From a very
simplistic standpoint it’s astonishing that our currency is not far weaker than
it is. If the social media is to be believed the very influential Gupta family
resident in Saxonwold, Johannesburg are shifting funds offshore as fast as
their private jets can refuel. And they are doing so also on behalf of the scores
of useful idiots who have arranged satisfactory outcomes and situations for the
family. Then there’s the less opaque stuff such as credit worthiness down-grades,
the repo rate cut and business unfriendly cabinet decisions which even the
mainstream news services are probably reporting correctly. Curious.
The
unfriendly stuff seems to be a consequence of two factors which loom large in
official thinking (oxymoron alert): shortage of state income and a desire for retribution
for increasingly distant injustices. The country no longer has (and actually
never really did) the time to do anything else but get every single able-bodied
person into productive work; which excludes shuffling papers in a government
office. It would be really good if we no longer had debates, meetings, conferences
and symposiums about who owes whom what because why. The recent change in the tax treatment of
South Africans working overseas will raise scant income but will discourage
many of the diaspora to think fondly of returning one day.
Exchange
Traded Funds (ETFs) have been around for a decade or more and still cause
suspicion and hostility. They are nothing more than a version of the familiar Unit
Trust (grandly aka Collective Investment Schemes) in which the fund manager makes
few investment decisions. He or she (actually, it – a computer) merely has to
mirror the constituents of a benchmark such as a popular market index (e.g. JSE
Top 40). Arguments for and against this “no brains required” investment technique
have consumed acres of paper, but the buyer of an ETF pretty much gets what it
says on the tin. The NewGold ETF is no longer new but provides convenient
exposure to the price of gold in rands. The Krugerrand does this too but is accompanied
but the costs and worries of delivery and safe-keeping. Theory suggests that
the prices of these two instruments ought to be comparable but in fact the KR
enjoys a premium which over the years has ranged from under 5% to over 10%. Just why this premium is currently at it’s all
time high of 11.4% is unknown, maybe it means that NewGold is cheap. Especially
if the rand is going south.
The downside
to cleansing an organisation of its assorted shysters and crooks is that it is usually
very costly. In addition to not doing their jobs properly and honestly the now
departing executives have clearly spent a great deal of their very expensive
time flipping through the pension fund rule book searching for loopholes.
Probably these rules were written in a different age and time when it was never
imagined that Mr Molefe’s 15 months of “service” to Eskom could in certain
light, be read as 13 years.
It is both
amusing and alarming that the country is about to be landed with a so-called “Intelligence
Boss” who seems to possess neither skill. He also does not have any documents
to support his claimed academic achievements and has asked his new prospective
employers to overlook this shortcoming. Why he has not sought duplicates is not
explained. The good news for him however is that his alleged criminal record
will not be a barrier to entry once he finds his degree certificates.
Not only are
there no Australian teams in the Super Rugby semi-finals this weekend but there
might also be no Australian cricket team this season. There is, it seems, a
disagreement about money. Back home, the folks who run our athletics seem to
have encountered a different problem. They can’t rely on simple maths to decide
who of the athletes looking for a place in the national squad has set the shortest
time or greatest height or distance. They need to have a quota as well, though
no one is prepared to say how to measure that. Here on the edge of the Indian
Ocean the Currie Cup has seamlessly claimed all rugby fans’ attention and my
pleas for someone to help me cheer the Lions tomorrow have been ignored.
James
Greener
Friday 28th
July 2017
