If we as a species had the faintest idea about some of the world’s greatest mysteries, Tidemarks’ weekly amble through a large selection of price charts would be enlightening instead of merely interesting. Perhaps the most significant number for those who still believe that the US and everything it says and does is significant, is the price of the greenback – the US dollar. Expressed in units of percent per annum (i.e. how many dollars it costs to borrow one hundred dollars for one year) it is always worth a look and a think. When almost exactly three years ago, the covid virus started to wander about the planet and Armageddon was confidently forecast, the infinitely wise men and women of Washington moved the price sharply down in a single move from a dollar seventy-five to 25 cents overnight. It remained pegged there for 2 years.
Then something important happened (who knows what?) and in the next 12 months this so-called Fedfunds rate has been ratcheted up inexorably, and currently stands at 4.75% pa. In passing, please note that this supposedly very critical price is far too important to be allowed to be determined by market forces. People with desks the size of aircraft carriers are tasked with meeting and deciding and setting the level. Funny that. This is historically very high so they (?) must be hoping to achieve something very important with this number. The odd thing is that the text books are rather insistent that expensive money is a bad thing for getting economies to grow. I did warn you that problems like this are not given to us mere mortals to solve! Most nations operate a political system that is supposed to identify and install the people who think they can do this incredibly tricky task. The evidence for this method of choosing clever decision-makers is however not encouraging. Consider for example our own president who may or may not have been doing some rather dodgy deals involving foreign exchange, expensive game and dairy animals and the imprudent use of upholstered furniture as a banking facility. At glacial pace -- it is, after all, ultimately their employer they are investigating so they are not keen to upset any apple carts -- a posse of civil servants are trying to work out what Cyril did and whether or not any of it was legal or better still, not illegal. This week the suspect, President Cyril, moaned that it is difficult to do proper Presidential type stuff while this investigation into his hobby is ongoing, so please can it be cancelled. And anyway, he has already assured the nation that it was all innocent and fine. Hmm.
Tidemark’s TV watching is mostly confined to the sports channels. These days it is increasingly hard to be sure what is coming up. Firstly, significant growth in women’s sport is complicating matters. It would help enormously it the men and women national teams adopted different symbols. In the certainty that this will annoy many readers, I believe that national teams themselves have earned the sole privilege to choose their own symbols and names. The concept of bureaucrats on the public payroll who have never chased a ball (etc.) in their lives, selecting teams and sports emblems is abhorrent. Please Cyril, close down the Sports Ministry when you get a moment. Who plays in what team under which name has absolutely nothing to do with any politician. In my world, men’s national players are all Springboks. But if they (the team itself) prefer and choose Bafana Bafana that’s great. A related but important niggle for me is the fiction that the country had no history in anything, including sport before 1994. This leads to garbage statements like “The 2019 rugby side led by Siya Kolisi was the first truly representative South African national side to achieve something great.” Thousands of sports men and women sides represented South Africa since and even before the country was created in 1910. They were selected (sometimes!) in accordance with the social and political practices of the time. The way the “woke” nonsense is developing some idiot will soon insist that boys and girls SA national sides may comprise only men who have been pregnant!
James Greener
Friday 3rd March 2023
