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2 WEEKS AHEAD: CLOSING Q1, 2022

If you asked me to bet on December 31st, 2021 on how would the World develop -in economic terms- during the 1st Quarter of 2022, I would have thought of Inflation and Economic Recovery, but never would have given a chance to war. Big mistake! How could we, simple economists, know? I prefer not to play here, in ADNPlus to write about conspiracy theories. We prefer data and facts, analysis, and technological dialogue; therefore, I do not play as a follower of the big industries of information, nor have stress about accessing the top-secret sources of information. We just interact under diversity, get informed, dissect, report, dialogue, and learn by doing calculations, and research by writing and reading. As a result, I am only a humble middle-class economic analyst. I live and write daily for the median voter, the median entrepreneur, the median leader, and the median household, the same as the median investor. We thrive on finding factors, actors, sectors, and timings for growth. The idea is to enjoy and reflect as part of a network that has a daily discipline of common humble r&d (read and dialogue) that helps each one of us for having our own work on R&D (Research and Development). We work since 2006 under Critical Cooperation. Still, we all did not see war coming during the first quarter of 2022, and not even during the whole 2022. The bet of our network was on Russia playing the cooperation game set by the EU while the markets recovered after the pandemia, and in preparation for the climate crisis. We did not believe in conspiracy theories of Russia playing with China against the West with the last sending viruses and the first sending missiles. Sincerely, as always, I am part of a group of close colleagues that work in a network of 105 "Palladium" thinkers and readers who randomly (100) and effectively (5) visit and develop ADN@+ around the universe of users we have as "partners" around the globe: 9 colleagues in fully-undisclosed places, 36 people in Oceania, 47 in Africa, 49 in the Caribbean, 67 in Canada, 101 in Asia, 300 in Cuenca, Azuay, Ecuador 542 in Central America, 993 in Europe, 2070 in the United States of America 3106 in Guayas, Ecuador 3516 in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile 7725 in Quito, Pichincha, Ecuador, and 2331 other readers in other cities of the total 1134 cities that we reach globally. I am sure that some of our readers knew what was coming and got informed of the probable effects of their actions over the 396 regions in 92 countries of 19 subcontinents, in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania (in its order), plus 9 "somewhere" people that complete our global 20892 readers. They did not speak to us about the war. We did not open the door of events for dialoguing in full anyways; so, nothing to blame on the ones that knew something and did not share anything. We are not there yet. We are still developing the global network, and adapting our technology for accelerating global investments, after our work of the last 18 years (we are still a young group). Our Plan, as our readers know, after 2021, was to write solely in English, as ADN@+ proved to be a global concept, and not only American, Latin American, South American, Chilean, or Ecuadorean. The World War Z (no joking, by the marks of the tanks, and not -necessarily- by the film) came as a surprise then. Probably that is what has happened to the median reader in ADN@+ so, happy to share that we are not different at all; we are just as strategic as our representative member; nevertheless, when we work as a network, we are very powerful and well informed. Because of that, our Politics' Pub of 105 Palladium people is becoming formal after 2 years of data and equilibrium results provided by our algorithms. Together, we will take the Santa Cruz Network to the next level: not via events, but via active networking and via multiple combinations of efforts via 100 impact initiatives working together for converting r&d in R&D, and turning both in Impact Investments accelerated through MCC "Multiple Critical Cooperation" (Salazar, 2022). In preparation for that, and in reaction to the moves taken ahead from Russia via its 2022 debut with the invasion of Ukraine, we got obliged to write a little, again, in Spanish, in order to summon to our MCC a total of 90 Palladium members from the Americas, 5 from Europe, and 5 from the rest of the World, plus our own 5 internal members in Hexagon Group, as the Technical Secretariat of the Santa Cruz Network, and the support team of ADN@+ r&d. We needed to go back to the Americas after the emergence of the war in order to activate our algorithms and test again the fundamentals of our Hexagon Dialogue in order to check if they would still run in a fluid way under the new unexpected circumstances that were unpredicted as they happened to show up, and hence, could have eaten the fundamental unit-roots of our models. The damage control is done. Further research is completed. We feel comfortable again with recovering the pace of our work and keep developing the evaluation and enhancement of investments as was our plan for 2022 and 2023. Now, we retake the activity -during March- for launching the 100% virtual Santa Cruz Network via 100% impact investment projects. Last month, we were able to do extensive and intensive research on how would be the reactions of our main readers, and how would they get affected by War. The list includes: pain, emotional distress, depression, stagnation, inflation, complicated logistics, increased costs, more opportunities anyway, growth plans postponed, higher taxes, shifted investment decisions, loss of markets, closures, changes of policies, rearranging of priorities, new limits, different perspectives, activation of old contingency plans, different behaviors in the media and in other stakeholders, political activism, more hacking in the networks, and more opportunities for impact investment because the impact is not only important but urgent. As a result: more opportunities for our technologies and methodologies of investment acceleration, and more interest in becoming part of the 100 chosen ones in the MCC team. Few sites are left in South America and we have to cover the seats in other subcontinents and continents. All the active movement of the World has hit the balance of power in America after just one month, moving us towards a new normal that includes technology and new big players in full display, while the old continental powers recover their strategic positions (see the example of Venezuela and its new talks with the USA that ended with the negative of Venezuela to Russia for installing a military base in its territory). The next two weeks of the future will be written in English. We need to do some further research and dialogue about what will be the reaction in Oceania and Africa in the South of our World, the same as the South of Asia. Nato begins with an "N" that stands for "North". We need to see what we think as "S". Our view will fly away from the S of America only, in order to understand ourselves in close action with other business partners and members of the Santa Cruz Network of Global Impact Investment, that always receives capitals from the "N" in order to create impact in the "S". We started the vision in 2019 in Washington DC after the " estallidos " (social uprisings) in Ecuador, Chile, and the news we got for future events in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and other countries in the Americas. We started in November 2019 with the foundation of the "Red Santa Cruz" as a means to invest from the N of America to our S in the continent. We did not have -by then- any idea of what would happen in 2020 (with the pandemia that started in December 2019 and became global by February 2020 until today). The same has happened to us since November 2021, when we were planning 2022. We did not have enough global perspective in the Hexagon Dialogue to anticipate (for America, and South America, but for the "S") what would happen with the global movements ahead. We need to gain more global perspective during this 1st quarter of 2022, we all need that. Our planet is on the verge of massive destruction coming from the North. We only can see it from afar in the South. South and Central America will get "merged" with North America because of the return of the (not at all) Cold War that we read about in Europe (in 2001-2015) after the emergence of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2021, in the very financial heart of the World. In 2001, by doing research in the Academia, we discussed the probability of a 3rd World War if Russia and China would join powers with Iran. In 2002-2004, while discussing in the World Bank, we heard of the Oil and Copper Diplomacy as a means to that. In 2006, after 5 years, via Hexagon Dialogue and again in the Academia, again in Europe, we researched about the BRICS and the possibilities of doing business between NATO and BRICS for solving -via markets- the Global Climate Crisis that was coming for 2030. The war was still there as a probable phantom, but the bet was the one mentioned in the paragraph above. In 2016 we heard of the problems of population, climate, and technology, as the 3 limits for the Private Global Corporations for investing. That changed everything; therefore, after doing research from Hexagon Dialogues in Ecuador we created ADN@+ as the "next step" after the Dialogue. The War was coming and we needed to align ourselves and help others to differentiate themselves from the ones on the "other" side, at a regional and further global scale. Today we live in a war between the "Old" Classic Globalization vs the "New" Post-Modern Globalization. It is not about being liberals only. It is about freedom vs totalitarianism. This is the sign of our generation, the X generation, that lived as youngsters during the Cold War and thought in the 1990s that the game had ended. By this time, our old colleagues -not youngsters anymore- that chose Russia, Cuba, and Nicaragua while young, and later Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, plus the rest afterward, while mature, will need to define themselves for the time they will live as old ones. It is about ending in our generation what the boomers never ended when we were young, and what the Millenials have chosen when young. There is no time for new experiments: we will need to work during the coming weeks under the wisdom that said the following: "who was not socialist when young, had no heart, but who was not capitalist when adult, has no head". We need to protect democracy, capitalism, freedom, human rights, wellbeing, and all that we saw working in the now "old" Chile, as an example for the World. We need to regain that model from here, from Chile itself in the World. We need to "export" ourselves to the World, and develop the model in other countries in the South of the World, while working with our network in the North of the World that has to fight in the North and invest in the South. After 2 years of Pandemia 2020-2021, and after this 1sr Quarter of 2022, when our headquarters in Chile have closed the political cycle of the country invoking the words of a former President in 1973, the same as our home in Ecuador has decided to have "more World in Ecuador, and more Ecuador in the World", our path is clear: we move our work again, 100% virtually from Chile to the World, starting by America, as Chile did physically during the 70s-80s and 90s-2000s: exporting and attracting investments. If the Chilean left is part of the 80s continental and global consensus made with the right, we would have advanced fully towards the next step in the Continent. That is the hypothesis with which we will work after a fruitful breakfast of 3 people, yesterday, in Santiago, with the Minister of Investments of Ecuador and the top academic author of Soth America in Public-Private Partnerships. Our view is what we write, and our perspective is what you give us always in virtual Hexagon Dialogue with your personal feedback, creating our global ADN@+, and extending our Red Santa Cruz Model of Impact Investments in a GloCal way: Globally and Locally, via Public-Private-Community Partnerships, and hopefully -soon- via Business in the Community from Global Corporations to Local Communities without the help of Governments but with the help of Platforms and Technology only. Should we work on that during the coming 2 weeks in order to be prepared for the future, in the midst of a war, a pandemia, and the global climate crisis that is there, waiting for our positive impact anyway? (*) Roberto F. Salazar-Córdova, Economist. CEO, Hexagon Group (Hexagon Dialogue), Founder, Cross-Sector Partners Incorporated Technologies (CSPInc.Tech). Editor, ADN@+ (Politics' Pub), and CFO, Red Santa Cruz (Impact Investment). https://tinyurl.com/hxgroup

2 WEEKS AHEAD: CLOSING Q1, 2022
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