Welcome to My Blog
Articles and advice on all things legalSnippet 2020 – 35
Economy Our economy is starting to pick up and hope springs… There are, however, a few issues which simply will not go away, and few are as urgent as the governance and financial issues in local government. It is pleasant to argue about tax but if you have no water or...
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Economics When the Prez, this week past, addressed us on the shortcomings of our public services, he touched on the essence underlying our current dilemma with the implementation of political policy. I grew up with the (British) understanding that the civil service...
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Economics You will recall that growing our middle-class was a hot political topic some years back – the thinking was that “we” needed a substantial middle-class to ensure the retention of a democratic capitalist state. This week past there were mutterings of our...
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Economics Mr Godongwana debunked the notion of using pension funds to bail out SOEs this week past. This pleased me immensely as, on checking, the only SOE that is making a profit, appears to be SAFCOL ; investing in trees is hardly a great pension move. The idea is...
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Economics The current economic stats are old news: consumer confidence the lowest in 15 years; the BCI consumer confidence is up, but still negative, and so on. Interestingly and unexpectedly our JSE is up to pre-lockdown levels. Why? Essentially because the large...
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Economy Last year’ s downgrade of SA Inc has led to R54bn in stocks being offloaded by foreigners. For the past 30 years, emerging markets have provided diversification opportunities for global equity investors. South Africa is listed on the MSCI index which tracks...
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Economy Investing in South African infrastructure: I recall having been repeatedly over the past 10 years, told by those who govern us, that the state will invest in infrastructure. Factually, fixed investment in South Africa, has grown by a mere 0.2% since 2009 ....
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Economy Restive: the volk is becoming restive – the economic damage (it’s about the economy, stupid!) wrought by the junta-imposed lockdown, is becoming such that folk are openly ridiculing, indeed disobeying, those that govern us. Examples of this abound and are not...
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Economics South Africa is reportedly in the 80th month of a weakening economic cycle, of which only the last three can fairly be attributed to CV 19. Self-made? Certainly. I was intrigued to hear a political commentator decline naming Zimbabwe as a failed state,...
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Economy B4SA, supported by BBC, and BUSA, made a proposal that infrastructure forms the flywheel of our financial recovery to the tune of R3.4Tr. What is true is that such development would create jobs and multiply the value of the sum spent considerably. Our problem,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...