'Goldman Sachs rules the world,' he claims, with utter confidence. And I suppose that's another thing that attracted me, since I recently read an article that diagrammed the relationship of the companies that are said to do exactly that! And yes, Goldman Sachs was among them.
Rastani even tells viewers how to avoid being led by the nose into certain disaster.
But he's holding his breath in joyful anticipation of a complete Eurozone crash.
It emphasises how often governments, banks and stock markets delude themselves into supposing that 'alles sal regkom'. Do you think they're in denial or do they just not grasp the facts properly?
If Greece is allowed to default, European banks, and particularly French banks, will become vulnerable. But she's not playing ball and has already, in real terms, defaulted. Will her civil servants be paid or not? Just how far will the crisis escalate before it drags us all down?
There are protests in several developed countries. Thank God our strikes are over for a while!
The Eurozone crisis will not affect the average South African directly, but will possibly affect every South African indirectly. As in: referred pain, or fallout.
South Africa and other emerging markets will find it harder to export their products or borrow money and the latter, in the face of our infrastructure plans, could just catch us short. As Engineering News reported, at some stage between now and 2015, by which time South Africa plans to install 1 850MW of wind power capacity, transport infrastructure will feel the pain.
Enter the GreenCape Initiative, which focuses on unlocking 'manufacturing and employment potential' in the Western Cape and includes wind turbine transportation in its interests. It has offered to lease a spot in Suldanha Bay harbour where turbines can be offloaded, which it will later sublet to whoever finally gets the contract to import them.
Each of about 925 turbines would make up seven or eight abnormal loads moving cross-country to their destinations, it claims, which could mean about 6 500 loads clogging Western Cape roadways over two years.
But these factors need to be taken into consideration:
· We don't have sufficient cranes to load and offload the segments at either end of the journey, or enough sizeable heavy transport vehicles do the job. I wonder whether we even have enough experienced PrDP drivers?
· In some places, roadside infrastructure will need to be modified or removed before such long vehicles can pass and turn. I hope that doesn't include rebuilding bridges...
· The routes used must be advertised for every journey and each will need route clearance obtained for the dimensions of the pieces. All need dedicated traffic escorts.
Discussion with Transnet (which agrees that road is the cheapest form of moving these gigantic parts) has made it clear that it doesn't have the necessary to do the job. The loads apparently move at a crawl, but taking the numbers into account, this isn't a task for weekends or nights only.
This type of factor is a fairly important aspect of any large infrastructure project and is the point of having good project management to hand when quoting. It would be a shame if Eskom had assumed too little and miscalculated when taking loans.
Logistics experts are doubtless quailing in their boots at the thought.
Global demand just isn't what it used to be and whatever the rand's value it needs willing markets to perform. Even China is suffering contractions and I sometimes wonder whether some countries don't feel they've bitten off, in recent years, more than they can chew.
Quoting the University of Birmingham's Professor Peter Sinclair, Engineering News also reported that the longer that Greek pain is drawn out, the more difficult adjustments will be, affecting risk premiums on loans to South Africa.
Falling exports could easily prove the last straw for production and our gross domestic product (GDP). Sinclair suggested allowing the rand to fall somewhat against the dollar (happy manufacturing sector) in preparation of a possible crisis (not-so-happy manufacturing sector).
Which would leave us exactly where with the oil price and dollar-related local business obligations? Some type of depositor insurance was suggested with regard to South African banks.
Beginning to feel a little queasy yet? Or just pleased you can't afford to save?
However, Sinclair's cherry-on-the-top suggestion was a shift towards more VAT and less direct taxation and the need for us to do long-term planning by learning from the Greek example...
...which involves an ungainly public service with unaffordable salary needs; see any link to us, yet?
Criticism about our public service spend since 1994 is nothing new, starting with comment about moving from four provinces to nine and the replication of jobs that demanded. Then of course there are all the consultants hired to do government work because the wrong people often work within the buddy system.
Add to that our social welfare payments, the umpteen health and social-welfare projects and the ever-bleeding and begging state-owned companies? No wonder Tokyo Sexwale's getting cold feet about housing! It's all unsustainable in the long term.
Last month, Adcorp claimed that nearly another 500 000 jobs would bite the dust from now to next year and the only one still hiring this year has been the public sector. How that makes it possible for banks to believe (and tell parliament) that consumer spend will prop up economic growth is beyond me...but you never know, perhaps they are referring to new homes and expensive cars for the likes of Julius Malema and other government-subsidised cronies.
I wonder how that inspires consumer confidence?
Because I'm pretty sure their tax situation no longer does. In essence, Grant Thornton research shows that there is a grand total of 5.7 million tax payers paying for a population of around 50 million in South Africa. He maintains that 2.75 million people carry over 60% of the total tax burden.
Taxpayers pay between 18% and 40% of their earnings to tax, depending on their income. In actual fact, the highest payers receive the least in return, which should make Boesak and Tutu happy little chappies!
Taxpayers generally self-fund their security, pension, medical, and educational expenses. Unfortunately, much of that treasury income goes back into social (or current) expenditure, leaving virtually nothing for infrastructure and capital expenditure. The division is unsustainable.
This means that capital expenditure must be covered by a variety of other taxes, levies, duties and tolls, from occasional airport and flight taxes, to VAT.
VAT is kept low to spare the poor. But taxes like estate duties, transfer duties, capital gains taxes and donations' taxes coin a good bit for the authorities. Home owners pay municipal rates, most of which are currently paying off new stadiums built in inconvenient places. Then there's an environmental tax on electricity.
Drivers suffer motor vehicle and ad valorem tax on fancy purchases, licence fees, vehicle registration fees and three different levies on fuel (including the RAF levy), but toll fees are probably the most resisted at this point. An emissions tax comes next.
Sin tax levied on cigarettes, alcohol and ad valorem duties on most imported goods jive with a new dividend tax for shareholders and a gambling tax on winnings. And for your sins you also pay a tax on each of the old light bulbs you buy, a levy on each plastic bag and the dreaded SABC licence, which accounting and collecting systems remain horrendous (ask me).
Collecting all these fees from you probably costs more than you pay, which makes sheer logic of Professor Peter Sinclair's suggestion that we look at more VAT and less direct taxation.
Since this would also enmesh a large number of criminals, drug pushers and sex workers more firmly in the tax net, I'd applaud that and after all, the term 'sin tax' is already taken for lesser demeanours!
Studio M bottom line: I question why Tokyo Sexwale would want to defend Malema. I either have totally misjudged the man or must ask, "What does Malema know about Sexwale that no one else does?" While he's dealing with all that abysmal social housing construction, I hope he isn't tearing his own house down.
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