Welcome to My Blog
Articles and advice on all things legalSnippet 2020 – 25
Economy More or less? I am confused as to where we should go, economically speaking. Should we tighten our economic belt, spend more, or both? Tito has called for the former; this week a bunch of PhD’s and similar, called for more expenditure. My gut says that you...
Snippet 2020 – 24
Economy I don’t believe we have an economic or financial problem in South Africa. We have a political problem. Dawie Rood ‘Potamus rising: the world debt is, on average 100% of world GDP. Ours sits at 81% of our GDP. Better than many, but, when we are spending 21% of...
Snippet 2020 – 23
Economy Can Dr Doom be right again? Roubini, a New York University Prof, sprang into prominence when his 2006 warning, that the US housing market would collapse, proved true. He now predicts a post-CV19 economic rebound, followed by a collapse beneath the weight of...
Snippet 2020 – 22
Economics Economic news in Africa, and closer to home, is not great, as may be seen from the following: the average share of African government revenue that goes towards external debt service has tripled over the past 10 years to 13%; Angola, Africa’s second-largest...
Snippet 2020 – 21
Economy We need guidance? “A developmental state does not necessarily mean higher levels of state ownership, but high levels of guidance.” IDC and SA Development Bank chairman, Enoch Godongwana. Eskom: whilst SAA tends to attract more attention, the total debt...
Snippet 2020 – 20
Economy News has it that our government is seeking a loan from “multilateral lenders” (whatever that means) to fund the development of “network industries” – read infrastructure. With this comes promises of jobs and so on. I understand that borrowing to pay for...
Snippet 2020 – 19
Economy Big brother: There was a minor rash of businesses being taken on for price gouging during the lockdown. These touch on two related issues being: the business concerned are tagged and fined. If these entities were to dispute the finding against them the cost of...
Snippet 2020 – 18
Economics Economics is the painful elaboration of the obvious …. Last week I attempted to entertain you with bos-sums, which led to rather dismal conclusions and the usual unfortunate comparison with Zim. What now? An SA economist pointed out that only two avenues of...
Snippet 2020 – 17
Economy Please bear with me; I would like to do a bos-som (Rockspider calculation): SA’s GDP is some 350bn $; our tax on this is approximately 28% which equals to about 100bn $. If SARS collects 30% less tax this year, then we will need to borrow about 30bn $ (working...
Snippet 2020 – 16
Economy If – our Treasury predictions come true – between 3m to 7m SA jobs will be lost as a result of the protracted lockdown; a 32% drop in state revenue is expected this tax year. the International Labour Organisation predictions come true, almost half of the...
Snippet 2020 – 15
Economy Everyone is suddenly an economist and the topic has become quite overtrodden: the fact is that throwing borrowed money at the lockdown has two essential difficulties associated therewith: our same sub-optimal and corrupt administration has to administer/dole...
Snippet 2020 – 14
Economy It’s the economy, stupid. A phrase coined by Carville and made famous by Clinton: a couple of weeks ago, the functioning of our economy was an arcane topic, entered into by politicians, pretending to be ideologues, to various ends and economists, to whom no...
Snippet 2020 – 13
Economy Perspective. Our state, as mentioned last week, had a mere half billion Rand to offer as aid following on the pandemic – because it is broke. This week, Eskom said that it will take R56bn from the existing state bailout… not to speak of SAA waiting in the...
Snippet 2020 – 12
Economy Price gouging: price gouging is wrong, right? Price gouging is driven by greed and, especially in emergencies, is simply morally wrong. Politicians love such laws as they appear to be defending people suffering from a setback and makes for happy voters –...
Snippet 2020 – 11
Economy The endless economic breast-beating and death updates are really becoming quite tiresome: what, economically speaking, happens after our isolation? Interestingly, it appears that economies rebound after wars but don’t after depressions. It remains to be seen...
Snippet 2020 – 10
Economy When stocks are volatile, conventional wisdom dictates that you should invest in bricks and mortar, right? Perhaps not, somewhat overexcited predictions are that the US housing market might crash to 29-year lows. The VIX is shorthand for a measure of the...
The coronavirus: a force majeure?
A farmer contracts to supply logs to a purchaser after having made the necessary arrangements to automate his tree harvesting activities: he orders the machines. Owing to the closure of borders and factories, following on the corona virus pandemic, these are not...
Snippet 2020 – 09
Economy Nedbank has revised our GDP for this year down to 0.3% and says that we run a high risk of recession. The South African BER business confidence index has sunk to its lowest level in 20 years: 8 out of 10 respondents are unhappy about current business...