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

LOVELY RITA METER MAID

The total rand amount of the earnings reported by the constituent shares of the JSE All Share index over the past 12 months has recovered enormously since the low recorded in the last quarter of 2020. In common with many informal and anecdotal reports in the same vein, this is welcome news but very had to explain. Where is the money coming from to fuel the reported surge in demand? Tidemarks suggests that we are witnessing the most perfect example of trickledown economics ever recorded. Public money raised by taxes and loans pass effectively and efficiently almost directly into the hands of those eager and unafraid to spend it. On themselves. This is a chain which is unlikely to be broken by seeking to install incorruptible and civic minded officials and bureaucrats who will deliver what the citizens expect and more significantly need if this nation is to become competitive. The chain is large and seemingly comprised of networks of a small number of large families. Their most annoying characteristic of this self-denoted A-list elite, after a talent for grand larceny, is a complete denial of any arithmetic which demonstrates that their lifestyle depends on a very small number of increasingly disillusioned payers of very large taxes. Their insistence, for example, that there is demand for the resurrection of the SAA the state- owned airline has no basis in any financial or transport universe. Recently Tidemarks wondered who was brave enough to take on the minibus taxi industry and break the news to them that “Really it would be jolly sporting and patriotic of them to start paying income tax”! And now the government want these same taxi drivers, along with everyone else in the country, to give up their hand-guns. The government’s thesis is that there is no need for individuals to have a weapon for self defence. Really? This was a bad time to choose to release a photograph of a suite of rooms, presumably in Pretoria, where the Firearm Registry, operated by the police, reportedly store their records. It was, one must say, surprisingly neat. But the sight of tonnes of paper stacked from floor to ceiling without a shelf, bookcase or filing cabinet to be seen raises doubts about just what is being controlled in this manner. Presumably these records are the original sheafs of A4 forms completed by gun owners over the past few decades when the previous system was changed. So now there is RTIA - the Road Traffic Infringement Agency, another grammar-challenged newly formed outfit that feeds on public money. It is tasked with administering the “Aarto Value Chain” an oxymoronic and meaningless concept. RTIA is complaining that it will need to rely on other state agencies like the Department of Transport and the South African Post Office to do its job. Further, RTIA is dependent on the NCR which is administered by the Road Traffic Management Corporation. And perhaps worst of all, The Government Printing Works is responsible for printing the Aarto notice books. Oh no! How will they ever do their job? And do we actually need it? The TV producer who decided to start interviewing athletes hasn’t bequeathed us a universally winning idea. While their appearance on the screen is normally due to noteworthy or exceptional performance in their discipline, not all are gifted speakers or natural and interesting commentators. Especially not if they have just completed a gruelling session of physical effort. Euphoria, excitement and adrenaline will carry them only a few sentences down the road before their words – often in a foreign language – are banal and embarrassing and only their parents are still listening. Unwisely producers often welcome the sports man or woman who is articulate or emboldened enough to use the TV exposure to espouse a cause that is unrelated to their talent and achievement. Naomi Osaka the very successful tennis player has announced that she won’t fulfil the media obligations (i.e. answer trite and silly questions on camera) required of her at the forthcoming French Open. She will be fined for this breach of contract and has chosen to pay her penalties to a charity. It certainly raises the question of just who owns Ms Osaka’s time when she is not on a tennis court. James Greener Friday 28th May 2021

THE DATA FOG IS CLEARING

Our much reviled and despised currency, the South African rand is daily setting one-year highs against major currencies. This is embarrassing for those who prefer the bear narrative about the nation going to hell in a handbasket. Even the share market tarnishes the thesis that the ill-conceived and largely medically ineffective lockdowns utterly destroyed our economies. The All-Share Index is lurking in the mid 6o thousands and has challenged 70 thousand on a few recent occasions. Like the parson’s egg there are clearly parts of the economy which are quite excellent thank you. As anyone whose daily life necessitates a trip to the supermarket can tell you however, grocery prices are going up and even the carefully massaged inflation metrics are confirming this. But the CPI has not yet done enough climbing to cause the usual knee-jerk reaction from the Reserve Bank. They again left the repo rate unchanged this week. There clearly is a WhatsApp group for Central Bankers who peck away at their smart phones under the bedclothes until late at night discussing the price of money. No one wants to be the baddy and start to reward the savers who have been patiently waiting for a bit more interest in their monthly pay out. It would be such fun to see this thread when it moves to the subject of cryptocurrencies. The citizenry is quickly realizing that the pandemic is not as infectious or lethal as our leaders have been assuring us. Increasingly the health industry globally is singing from the same song book and the rest of us can begin to sort the likely truth from the wishful thinking and suspiciously deliberate misinformation. We are these days less easy to terrify and bully. And so now it looks and feels as if our leaders are becoming more interested in rummaging through the nation’s rubbish bins seeking dirt with which to smear each other. Some are even perhaps returning to their real jobs. For example, the Independent Electoral Commission have decided that it will investigate whether conditions will be conducive to free and fair local government elections in October 2021, particularly in the context of Covid-19. That should keep them busy. Spoiler alert: Yes of course. Meanwhile bleeding fingernails must be the order of the day at the SARS head office. Despite starting off telling the civil servants that there simply was no money for honouring long standing pay increase commitments, suddenly there, down the back of the couch in the Commissioner’s office a few rusty coins and tatty notes were found and have been offered to this rather grumpy cohort of public employees. It remains to be seen if the trove is enough. In another part of Tax Towers, squeals of delight can be heard from the tax-collecting gumshoes who have discovered the unlooted medical aid reserve funds. Just the latest in the various private savings accounts that the desperate government is about to prise open with some adroit reinterpretation of the rule books. At first sight on TV the Kiawah Island golf course in South Carolina where the US PGA Championship is being held this weekend, looks startlingly similar to courses here on the south coast. Mamba infested groves of coastal bush with clumps of palm trees and rough which would be better described as jungle or lush grasslands. Then the drone rises to reveal the course to be an amazing enclave squeezed between the Atlantic Ocean and some evil looking swamps which the US commentators are proud to tell us are unique. So far, the first day has been very entertaining. Which is what one hopes we will get from the iconic Monaco F1 Grand Prix. I will refrain from my annual complaint that my invitation to join a party on the poop deck of a grand yacht moored in the harbour has gone astray. But I do look forward to seeing what the spectator policy is going to look like. The restricted number of fans who at last are being allowed to attend Premier League matches in England have been behaving exactly as they warned they would and are booing the ridiculous and inappropriate officially mandated display of support for a racist lobby group, unconnected with any sport. It will not end well. James Greener Friday 21st May 2021

SOME ELECTRONS ARE LESS RENEWABLE THAN OTHERS

Here we go again. Someone wakes up to the fact that minibus taxis aren’t paying much income tax and everyone feels that something must be done about that. Unsurprisingly not too many folk are volunteering to break this news and begin handing out tax return forms to the owners and drivers within this massive but pretty lawless business. The reality is that it’s probably best if we just leave that tax uncollected. After all, one of Tidemarks’ old shibboleths is that it is extremely unlikely that the government would be able to distribute that money as swiftly and widely as the industry itself is probably doing. They are running a pretty good case study in the benefits of economic freedom. For most of the world the Covid thing appears to be shaking down quite quickly with different levels of public rejection of the wilder and woollier requirements for behaviour modifications. Nevertheless, some governments seem to be particularly loath to give up the powers they gave themselves to control their pesky populations. In case you didn’t notice, our “State of Disaster” was this week rolled out another month. But its hard to tell. The last holdouts to “normality” are of course mostly those whose emolument was unaffected by the lockdown and who have yet to return to their usual places of work. Complicating any understanding of the status and impact of the virus are the various statistics which show huge improvements in the economy since a year ago. This a faulty comparison as that was when there were penguins were tottering through the streets of Simonstown and surfers were being arrested. The lockdown was hard and brutal and neither booze nor ‘baccy could be sold. Compared to the pre-covid periods we are way short of a real widespread recovery. Here on the southern tip as usual we are doing things quite differently. There appears to be scant urgency to administer any of the vaccinations that the rest of the world has adopted so enthusiastically. Why that is, is hard to tell but a possible reason is that the pathways to cadre riches that the ruling party like to map out in any expenditure of public money are unclear. Already the supposedly unavoidable and imminent third wave of infections is being blamed on the feeble vaccination program. Tidemarks would like to draw readers’ attention to the collision of two phenomenon These are Elon Musk and Bitcoin The former it seems has reversed an earlier decision to accept the latter in payment for purchase of his Tesla electric car product. The offered reason drips with hypocrisy. Elon is now worried about how much dirty electricity is required to “mine” a Bitcoin but is unconcerned that the same energy source is used exclusively to power the novel car. Years behind schedule, the national broadcaster SABC is only now switching off the legacy analogue terrestrial TV broadcasts in order to meet an international agreement to free up “spectrum” for mobile data. SABC’s channels will soon be transmitted only in digital format from the familiar array of huge masts dotted around the countryside. To watch “The News” and other fiction offerings churned out by SABC, viewers need to get a decoder (Just as Multichoice customers need to unscramble the digital TV signal broadcast from the DSTV satellite.) Much of the delay in getting to this point was due to the government working out how to ensure that their voters would continue to get the benefit of a daily opinion from a political worthy. After all, folk who do not buy TV licences are not going to purchase a decoder. Viewers on the old system, due to be cut off finally in about a year, are now getting messages inviting them to register for a free government-subsidised decoder. Um. So not all that free really then? Oh the excitement of the domestic rugby season. The Lions play the Stormers and the Bulls play the Sharks both on Saturday. The latter clashes with the FA Cup but few people care about much of this. The absence of audience is awful. The WHO have recently pronounced that “There has not been one verified covid infection transmission in the outdoors”. Is this real or just some pressure from Japan, the panicking Olympic hosts? James Greener Friday 14th May 2021

ONE OF US IS SUSPENDED AND IT IS NOT ME

Most real trained economists can be distracted for a couple of hours if asked what the price of money (i.e. interest rates) should be. They are amazingly variable over an astonishing wide range, sometimes even falling below zero. Indeed, there are several situations around the globe at the moment where depositors are being charged interest (which surely must be the wrong word) to lend their cash to a borrower! Fake untrained commentators like Tidemarks can’t grasp what this means for the economy of a nation where this takes place. It nevertheless does not seem right. Interestingly the debate about negative interest rates is heating up again as part of a growing discussion about how perhaps administered interest rates having been too low for too long. But the flaw in thesis is that there exist people and committees who know what the correct interest rate must be. And these wise men and women from time to time reset this rate and the nation’s economy surges forward on this wave of intelligence and insight. Um. Almost certainly this is not the case! Throw in the fact that that governments just love to tax interest flows and one has the makings of a complex system for which open transparent markets are the ideal price-setting mechanism. In contrast, the issuing and renewal of driver’s licences should be a cheap and seamless service delivered by technology with minimal human intervention. (Except for the driving test – but watch this space). However, this week, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula used nearly every cliché in the politicians handbook to describe what will happen. He was excited that the process will in future be “atomised” and the new licence will be redesigned to incorporate and adopt new technologies. such as blockchain and other related technologies which will form the platform of an integrated transport system.” Sadly, he didn’t promise that his staff would “work around the clock” so most likely many of us might not ever receive these new licences. Just before President Cyril became embroiled in the ridiculous play-ground shouting contest with the ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule about who had the bigger mandate to fire the other, he joined a love-in with Finance Minister Tito Mboweni. This duet was about the need for another State Bank. This is such an old and boring song that reappears whenever one of them forgets that they don’t know how banks work. In a series of posts made on social media, the finance minister said that the ‘cry for a state bank is loud, clear and urgent’. The queue of depositors however is short, risk-averse and vanishing. The folk who create the never ending stream of legislation that dribbles out of the corridors of power really don’t have a clue. Neither frankly do many of the commentators who are called in to write about and praise the latest slab of extremely annoying and implausible instructions on how to run a business. In their minds thanks to the glossy TV ads, they see plush offices staffed with crisp efficient laptop-toting meeting attendees smiling and laughing as they devise yet another illegal way to squeeze the clients and customers and make another couple of million before morning tea. The reality, as most of us know, is quite different. Those lucky enough actually to have a job. divide their time between begging clients for orders or payment and telling compliance officers not to interfere in the delicate balances we have crafted in order to keep afloat. A most peculiar story has emerged from the rugby tournament known as the Varsity Shield bubble(?!) now in progress. The team from Walter Sisulu University (with 31 500 students on 4 campuses in the region that used to be known as Border) have been performing the New Zealand “haka” before their matches. Among the reasons they have provided for this choice of a foreign symbol is that they admire the way the All Blacks play. Further they have won 3 world Cups. Errr. Yes. So has another team called the ‘bokke. Anyway, after receiving a polite and kind letter from New Zealand rugby, the WSU fellows have stopped making fools of themselves but to be fair it did seem to work. They beat Rhodes 63-10. James Greener Friday 7th May 2021