Strawberry Fields Forever

Before the economically lethal anti-pandemic measures took effect, the State’s revenue was around R1.3 trillion a year and growing modestly at 5% to 6% per annum. The latest release from National Treasury reveals income now to be more than R1.5 trillion a year, growing at 25%pa. These are staggering numbers and it’s little wonder everyone from Cyril down is doing a little jig and praising the efforts of the taxman. Elsewhere, the team who dish the cash out to the Ministries that spend the stuff, must also be smug. For the first time in living memory, they have throttled back and their average monthly distribution of R1.8 trillion has barely changed in the past 12 months. It’s not all good news though, as the latter number is around R300 billion larger than the first. The technical jargon for this situation is “deficit” and any organisation or individual that has one, needs to borrow to fill the gap. Interest rates are however nudging up everywhere, so borrowing is becoming more expensive. The current deficit is still greater than in pre-pandemic times so National Treasury needs to turn down the music and get back to work. Especially the expenditure team. The revenue windfall is just that.

Apparently the MTN shareholders panicked and sold when this week it was announced that Nigeria was requiring phone companies to link SIM card numbers to user’s ID number. I’m pretty sure we have that link already since one needs an ID number to open any sort of account. Even visiting a friend in a residential complex involves scanning both your driving licence and car registration. As far back as the Kebble murder the police were using cell phone records to track who was where and when. We would each be horrified to discover how much of our lives is on record. And not very secure ones at that. I’m sure Checkers supermarkets have already alerted someone to my apparent addiction to strawberry flavoured yoghurt and my on-line order for litres of the stuff. It was a simple mistake in the shopping app! Honestly!

The search for scare stories about the state of the world has moved off Twitter and is now to be found (or maybe not found) on the supermarket shelves. There are all too real and visible shortages and astronomical price rises in every aisle. The supply chains are visibly awry. A drive round the Durban dock area reveals acres of stacked and mothballed containers awaiting export cargo to ship from SA. The flip side is that this means there are container shortages at the supplier’s end. Reportedly, Chinese ports are even taking shutdown days as manufacturers there battle to move their output. Undoubtedly, it’s all way more complicated than that and the Ukraine debacle is hitting hard and fast. Few of us realised or even knew how many markets that nation dominated. No wonder Putin is all over it. It’s a real mess and western leaders are seemingly more concerned with pronouns, sports competitor gender and toilet door signage to placate miniscule fractions of their populations than to ensure that everyone can find food. Boris’ command of Russian hasn’t helped much yet.

The apparent inability of anyone (especially those on the public payroll) to do their job without first ensuring that there is a place for them at the corruption trough must be this nation’s greatest ill. SA has still not complied with the long-standing international agreement to discontinue broadcasting non-digital TV signals. The delay seems to be bickering about who gets the contract to make and distribute the small piece of kit (set-top box) to those deemed too poor to upgrade to digital TV sets. There’s stream of government money to be tapped right there.

Being the Masters, there’s bound to be a story about those iconic but androgenous baggy white overalls they insist the caddies wear. This year, for some reason, we got lengthy TV coverage of the events of the so-called Par 3 Day where the players’ immediate family join in and get to walk the hallowed grass and swing a club or two, provided they wear one of these overalls. The kids seemed to relish the opportunity to get dressed up, but the carefully groomed significant others, maybe not so much! But my goodness, golfers do breed hey?

James Greener

Friday 8^th April 2022

 

THE NEWEST WAR IS JUST TOO AWFUL TO MENTION

There was a flurry in American money markets this week when, briefly, 2-year yields exceeded 10-year yields. This “inverted yield curve” frequently signals recession. Watch this space.

Apparently, another surge in the number of people testing positive for Covid is already upon us. Will the political decision makers realise that this is irrefutable evidence that pretty much everything that they have insisted we do to “flatten the curve” these past 2 years has not worked?  At least not in the way we were assured it would.  It is therefore alarming to watch them now adopt laws that will equip them with the very powers we are at last discarding by the long overdue termination of the State of Disaster. There is scant evidence that the vindictive and hugely disruptive and economy destroying intrusive interventions such as bans on the sale of booze and tobacco, lockdowns, ad hoc quarantine programs, masks, body temperature checks and the sanitisation of facilities and surfaces, has had any effect in controlling who might next be unfortunate enough to suffer the sometimes severe and alarming symptoms of the “novel respiratory infection”. And why can’t the world develop and agree upon a suitable palliative treatment? One really is tempted to give the so-called conspiracy theories some credence.

The most contentious intervention has been the vaccination program where the strategy of simply prescribing more boosters every few months is undeniable evidence that the vaccine has not worked as designed and promised. Even President Biden has just received a 4^th jab. He reported afterwards that he felt great -- a side effect not widely recorded! Reportedly many South Africans are refusing to play this game ad infinitum. So much so that the nation has just had to destroy many unused and expired doses of the disappointing elixir.  Yet another case of wasted money in a two-year story of value destruction we can ill afford. The reported response to this reluctance to believe and obey the official insistence that the vaccines are safe and effective is to create a law which will allow the authorities to use force and detain unbelievers. Wow! And we can’t put the mega crooks in jail?  

The headline is on this occasion probably correct. It says that stakeholders are concerned that South Africa could see an exodus of doctors and other key medical personnel ahead of the planned introduction of the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme. This emigration is presumably a response to the reported NHI plan to take on the task of deciding who should practice what, and where! The government is surely aware that many doctors and nurses are real people who have chosen where they want to live! Consider the Durban specialist who, before a harrowing day of doctoring, chooses to swim a mile in the sea. This won’t happen when the NHI sends him to Joburg or Joubertina, so he might just move to Jacksonville! 

Our postal service is undoubtably tottering and in the absence of everyone having an address to which snail mail can be delivered (BTW what happened to the Census?) the government is going to provide everyone with an email address. It would be fascinating to get a glimpse of the notes that were jotted down when this plan was being hatched. Does the name Google appear anywhere? Did anyone at that meeting mention that mobile phone penetration in our country is already astonishingly high and provided the user has a suitable cell phone and can afford a data link to that phone, the Gmail address is already free. So obviously this gesture is just about improving and extending affordable broad band coverage. Yay. Oh yes and handing out smart phones to all.

I’m not a biologist but Lieutenant-General Sehlahle Fannie Masemola, South Africa’s new national police commissioner, is not a woman. Just a heads up for loyal readers who depend on Tidemarks for honest facts. He is a great mate of the prat in the hat, police minister Bheki Cele so it may be premature to welcome his appointment at this stage.

It’s the time of year to complain about what an ancient university regards as the colour “light blue”. It’s Boat Race weekend and notwithstanding the gripe above, may Cambridge win.

James Greener

April Fool’s Day 2022

 

PROBLEMS EVERYWHERE

All other prices are skyrocketing so far and so fast that another hike of a mere 25basis points in the repo rate was hardly noticed. Big important banks will now pay 4.25% pa to borrow cash from the Reserve Bank. This lowest rate in the money market, signals that this transaction is maybe the least risky in the nation. Interest rates rise for loans which are considered to be riskier. Near the top of the scale are loans perhaps between a “loan shark” and an individual with no collateral. The loan of R100 for a day (common in street vendor markets) may attract a R200 repayment. This translates into an interest rate of 100%!   Perhaps the most watched interest rate in the world is the price of US 10year money which currently at 2.4%pa is soaring through three-year highs. This rise is an expected response to the very recent doubling by the US Federal Reserve of the Fed Funds rate to 0.5%pa. If nothing else, this displays a drawback of manipulating administered rates to unrealistically low levels.  In the absence of letting the market set these short-term interest rates, no one really knows what the economy could bear.

Markets are on the move everywhere. And few are as positive as the SA Rand. Just why our wee “runt” is being used as a haven while a nasty war is developing is unclear and puzzling. Are we suddenly being re-evaluated because we mine gold? Or is it our BRICS relationship with some bad boys that’s making a difference? Dozens of “woke” limp-wristed heads of state who have taken a break from pontificating on climatology and virology and are trying their hand at the real and really hard task of international statesmanship. So far the West have yet to produce any plausible hard men (or women) who seem capable of getting the measure of Putin.  

The suggestion is that our fearless leaders and their medical advisors might lift the State of Disaster in April. About time too. There really is scant evidence to suggest that there is any state of disaster in South Africa at the present. Or at least one arising from a respiratory infection. There are indeed disasters getting worse by the day in almost every other area of where the state is trying to control our activities. Newest of these is apparently the port system that is reportedly so dysfunctional that export volumes of everything we need to sell and deliver overseas are falling steadily. Businesses dependant on imported components are in deep trouble also.  Every day there are revelations of how incompetence and ignorance are grinding down what remains of functioning government services.  However, lurking in the background to take effect once the State of Disaster is repealed, is a raft of regulation which fails to consider almost anything learned about Covid in the last 2 years. Why for example waste ink on the nonsense about reducing social distancing from 1,5m to 1m, except when queuing to enter a shop! The fact is that the public appetite for having their daily behaviour stipulated is now zero. None of it worked much and it is distressing to see that only those who never missed a single paycheque these past 2 years can’t recognise that fact.

For a number of reasons, the forthcoming important national conference of the ANC, the nation’s alleged ruling party will probably be held as a virtual gathering. Which raises several points, not least the question that in the absence of throwing chairs, how will delegates know when a session is over?  Has anyone had a word with the team at the Reserve Bank who are working on developing a digital currency for South Africa? Will that not cause great difficulties for the practitioners in that other important party conference skill? The slick and seamless transfer of brown envelopes stuffed with folding money. Promising an EFT and obtaining banking details is so so …public! Especially if one has forgotten how the “Mute” button works.

Two interesting issues for consideration. The Proteas Women are in with a decent chance at their World Cup. And the science of automotive aerodynamics is far from solved. Just don’t ask Mercedes how to spell “porpoising”.

James Greener

25^th March 2022

NKOSAZANA’S CALENDAR APP

Two years ago, policy makers in the US (followed soon by others elsewhere) thought that cheap money would help the fight against the unknown and terrifying new respiratory disease sweeping the globe. Whether that turned out to be the case is hard to say. Despite low interest rates, economies were utterly hollowed out by this and whatever other measures such as the lethal lockdown that the leaders imposed. Commodity prices and inflation are now sweeping majestically upwards and the usual remedy to these ills, push interest rate up, are being applied. It doesn’t help that people who should know way better are trying to prod each other into war. This Democracy system honestly doesn’t place the wisest in the positions of most power, does it? In fact, it seems deliberately to  identify the worst suited to the job of running nations.

The selection of the new Chief Justice of the Republic was a scrappy affair. Right down to the congratulatory elbow bump (instead of a handshake) between the deserving Judge Zondo and President Frogboiler. Presumably Justice Mandisa Maya – the sole female candidate and short-odds winner --  has been comforted by the news that Zondo is close to retirement.

Someone really needs to get hold of Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s smart phone and remove the entry that reminds her every month to extend the National Sate of Disaster that has been in place for two years. As usual her excuse for the blatantly obvious misuse of her power is that the extension will “give the government and organs of state time to augment legislation to ensure the continued management of the Covid-19 pandemic after the state of disaster”. Now, what metrics is she is using to decide when this augmentation is complete? And when does she expect to complete it? What we all know, is that she and the National Coronavirus Command Council have nothing useful or necessary left to do. It is moot whether they in fact ever achieved any significant impact, since most of the measures recommended and implemented by the NCCC these past 24 months have long since lapsed into irrelevance and ridicule. The truth is that very simply, those granted powers by the State of Disaster” have become fond of those powers and are loath to relinquish them. For example, the prat in the hat cant wait for another opportunity to harass and arrest a pretty girl in a bikini for the crime of using a beach that was closed. Because Covid!  

A developing story that merits careful attention is that powerful people are appearing who believe that other powerful people were responsible for the riots which all but destroyed the country last July. The word treason has been used. Hmm. Interesting.

 The first race of this year’s Formula 1 season takes place this weekend. The last one of 2021 ended rather acrimoniously, with rule books being waved about and lawyers being threatened. – never a good thing in sport – or indeed anything. It remains to be seen if the lighter paint work of the champion’s Number 1 has an impact. Tidemarks has whined before about the effort required to keep track of all the sports, tournaments and matches on the sporting calendars. Compilers of these lists should be clearer about which are the woman’s fixtures. My remarkable 99-year-old mother-in-law is adamant that certain sports have no place on the distaff calendar. Woman’s rugby is indeed intriguing

Cricket SA is one of sports’ most annoying and corrupt ruling bodies. However, their decision to allow local players to accept IPL invitations is perhaps wise. The most noticeable consequence is that the selectors have been forced to cast their nets wide for the forthcoming tour by Bangladesh. The newest members to the awesome list of those who have played for South Africa will, I’m sure, apply themselves to defending the Proteas’ rankings. And we surely soon will have new household names to boast about. Maybe even tonight in Centurion.  

James Greener

Friday 18^th March 2022