COVID RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BANKS GOING BANG!

 

The egregiously misnamed Economic Freedom Party (a relatively minor force but with a terrifying history of fomenting considerable violence and criminality in short order.) is planning to arrange a nationwide “protest” about the lack of planning and action of the African National Congress in their task of running the country. Absent the simmering threats of violence, looting and lawlessness, the rest of the country is broadly in agreement with the EFF that the ANC is utterly useless and that a “protest” is long overdue. The nation is however anxiously waiting to see if it does take the form of a quiet walk in the park outlined for us by their erratic racist Commander in Chief (sic) These events usually end as a serious looting sprees from which the security forces are seen to flee. Usually after first levering the loot into official vehicles. Double-speak becomes the real official language of the nation.

Many years ago, when Tidemarks was an innocent wide-eyed liberal undergraduate with long hair and long-suffering suffering parents, I was made aware of the concept of reparations. The theory was simple. Descendants of (mostly white-skinned) families in the USA who must all have benefitted enormously from slave ownership, would be required to recompense survivors of those black-skinned families who had suffered from being slaves. So naïve was I then, that I was unsure about who it was that was expected to pay whom. It appeared to me that every slave descendant now living in the relative affluence of the US in the 1960s where there was jazz, Disneyland, ice cream, comics and cars with huge fins and even some measure of political freedom, were the lucky ones. It was they who should be visiting the steaming filthy villages in Africa with bundles of dollar notes. These and other questions and hideous misconceptions were painstakingly answered and corrected for me over the next three decades, culminating perhaps in a meeting held in San Francisco this week where the recommended reparation payment was confidently set at $5m per living American descendant.  This is not as helpful as it will need to be, not least in the matter of where these funds would come from. And so, I suppose another generation of hopeful mendicants will be disappointed. But at least I personally can never again have doubts about social engineering cash flow statements.

            A very significant financial event, missed by pretty much everyone, was triggered by the lockdown debacle that accompanied the official reaction to the respiratory infection, first noted in late 2019. Many people were told that they could no longer work in their employer’s office. This created a huge demand for home computers and then an associated surge in the number and size of banks that financed these purchases. These institutions grew at an unprecedented rate, and it wasn’t long before they were boasting about spending money on pronoun courses and other the “woke” guff to amuse their huge numbers of clueless and inexperienced staff.  The ultimate danger signal flashed a few weeks ago but still few spotted it. The CEO of the Silicon Valley Bank –leader of the pack of banks now racing to the bottom – sold a large chunk of his own stock. Without exception every regulator seems to have been asleep at the wheel and now the usual “It was not me; I was not there.” stories are fighting for attention. The patently untrue claim that no one will lose money has been dusted off and another generation are learning that “Too big to fail!” is a lie. Shame.

One feature of professional sport that helps to keep the politicians from interfering too much (with of course the exception of good old South Africa) is the dispassionate speed with which the salaried staff are fired. The Supersport App has a “News”  section which this weeks culling of soccer players and coaches has turned into a bloodbath. Merciless. No civil servant or ministerial lacky wants to stray too close to these shareholders and owners (think voters) when they are apportioning blame for poor performance.     

Now at last here is a good news story. “One of the founders of Queen has been knighted by the King.”

James Greener

St Paddy’s Day 2023

AND AFTER THE WOOD RUNS OUT?

Financial markets have a remarkable attitude towards calendars. They largely ignore any dates which are marked  up as significant. In places like the US where listed companies are required to report quarterly (here we tend to think a semi annual contribution to the fiction shelves of the library should be sufficient.)  it’s a godsend for the talking heads who need to fill reports and studios with hot words. So just to add my observation tuppence worth – the rand is at a 1 year low versus most major currencies.

Tidemarks’ has always had a deep dislike for and distrust of bureaucracy. Supporters of Brexit have never managed to convince me that having more layers of lawyers drawing income from the public purse was a good thing for anyone other than the paper shufflers who see incomplete forms as an offence. A classic example appeared this week when the European Union told Elon Musk that his recently purchased computer program named  Twitter, must employ more staff to keep an eye on what its customers write about. Apparently the EU has enacted legislation with the totally misleading title of “ Digital Services Act” (basically a censorship scheme ) and they think Elon is incapable of complying with this attack on freedom of speech unless he employs more busybodies with blue pencils. That’s just way too many interfering activities right there. Long term, history tends to favour the freedom seekers, so the wise money should be on the boytjie from Pretoria in this squabble.

It was entirely characteristic of President Frogboiler that he should take so long to announce the outcome of his long-awaited cabinet re-shuffle. Even the TV broadcast on the night was delayed by several hours, but in the end, we learned that Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa would be the nation’s first Minister of Electricity. Later on ,however, Dr Kgosientsho explained   that his job description was silent on loadshedding. This was a bit of a surprise to most of his audience.  In fact, he went on to explain that he had been appointed to ensure delivery of the government’s energy plan. This is a document, already announced by President Ramaphosa but clearly not yet implemented! Puzzling.

Students of this genre of government-speak are pretty sure the country has been down this path many times before. The new minister is indeed a very smart guy and the list of his academic achievements include a BSc in Civil Engineering , two Masters degrees (one in Business Leadership & one in Public Administration)  and  a PhD in Public Affairs. Notably however, his CV opens with the declaration that he is an African National Congress (ANC) politician; a status confirmed by the multimillion rand wristwatch on his arm.   Now President Cyril has a well-known preference for party unity and loyalty above all else. And some of us are now starting to worry that Kgosientsho’s selection process might have bowled Cyril around his legs.

It’s certainly not funny for those people living through this ultra cold spell currently disrupting the Northern Hemisphere but the complaints appearing in the social media are amusing. Apparently it’s not as windy as it usually is at this time of year and that’s giving the renewable wind energy fans a hiding. The sun’s gone AWOL too, and many energy utilities are being forced to fire up the coal-stoked boilers and send a letter of apology to the Doom Pixie, Greta Thunberg.  Amazingly the data indicate that some places are using an energy source called “American firewood” or is that a joke? Hopefully what is really happening is that more and more sensible people with real responsibilities (i.e. not politicians) are realising that planning and managing the electricity supply systems for real live economies doing important stuff like manufacturing,  health, education and production are  ideally lifetime career choice for adults.  There are few alternatives for supplying the amount and reliability of power that the population of this planet requires .None of the so called “renewables” have delivered anything more than irrelevant entertainments for people who can’t do the physics and chemistry. The time for pretending that intellectual dilettantes are doing anything but massive harm is over. “Net Zero” is a total scam.

James Greener

Friday 10^th March 2023

 

 

BLACK HORSES ONLY MAY BE ENTERED IN “THE JULY”

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 3^rd March 2023

SURELY SOMEONE WANTS TO BE THE MINISTER OF ELECTRICITY?

All the tomfoolery that has unfolded to and through the State of the Nation non-event has been wearisome if not outright depressing. It has certainly provided fertile ground for widespread speculation about what the future holds. Well, it holds a National Budget for a start. Some talking heads feel that government have now arrived at the place between a rock and a hard place and will have to scale back on the free stuff, which of course includes paying thousands what is called a salary but in the absence of productivity is really a grant.

It won’t help those who have long dismissed gold as a not particular rare mineral that’s costly to own and clearly(?) being superseded as a store of value by Bitcoin, to be reminded that the rand price of the yellow metal has doubled in the last 5 years. In the meantime, not only have many “blue-chip” listed shares been tainted by the smell of cooking books, but also now the exchanges they were listed on, are closing. Our civilisations and system were built on the now rare concepts of honesty and trust. Which are now crumbling in the absence of any rule of law. The Marxists won in the end.

It is so confusing trying to follow an American story about energy. It really is time they learned that the liquid fuel we put in our cars is called “petrol” and that the stuff that (mostly) comes out of the ground alongside crude oil is “gas” This is the substance that Europe (and even the USA uses to cook and heat their homes with and which President Biden sabotaged by destroying Russian gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. The word “gasoline” has reached its sell by date! It’s so 20^th century.

There are at least two phenomena unrolling in our world that have the potential to make profound impacts on our lives far sooner than we would think possible. Both are happening at an incredible rate. The one is so called artificial intelligence where computers are apparently able to perform in ways that are indistinguishable from what human beings can do, think and say. We are already familiar with Google suggesting the best place for purchases of things we have been researching. But now it is moving to a higher level and the so called “chatbots” are reportedly well on the way to writing Tidemarks every week.  With better punch lines.

The second is the appearance of central bank digital currencies. This is quite a hard topic to understand but is the ultimate goal of authoritarian governments who are sure they can make far better decisions about how to live your life than you do. This week a perhaps deluded individual allowed himself to be implanted with a microchip thereby identifying himself indelibly. He should never lose his credit card again because it is now buried under the skin in is left wrist! He’ll also never be able to pop down to the pub for a quiet beer without everyone knowing. Already we can track our cars and our kids (think cell phone). The notion of the digital currency is quite difficulty to think about but we already mostly have given up using cash and strongly suspect  that our banks readily share whatever they know about us with some bureaucrat. The threat however lies in the idea that if you do something the governments don’t approve of – like vote for the wrong party – access to your account can be frozen and you quickly become a hungry unemployable pawn. Tax evasion will be a thing of the past!

As you read this the second day of the Dusi marathon canoe race is navigating the sewers of outer Durban . Brave folk those. If they fail to stop at the mouth of the Umgeni they could well find themselves in the midst of Chinese and Russian sailors showing off their toys in Exercise Musi II. Our own chaps are blowing up balloons for the visitors to shoot down.

James Greener

Friday 17^th February 2023