Share markets
are looking decidedly edgy. Clearly much of the money is no longer certain that
economic growth is going to soar and lift everything with it. A recent article
suggested that computers programmed with the latest in artificial intelligence
software are about to displace humans in the investment decision-making
process. In fact, data such as economic parameters and company financials
probably rival weather records for longevity in digital formats. And we are still
not very good at forecasting rain. Think of those multi-coloured weather radar
screens on the pit-wall desks at any Grand Prix and the mistakes in tyre choice
that result! In both subjects what
baffles even the best programs are the number of unknown parameters. For many
of them we don’t know what values to use. For others we don’t yet know what the
variables are.
Have you
joined the President’s Reading Circle yet? It seems to be a sort of virtual
book club, started by an organisation named the National Reading Coalition. Like
the rest of us privileged enough to be able to access and read anything we
want, the NRC are appalled that South African children are worst in the world
in tests of reading comprehension. This initiative will hopefully encourage
them to read and then allow them to share notes about the books with President
Cyril. Just what he has been reading, however, is not easy to find, so perhaps
the Circle has yet to formed. In the last few years there has been a huge
number of books in the “What’s happened to my country” genre and one would hope
that they are piled on our leader’s bedside table. We all look forward to his critique
and opinion of content and style of any one of them.
It seems that
all the candidates from five local universities failed to achieve the 45%
required to pass the exit exam written for Fellowship of the College of
Surgeons. That the candidates from 3 schools did pass is hardly reassuring. Is
that 45% level a consequence of schools deciding that 30% is good enough? Those
of us about to undergo an operation rather hope that the person with the mask
and the scalpel leaning over us obtained a pass mark closer to say 100%.
As a nation
we spend far too much time trying unsuccessfully to find out who stole what and
when and is there any chance of getting some of it back? “Not a very big one.”
is the answer to the last question. So let’s just have swift justice, find the
thieves guilty, sell their houses, horses and Lamborghinis and importantly, after
a spell in the slammer, ban them from ever again getting employment in a
position of trust and responsibility – especially as a civil servant. We all of
us deserve this.
Is Minister
Pravin Gordhan the victim of a witch hunt that is out to prove that he broke
some rules of protocol when head of SARS – our tax collector? Although once a
member of the communist party he comes across as a “nice fellow” but only this
week he told the country that the state-owned airline SAA is not a “going
concern”! This is really old news as any taxpayer will tell you. Why was he the
last person on the planet to find this out?
Enoch
Godongwana is the ANC’s economic policy guru who has recently confirmed that because the party has not yet found out
how “this thing is going to work” it is
going to investigate the concept of prescribed assets. A wise and
reassuring statement. Most folk indeed are hazy about the ownership and
management of the piles of wealth lying in pension funds. Few would believe that
it is not white South Africans who own the majority of this wealth and no one
knows how forcing those funds to “invest” in the government will turn out. Though
we can make shrewd guesses.
Courtesy of
an unfortunate but deserved red card for the Italians, the bokke are pretty
much dead certs for the quarter finals. An interesting wrinkle emerged early in
the game after both Italian tight head props left the field because of injury
and so scrums thereafter were “uncontested”. This removed a phase of the game
that the bokke were likely to dominate. Could that actually be a real tactic in
future?
James
Greener
Friday 4th
October 2019
