Have you heard about NERSA? It is not an association for the nerds of the country but yet another darned regulatory body. This one will, it is alleged, oversee the electricity, gas and petroleum pipeline industries by ensuring “a level playing field” – yes another one – and “prevent(ing) monopolistic abuse” which will avoid the “unacceptable outcomes” of unregulated markets. Oh dear. The headline to the story described the idea as a “boon” for private industry, but I suspect that the only folk really to have benefited will have been the caterers who arranged the inevitable launch of this latest folly. Hopefully the first matter of business for the nerds will be to determine why we are selling electricity to neighbouring countries cheaper than we sell it at home.
Never one to rest on their laurels, the cabinet also this week approved a radioactive waste management policy, with of course, a committee to be established to oversee its implementation. I’m rather alarmed that this implies that hitherto no one has been paying much attention to all our toxic waste. And goodness knows the securities research industry alone produces truck loads of it every week.
Of course today’s equivalent of the old “thud” report (so named for the noise it made on landing on your desk) is the multi-megabyte inbox clogger. Fortunately a dab at the Delete button disposes of this menace and forests of trees are spared only to be used by the supermarket and estate agent full-colour tabloids that slip from the pages of the morning paper. Nevertheless, especially in those countries where the citizens are not prevented from having decent broadband access, newspaper circulation is dropping. The replacement news source of choice is the internet. This is sowing terror amongst the politicians and other shady characters who have decided reservations about just how much freedom the proletariat should have to discuss their exploits.
The economy and the markets go through cycles and today the immediacy of news, information, lies, data, opinion and conjecture will ensure that this time it really is different. Investors believe that they now must surely know so much more than they ever did before. However, purported inside-information has a very limited life-span as leaks can now take place at the speed of light throughout the globe. So too can rumours and dis-information whether malicious or not. Many folk who thought this week that MTN was about to be taken over, will sadly confirm this!
This excitement aside, the market was pretty dreary, as the good citizens of the USA devoted their energy away from the markets and towards the ordeal of travelling back home to attend to their Thanksgiving turkeys. Myself, now sated on cherries (have you any idea how many cherry liqueurs there are?), I am off to the Kruger and hopefully some tiger fishing in the Komati. Due to anticipated heat down there I must now go and stock up on cooling beverages.
Don’t forget the match against Wales tomorrow. It’s difficult to think about rugby when it’s summer time and the living is easy. And there’s someone else doing the worrying about all those level playing fields too.
Keep cool and safe.
James Greener
25th November 2005
