Archive for August, 2005

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Quote for the Day

Coming from reader responses to The Economist articles on claims of video game violence, and one I think Prophecy readers might enjoy:
May I suggest that BBC be replaced with ‘SABC’ and Saturday night with ‘any night’ for local circumstances.
—-
Then again, maybe Prophecy readers would prefer it to refer to ‘Telkom’s bandwidth cap and prices’ while [...]

Filed under: General

Willful Ignorance

The debate over creationism and evolution in the States is taking some worrying overtones judging by a poll There 38% of Americans reject evolution completely and claim that creationism is the truth.
Abiola notes however that Europeans demonstrate a different form of a weak grasp on biology and pushed by another form of mistaken social views. [...]

Filed under: General

Time to Cut Taxes?

One way to try stimulate the South African growth rate would involve the old and controversial move of cutting taxes. That would include cutting both the Corporate Tax rate and significantly raising the minimum value for paying Income Tax, seeing as there is significant doubt about the central government’s ability to efficiently increase spending.
The cut [...]

Filed under: General

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Attempt to Snare Fleeing Zimbabweans

notes the new bill promulgated in Zimbabwe that will bar ‘those opposed to the Zimbabwean state’ from travelling abroad. That has interesting ramifications for South African government policy on illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe claiming asylum locally from persecution at home.
The Zimbabwean bill is in effect a Soviet Union-esque violation of the right to freedom of [...]

Wayne | 21:49:58 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under: General

Monday, August 29, 2005

End of Zimbabwean Property Rights

Zimpundit last week wrote up some details on the proposed Zimbabwean constitutional amendments that will It’s worth a read and comes after a 10% tax on all share deals on the Zimbabwean Stock Exchange bought that market to an absolute halt, as its knees.
It seems that whatever capitalism is left just has to be torn [...]

Wayne | 20:39:00 | Permalink | Comment?
Filed under: General

From Debtor to Creditor

Interesting. Some of the talk has been that if South Africa can successfully maintain its conservative fiscal and monetary policies, while increasing foreign exchange reserves, the country will move from being a net debtor nation to being a net creditor nation by the end of 2006.
In plain english, South Africa will be a net lender [...]

Wayne | 20:28:03 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under: General

Vodacom Cuts Shouldn’t Surprise

Vodacom recently announced that they are in the process of cutting 5PM to 8PM call rates by 50%.suggests that this will spread (although MTN reportedly already has a similar scheme in place).
Vodacom’s decision to cut call rates isn’t surprising in itself, but perhaps rather the reason why they’ve been undertaken is. There it’s potentially a [...]

Wayne | 19:26:22 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Filed under: General

Friday, August 26, 2005

Telkom Strangling Local Economic Growth

Regular readers will notice I’ve been on something of a small campaign about ways to (and how not to) accelerate the South African economic growth rate, having written quite a bit thus far here, here, here and here.
The Economist meantime highlights how Telkom’s monopoly is directly contributing to bloated telecoms costs for the local outsourcing [...]

Wayne | 21:42:39 | Permalink | Comments (7)
Filed under: General

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Don’t Kill the Growth Rate

Is it really that wise to try accelerate the economic growth rate by increasing State spending and the annual budget deficit to a rate of 4% of GDP? I don’t believe so for several reasons.
That suggested deficit of 4% is actually a high number for any central State to incur and would only be justified [...]

Laurence | 23:12:09 | Permalink | Comments (4)
Filed under: General

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Does Tony Leon Read Commentary?

It’s possible. I once gave the address of this blog to a DA MP in the National Assembly, and who knows, maybe he passed it on to Papa T (I made that up myself). Here’s Tony Leon on the creepy SA/Iraq correlation (hat tip to Trevor for noticing this):

“The murder rate in South Africa, at [...]

Laurence | 22:34:31 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under: General

Market Failure?

It’s usual fare to bash China for trade imbalances – both in the US, the EU and in other nations (Brazil is increasingly doing so too). But perhaps one should rather focus on China, Japan and the European Union’s behaviour in the global financial bond markets. Together these three are actually preventing the global bond [...]

Wayne | 20:45:28 | Permalink | Comments (1)
Filed under: General

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Addressing the Skills Shortage

One of the factors restraining the South African growth rate is the critical shortage in skilled workers in specific areas of the skilled economy and includes the crime rate as well as healthcare policies.
It’s relevant if one considers the argument as well that a skilled worker can lead to, on average, three unskilled jobs being [...]

Wayne | 19:33:04 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under: General

Economic Growth Rate Accelerates

South Africa’s economic growth rate for the second quarter in the year came in at No doubt about it, there is a general trend of acceleration even though it will decline in the immediate future. Still, the overall annual growth rate is likely to come in at over 4%, the highest in over two decades [...]

Wayne | 18:46:29 | Permalink | Comment?
Filed under: General

Monday, August 22, 2005

Trying to Repeat the Past?

Is it just me or are parts of the local press itself becomingabout supposed new versions of the old UDF (United Democratic Front) coming into being? They seem to hint, or at least believe, it’s a return to the idealism driven formula of the entity’s opposition to the then Apartheid state.

Wayne | 22:24:50 | Permalink | Comments (2)
Filed under: General
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