Good points, but certainly do not point to defaulting on debt. Have you actually looked at all SA debt levels, you will also be surprised o know that SA runs a budget surplus which is a controversial topic as many belive that they should be running a budget deficit because of the poverty levels. A number of your variables will not have an effect on SA crashing, due to structural issues caused by apartheid. 1. The property boom was more a result of blacks now being able to affor d housing that they couldnt affor under apartheid. They didnt have a house before. The purchases were mainly for domiclium and not to rent out, as a result you dont have multiple home ownership amongst most. You also do not have the mortgages cut up and traded otc. 2. South Africa operates at full employent. The high employment rate is due to structural unemployment caused by the effects of apartheid whereby the market is flooded with unskilled labour and because blacks were denied education there is not enough skilled labour to fill the vacant skilled positions. The country survived with these unemployment levels during aparttheid because the white population carried the economy which they still do, therefor this point is moot. The employment rate is actuall at around 28% since informal employment has been factored in. 3. The ANC government decides policy and the president executes it......therefore there wwill be no crises unde JZ, a sentiment echoed by the international finance industry. 4. Inflation is historically always at the high point especially in emerging market economies, but the current rate is also not an issue especially with intrest rates being so high. 5. The depreciation of the rand is not due to rand weakness or dollar strengh but due to panic and risk aversion, when the dust settles u will get a quick reallignment. 6. Yes, there is a decline in plat and gold prices but remember that SA companies sell the gold & plat in dollars, therefore with the rand weakening it helps offset the price drop. I think its silly to say that SA is facing a default.
I guess it was all true... Word of a 5-8 day mass sell off that will be 'spoken of for generations'....
Default may be not, but certainly a weaker Rand is on the books.... Have you considered that l might have a lot to benefit if South Africa implodes, if only l could feed in a single news item into Bloomberg and Thompson Financial/Reuters
Cygnus, you fucking disgust me. People here have been through hell, but hey "fuckem" if you can make a buck. YOU are the problem with the world. And everyone who thinks like you. I hope you are joking, but FFS man, these are people, living and dying because of all of this paper/byte dungeons and dragons for cunts bullshit. They never got the cheap credit, the big house and car - ever. Big powerfull smart investment pros, willing to fist-fuck children in Africa, for lose change. I recon a good dose of let all this house of cards crap die in flames, burn baby burn. With your portfolio. You fuck. Unless your joking, in which case I appologise, also for the language, but these peoples lives are not some rich fucktards playthings, and should never be considered such.
Instead of invading/conquering countries these days we simply repo them when they can't pay their bills. If they don't have sovereign bonds?(Iraq) Well, we've seen what happens..
WTF are you talking about? Turkey holds no oil interests, neither does Armenia. The only areas in question of pipeline are Georgia and Azerbaijan. Most of the problem is in Chechnya anyway.
Actually I think the opposite is true. Why? Because lets look at commodities. If you own the majority of a commodity, you can pretty much set the price. Remember that movie, trading places with eddie murphy and the duke brothers tried to corner the market? If they had succeeded they would've controled the price of frozen orange juice and made a ton of money because the "Juice" would've been in "few" hands. But when one fails to corner the market, what happens is they usually go bankrupt. Look at Joshua Abraham Norton. Back in the 1800s he tried to corner the rice market in san francisco and failed. (he later became crazy) This is what is happening today. All these bankers tried to corner the financial market and failed and now they are losing their minds too. So many of the "little guys" profited during the real estate boom and despite what the media says, the average homeowner who got forclosed on, did not "lose everything" You cant lose everything when you do a zero down loan because you never put anything in to begin with. Only thing they lost is the imaginary profits they thought they were going to make. The real losers were the banks
San Francisco ready to grab private elctrical grid? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081024/ap_on_el_st_lo/san_francisco_public_power
LOL. Your area of expertise would be what? One (Gergia) has already shown it's head. You know little of strategic global posturing. Any idea why shindand was developed...the real reason?