Feature of the week is the dollar gold price which just keeps on trucking upwards. The business channel screens are full of well brought up economists insisting that the decade-long rise is short lived and that gold bulls will regret swapping fiat paper money for lumps of cold yellow metal. They are eager to point out that amongst its many shortcomings, gold pays no interest and can be used to avoid tax. Locally our enjoyment in this excitement is muted but hopefully only delayed by an obstinately strong rand. This strength was not helped by the Japanese authorities, exasperated by their own strong currency, giving it a few swipes with a samurai sword and making it leak a bit. Buyers outnumber sellers in almost all the world’s share markets and our own All Share is sniffing at the heels of 29 000 again.
COSATU’s suggestion that the country needs a state bank (that)… “will ensure that interest rates are low enough to finance productive economic activity" raises a few questions. Does the author of these words understand that banks normally only lend money at rates higher than they can borrow it for? Like most old reactionary cynics I shall not be reading “A Growth Path towards Full Employment”. The document is reportedly keenly supportive of the view that government employees alone have the skills and training to control the allocation of a nation’s resources. For me there already is far too much evidence that anything the state tries to run is bound to fail. Simply the issue is that people look after their own assets best and when entrusted to administer assets which have no immediately obvious and watchful owner, rarely resist the temptation to steal them. Corruption is the usual term.
This week’s saddest example of the state’s failure is the demand by pupils who lost out during the teachers strike for a guaranteed year end examination pass. Pupils themselves are now reportedly on strike and armed police have been deployed against the threat. . No one in authority has the courage to point out that an exam pass is totally distinct from acquiring the skills and knowledge that these so-called “learners” will desperately need to compete with the other entrants to the labour market all over the world. Many of them I suppose still believe that the state will provide a living even if they can not read or write. After all, who has ever seen pictures of our president deep in concentration poring over a policy document while making annotations in the margin?
Another community that the government is unwilling to confront with the truth is mini-bus taxi drivers. AARTO is the rather ugly name for yet another scheme to cajole drivers into obeying the traffic laws. It final but risible sanction is the withdrawal of a driving licence – a document that many never legally obtain anyway. AARTO’s implementation has now been postponed because of “public panic”. This panic was actually an unruly traffic-disrupting gathering in Pretoria that had the familiar effect of demonstrating which side is the more heavily armed.
Those of you not living here in the kingdom may have missed the story about the unfortunate woman who was robbed of more than R200 000 worth of jewellery. This dreadful crime took place in a shopping centre as the lady was returning to her car after having had the jewels weighed. The purpose of this odd practice was, she explained, in order to “pay taxes on it”. It is indeed tax return season, and most of us are currently wrestling with the dreaded forms, but I must admit to having missed the levy based on the weight of one’s trinkets. Mind you, the lady concerned is a close relative of the man who used to be the president’s financial advisor so maybe she is privy to some forthcoming announcement. As far as I know the tax man’s recent communication to several thousand of his customers did no more than leak his email address book to the astonished and in some cases delighted recipients looking to expand their own client base.
My Shark supporting friends are getting anxious about the resurgent and mighty Transvaal.
James Greener
19th September 2010.
No comments:
New comments are not allowed.