JUST WATCH WHAT I SAY

Just last week Tidemarks complained that President Cyril was travelling overseas too much. Some one really ought to take his passport away and make him stay at home and visit the many places where our country is burning. Starting with the streets of Pretoria.

It not as if he’s doing a scrap of good swanning about at these conferences hobnobbing with other leaders who by now have learned exactly who he is – a mendicant in search of handouts on the basis that we are a cute nation where Nelson Mandela lived. Infamously this week a foreign journo who had been asked to supply names to caption a pic of world leaders gave up when she reached Pres. Cyril’s gleaming visage and labelled him “another world leader”!

While the accountancy challenged amongst us naively believe that an entity where liabilities exceed assets should be declared insolvent, every enterprise in this position can produce a bouillabaisse of words, numbers and opinions proving the exact opposite. While this seems to produce the desired comfort for reassuring most staff, suppliers and clients, it really ought not convince those entrusted with caring for other people’s money. It is amazing how often the trustees and fund managers of funds collected from the most vulnerable and poor of our community seem to pick these lame ducks as investment targets.  The Government Employees Pensions fund bailing out ESKOM comes to mind. May this NOT end in tears, please.

It’s requires a very special talent to drive a trading desk surrounded by screens ceaselessly delivering numbers, words and pictures of talking heads. One must respond to anything that’s just the slightest bit different from what it was seconds earlier. Currently a new fearsome hazard to prudent decision-making has turned up : A garrulous omniscient media-wise US president with an opinion on everything. This week he seemed to be baiting the Chinese and there must be some dealers who this week considered early retirement, growing turnips on a small holding. Even from a disinterested distance it looked very messy as Trump apparently changed his stance regularly

The sadly deluded and probably now mentally disturbed young Swedish girl Greta Thunberg has arrived in the USA to lecture anyone with the will to listen, about climate change or something. She has become the figurehead for the enormously enraged but equally ignorant lobby groups who are convinced that something should be done but can’t produce robust evidence to prove what that should be. The usual suspect in the shouting matches is the ubiquitous but mostly innocuous carbon dioxide gas and it just so happens that Greta’s mother, an opera singer, has claimed that her daughter can see carbon dioxide gas as it spews from any industrial chimney. This politically useful but scientifically dubious skill must make living amongst the rest of us who exhale this gas in copious quantities rather foggy. Unfortunately, for her cause she has arrived just as Trump is busy trashing some of his predecessor’s carbon legislation.

Also changing her mind is the Durban Lady Mayor who was either booted or quit while a small matter of big money flowing in unusual directions was sorted out. But before that investigation even got under way, the lady went to Luthuli House (the ANC headquarters) for a sympathetic ear and an inspiring pep talk which changed her mind. She returned to Durban and demanded her chair back. The politics here on the edge of the Indian ocean is deep and troublesome and services to ratepayers gets little attention while gravy train tickets are being fought over

It is amazing just how engaged and knowledgeable Springbok rugby fans are. Debate about the squad that has been selected to go to the World Cup is heated and mostly interesting. My miserable contribution is that sentiment and politics should not overrule injury and age.

James Greener

Friday 30^th August 2019

PS thank you to all who spotted the birth notice for our first grandchild Penelope Nora

WHAT REAL PROBLEMS?

Lending money to the US government for 10 years will now earn you only around 1.5% pa. and yet their President seems to think that’s too much! But there are worse current examples. Anyone lending 30-year money to the German government has to pay IN for the privilege! Negative interest rates are a definite thing and not just something for the maths geeks to play with. Unsurprisingly though, it’s unpopular with savers and the providers of capital and its main use is to signal to the politicians that their meddling is starting really to do harm to an economy. Of course, the other end of the scale (hyperinflation) is toxic too. This risk and return equation is solved only when every one in the nation (or currency union) is allowed the freedom to sell whatever they have for what ever they can get and not have to give away too much to (over) feed the sour-faced bureaucrats and politicians who think they can allocate resources better than the markets.

President Cyril is really warming to this presidency thing. He has quickly learned how much fun it is to travel in your own cosy jet to places where, for the price of a few handshakes and delivering a speech or two  (fortunately written by someone else) he inevitably gets his knees under a table groaning with local delicacies and can make small talk about the terrible price of bulls and buffaloes these days. This is so much better than a draughty office in the Union Buildings where a steady throng of people bring you boring stuff to read. For example, this week he put his signature to the Protection, Promotion, Development and Management of Indigenous Knowledge Bill. This new act “aims to prevent the unauthorised use and misappropriation of knowledge developed over time by the country’s indigenous communities”.  It also provides for a group of assessors and indigenous knowledge practitioners who will be responsible for maintaining and adding to a register of appropriate items. I trust that they have already added a stout copy of an English Dictionary to the register as it represents my Indigenous Knowledge. Oh, and Newton’s “Principia”. Unfortunately, the example chosen for illustration are traditional Xhosa blankets. The internet link explaining what these are, showcases “the Ingcawe blanket (which) is a dazzlingly bright white blanket with a striking black stripe (top and bottom) ….. The blanket, warm and fuzzy, is extremely soft to the touch… is 90% acrylic (and) 10% Polycotton!” The sounds suspiciously non-indigenous and may be an early case for the National Indigenous Knowledge Systems Office to investigate.  

It has already been noted that the late Johnny Clegg would have fallen foul of this incredibly foolish legislation which this week was joined by the utterly meaningless declaration of a historically significant flag to be “hate speech”. While it would be unwise not to recognise the power and significance of bygone icons the declaration is linguistically and practically an impossibility. But nevertheless, it will undoubtedly soon be used to attack and punish insignificant minority fringe groups. The sad part of all this divisive and inflammatory law-making is that it comes as a tactic for moving attention from the very real issues in our nation. Like explaining clearly and unambiguously exactly how the undeniably worthy idea of universal affordable health care will happen in a nation that can’t keep the electricity flowing or prevent overloaded school buses from being driven by incompetent drunks.

In passing, it is worth noting that the image of a woman rolling up her work shirt sleeves that is being used in the media to highlight Women’s Month 2019 is identical (except for modern colouring) to the famous WW II motivational poster of  Rosie the Riveter. Cultural appropriation anyone? Or copyright infringement?

Not all sports have quite got the hang of using TV slow motion replays to check the umpire or referee’s immediate on-field decision. Tennis and cricket aren’t bad and there’s not much delay or dissension. Rugby isn’t good yet mainly because the official in his eyrie seems to miss a lot and asking the on-field guy to peer up at a distant poor-quality stadium screen is cruel. It also tends to take too long. But the so-called Beautiful Game has fouled it up completely. Astonishing!

James G[1] Greener

Friday 23^rd August 2019

---

[1] Grandad

HALF A MILLION WORDS NOT OUT

A certain amount of panic has broken out over a roughly 5% fall in the major USA share indices so far this month. This is neither large nor rare but because the share markets are widely thought of as the embodiment of people’s right to get rich without working, anxiety is the order of the day and material for dozens of extraordinarily attractive young women on TV to say calming things and blame President Trump. The fall guy in the UK is of course Boris Johnson where the decline is almost double the US experience. The JSE correction is like the London one, but when seen through the lens of a sizable currency weakening as well, it makes our market the most uncomfortable one around. A rather nasty price correction is also smashing the local bond market – an asset class that for historical reasons the state-run funds are very exposed to.

Unsurprisingly this kind of event is seen by most of the nation as merely a richly deserved come-uppance for the beneficiaries of all that white monopoly capital. The reality of course is that everybody is suffering, as the overwhelmingly black membership of the nation’s largest savings pools are very exposed to these share price events. Whether through ignorance or because they don’t care to or maybe because it’s too late, the nation’s leaders refuse to explain to everyone that an attitude of entitlement is utterly unhelpful and won’t improve anything. Or are they mute because it’s a particularly ironic and hypocritical standpoint while they, the elite, are busy preparing yet another state-owned entity – this time the health system -- for evisceration and plunder by the suitably placed.

The senseless violence that breaks out when the populace realise that politicians are both incapable and largely uninterested in delivering on any promises is terrifying. The looting and theft and destruction of everything that has been delivered to or is destined for the mobs themselves is one of the hardest aspects of trying to understand South Africa.

Frequently countries like ours, teetering on the brink of insolvency, may be offered aid from an entity like the International Monetary Fund. If granted, it comes in the form of a loan of dollars and a big stick of austerity wielded by a humourless international banker. With this in mind, several commentators have suggested that a far gentler option would be for government to realise that the route out of the morass is not to have ceremonies whenever another toilet is opened, but to let the people themselves decided best how to recover and benefit from the immense value in the natural resources lying on and in the ground. To do this, the government needs, without compromising on environmental issues, to relax two dozen years’ worth of employment legislation and regulation.

These days the Krugerrand that you bought as a hedge against politician stupidity can be sold for around R24 000, as much as R7 000 more than you might have paid for it in the last few years.  But don’t sell now. There are still tons of idiocy coming.

It’s a well-worn complaint but there is something totally obscene about a young nation like ours spending such a large proportion of its resources on fighting each other and the government in the courts. It’s particularly annoying are when both sides are permitted to submit their lawyers bills to the tax payers AND then they repeat the whole nonsense in an appeals hearing – and not just one either. Interestingly the futurists who think on matters such as the impact of Artificial Intelligence, predict that AI will reduce the need for lawyers. They clearly haven’t looked at SA yet!

This is the 700^th edition of Tidemarks, that’s about half a million words carefully selected and placed in what I felt was the right order. Thank you for reading and for the kind feedback you have sent from time to time.

James Greener

Friday 16^th August 2019

Elvis died 42 years ago