TALES FROM THE CRYPT

Later this weekend we may be invited to tune in for the next episode of “Presidential Prattle from his iPad”. That’s if he doesn’t once again lose the magic slate with his notes. There is a distinct skill required for using a so called “tablet” as a prompting device, the first being not to lose it. One does also need a tame IT boffin on standby to locate the file again if you inadvertently flick a sandwich crumb or pesky fly from the screen and your sacred text turns in to your screen saver, and the whole world can see your pet fluffy animal picture collection. Once again, the play of the day is guessing what our wise leaders have come up with to control the spread of the rather nasty respiratory infection. Judging from the frantic queues forming at the local bottle store last night, Cyril is expected to tamper with our booze supplies. Undeniably we South Africans, when liquored up, are utterly lethal road users who place huge demands for casualty treatment from hospitals already busy with Covid patients. How, one wonders will the authorities deal with drunk driving when Covid no longer provides the excuse to control booze sales? The real panic patter has it that tobacco sales will also be reimposed. After all, the argument goes, we know that the ruling has run out of money and is battling to pay its own employees, and we also suspect that the same party has lucrative links to black markets in both these commodities. Nah! Can’t be a grain of truth. Pure scuttlebutt. The headline that “Two South African brothers, Raees and Ameer Cajee, recently vanished along with an estimated R51 billion in Bitcoin from their cryptocurrency investment platform Africrypt.”, is so rich in various ironies that one doesn’t know where to start. Straight off it seems unlikely that the Cajee boys knew the usual use of the word crypt when selecting a name for their business scam. But that is exactly where the investors’ money has gone. To a crypt. Never to be seen again. From the scant data available it is obvious that the lads were running a standard ponzi scheme, this time dressing it up in the mystique of “crypto currencies”. An allegedly attractive aspect of these poorly understood virtual assets, is the fact that they are unregulated and in fact may be unregulatable. Sadly many folk have obviously already lost a great deal of money in the last few days and are scratching around for official help but it is very unlikely to be forthcoming. Since none of the transactions seem to have passed through any gateway where a regulatory fee might have been paid, that suggests that Mr Plod wont be very keen to come and take a look since he already knows what he will find. Nothing! In an interview in December 2020, the brothers spoke about “hard work, ethics, morals, and responsibilities” to make their new business work. So now that it’s failed, what was missing? Amongst all the bickering about who has the “best science” in the Corona virus squabbles comes some proper physics. Astronomers have pinpointed more than 2,000 stars from where, in the not-too-distant past or future, Earth could be detected transiting across the face of the Sun. In essence this is the answer to the neatly posed questions “Who has the cosmic front seat to see us?” and “For whom would we be the aliens?” Far more interesting than the arguments about which vaccine is better. The solstice has passed and the northern hemisphere sporting season is hotting up. The surprisingly rapid reintroduction of fans to stadia is very welcome and as their numbers grow, their age-old habit and right of expressing their opinion about what is happening before them is becoming more audible. This is causing apoplexy amongst regulators who have spent the past year forgetting entirely the wonderful adage that “sticks and stone may hurt my bones, but words can never harm me.” James Greener Friday 25th June 2021 (6 months to Christmas)

SOASATIES. SOUTH AFRICA’S OWN SPIKE(D) PROTEIN

Commodities prices are blasting through 5-year highs as the recovery from last year’s lockdown lows just keeps going. They are still not halfway back to the last giant price peaks of 2007 though. The indices are not much use for that sort of time scale though and each specific commodity will have a fascinating tale to tell of its market price journey. What seems obvious though is that people want to get back to work and make and sell things. It is astonishing how quickly the sense that their citizens were utterly fed up with the various virus transmission control measures still being enforced, made authorities relax their rules. Undoubtedly the dramatic unmasking of Prof Fauci in the USA as being no more informed than any other commentator or medic, helped change many minds. Increasingly large parts of the globe are slipping back to more normal times. But Southern Africa appears to be lagging quite badly. The two factors driving this could be the painfully slow vaccine roll out here in SA and the onset of winter, when flu-like infections flourish. Having scared the population into treating every cough and sniffle as unquestionable symptoms of a life-threatening disease, it is difficult to unwind that mindset. For some reason sports administrators and their charges have decided that they need also be responsible for managing spectators through the risks of infection. Until of course they board the bus home. Curious. The virus is losing its “hot topic” ranking in many parts of the developed world. It is so 2020! For example, the agenda for this weekend’s Group of Seven summit meeting has bumped “Green Finance”, whatever that might be, up to pole position. It seems that the world’s richest governments are under mounting pressure to help poor countries fight climate change and the term Green Finance is the code. Somehow South Africa has cracked the nod to attend – they are always keen participants when money is being handed out -- but have been allocated seats near the toilets. Also their iconic scarves in the colours of our flag are useful warning signs to avoid, else one will be handed a begging letter. As is common for these gatherings of the great and good they fear being confronted by disrespectful citizens and they choose venues that are easy to isolate from the hoi polloi. St Ives, once the home of a serial bigamist and cat lover, is perfect. The politicians are back tinkering with the school system in order to disguise that it doesn’t work, They have invented what they call the General Education Certificate (GEC) and to my mind it is merely the resurrection of the once popular Junior Certificate (JC). A holder of a GEC will be permitted (but not encouraged) to leave the school system. Who benefits the most from this gerrymandering is hard to tell. The kids will still be unemployable. Oh dear. All these bits of paper and still today many can’t read, let alone understand long division. Is there not a single encouraging policy or initiative announced by government that is not within days infested with methods and paths to siphon off the allocated funds never to be seen again util they reach the Range Rover showroom? Is it possible that the really good news about increasing the upper limit of allowable private power generation to 100MW (from the derisory 1MW) is corruption proof? Hold my beer and watch this I hear you cry. The scheme to berth specialist power generating ships in the harbours and hook them up to the grid fell at the first hurdle when a squabble about money exposed the deceits. Viewers who have little interest in watching soccer and lots of it, might need to visit the library soon. Cricket from the West Indies suffers from time of day issues and Rainbow Cup rugby is worryingly déjà vu. But we are about to sample a surfeit of sport as July approaches. So just borrow short books! James Greener Friday 11th June 2021

REF! THE BALL CALLED ME A CHEAT!

Once again, the two allegedly “professional’s” indicators: bond yields and FX rates, reveal that the bull is alive and well when it comes to the nation. Whatever the news about the ideas and foolishness or otherwise of our fearless leaders, “the smart money” is not worried. Last April a US dollar cost you R19. Today a mere R13.50 will score you a green back. Alternatively, you could lend those rand to the National treasury for 10 years at around 7.25%pa. But those dreaded Ratings Agencies are all of the opinion that its not so certain if you will get them back. Government policies like the one below, are really worrying. How exactly do those who go out to sell our story, explain to potential investors that when they come to disinvest, our government has rules about to whom they may sell. These rules revisit race and other classification criteria that outsiders might reasonably assume disappeared in 1994. What is certain is that the effective price will be lower than it would be without those restrictions. And the buyers could quite easily expect the seller to lend them the money to do the deal! South Africa is not for sissies. It was a week in which Stats SA published its numbers about how many people are at work. The short answer is around 15 million, which is at least 2m fewer than the last pre-pandemic data release. The long answer, which arranges the data according to age, finds that 70% of the nation’s young are unemployed! The overall figures provide a rough guide to the economic catastrophe caused by the lockdown method for controlling the spread of the Covid-19 infection. Meanwhile the head count of citizens collecting one of the half-dozen types of state grants grows inexorably and may now be above 18 m. A rumour suggests that the government had accepted the inevitable and is about to announce a basic minimum income grant for everyone aged 19 to 59. Sadly, maths and listening to people who know a bit about how governments are funded, are not skills common among our decision makers and painful disillusionment awaits most of the nation. The taxman, who we all know is desperately scratching around for revenue, is convinced that many of the crypto cowboys are not being totally honest about their trading profits. And since our government has declared that we must all share any good fortune we have with the state, the men from SARS are on the hunt. Or as they put it, “conducting a risk assessment exercise on residents”! As exercises go this could be rather exhausting for those who keep appearing on the internet boasting of the uncountable billions their guesswork has delivered. Tidemarks long ago learned to treat stories of uncountable trading profits with suspicion and this coupled with the flakiness of the product and its deliberately obscured paper trail might leave the National Treasury empty handed. Those who point to the vaccine rollout program as an example of government success do have a point. Albeit one that is unrolling rather slowly. The much-admired Health Minister Zweli Mkhize must be rather distracted these days. Any business calling itself “Digital Vibes” deserves a quick audit to find out exactly what it does before government sends it any of our money and the good doctor may not have done the necessary homework. Digital Vibes is a very low rent outfit providing “communication services”. All Mkhize may have scored is a second hand bakkie for his son. But plenty of folk say they can scent blood in the water. News is coming through that Gilbert, the manufacturer of rugby balls, have managed to insert some robust electronics inside the ball and so rugby players will soon encounter something on the field that is way cleverer than they are. Just for a start, the ball knows where it is. Then it can tell who handled and kicked it last, and my personal favourite, it issues an alert if it feels it has been passed forward. Every fan has a view about this specific infringement and a lot of beer is often needed to cool down opinions about the ref’s eyesight. Slowly slowly, the crowds are being allowed back into the stadia. The Olympics are not yet a certainty though are they? James Greener Friday 4th June 2021