Mission Statement: Mpumelelo Nxumalo

Below are guiding principles (borrowed from the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) focusing on who I want to be and what I would like to do. It is a personal creed upon which doing and being are based.

Succeed at home first
Never compromise with honesty
Remember the people involved
Hear both sides before judging
Obtain counsel of others
Defend those who are absent
Be sincere yet decisive
Develop one new proficiency a year
Plan tomorrow's work today
Hustle while you wait
Maintain a positive attitude
Keep a sense of humor
Be orderly in person and in work
Do not fear mistakes, fear only the absence of creative, constructive and corrective responses to those mistakes
Facilitate the success of others
I will listen twice as much as you speak
Concentrate all abilities and efforts on the task at hand, not worrying about the next job or promotion
Be a concerned and informed global citizen
I will be a self starting individual who exercises initiative in accomplishing my life's goals
I will seek to create a clean and orderly environment that is livable and comfortable
I will exercise wisdom in what I choose to eat, read, see and do
I will act on situations and opportunities rather than be acted upon
I will always try to keep myself free from destructive and addictive behaviors
I will develop habits that free me from old labels and limits, and expand my capabilities and choices
My money will be my servant not my master
I will seek financial independence over time
My wants will be subject to my needs and my means
I will seek to keep myself free from consumer debt except for long term home and car loans
I will spend less than I earn and regularly save or invest part of my income
Moreover I will use what talents and money I have to make life more enjoyable for others through service and charitable giving

Comments

Mapping the Blast Radius: What Happens When the "World's Factory" Stops?

In global trade, "efficiency" often masks "fragility." We know that China is central to the global electronics supply chain, but how central? And if that node were to go dark, who would feel the shockwaves first? To answer this, I moved beyond standard trade statistics and built a network simulation using the OECD Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) Tables (2023 Edition) . This dataset maps the DNA of the global economy, tracking every dollar of input across 66 countries and 45 industries. 1. The Blast Radius: Tracing the Contagion I treated the global economy as a directed graph and simulated a total supply shock to Chinese Electronics (CHN_C26) . By tracing the flow of inputs across three tiers of buyers, I visualized the "Blast Radius" of this disruption. Fig 1: The Supply Chain Cascade. The shock originates in China (Red) and immediately hits "Tier 1" assembly hubs (Dark Blue) before cascading to global consumers...

Turkey's Informality Tax

A general-equilibrium model of Turkey's dual labour market says the cost of taxing formal work doesn't show up where we usually look for it. The bottomline: Making Turkey's transfer to the unemployed a third more generous raises unemployment from 8.6% to 9.2% . That is the honest cost, and it is not large. How you pay for it matters more than whether you pay for it. Funded by payroll taxes, the poor end up 0.6% worse off than before the transfer was raised — the policy defeats itself. Funded by VAT, they are 0.5% better off . The reason is not unemployment, which is nearly identical under both. It is informality . A higher payroll tax pushes formal jobs into the unregistered sector, where the wage is 43% lower and nothing is taxed. Turkey is not on the wrong side of the payroll-tax Laffer curve — revenue peaks around 53%, well above today's ~37.5% wedge. But the marginal cost...

Mapping the Matrix: Malaysia's Corporate Network

The complex interconnections that define modern society are readily visible in our Facebook or LinkedIn networks. But what about the corporate world? I recently began mapping the web of cross-shareholding among Malaysia's listed corporations. Using Social Network Analysis (SNA), I visualized the ecosystem to identify key "communities" and power brokers. The goal? To see if a company's position in this web predicts its financial destiny. The State of Play (2015) Figure 1: Malaysia's Corporate Network in 2015 (Created via Gephi) The map above visualizes the network as of 2015. While I have excluded specific company names, the "super-nodes" (the largest circles) represent the most connected shareholders in the economy—primarily government-linked investment companies (GLICs), fund managers, and international asset managers. A Decade of Growing Complexity ...