After two weeks of news isolation while exploring a corner of the Kruger Park, it has been great fun to return to the absolute furore being caused by Wikileaks. This is yet another wonderful example of how people – especially those who claim to be in charge – utterly fail to grasp how the internet is completely changing the way the world works. If these documents that are now public really are as sensitive as the spooks claim, then perhaps they ought to have done the job for which we pay them and kept the darn things properly secret. As it is, so far all the documents have revealed really is the unsurprising truth that politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats are just as grubby, self-interested, clueless and fond of gossip as all the rest of us. Their attempts to prevent us mere plebeians and taxpayers from finding this out are almost as amusing as watching the stammering denials that anyone ever wrote that the president of a neighbouring country was mad.
The JSE, and indeed most other share markets are enjoying almost the complete opposite of free fall as investors and speculators search for alternatives to keeping money in the bank. They are also not buying bank shares and that sector continues to fall away relative to resources and stocks with more direct exposure to consumers. The Transvaal holidaymakers have appeared in the kingdom in their thousands and a trip to the malls shows no sign of shopper’s shyness. A newly listed instrument that offers buyers exposure to the price of crude oil in units of rands per barrel is yet another currency hedge vehicle to consider for the time that our dear rand falls from grace.
Do we not have more productive things for people to do than trawl through company reports counting how many women work in the place? Presumably it is us taxpayers who employ these folk to howl with outrage at their discovery that “companies demonstrate a lack of coherent gender transformation […] polices, with little evidence of […] designated responsibility measured through performance management mechanisms”. No one trying to run a business where people are employed on the basis that they add more value than they get paid, have any desire or time to understand let alone implement nonsense like this. I wonder what will happen to the small firm that they found that did not have any men on board.
Not only has the pres generously cancelled the R1.1bn debt that Cuba owes us for kit bought more than ten years ago, he has lent a further R1.4bn to this obviously high risk borrower and in return the younger Castro pinned a medal to his chest. Hey! That’s our money you are dishing out sir, even if it is a lovely gong.
I also missed the third quarter GDP announcement – not all that encouraging – and Minister Patel’s magnum opus on how to get the country growing by getting more government officials to offer advice and give instructions on how the rest of us should do stuff. That’s not much good either. A good research piece in Biz Day by Annabel Bishop points out that public sector remuneration is growing by almost 30% pa because of both higher salaries and new hires. There’s your first problem right there minister. And please also note the calculation that adding the proposed health scheme to the spending side of the budget might require marginal tax rates of around 70%. Oh dear me, no.
Equally disturbing is the picture of a man in loin cloth who was trying to raise awareness of some doubtless critical issue at the climate talking shop in Cancun this week. Please note sir that despite its reputation for balmy weather there can still be some unseasonably cold spells in Durban in December and you might need to pack more gear for your next appearance.
I am delighted to report that I was watching a pack of wild dogs at the time when I could have been witnessing the Scots feasting on Springbok.
James Greener
10th December 2010
