Intriguingly the rand is today stronger than it
was before Number One felled all the skittles and fired Finance Minister Nene
who was irking him by refusing to pay for the presidential patronages. And
while the political landscape is littered with wreckage of constitutional expectations
and discarded principles, the financial one is swiftly back to normal. Buyers of
shares are inclined to pay more for fewer earnings. Consumers are paying more
for purchases. And the cost of credit is also on the up. Enough rain has yet to
fall in the right places. Anyone with a bullish forecast must have their
fingers crossed firmly behind their backs.
A clever analyst has developed a neat way to
price politicians by expressing it as the number of median sized taxpayers it
takes to cover each salary. Unfortunately, the data he used is a bit old, but
in 2012 One President needed 56 taxpayers to get him through the year. Today
with almost 100 members of the cabinet it is probable that upwards of 4000
taxpayers are required to pay just the top layer of government. That’s pretty much the readership of
Tidemarks. Just saying.
Only highly skilled and trained economists will
be able to understand the agreement that Grain SA has with government not to
allow the price of imported wheat to fall below $294 / tonne. The current global
wheat surplus (for places not suffering a drought) has caused the international
price to drop, but this windfall is not to be enjoyed in SA. The agreement
automatically places a tariff on all imports of this important food to keep the
price at this special level in US dollars. In rands, however, it obviously has soared
and the probability that bread prices must go up in an election year is causing
alarm even amongst those who eat little of the stuff. This agreement is just
another example of a special interest group getting government support and
money to control their market. Every industry and business occasionally attempts
this stunt in some way and the trump card in the negotiation is often the threat
of unemployment amongst important voting groups. This terrifies politicians of every party and
usually the principle of free markets fades away to be replaced by the dead
hand of bureaucracy slumped across the controls of that section of the economy.
Once upon a time, here in SA there were battalions of control boards roaming the
corridors of power in Pretoria and it is a surprise to learn that they have not
all gone extinct.
The imminent formation of a company that will brew
and sell almost one third of the entire world’s beer is worrying the suits who
are sure that no good will come of such a giant. One particularly stupid demand
is that the new company should brew and sell low and zero alcohol beers. Rest
assured, if there was any demand for such a vile product the folk at Anheuser
and SAB would have been onto it years ago. Nevertheless, the competition cops
feel this will keep the chinks open for competitors. Actually competition is already
emerging from the Craft Beer industry which seems to attract the big spending
so-called hipsters. Some restaurants no longer stock even Castle Lager. Who is Charles
Glass anyway?
The suspicion is growing that Minister van
Rooyen during his 96-hour tenure in the Finance Ministry did perhaps do
slightly more than check the en-suite facilities and measure for curtains. One
ringing alarm bell is that shortly before his appointment, Desmond spent one
day in Dubai “on holiday”. The brevity of this break he said was because it was
all he could afford. If nothing else
this admission should alert local holiday resorts to bombard him with pamphlets
about more affordable vacations. Now Dubai was also the place where our president
made a very brief unscheduled stopover recently and it was the first
destination of the Guptas who gapped it. Clearly there is something or someone
important in that place. Our country’s meagre reputation and perhaps wealth are
getting a thrashing.
Why did SARU think that the announcement yesterday
that Allister Coetzee would be the new ‘bok coach was news? It wasn’t even a
secret let alone a badly kept one. However, all we want is for the coach and
his team to pick a winning team game after game. Deliver us a victory over the
All Blacks for the next five years and I will certainly be proud to boast that
we both come from Grahamstown.
James
Greener
15th
April 2016
