We are probably not supposed to notice but there are bulls stampeding all over the share and bond markets. Buyers can’t currently see an indicator that makes them fearful. In the US, the yield curve is rarely as inverted as it is now.– short term interest rates are well above long term interest rates – so that’s another old favourite “please panic now” signal shot to bits. But guess what? The gold price is also bullish and may soon set new highs in most currencies. Barbarous relic! Bring on the crypto currencies. What’s that? Someone stole them? Oh dear. But aren’t they all block chained into unbreakable security?
Last year ended with the damp squib of an Elective Conference which at the very least we uninformed naive analysts expected to see fisticuffs and rolling heads. But no, even the traditional displays of flying chairs failed to take place. Delegates merely ticked the boxes they were and slithered back under their rocks to await the general election in 2 years’ time.
Astonishingly Cyril is going to the annual Davos shindig next week. Why? Did Comrade Gwede Mantashe pay for the ticket perhaps? There are just so many reasons for President Frog Boiler to be at home, not least of which, is the fact that the nation’s electricity supply has dwindled to a useless soul-destroying trickle, for which Eskom has the gall and impertinence to apply for (and even get!) a 30% odd tariff increase! Another is that he never seems to bring back anything of value from these jaunts. Like reasons why we don’t need a State Bank. Or the news that he has been arrested at Customs on charges of money laundering and couch abuse.
Sufficient time has now elapsed since the start of the Covid incident to enable the coarse-grained data (monthly and longer) to reveal the extent of the damage that the state’s response caused in the economic landscape. One such data set is the government’s deficit. That is, the gap between what taxes bring in and the amount of spondulix the lads and lasses in charge are spending. The decade before Covid, this shortfall, which has to be covered with borrowings, ran at an already eye-watering and unsustainable average of just less than R200bn a month. In April 2021 it peaked at almost R600bn. Lockdown tripled the deficit! But things have not recovered very much and at present the average monthly deficit is a tad over R300bn.With this number hanging over their heads it’s hard to understand the near triumphal tone used by officials who announced that half the population is totally dependant on state handouts for their existence.
Despite queuing at the Traffic Department for almost three hours I failed to encounter actor Tom Cruise who allegedly is in town to make a movie to be entitled Mission Impossible 8 - Renewing a South African Driver’s Licence. I did eventually get the 3 minutes of attention required from an inexplicably calm official in order to collect a new driver’s licence.
These and other similar earlier experiences in this “renew your licence” saga did reveal an interesting feature about a new role for white-skinned South Africans as human place holders in these unending waits. In rough agreement with the national demographic, about 1 in 20 people on average in a queue at a state facility is white and they are quickly singled out by the darker fellow supplicants for service, who see no reason to stand in the sun when a mlungu will meekly perform that task. Whenever the official line shuffles forward to the point where a place holder approaches a chair, the shade or some other small milestone of comfort, the wise men reappear and reclaim their positions around the white man. Rarely does a true and blatant queue jumper appear although an occasionally suspiciously sprightly grey-hair turns up with an obviously little used walking stick. In general we are as a nation respectful of old age.
I really must make up my mind whether to follow the SA20 Cricket tournament or one of those overseas rugby contests that SA teams did so well in last year. The team names in the former are just so uninspiring. But watching rugby from the pool bar seems very odd. Just a few days of the Dakar left.
James Greener
Friday 13th January 2023.
