PETROL DEARER THAN BEER

The government made remarkably little noise about the fact that it generously rebated the tax on fuel by R1.50 a litre during these last two months. Unfortunately dabbling with the pricing algorithm has backfired somewhat as the expected “return to normal” has not taken place and not only is that rebate likely to be ended but the external factors have ganged up against us and we can expect a total increase starting next Wednesday of R3.50 per litre. Oooh. Its remarkable that the frequently quite vocal protestors have not yet taken to the streets to display their “We are Angry” dances. Perhaps they know that they may gain supporters from the usually apathetic and phlegmatic white monopoly capitalists and that would upset their “them and us” narrative.

Ex-president Mbeki carefully nurtures the widespread assumption that he is a wise elder statement. However, he somewhat tarnished this reputation recently when he reportedly appeared at a national youth task team political school under the banner of “Rebuild, renew, revive, reimagine and reposition the ANCYL towards economic freedom in our lifetime, now or never”. Word salads like this are always an alert that waffle is in the air and unfortunately its not obvious that Mbeki any longer has a constituency of followers interested in doing what sounds like a great deal of hard work. Borrowing one of the opposition’s tag-lines “Economic Freedom” was interesting.  But there was no report that Mbeki explained just who in this land still requires to be granted this particular freedom and if so by whom. Judging by the ads that infest both the TV and the Internet there are dozens of outfits eager and able to lend money to entrepreneurs.

Those of us who complain that no one has yet been called to account for the numerous corruption cases of the past few years should note that arrests were made this week. They included a senior civil servant from the Ministry of Mineral Resources and two Gupta side-kicks. Allegedly they nicked about R1.75bn of mine trust funds That’s a goodly sum and paying it back before lengthy prison spells is a splendid idea. Naturally the lawyers for this unsavoury crew are already in full cry and are faithfully following the Zuma playbook of delaying the trial until we all grow weary and old. Talking of which the assurances that the paperwork necessary for extraditing the actual Guptas was awaiting only the correct ink for the necessary signatures, has gone quiet.  Oh how we need to see those fellows in a dusty hot South African court room.

 

Tidemarks is a keen follower of most motor sports excluding of course the rather sad E series designed to promote the idea that battery powered transport is the way of the future. This weekend it’s the Monaco GP, that celebration of allegedly understated sophisticated and refined wealth. No one will ever admit that it’s a ridiculous circuit for Formula 1 cars. It’s just too special to risk getting it cancelled. Amongst other track specialities is the tightest and slowest hairpin corner in the sport. Allegedly designers of the racing car steering geometry need specially to take this left hander into account. At the other end of the spectrum is the insanity of the TT motor bike races held on that mysterious Isle of Man. This is a festival of raw speed and scant safety features and begins this weekend too. It's difficult to find the TT events on TV but its worth the search if only to try and decode the impenetrable Manx accent apparently reserved for commentators at the event. This event places in proper context the squabble taking place in Formula 1 about driver’s jewellery and body piercings. A TT rider’s piercings only count if caused by bits from the rider’s bike dislodged by a stone wall or a spectator holding a beer. Or once a horse! Watch for the side car events!

James Greener

Friday 27^th May 2022

WHO WILL BUY OUR SWEET RED RULERS?

It does seem that the equities bull markets are over for the moment. As always one only knows this for sure sometime after the trends reverse. The fact that the down ticks are not yet precipitous demonstrates that there is still considerable balance between buyers and sellers. For inclined bears it appears that the dreadfully cruel war between Russia and one of its previous provinces, Ukraine should have a negative impact on investor confidence. On the other hand, now that we are belatedly learning just how important Ukraine is for global commodity supplies, there undoubtedly are those who saw it coming and are well positioned  SA motorists are not one of these lucky folk. Petrol prices are squeezing the life out of our economy.

Apparently the double jump was expected. The Monetary Policy Committee obviously noticed the downgrade of their tea time nibbles from  Chocolate Digestives to mere Marie biscuits and hit back yesterday with a half percent rise in the repo rate instead of the one quarter percent jump it has applied in the last three adjustments . This caused the major commercial banks (acting entirely independently, of course) each to adjust their lending rate to prime clients to 8.25%pa. Which in turn cascades into virtually every money lending agreement price being adjusted upwards. Allegedly this will rein in inflation. Patient readers will remember that since the beginning of time Tidemarks has remained unconvinced by this long held assertion of economic cause and effect.  Making money more expensive seems an odd method to make goods less so.

The Prat in a Hat, Police minister Bheki Cele, has been ranting about something one would have imagined was his problem to fix. That is the atrocious working conditions that the police must endure. But most of the premises occupied by SAPS are state owned which means they are the collective responsibility of all the fat cats who get to sit around the Cabinet Room Table. That’s where the chair throwing needs to take place to demonstrate just how disappointed and disgusted we are with our non-functioning government. We need a billionaire to pitch up and threaten to buy the whole sorry mess and then to start by firing everyone on the state payroll who sits in the same chair all and every day and calls that “working” . First to go should be the aforementioned hatted one. Next should be those still sheltering at home awaiting “zero covid. “

Fortunately, it seems as if the cockamamie idea to erect a gigantic flagpole (with a flag to match) has been shelved. The only public reason offered by the spectacularly useless Arts and Culture Minister Nathi Mthethwa for this project is that it will “memorialise our democracy”, whatever that might mean.  The idly cynical amongst us think that R22m might be worth it, if only to see how long it will take our nation’s world class metal recyclers to nick a 100m tall steel flagpole.  These amazing disconnects between ministerial imagination and citizen realities are breath-taking. Another example was the astonishment expressed by ex-minister Tito Mboweni that privately owned Safair’s business model included charging passengers R15 for a bottle of water. Years of flying for free at the front of the plane have taken their toll on this amateur cook’s grasp of real life.

The format and fixture list of the United Rugby Championship has an insoluble problem. Seasons! It certainly pits interesting sides against each other and its rather relaxing not to have whining antipodeans in the background all the time. But the laudable attempt to reduce inter-hemisphere travelling costs is up against the fact that rugby is not a sport for summer conditions. Nevertheless, there is considerable interest in the URC for SA fans this weekend as there should be at the PGA Championship being played on another of those impossibly groomed USA golf courses. In the meantime, there is an incredibly silly spat breaking out about F1 drivers wearing jewellery.  The self-acknowledged injuries they might suffer from their various body piercings and adornments must be trivial when contrasted with steering the fastest cars on the planet – a risk they obviously already accept.  

James Greener

Friday May 20^th 2022

 

CHAIRING A MEETING – A NEW MEANING

According to my trusty Google-connected mobile phone, a Bitcoin would currently cost you R485k and change.  Almost half a million rand! For what? For the opportunity to find a greater fool to whom you can sell it? That’s called a Ponzi scheme. The number of similar intrinsically valueless instruments and platforms on which to trade them has been growing for decades. There are tens of thousands of them, each presumably complete with a cohort of enthusiastic supporters, almost all of whom will in due course become disillusioned and poorer. This week Warren Buffet, that entirely real experienced expert is reported to have said that he would not pay even $25 for the worlds total supply of so-called crypto currencies. That’s because they don’t represent any value into the future. True enough. Tidemarks has always cheerfully admitted to not understanding Bitcoin and its umbilical cord – the blockchain. Its all a messy mystifying morass of mendacity. Maybe it’s a backlash from the sad realisation that the legacy markets such as property, equities and debt are not as straight forward as they portray themselves. The shysters are everywhere. It turns out that the systems in place to encourage institutions to publish regular reliable statements of their financial situation have not worked too well. The incentives for organisations to dupe their employees, their creditors, their shareholders, their competitors and especially the tax man now apparently outweigh both the possibility of being timeously exposed and also any sanction arising therefrom. The information they grudgingly supply is deeply untrustworthy for making judgements about the worth of potential investments. Investors (looking for income and capital gain) are switching to gambling (looking for short term profit)

Its chair-throwing season here in the political arena again. Local elections are coming up and the niceties the founders of democratic processes imagined are suspended. Unfortunately, political assassinations are also in full swing. A record number of men and women who thought they could make a difference are never going to get that opportunity. Only the families mourn these killings with official reaction often reduced to platitudes and the rest of us worrying about the petrol price. There’s an indignant article doing the rounds about the apparent vendetta against SA in not awarding us a long overdue Rugby World Cup venue status again. Allegedly the Aussies edged us out of the running, but SA is a hard sell when it comes to guaranteeing safety of visitors. And locals for that matter.

So SARS have published their plan for improving their collection of taxes from us. Other commentators have noted that they do seem to be pursuing the rats and mice for nickels and dimes when to the casual observer the health of the super luxury car and home markets seems astonishing. Wasn’t there an attempt years ago to limit cash payments for these sorts of assets?  Top of SARS’s check list for the plan is to employ Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect non-compliance among taxpayers. Well, excellent. But one sort of thinks that ordinary intelligence might have more success. You know the old proverb about “set a crook to catch a crook”?

The Giro d’Italia marathon bike race has begun, and early stages have been through Sicily and the adjacent tip of the mainland. The TV coverage of these events provide a wonderful glimpse of the geography of the country, but the relatively unkempt dilapidated appearance of the urban areas shown so far, is quite a surprise. The landscapes are magnificent however. Even routing the peloton near the summit of an active volcano was interesting if bleak.  The Miami venue for last weekend’s Formula 1 GP was rather the opposite. Lavish opulence everywhere.

Wokism is going to swallow the world. The word processor program that I use to compile Tidemarks has taken to highlighting words that it feels may offend some readers. Gosh I hope so. A few weeks ago, an edition of Tidemarks triggered replies from a number of readers who requested I remove them from the mailing list and one who wished to cancel their subscription.  They must have been offended. Naturally I complied. I shall miss that sub though!

James Greener

Friday the Thirteenth May 2022.

 

GOING ON ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT

The dollar prices of a wide range of commodities are showing steady and, in some cases, alarming rises. The precious metals not so much. Obviously, folks are demanding stuff one can eat and use. A frequent news theme is the shortage of materials and goods causing delays and backlogs in manufacturing and retail. Ruthless stock and cost controls so eagerly and confidently adopted in these industries have proved to be very vulnerable to government polices of lockdown and work from home. Ironically neither of these had as much effect on the infection rates as they had on national capacity and productivity. Just about the only people financially unaffected were the political leaders and their armies of bureaucrats who never missed a payday or stopped issuing instructions of increasing irrationality and outright foolishness.

This week our government began the process of repealing the State of Disaster declared when the virus first appeared more than two years ago. Even this is not going well. The state is reluctant to acknowledge that we all have had two years of learning and experience of living with this infection. We are onto the fact that management of this pandemic long ago slipped out of the hands of knowledgeable and experienced doctors disinclined to panic and was hijacked by just about everyone else. Naturally the Ministry of Health is the chief interferer and we have already found one Minister with his hands in the honey pot, so their intentions are suspect.

Unsurprisingly the talking heads have almost all seized on “Climate Change” as the cause of the recent terrifying and calamitous floods here in KZN. The main reason for using for this vague and unsubstantiated culprit is that it provides a useful distraction from the likelihood that most of the mayhem was a result of unskilled and corrupt planning and maintenance activities. No amount of banning fossil fuels and getting us to drive all-electric cars would have mitigated this natural disaster of unusual rainfall inundating a tragically inadequate and unprepared infrastructure. Engineering rules of thumb such as 100 year storms are in constant need of revision. A simple support for this fact is the fascinating picture pairs showing identical stretches of coastline many years apart. There is scant if not zero change to the sea level! Perhaps one day it will be acknowledged that there is not much hard science to back up the claim that carbon dioxide is as dangerous as many insist. 

As a nation we really need to stop wasting public money on the long dead albatross that is SAA. Several thousand gigabytes of incredibly infuriating and pointless commentary clogged up the internet recently with discussion of the 2018 results for this alleged airline. The Auditor-General claims to have ploughed through these financial statement (which apparently are still incomplete and surely always will be as the staff responsible for preparing them must be long gone). Results for later years are still in preparation which merely points up to the chimera of an imminent sale of the rotting body to an “independent private enterprise”. No true private money would buy a business with so many still to be discovered cupboard-bound skeletons lurking. Oddly, many who have requested sight of the alleged sale agreement have been ignored.

Another gobbet of legislation comes with the amazing name of “Older Persons Amendment Bill”. What?!  But it’s not that sinister. It merely sets men to the same pensionable age (60) as women. And probably in so doing exacerbates an actuarial liability arising from an aging population with insufficient retirement resources.

I’ve not yet seen the F1 street circuit in Miami but frankly after with Monaco on the Grand Prix calendar no other venue can be worth it. Its odd that a similar observation can be made in comparing the country sides through which the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia (starting today) pass. France wins every time for the armchair tourist.

James Greener

Friday 6^th May 2022