This letter
has far more trivia than investment insights simply because the markets are consistently
unpredictable, while celebrities and luminaries are consistently foolish. The unpredictability
arises from the markets being the sum of an uncountable number of human decisions
each of which is taken in the hope of delivering a beneficial and rewarding outcome.
And this is why so much and too much legislation and regulation fail. Even
before the intention and effect of a leader’s attempt to improve something is understood,
individual’s reactions will begin to nibble away at the foundations of that
decision and alter the outcome in an unpredictable way.
Take for example
South Africa’s failed bid to be the replacement host for the AFCON soccer
tournament this year. It seemed like a given simply because we have all those underused
World Cup venues waiting, while the original host Cameroon wasn’t making enough
progress in getting stuff ready. But out there was a committee waiting to exact
revenge for our government backing totally the wrong horse in a messy and
distant political squabble. Egypt is the host .
It is indeed
all very civilised and modern to suggest that fathers need time off work to
bond with their new-borns and apparently legislation now obliges employers to
grant fathers at least 10 days of paternity leave. In a country where around
half the mothers don’t know the whereabouts or even the identity of their
infant’s father this is going to be interesting. At least two consequences come
to mind. Unless the law insists on the leave claimant proving monogamy, those active
and virile chaps (like our ex-president) are going to be permanently on
paternity leave. The good news though is that this might provide a method for
abandoned single mothers to put in a child-support claim on the salary of the
new-found dad. So maybe there’s a natural limit that will come into play. But
equally it might provide an incentive for the timeous registration of new
births which is another area where we as a nation are failing to keep up. It’s
just about this time of year when we read of schools having to cope with many
more new pupils than the Home Affairs records suggest would pitch up.
The ANC is
107 years old, a fact that for some reason it is especially keen to make here
in the Durban area despite it being probably amongst its safest for a majority
in the forthcoming election. As well as flying a helicopter, which towed a huge
banner portraying President Cyril’s face, past the estimated 1million beach
goers on New Year’s Day, a sculpture garden of party worthies has been opened. A
bakers-dozen life-size statues of the illustrious names are arranged in a well-tended
garden alongside a busy freeway that leads into the city from the north. The
presence of some discretely positioned portable toilets shows that the
organisers expect and welcome visitors to stop and visit the tableau. And this
they are doing in numbers, parking in the emergency lane on both the carriageways
on this arterial route. So far this invitation to break several laws about
freeway driving has escaped the notice of the traffic department but hopefully
nothing more serious than road rage will occur while this hazard is in place.
Our national road death statistic is deeply concerning. The latest idea on
solving this problem is to introduce driver testing at the time of the five-yearly
driver’s licence renewal, though how this will be accomplished when there are
insufficient testers to cater even for the newcomers to the driver’s pool has
not been explained.
An undeniable
benefit of paying outlandish sums of money to people who are very good at their
sport but not much else is that they are bound to reveal the absurdities of
life. In this case that there is a restaurant which serves steak coated in 24-carat gold and that a French footballer ordered and ate one simply because he
could. No word so far about the medicinal benefits if any of such a repast but
it sure stirred up a fine outrage amongst those immune to irony and worried
about how other people spend their money.
James
Greener
Friday 11th
January 2019
PS. Have you
seen the gold price easing up?
