA, but hopefully it turns into something that you're gonna be proud of. And I think that if everybody does that and is sort of responsible, you end up with a community that's actually pretty functional, that generally heads in the trajectory that you want things to go. And I kind of feel like the solution to the journalism idea, the solution to the civics idea, the solution to the government idea is not gonna be some brilliant, aha, I got it. It's gonna be some combination of pieces in a network that sort of start to become resilient and start to grow and turn into a thing. And for that, I think the open internet that we've been talking about all these last two days is essential because as those people who try to close a system go in there, it's really like gunking up an ecosystem with pollution, trash, or constraints that you don't really want. And so I think that that's, if you think about it as a gardener, I think the open internet is the water, the openness, the air that you need. And then I think all of us are the organisms that live there that try to make this thing vibrant. Can I get the principle slide up now? So these are some principles that I've been working on and a lot of people disagree with a lot of them, but I don't care. And I guess I care about the arguments. I don't care that they disagree. But in a complex system, this is sort of the way I think you need to think about it. Instead of the sort of Newtonian, Euclidean laws of before internet when you could predict things, I think you sort of have to live very much. It's sort of a zen thing. It's more about being present and about thinking about things in this way, I think. So for instance, take the lower left one. Learning over education. I know Bracken hates this one. But to me, education is what people do to you and learning is what you do to yourself. And like in education, like have you completed your education? Yes, I have a degree. I'm done. Well, no, that's not, it's pretty useless. What you want is you want to learn how to learn and continue to learn. So in a lot of education is about the degree. So when the first year PhD students come to the Media Lab, I often say, pretend that at the end of your degree program, I take your degree away and say, I want you to be able to look back and say it was still worth it. I don't want you to be at the Media Lab because you want to get out. Because by the way, the Media Arts and Sciences degree that you get here isn't, there are no jobs listed for Media Arts and Science PhDs, it turns out. It's not like engineering. So I think part of it is learning should be the focus, not the education. Disobedience over compliance. I think this is also a tricky one for a lot of our faculty members. But you don't win a Nobel Prize by doing what you're told. You win a Nobel Prize by questioning authority and thinking for yourself. And I think if you're trying to create an institution that's resilient to the computerization and the robotization of the world, you don't want a whole bunch of people doing exactly the same thing as everybody else in a predictable and orderly way. Well, guess what? Talk about education. We are trying to train kids to produce exactly the same answers as you expect, not to ask questions and to be disobedient. But I think what you want is you want to create a system or an organization that's resilient to disobedience. And I think a lot of the projects here are really about being... I mean, a lot of civics is about disobedience. Emergence over authority. This just means how does the authority of a system exist? And if you look at open source projects, if you look at communities, authority tends to be emergent, right? So if you look at the heads of a lot of the successful open source projects, they tend to be somewhat quiet people who have a lot of EQ, who aren't naturally trying to grasp power but end up in power because everybody, the followers pushed them there. To me, authority is the opposite. Where somebody comes in with a title and based on the title is... And if you're in a system like an investment bank where everybody's trying to claw up to the top, all you need is sort of a club in order to manage the system because there's this natural incentive that money is pulling people to stay. But when you're in a system where people are paying to participate or volunteering to participate, like many of the nonprofits, then what you want is you want this sort of emergent authority, which is, I think, really important. Compass over maps, I think, kind of ties to the big idea versus a little idea problem, which is I think you need to have a compass heading of where you want to go. Like we use a safecast example. We want to figure out this radiation problem, but every step of the way we were trying to figure out what we were doing and we couldn't have mapped it out. And often the map costs more to build than it's worth because the complexity is so high and so unpredictable. So I think this dependence on planning, I think, is really a weakness. And it ties to this risk over safety thing. So for example, the first ISP that I set up in Japan or the ISP I set up in Japan, I tried to raise money for it, $600,000. I took it to a big company in Japan and they spent $3 million on consultants to come up with a study not to invest $600,000. So if it costs you more money to think about it than to do it, it's probably better to do it. And it turns out if you do it, you get a fact, not a theory. So they had a $3 million theory when I could have given them a $600,000 fact even if I were wrong. And so I think that ties to this practice over theory. So I think it's really important to do things, especially when the cost of doing things is cheaper than the cost of talking about it and trying to decide whether to do it or not. And a lot of times it works in practice and not in theory, which is fine because then you can figure out the theory later. Most of the world is dealing with stuff that works in theory but not in practice and they're trying to discredit reality in order to fit with their theory. But in theory, they say theory and practice are the same. And then pull over push. Again, I'll keep using the SafeCast model because I see Sean here. It's really the idea that you pull from the network as you need it rather than stocking and centrally controlling it. So in SafeCast, we started after the earthquake but we beat, I would say beat. We were more effective than any NGO or government that had planned and spent millions of dollars before the earthquake because we were able to find what we needed and what we needed and it turns out that way we found better partners and it cost less and it retained our agility. And agility is what comes out of that because if you have printing presses and lines of code and IP, those are all reasons not to shift course and stick to your map rather than the compass and all the things that we think are assets actually are liabilities when you think about it from the perspective of agility. So the power of pull is really if you're only pulling things that you need as you go, you can move very quickly and you have a lot of agility. I'm not going to go over the others because they're somewhat obvious but I think what I'll do now is to switch to a conversation and some questions. Thank you. And comments are fine too. If you... Somebody wanted to slide. Oh, there it's there. You talked about the media innovation ecosystem and one of the great values of a conference like this is we can find out what's going on. So there's some way that civic media could map real time the innovation that is taking place globally so that we're all kind of we're not reinventing the wheel. We can sort of share our experiences and pull faster. So I'm going to defer this question to Michael because that's what he should be doing. But I think that's a good point. I think that trying to figure out how to communicate... So I think you're right, the conference is a great system. I think a lot of people have experimented with ways to try to share knowledge but it seems to be one of the hardest problems because everyone's got a day job, they're very busy and people have slightly different languages and when you're face to face you can kind of coordinate your language in real time but when you sort of separate things out it gets really difficult and this is actually an interesting... There's an interesting parallel on the web of the semantic web people who are trying to create a sort of card catalog of everything and then there are other people who love tagging and kind of the sloppiness and just use search and the sort of coordination inside of an ecosystem I think it actually is also... There's an interesting parallel to just general governance and civics as well which is how do you get a bunch of people who are working on stuff coordinated? At the Media Lab we do have several different approaches. We have this sort of big data, data mining, machine learning so work like predicting things through sort of causalities and patterns versus something where people are more in charge and people are more active. So I think it's a rich domain. I don't think we figured it out but I hope that Michael will talk about a little bit during his comments. Thank you. You have an interesting couple of positions that give you a perspective on journalism, your role with the Knight Foundation as well as being on the board of the New York Times. What do you think of the way the business models are evolving in journalism? What do you think about the way the business ecosystem is evolving and sort of where do you think business models are going in journalism? So I think that's sort of the million dollar... or not million dollar question. I don't think I want to say that I have a view in terms of what's going to actually work. I think that there are so many variables that are moving and it's pretty unpredictable and so what I would do and that's why I'm on the Knight Foundation board and at the Media Lab and at the New York Times. I think we have to try everything. I think there's a possibility that the traditional media companies kind of figure something out and then there's a paid model of the advertising mobile, there's a whole bunch of models that we're trying at the New York Times some more successfully than others. I think that the Knight News Challenge is trying... the point of that and some of our prototype funding is to really try to see if we can find a business model somewhere. The good news... I don't know if it's good news. The news is that the news folks like New York Times and Financial Times, all of us realize that we're in a moment of crisis and that if somebody figures it out it's going to help everybody. So the good news is we... I saw Matt Carroll here. There he is. So he's heading the news initiative at the Media Lab and it's interesting the extent to which the news companies are willing to get together to talk about the future of the business model as well as the future of editorial. So there's a lot of cooperation more than you would normally expect but I think the jury's still out on what it is and I think we have to try everything until we figure it out. So it's sort of a non-answer but let me know if you figure it out. Hi Joey, thank you for this slide. I watched you put it up and about two dozen cameras went up to take pictures so there must be some magic here. I want to ask though personally which of these you struggle with the most and why? Struggle with it in terms of... It's difficult for me? Correct. I guess the one that I struggle with the most is in a funny way... Let's see, they're all tricky different ways. I think resilience over strength is sort of an interesting one which is what I mean by that one is instead of trying to sort of bulk up and resist failure invest the same money on recovery and resilience. And when you're running an institution when you're trying to build stuff you tend to want to invest in trying to... and it's related to the risk over safety trying to minimize failure rather than trying to work on resilience. And this is also... it's kind of a zen thing too, right? So if you're extremely present and ready for anything you're in an extremely resilient state and so if you get shoved you wobble but you come back and if you're not present you're always focused on the future and the past you end up trying to build walls and trying to make sure that you don't get shoved and it's hard because when you're surrounded by other planners in an institution like this you tend to sort of focus on structure which is really kind of the strength versus resilience structure versus this sort of bounciness and again I think that on the internet a lot of the pieces are very resilient but when you're in an institution that's used to be a lot of planning it's hard to create that interface.


Hello, in this presentation we will discuss the accounting equation. At the end of this, we will be able to name the accounting equation, explain the components of the accounting equation, and explain the balancing concept related to transactions. The double entry accounting system can be recorded in a few different ways, at least three different ways. It's useful to understand these three different ways, the first way the one we will be concentrating on here will be in the format of the accounting equation, assets equal liabilities plus owner's equity, or just equity. I have to name the equity section equity only because it will differ depending on the type of entity. Sole proprietors will have owner's equity, partnerships will have partnership equity, and corporations will have stockholders' equity. But note that the concept of equity will be the same for any type of entity when we are thinking of it as a whole in total. It's useful to know the accounting equation is the double entry accounting system, and to understand that it could be expressed in different ways, both the accounting equation as well as the double entry accounting system, meaning the accounting equation can also basically be seen as the balance sheet equation, meaning if somebody says that the balance sheet is in balance, they are in essence saying that the accounting equation is in balance because the balance sheet components are assets equal liabilities plus equity. Therefore, if the balance sheet is thought or said to be in balance, then the accounting equation by definition is in balance. And it's useful to understand this as accountants because we need to understand when we are talking to different people what they're saying. If they're talking in terms of the accounting equation, we need to understand that if they're talking in terms of the balance sheet, we need to understand that both in terms of our clients when we're talking to our clients or we're talking to people within the business or within the accounting department, different areas will express the double entry accounting system in different ways. People in finance often will be discussing it in terms of the balance sheet. We can also express the double entry accounting system in terms of debits and credits. And when we're working in the accounting department, this will be the most common format or one of the most in common formats because the debits and credits will be the building blocks. So when we present the financial statements, say to management or say to external users, investors, or creditors, then we're going to present it in terms of plus and minus format. And all the discussion then will be in terms of a plus and minus format. But when we build the financial statements, when we're talking to people in the accounting department and auditors, we need to know that the same kind of concepts, the same kind of balancing concepts, the same concepts related to the double entry accounting system will be represented in terms of debits and credits. We're going to use these debits and credits in order to then construct something that will be in a plus and minus format, will be in the format of the accounting equation. Now you might be asking, why would we then do that if we have something of an accounting equation that works? Why would we then go to a debit and credit system, which is more complicated and less people understand? Well, it's more complicated in some ways, it's easier in other ways. And the reason is that it is going to be easier in some ways to actually record the transactions once we understand the definitions of debits and credits, understanding the definitions of debits and credits being something that's not as easy to do, we have to memorize and understand what that means. Once it's been learned, however, it's a better tool for constructing and compiling the data, which then we can easily convert or fairly easily convert to a plus and minus system so that we do not have to explain the concept of debits and credits to the users of the financial statements, to management, to external users, to investors, to the IRS, whoever is going to use the data, we're going to convert it back to the accounting equation. The accounting equation, as we saw, is assets equal liabilities plus equity. Remember that equity could be owner's equity, it could be partnership equity, it could be corporate equity, it could be stockholders' equity, depending on whether we are a sole proprietor, partnership, or corporation respectively. The assets are going to be things that the company has that they will use in the future in order to achieve the goals of the company, the goals being to generate revenue. So we're always thinking about the accounting transactions in terms of that goal achieving revenue. Our most common asset that the first thing you want to think of is of course cash. Cash is our most common asset or the first one that should come to mind, the first one that will be on the balance sheet. And even cash, our goal of the organization, remember cash is not revenue and therefore the goal of the corporation or the business is not to just compile cash, the goal of the business is to generate revenue. Any cash that this business has should be accumulated in order to achieve a future goal of revenue generation. If it's not achieving that future goal, if we have more cash than we need and there's no future goal that we have to expend that cash in order to help generate revenue, we should take it out of the company and actually give it to the owners, the stockholders or the owner of the sole proprietor or the partners. Otherwise if it's within the company, we should be using it in order to help us to generate revenue. Land is another example of assets, something we're going to consume and use for a long period of time. Things like auto or property plant and equipment are going to be forms of assets, things that we have not yet consumed, we're going to consume them over time in the future to help generate revenue. Ink or supplies are going to be a format of assets. We should be putting the supplies basically on the books as an asset and then expensing them as we use them in accordance with the matching principle. We have not yet used all the ink that's piled up in the corner. So technically in an accrual method, we should then be recording it as an asset until we consume it in the future in order to help generate revenue. Things like computers and phones and whatnot, those are also going to be formats of assets, not the phone bill or not the computer usage but the actual computers themselves and the phones that long live things, things we're going to use for an extended period of time technically should be on the books as assets. Now note that there is going to be a usually some kind of constraint in terms of how much the dollar amount is, meaning if the phone, we're going to use it for multiple years, however the cost of the phone is relatively small in comparison to the revenue generation of the company. We may just expense it even though we're going to be using it for a long period of time because that'll be the easier or faster thing to do. So typically there is going to be some kind of threshold in terms of dollar amount, however theoretically there shouldn't be a threshold because we're going to use that phone into the future. We have it now in order to help us generate revenue into the future. So in reality in practice there typically is some kind of cost benefit analysis in terms of how much we're going to capitalize something for, how much it costs and therefore how much we're going to capitalize it for in theory. Anything that we're going to consume over an extended period of time should be an asset liabilities then are going to be things that liabilities then are going to be things that we are going to have to owe in the future for something that happened in the past. So common examples would be something like a loan or accounts payable. When we're starting off there should be there's often less liabilities than we will have assets for. The liabilities being a loan is going to be a common first liability us owing the bank for usually cash received in the past, the past transaction requiring a future payment. Vendors are going to be an indication of accounts payable. That's going to be our most common account. That's going to be similar to a loan but it's kind of like a short term loan. You can compare it to something like a credit card transaction. If we were to purchase something on a credit card we would have to owe something in the future probably 30 to 60 days we would end up paying that and that's similar to an accounts payable something that we owe in the future in order for some transaction that happened within the past. Then we have the equity section which is often the most confusing section. If we're thinking about a sole proprietor we're thinking about one we could think about just one owner is what is represented by the equity section meaning it's kind of what is owed to the owner. So if we have the assets on the left hand side and we think of the business as a separate entity a separate piece of paper that piece of paper must pay everything they owe or contribute it or someone has claim to everything that that piece of paper owes either a third party in terms of loans or accounts payable or the owner has claims to these assets. So note what we will do is we will value all these assets in terms of dollars and then we will then contribute who has claim to those assets to either a third party vendor or the owner. Remember that the owner in this case is a sole proprietor but if we had partners we'd have to break it out into the partners two or more partners if it was a corporation we would have shareholders and we would have to break this out into the shareholders. Also note that we can see this accounting equation in a different format. This is the format you really want to look at when we're considering financial accounting always think of this format but if you're thinking about finance or we're just considering what this equity section means we could reformat this mathematically as assets minus liabilities equals equity by just subtracting liabilities from both sides which would then emphasize the fact the idea that the equity section represents the book value of the company the amount the owner would receive if they had for example sold all the assets and they have received the exact amount of cash that the assets were on the books for paid off the liabilities then they would theoretically have that amount of cash left over that's what the equity section is it's the value of the company owners owning the company then being attributed that value those assets minus those liabilities we can think of a few transactions just to emphasize what the transactions are doing because when we consider transactions financial transactions the activity that the accounting department will be recording over time we will be recording this data or we can think of the recording of this data in terms of the balancing concept of the accounting equation for example if a company received cash because the owner invested cash we're going to record this in terms of the accounting equation we're going to say that assets are going to go up because cash is an assets and there and then we're going to say that the equity section is going to go up because the owner is owed back that cash so the owner put cash into the into the business cash is going to go up and of course who who is the business owing that cash to the owner the person that put the money into the business to hopefully help to stimulate revenue generation within the future it's also possible to have three accounts that will be affected or impacted by the accounting equation for example we could think of a transaction where we purchase a car we put a down payment on the car where we would have the asset property plant and equipment going up long-lived assets we would then have cash and other assets decreasing and we would then have possibly a financing of part of the car meaning we owe money a liability a loan of some kind going up the assets in this case the net effect of the assets would equal the loan meaning the amount of the car minus the amount paid would equal of course the loan that we took out in order to purchase the car so many of the transactions that we will be working with when we first start out recording transactions we'll just have two things happening two pieces two accounts within the accounting equations will be affected most of the time however it's very possible and later on we will have transactions which will have more than just two components however it every transaction will have the rule of the balancing concept in that every transaction will remain assets equal in liabilities plus equity we could think of another transaction where we purchase for example computer ink and we purchased that not for cash meaning cash is not involved in this transaction at all we have instead a liability increasing so in this case an asset is still going up assets still affected however cash is not the asset being affected the the supplies account will be going up and we'll have an increase on the other side of the accounting equation in terms of a liability that liability being accounts payable therefore we see in this case in this example if we were to see those transactions and add up those transactions pictorially we would say okay we still have some cash hopefully left over we've got a car in terms of assets we've got ink and note we would have a dollar amount attributed to those we're not going to say that we have one car when we talk about the accounting equation we're going to say we have so many dollars worth of car nests we were using dollars as the majoring tool same with the ink here and those dollar amounts attributed to the assets would be the same as equal to who they owe them to in this case the third party for the loan that was taken out and to what is owed to the vendor the difference then is the amount that would be owed to the owner the book value of the company in this case looking like a sole proprietor in the case of a partnership two or more owners would be allocated the assets minus the liabilities and the case of a corporation stockholders equity would be this section we are now able to name the accounting equation explain the components of the accounting equation and explain the balancing concepts related to transactions.


You know, so what is a sandwich? Tacos, taco sandwiches? What about all the taco trucks? Are they sandwich stores? Are they competing? Is this an issue? And then what about the fact that grocery stores sell sandwiches, convenience stores sell sandwiches, coffee shops sell sandwiches? The non-chain delis, lots of them, particularly in New York, does they count? Is the category, particularly sandwiches, two pieces of bread with deli meats in the middle, not hamburgers, that are not sold by... I mean, this is just the arbitrariness, the subjectivism, the complete randomness. The FTC and Elizabeth Wands complete power lust, wanting to control every aspect of our lives. It is just absurd and ridiculous.


the Yankees right-hander with Meredith and the media. Hey, Jameson, Aaron Judge mentioned that you got the belt today, player of the game, for getting your first win in two years. Is this one more meaningful for you, given the journey back? Yeah, for sure. You know, one, it took me a little longer than I would have liked to get that first one here. So that makes it meaningful, I guess, to be on the board and get that out of the way. But yeah, I mean, I think it was about two years ago from the day that I hurt my elbow for the second time. And there were times where I wasn't 100% sure whether I'd ever be back in a big league uniform and let alone to be on a team like the Yankees and to contribute to wins throughout the year. So it's definitely meaningful. There's a lot of people that played part in it to get me back to this point. And now I'm looking forward to just putting my head down and knocking out more starts. Aaron Boone called your outing another step in the right direction. How would you evaluate your outing and really the start to the year? Yeah, I thought today was definitely a step in the right direction. I thought there were a few situations with like two strikes where in the past I've given up a lot of two strike damage this year. It's no secret. I thought, you know, my awareness to the situation was a little better. You know, I slowed it down and I was aware that, hey, this is one of the situations where I need to make a pitch. Or even like the three, two walk there and the fifth inning to bring up Miggy. You know, I don't want to walk anybody, but I'd rather that situation take part than to throw a cookie and give up runs. So I thought the awareness to the situations today where it was a lot better. And I think to start the year, some ups and downs, a lot of good. I've learned a lot and from every down outing that I've had, I've taken something away, which whether it's the shape of the curve ball, getting the fast ball to the top of the zone, being competitive with two strikes and not giving in. You mentioned that fifth inning. How much of a grind was that fifth inning? And ultimately, how were you able to bear down and get one of the best hitters in baseball to start out to end the inning? Yeah, yeah, that inning, you know, started to get some traffic on base there. I feel like I still made a lot of really good pitches throughout the inning. And that's kind of what I told myself is let's just slow this down. Let's make one pitch at a time. And yeah, I mean, Miggy's one of the best hitters of our generation, if not the best. And you know, no matter what stage of his career he's at, I have a ton of respect for a guy like that standing in the box. So that made that moment that much bigger to be able to get him there because he's come up big in a lot of spots over the years. So that was a good challenge for me.


Welcome back to my channel guys. It's your girl Coco styles and on this channel. We talk about beauty fashion lifestyle and styling Today, I'm sitting down to show you guys some of the jeans that I purchased from Zara for the girls who are tall I wanted to buy some jeans and show you that We're able to shop at Zara. We're a little bit of tweaking So I have about three pair of I don't want to say that They're not jeans They're denim But they're not jeans and the other pair is like um Like a khaki material But my main purpose of this video is just to kind of show you girls who are five ten five eleven six feet Like myself that we can still shop at Zara with a little bit of tweaking for those of you guys who don't know And who are new here to my channel. I will swear by going to a tailor. I Have been doing this since I was about 14 possibly Very very young once I realized I couldn't find things to fit my frame and my friends could I had to get creative So back then I would buy extra material different Patterns and have a tailor go ahead and put it on the bottom on my pockets on my belt hoops So all that good stuff. This is so that I didn't feel I Guess you could say like left out with my friends are shopping or Not have an enjoyment when it came to shopping period This is gonna be a video about shopping while tall at Zara. Like I said, I do not have any tops today They actually didn't have anything Okay, so it looks like they have a bunch of New leather dresses skirts like a hundred percent leather and I want to say a blazer in this exact color and Probably one more thing But the reason why I'm pointing this jacket out is because this is my jacket from Lamarck and Everybody in the store kept saying oh my god that jacket is so nice. Zara has one. I'm like leather. They like yeah It's online, but it's actually not in store yet. So anyway, let's get into the video I'm gonna pop in a video or a picture Probably a video of me wearing each item and I want to say Zara's bottom and stuff They do run The sizes are weird. So it's like forties forty three forty four forty two. I am not a big girl however Your girl gotta get a 44 and I don't know for 40 44 is a 12 which is odd because I'm not looking at 12. I guess I am how these hands I'm gonna see if I can find the picture on Zara first and then show the video of me wearing them But they do come with like these snaps on the side So if you like me who always get your pants tailored You may want to try this out first before you go ahead and take it to a tailor This may help out with a little bit of that that gapping in the back I Thought this was pretty cool. Some of you may or may not like it and these are just a pair of like shorts Okay Nice denim. I thought the color was great. I don't have anything this dark But I am going to show you guys with me wearing these these were 49. I believe 45 90 Okay, and these are the a-line shorts So again, once I pop in a video you guys and see how these look on me One thing I do like about these is that they actually don't have a lot of stretch That's one that I like and two I'm mis-having like real denim Pants or shorts. It's very hard to find them and they did a really good job with these So it's just a dark denim. It has a little bit of washing here and For me as a tall girl, you guys are gonna see they hit like a little bit past my knee So kind of like a cool cool off So I got the dark pair and then I got another pair That are actually similar, but they do not have that piece in the back a lighter color But these are actually softer in material and these are called These don't happen. Oh wait, hold on. Actually, where did I get that name from? Oh These don't have that little thing on it guys These are There's no name. What is this? Maybe have a wall types of sticky. That's why I was beeping in the store So I got a lighter color these are 45 90 as well They look really big but these I know I have to get them taken in just a little bit Just so I don't have to wear a belt But the reason why I wanted pants like this is because I could wear my boots My I can wear booties with it. I can wear sneakers with it really whatever I want a nice blazer But I'm gonna show you guys these once I get these on and then the last pair Well, let me just say this the reason why I wanted to do the short video just literally solely on Zara's bottoms Is because as a tall girl, it is really hard for us to find pants. That's gonna fit our frame. I Already showed you guys those good American jeans Those are like a 38 36 or 38 they're long. I'm gonna get the other pair because Why not when you're a tall girl? Sometimes we just have to We actually just we just have to pay for the item, you know I like I said before one of my friends said that fashion Nova has a 38 inseam so If you girls are looking for long long cans and you're tired of wearing like Stretched jeans because trust me it gets really boring Get creative do some research if you want check out fashion Nova. I have never Hurches anything from fashion Nova But one of my friends is tall and she did and the pants look actually look really really good on her So if you're struggling with it Check them out.  Okay, a tailor is your best friend. They're going to help you figure out Your your sizing pretty much, right?  And then the last pair these were 69 I'm gonna I said the kool-axe these are like Bermuda shorts Cool, that's a little bit longer, but these are these are considered trousers They say trousers and they're 69 90 which is kind of high for Zara and these are oh Okay, they're cargo pants here But on there they have them as trousers, which is weird and I got these in a 42, which is a US 10 McRide's regular length when it says regular length. You ever know, it's gonna be like high waters on me however These are gonna look so cute with my red boots And I'm gonna have my tailor do something to them I'll show you guys once they're on and I'll clean it a little bit more, but I'll pop in a video with that so you guys can actually see how they're looking on me But I'm gonna get her to tweak these pants for me. The waist was fine They're really really cute and it's kind of like a a green It's like a greenish color. Can you guys see I don't know It's like a green color, but I like them. There's some huge pockets But I'm gonna show you guys how each pants look on me and then kind of end the video But um, make sure you guys are Subscribing to the channel. Make sure you guys are putting any questions that you would like to know in the Comment section If you guys are not following me on Instagram follow me on Instagram at Coco styles NYC and Coco styles And why and my personal style blog Coco styles NYC and my style services Coco styles NY calm And I'm on tickety tickety talk Coco styles NYC and if you stay to the end of this video, please comment Coco. We see you guys


You're welcome back. We're now going to bring you something else. And we're talking about inflation and how high interest rates spike, spike sales and rent by 40% in major cities. In fact, in Lagos state is more or less like 300%. I know of someone very close to me who lived in a house that he used to pay 400,000 and just about May this year or April this year, the landlord came and said it has to be 600,000 from 200 to 600,000. And they were just begging for this rent to be at 400,000, from 200,000. That means it's a 100% increase, not 40. So if in some cities it's 40%, then, well, that city is still a very, very good city. But in Lagos state, so many landlords have increased it 100% and that is worrisome. So it's interest rates and so many other things are going up and up and up. And to discuss this with me is Mr. Nick Agoulet, Public Affairs Analyst. Good morning and welcome to the program Mr. Agoulet. Good morning and welcome Mr. Agoulet. Good morning to our viewers. So now we're looking at inflation, high interest rates, and we're looking at the fact that rents have gone up 40%. This is the official figure of 40%, but practically it's more than that and so many other things are going up. Let's take your thoughts on what is happening, inflation and especially high interest rates in Nigeria. Will that take us somewhere better or it is taking us somewhere backwards? Thank you very much for that question. That there will be inflation in Nigeria is expected. Expected because of the policies that have been backed upon by the current government. Every step that this government has taken is inflationary or we have negative impact on inflation. Number one, the government increased the price of petrol from 180, 190 to 600 plus today. That's inflationary. That is going to cost inflation in the country because petrol impacts on so many things in this country. Number two, government floats the Naira. Meaning the official exchange rate of the Naira moves from about 450 there about to 800 even try to touch a thousand or touch the thousand and it's floating at around that 800 mark now. That is inflationary because Nigeria's economy is heavily import dependent and if the cost of the dollar rises by such quantum you expect that the price of the imported goods that we bring into Nigeria are going to rise. Government under the central bank of Nigeria increased the monetary policy rate to 18.75%. That is also inflationary because businesses that assessed credit will experience an increase in their interest cost and they are going to try to transfer this extra cost and interest into the prices of the goods and services that they produce. So that is also inflationary. So you can see that so far everything that this government is doing is inflationary is causing negative impact on inflation and so it's not surprising that the housing sector is experiencing inflationary pressures. Like I said, will it lead to a better Nigeria or is it taking us backwards because the government that is doing all these things they are telling us that they are taking us to a better place. Do you believe that? There is nowhere in the world that inflation takes anybody to a better place and that is why central banks across the world once they see that their economies are facing inflationary pressures they begin to take action to deal with that because the inflation is like a cancer because if you are paying the worker today 30,000 minimum wage and the 30,000 can buy them a bag of rice if you still pay them the 30,000 next month and a bag of rice increases in price from 30,000 to 45,000 then that worker isn't going to be able to buy a bag of rice again he can only buy probably half a bag of rice so that is the impact of inflation it eats into the purchasing power it brings poverty because the money that people have cannot fetch for them again the goods and services that it was commanding so inflation is a bad thing and for any responsible government once they see inflation they have to start taking actions to deal with inflation unfortunately the Nigerian government so far has been in office from May to Death they have taken all the actions that have been increasing inflation but they haven't taken any action whatsoever that would deal with inflation because to deal with inflation you have to understand what is the cost of this inflation and Nigerian government approach to dealing with inflation under the central bank of Nigeria is to hike the interest rate that is the medicine for demand-pull inflation because in demand-pull inflation the people have a lot of money money is floating in the economy and you want to mop up the money from the economy so that the people will demand for less goods and services and by increasing the interest rates it will attract them to go and deposit money in the bank so that they can earn high interest rates and that contains demand so that's how you deal with demand-pull inflation by increasing interest rates when Nigeria's inflation is cost-push inflation Nigeria's inflation is not demand-pull inflation because if you look at it in Nigeria only a few people have money the vast majority of Nigerians don't have money today we have millions of graduates for instance they've gone to school they've burnt the midnight candle but they cannot get jobs to work at any living and a lot of people who are even working there are not any good wages that can even take them home but there are a few people in Nigeria who have a lot of money they don't go to the market always so you can see that the inflation in Nigeria is not demand-pull inflation it's cost-push cost-push in the sense that if the cost of imputes into the manufacturing sector is rising the manufacturing sector will try to push the extra cost into the prices of goods and services and you can see that because a lot of manufacturers in Nigeria are importing their imputes they are importing their spares and all of that this exchange rate depreciation is what has now led them to increase prices of goods and services in the same way even the interest rate that the central bank is increasing is inflationary on its own because when you increase interest rates those who were assessing credit into manufacture because the credit is now more expensive they will transfer their attempt to transfer the cost of the extra interest charges into the prices of goods and services so you can see that in Nigeria because inflation is cost-push the government should rather be dealing with what are the causative factors that are leading to this increasing cost of goods and services and not about increasing rates and the causative factors are there the causative factor is electricity if you don't give enough electricity to the economy the manufacturers are not using generators and you know if a burning generator at a diesel cost of 800 Naira or so that is very expensive actually it's not sustainable and that is what over time as we continue to give 3,000 MW to an economy that ideally needs 200,000 MW a lot of manufacturers are closing shop and live in Nigeria we recently had the case of GSK and all of that they can count the reason why they are living in diplomatic terms but you know that the environment to do business is very bad so government should have been quickly dealing with the causative factors what are they doing about inferno rates what are they doing about electricity what are they doing about high interest costs this is the president in his inaugural speech on the 29th of May he identified the high interest rates as being inimical to economic development and he said he's going to do something about it but unfortunately in his government the central bank had a monetary policy committee meeting and increased the interest rate the president didn't say anything about it so until we deal with the causative factors of inflation we are not going to cure it interest rate hike will not cure the inflation in Nigeria because it's not demand for inflation one of the factors we mentioned in this topic is the rents that have gone up not just the goods and services out there but the rents have gone up so much and some people are saying there need to be some kind of regulation for rents for accommodation for wherever people live and it seems to be working in other countries but in Nigeria there's no form of regulation at all it's left in the hands of the harmonies and all the people that give you houses and charge you exorbitantly apart from just paying your rents you still have to pay agency agreement, damages and all that and that runs into a lot of money and all that so what do you suggest be done in terms of accommodation in terms of rents how can the government step in so that the people don't stay homeless because right now a lot of people their options are either you go to, for instance in Lagos you go to Ogun state or any other neighboring villages to live and be coming to work in Lagos which is also very stressful for anybody that needs to work in Lagos state so what kind of regulation can the government give in that sector we also support the government to regulate the rents that landlords are collecting because any time the government attempts to regulate the price of a product you see racketeering that is what government attempted to do all these years with petrol price they tried to regulate the price of petrol and once you start to regulate the price of a product you're not going to attract investment into that sector what you do is to allow the sector to play out there is high rent now because the supply of housing in Nigeria is way way too low compared to our population of 200 million people there are not enough houses so what government should be doing is to take action to increase the number of houses available for people to rent in Nigeria and there are the number of measures they can take number one we're talking about interest rate if you want to take a mortgage today your interest rate is going to be topping 25%, 30% who takes such a mortgage ordinary SWA mortgage is not more than 5% mortgage is not more than 5% interest rate so if the government takes this step to say for mortgage purposes or for housing, for building of houses banks are not supposed to charge interest rate of more than 5% then we have better impact than trying to regulate the price of getting a house which is the rent you see there is a problem in Nigeria you know how the problem in Nigeria is the banks in Nigeria are having a free day because SWA in any economy it is the banks that are the catalyst of the economy because the banks are the ones that supply cheap credit into the economy which boosts economic activities but in Nigeria because we have been having this idea of appointing central bank governors from the commercial banking community these central bank governors coming and do the bidding of their community which is commercial banking because you see what is happening in Nigeria is that if you take your money to the bank to save the bank is going to give you an interest rate of 32%, 3% if you try you get a 5% and then when you go to borrow money from the bank you are seeing interest rate of 30% imagine from 5% that they are paying to the person who brought the money to 30% to the person who has come to borrow the money 25% and that is why the banks in Nigeria keep declaring humongous profits even during the time of COVID they were declaring humongous profit and allowed to do as they like a responsible government will say this don't charge more than X amount of interest above the interest you are paying on savings so if a bank is paying interest on savings of about 5% then you give them a spread of say about 3% to 5% max that means any loan that that bank gives cannot be more than 8% to 10% that is what you do and once we now have this single-digit interest rate in Nigeria you will see more people borrowing money to build houses whether for themselves or for commercial purposes and that is where the supply of houses in Nigeria will start increasing and the more houses that will supply in Nigeria the less the rent will become the other thing is that in all cities in Nigeria go about in all cities in Nigeria you will see humongous housing projects that have been left there finished but nobody is living in it perhaps the people living in it are large cockroaches and probably snakes why will government not pass a law to say that look if you don't occupy your house within a set time period maybe 3 months or max 6 months that house is going to revert into public custody and we are going to put tenants inside that is the only way you can deal with because there is no one in Nigeria to be living in squalor when in the same country you have houses that are not being occupied look I will give you a good example if you go to Abuja on your way from the airport I think this is Constitution Avenue there are thrones that are coming from the airport into the city of Abuja one is Constitution Avenue the other is Independence Avenue I think it is the Constitution Avenue when you pass National Hospital you are going to see these two high rise buildings they are the tallest buildings in Abuja they are called the World Trade Center I have been seeing those buildings for the past 5 probably 8, 10 years nobody has lived inside there is no sign of anybody living in those buildings why will the government of Nigeria allow something like that you come to the Nigerian land you build a humongous housing project like that and just leave it why Nigerians are living in squalor so that is one thing the government can do the other thing the government can do is what you have said now let the government start improving on the public transportation system including the rate you see with rate people can live in a padau people can live in a kure people can live in a even in a neighboring state and work in Lagos because look you can get on a train on Moray within 15 minutes on this first train you are in Central Lagos you are right there on the marina or you are in Ikeja you just step down work to your office do your work and then you come back enter the train within 15-20 minutes you are back to where you are in Wondo State you understand so that is what you also do meaning you decongest the cities so people live outside and they go in and they do their work so these are some of the measures that government can take to deal with this matter these are fundamental measures but simply just going to strangulate landlords and say you cannot charge X amount of rent I mean look at how much the dollar is now if I import building materials at high cost and build my house then the government is coming to tell me that you cannot charge rent up to this amount that will not work that will discourage investment and exacerbate the issue instead of throwing it it's going up well that's what some people have said is the fact that there is this new awareness of developers they come to buy your house they develop it into something really magnificent and the rents will go up and no housing for common men should there not be a deliberate policy of government to provide housing for the people because it doesn't seem as if government is doing much in that sector what they do is build some houses and then sell it to the people that can still afford to build their own houses for instance you build a two bedroom flat and then you're giving it out at 25 million how many people will have 25 million to buy those houses it's the same people that can build their own houses independently without having to take from the government those are the people that still come to buy so shouldn't there be a deliberate policy of that or do you think there's going to be a challenge if the government wants to embark on that there has to be a deliberate policy of government that is why we have ministry for housing we have ministry for housing to do specifically what you are saying now let me answer your question in two parts the first part is that you talk about you build a house that is worth 25 million how many people have 25 million to buy the house and that is precisely where the government needs to come in the government needs to come in to make credit cheap so that people can take mortgage and buy houses if you are a worker and you buy that house of 25 million with a mortgage instead of paying rent you will now be paid of your mortgage so that at your retirement the house belongs to you but if the worker is unable to assess mortgage and buy that house there are only two things he can do is either he will continue to pay rent until he retires and he has no house of his own or he will try to steal money and buy the house for 25 million which is what fuels corruption in Nigeria so the government must by deliberate policy ensure that there is cheap credit especially in the housing sector so that those who are building the houses have access to cheap credit those who are buying the houses have access to mortgage so that they can be paying their mortgage of instead of paying rent if you do that then there will be a boom in the housing sector we need a lot of houses to be built and a lot of demand for housing will be there because those who ordinarily will not have 25 million to buy a house will not be able to buy a house in mortgage facilities that is number one number two you will look at an economy like the UK government as I speak to you today is still supporting the people with housing that is what you call social housing so if you are a worker and you are on low income the government helps you with your housing costs and if you fall out of employment and you no longer have money to even pay rent the government provides you housing in that UK in fact there are people in the UK that are living in hotels on the bill of government why because the government is yet to find a house for them and their families so the government checks them into a hotel which is how responsible a government can be to its people so for the Nigerian government to have a ministry for housing to have a central bank there to have all these ministries and they are not doing anything to support Nigeria to have their own houses to own their own houses to boost the housing sector is grand failure and we expect the current government to do things differently okay well let me use Lagos again as an example Lagos doesn't seem to have enough land for housing and I keep wondering why high rise buildings is not a thing in Lagos where government will come in and build houses very very high rising houses and get accommodation for a lot of people some people say there are challenges if you have to have buildings like that for instance like you have in New York so the solution in Lagos now is to fill every fillable place if I may use the word fillable in Lagos state which also poses a danger for flooding a danger for being submerged in maybe the next 30 years some parts of Lagos state because they are practically doing everything on water on the sea on places that they are not supposed to do that what are those challenges that you see in Nigerian cities that they cannot go to high rising buildings they are just doing small things everybody if you have money you go and get land and then you build your houses and then the land is no more there for other things to be done are there challenges that the government cannot address Singapore is a case study here I have been to Singapore several during the course of my time working for International Work the country is what you call a city state so as you see Lagos Lagos should have been the city Lagos should have been the country that Lagos should have been the country Singapore is a city and Singapore is a country they don't have any land Singapore does not have agriculture because they don't so if you go to Singapore almost every building in Singapore is a high rise building almost every one of them and after they have finished building up high rise they are not building down so you will go to a building in Singapore and you will see 10-15 floors underground 10 floors underground in Singapore and that is the kind of thing we also need to do because even as Nigeria has land we cannot continue spreading buildings on our lands because we need these lands for other purposes like farming you know so the reason why you are not seeing those high rise buildings in Nigeria I believe is because the people don't have the capital to build such high rise building building the high rise building is a different program compared to building a flat and that is why those who don't have the capital they attempt to build high rise buildings and we have been seeing cases of building collapse in Nigeria you know and only come if the government takes the steps that I have earlier initiated to enable cheap credit to be available to the housing sector so that people who have the interest to build houses to are good we seem to be having some challenges with Nika Gule right now the audio quality is dropping and fast too so maybe we will have to discontinue with that but we were talking about the fact that there has been a spike in prices of commodities and then rents as well because of the high interest rates in Nigeria you go to the banks you want to borrow some money the interest rate is not only two digits but up to like 30% of interest that will be put on the money that you are going to borrow which is very very sad for all of us because farmers need money to do their farms people need money to build houses go to school and so many other things money that you may not be able to get immediately and you run to the banks and you cannot get anything they are now like POS operators at the time of cash crunch you know where you go you get 5000 Naira and then you pay 2000 to get 5000 in some places 2.5 even to get 5000 Naira that's how the banks are operating right now with such kind of interest it is difficult for anybody to go to the bank and so like Nika Gules said the only option left for you is to cut corners and make sure you make extra money so it's either you are not dedicated to the work for which you are paid you want to do some other things because everybody talks about a different or many streams of income right now and you are working full time something that should not give you time to do a lot of other things but your salary is not that much and so what do you do? you cut corners you do some fraudulent things while at work or leaving or neglecting that work to go and do something else that will give you money that extra money that you so need if it were possible for people in Nigeria to be sure that whenever they are ill or their people their loved ones are ill they go to the hospital they get treatment they know that if they want to go to school they will go to school without any problems they know that if they want to travel there is that transportation system that will take them like Nick said you can work in Lagos but leave in Akure because you have the trains that are working and all that people will not even be talking so much about salaries because I mean what are you using salaries to do? well we do hope that the government will look into the matter and make sure that the interest rate comes down to one digit even if it's 9% but let it be one digit as against the 25-30% that you find everywhere else and you know there are some people that as individuals will loan money to the people and charge less than that maybe you can collect like 50,000 Naira for a planting season I see that happening a lot in villages you collect 50,000 Naira to pay 70,000 at the end of the season a season sometimes takes like 5 months for rice season or yam planting season or cassava season and everything else so well Nick are you back? we couldn't hear you anymore yes back are you hear me? yes I can hear you now please continue with your thoughts before we wrap up let's go back to what you were saying Singapore is now building down yes so I was saying that the people who have attempted to build high-rise buildings in Nigeria because you rightly raised the point that why is it that we are not seeing high-rise buildings in Nigeria and I say that the reason why we are not seeing high-rise buildings in Nigeria not to build high-rise buildings but they have stopped that now people are building high-rise buildings there now the reason why we are not seeing that in Nigeria is access to capital building a high-rise building is an expensive venture and the capital is not there because like you rightly said and you were discussing in your own analysis the interest rates are too high at 25% 30% there is nothing that is going to happen in the economy because it can't survive but that kind of interest rate so people who have attempted to build high-rise buildings in Nigeria you see the incidence of a building collapse because with that adequate capital they are not trying to cut corners they are not putting sham projects in place and that is coming at high cost of life and the money that has been invested lost so definitely Nigerian government needs to support the housing sector we cannot have a ministerial housing and then that ministerial housing is doing nothing also it shouldn't be that the ministerial housing is not going to go and build their own houses any time government builds houses I have seen the evidence of federal local housing projects in Nigeria that were never occupied by anybody they build these houses, they keep them and the houses rot in situ where they are what the government needs to do through a ministerial housing is to create a neighboring environment for people to build houses whether they are developers on commercial basis or their personal houses that they want to build then build their own houses and that can only come through cheap credit in the sector and they also want to buy their own houses they should buy their own houses with mortgages if a worker buys their own house with a mortgage instead of paying rent they will pay their mortgage over time after 20-25 years the house becomes their own so they are retiring into their own home this is the simple thing that needs to happen and I was hearing you in your own analysis and you were very right in terms of your analysis because let's look at an example of the UK I talk about the UK because I live there too so I am a participant, observer I experience an economy I am not talking about theory this is what I am experiencing because I have a residence there in the UK you have rightly said it workers in the UK they paid nothing for head care after their salaries because the government is providing head care at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels for free for everybody the people in the UK, the workers in the UK they paid nothing for education because government is providing education for free all the way to high school it is only university education that is paid for and if you don't want to pay for it the students have easy access to student finance where they can finance their education and once they take student finance they don't start repaying it back until they start any money at a particular threshold if so that student doesn't start work they will never pay that loan the people in the UK are enjoying security from government they don't have to employ their own regard or bring their own security or have vigilance government is providing effective security for them the people in the UK I can tell you now that children travel free on public transportation and senior citizens that is those who are I think 65 years and above travel free on public transportation there are many other things that the government is providing that is making workers not to pay for out of their salaries and then workers have this cheap access to credit on mortgage rates that are less than 5% to buy their own home this is how you create a neighboring environment for your citizens to enjoy life we are all in this country for just a few years not more than probably 100 years and why would the government allow Nigerians to suffer so much each day of their lives the current government they may promises they must live up to those promises we seem to be in a time where we pray for everything you pray that in the morning or in the night there will be light all throughout you pray that the roads will be good and safe you pray that you are going to be paid your salary we pray everything in this nation is prayer, prayer, prayer we do hope that one day these prayers will materialize I'd like you to just talk to Nigerians as we wrap up, talk to Nigerians if you were to talk to an ailing Nigerian a suffering Nigerian what would you say is there hope, is there no hope what kind of things do you feel they should do what kind of mindset are you giving to Nigerians in the final word please my message to Nigerians is that let's keep hope alive there is hope for the fact that we woke up today I'm on TV here, you are watching me that's a big thing because if we didn't wake up all hope would have been lost so let's keep hope alive but let us accompany those who have elected through the governance process let us not give up and say let us wait for 2027 no, 2027 is still four years away let us close mark our elected leaders because in those places where our young people are Japan too, that's what the citizens do if you go to London today, I can assure you that there are no less than 20 to 30 different groups protesting at the Parliament Square MPs are getting letters written to them by their citizens in fact it is the movement of the citizenry that makes the leaders not to misbehave because they know that if they misbehave the citizens are watching them and the citizens will come after them so let us not see those side and be praying and be expecting that good things will happen to us we must be participants in the governance process we must know our rights and we must call for those rights and we must ask for those rights because the state legislator is not working for us is not doing what we need record them start the record process by beginning a record process alone you will have a message to that legislator who will behave well and all those who are appointed to work with him that's the way we can build in Nigeria that will work for all of us all right, thank you so much Nika Gule for coming on the program and giving us your thoughts nice day to all okay that was Nika Gule a public affairs analyst talking to us about the fact that the interest rate has gone high and that means the resultant effect is in rents is in goods and services and so many other things so cost of living has become very high now so stop giving chieftaincy titles to people who obviously steal our money give it to people who are people of integrity let integrity reign supreme rather than kleptomania well we leave you with these words of red butler he says never pass up new experiences they enrich the mind we do hope that the experiences you are having now no matter how difficult they are you will take them and make sure they enrich your mind give you more wisdom to thrive it's been a wonderful time having you on behalf of the entire team of the breakfast this morning I would like to say thank you for being there my name is Nyam Gule Agadji let's do it again tomorrow