There is absolutely no sign anywhere that investors have the
slightest doubt that they want to own shares and are prepared to keep paying
more and more to do so. While company fortunes and profits are mostly improving
they are certainly not doing so at the rate at which their valuations are
increasing and the elastic is getting very stretched. Us bears are cowering
behind our spreadsheets waiting for the huge twang we think should happen.
These are difficult times to be dubious about the market.
A quite delightful scrap is developing in England about where to re-bury the
recently discovered bones of one of their previous kings. For several hundred
years he has lain beneath a car park in Leicester.
Surprisingly no beaming car guard has pitched up to claim a tip for ensuring
that he was safe all this time although his horse was definitely missing and
may have been nicked.
The auditor general’s report about how few state-owned and operated
entities have a fair grasp of how to run their money is alarming. Equally
disturbing is the fact that there are 536 of these organisations. Presumably
each one of them has an executive team of worthies all of whom require a corner
office, fancy wheels, fact-finding jaunts and programs to launch with
appropriate catering arrangements. One of these organisations is a newish
government department that claims that their job is “to make the(ir) lives (of
former soldiers) much better after they
have ended their careers as ‘soldiers’ rather than force them to choose a life
of being dogs of war and missionaries (sic)….” This does nothing to indicate what
that department intends to do with the R300m it was granted in the budget. It
reckons its beneficiary client base of military veterans could be as many as 56
000 although over at the social grants department the claimants in this
category are numbered in hundreds. The sole idea published so far is to erect
monuments to those who sadly never got to be veterans.
It seems that the rooms where
they store the firearm licences are these days so rat infested that no one
wants to work there. Now all we have to do is to get those rats over to the tax
collector’s offices. Maybe we can send some of the ex-servicemen along to shoot
a few. Rats that is.
For reasons of demographics and a paucity of taxpayers the central
government hand-out to the kingdom was far less than hoped for and cost saving
measures are being discussed. The one that grabbed the biggest headline locally
was the suggestion that councillors should give up drinking bottled water and,
like their constituents, rely on what comes out of the tap. While they are
about it how about using public transport to travel to work, use public schools
and hospitals, cancel their security contracts and put their retirement funds
into only local bonds, shares and property. That is, they ought to lead the way
by showing that the services they provide and organise are quite capable of
supporting everyone’s needs and aspirations.
The yellow-billed kites have departed, the red-winged starlings are
calling ceaselessly and the F1 season is about to start. These are sure signs
that autumn has arrived. Another is that we are about to enjoy a succession of
holidays that tend to develop into 3 day weeks. Productivity gets a hammering.
It is unlikely that there will be a “Tidemarks” next week.
James Greener
Ides of March 2013
