With petrol prices still high, a bond bleeding you dry and food prices soaring, December holidays are looking a bit bleak. For many, the only option is to stay at home. So I've kindly compiled a list of things to do when you can't afford to go anywhere.
For those who live in Springs, Pofadder, Senekal and the like, I'm afraid you're just going to have to be bored. There is nothing to do and anyway, people shouldn't live in hick towns like those.
But, for those of you in city centres, there's hope.
1 - Your first, best option, of course, is to make more money quickly so you can go away. The best earners in the country are chief executives and strippers. For one job you can be overweight and hairy; for the other job you'd better be slim and smooth and know how to dance.
2 - If neither of the jobs above appeals to you, you'll be stuck in the city. But, buy enough cheap beer in quarts and you could spend the whole holiday not sure where you are.
3 - However, for those who value their livers, there's always the pantomime. It's loud, it's funny and you could end up on stage singing with the cast and all the five-year-olds who have rushed up on stage with you.
4 - Then there are the casinos. They'll be doing a roaring trade with sad, poor people just like you. Apart from potentially getting to meet lots of like-minded souls, you also stand a chance of winning some loot. But, it's a very slim chance you'll walk away a winner. It's far more likely you'll lose all your money and be worse off than when you started.
5 - For a more wholesome experience, you could always spend a day out at one of the dams nearby or at the seaside. Visitors to Hartebeespoort or the Vaal can peer out at the water watching the rich people on their jet skis. There's nothing like a bit of envy to make you want to earn more money next year. For those who live by the sea, it's going to be less depressing. Just remember to take your own umbrellas and food, because you won't be able to afford anything from the vendors.
6 - As for Christmas Day, I'd suggest a bring-and-braai. You should be able to stretch to some charcoal, firelighters and stale rolls. Just get the guests to supply the Lays chips, meat, booze, salads, potatoes and pudding and you're all set.
7 - As for New Year's Day, I'd suggest a bring-and-braai. You should be able to stretch to some charcoal, firelighters and stale rolls. Just get the guests to supply the Lays chips, meat, booze, salads, potatoes and pudding and you're all set.
8 - However, other people's New Year's celebrations are notoriously easy to gatecrash. Take your own beer, but remember to keep it hidden in your car so no one steals the precious stuff.
9 - Then there's always just staying at home. Alone. Watching SABC. I've heard they have a good programme or two once every couple of weeks.
10 - For truly sad people, who can't stomach the SABC, you could work over the holiday season and pretend you're the office martyr. Who knows, you might even pick up some overtime. Unfortunately, that won't do you any good, since you're trying to avoid having time off, but at least you can spend your days surfing salacious Internet sites with company bandwidth.
With this plethora of options now before you, you should be able to start planning for your holiday break. Just remember, when you're feeling blue, terribly trustworthy "experts" have said South Africa's economy will pick up again by September next year, which means that Christmas 2009 should be a lot more pleasant.
______________________________________________________
This column first appeared on ITWeb. You can find it at www.itweb.co.za
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Great Media Agenda
Very few people know this so I’d appreciate if you kept it to yourself, but the media does indeed have an agenda.
You’ll have heard politicians say so. The general public says so. Overpaid company executives say so. Hell, these days even our dear finance minister Trevor Manuel says so. So it must be true. The media has just never admitted to it before.
But here’s how it works.
Every morning, just after the sun rises, editors around the country have their first cigarette, get up, make coffee, scan the papers and then dial into the daily conference call. Didn’t know about that conference call, did you?
Well, everyone’s on it. The editor of “You”, the guy from “Playboy”, the head of “Jacaranda Radio”, some oke from the SABC (it’s hard to keep up with who it is because it changes every week) all the financial publications, all the radio dudes, all the television types, “Die Son”, “Die Kat”, “KTV”, “Farmers Weekly” – you name it there’s no part of the media too odd, too little or too irrelevant for that call because, you see, that’s when the great media agenda of the day is set.
And behind that agenda is a broader agenda. Briefly put, the broader agenda is to sow the seeds of negativity, depress the nation, cast doubt on all those who have authority, give credence to spurious rumours and gnaw away at the very fabric of society.
The daily agenda fits in with these goals and might include endless talk about gruesome crimes, politician-bashing, shit-stirring and bold-faced lying about everything.
Once the general tone for the day is in place, the editors wander in to their respective offices and attend the morning news meetings. At these meetings the agenda is never spoken about, but the editor will push people in the right direction even though they propose innocuous stories about nothing in particular. Said editor will put a spin and an angle on all story suggestions.
Then that editor has to control the news editors during the day. Because they can’t be openly spoken to about the great media agenda, it takes persuasion and threats to get them to fall into line.
Then there’s another secret, early afternoon conference call to check that all media are on track to cause the mayhem expected of them. Often the editors are a bit drunk after lunch – this only serves to make them more rabid about the task at hand.
Then later in the afternoon they have to keep checking that the reporters and the news editors are in sync and haven’t noticed that all their buddies in other parts of the media have been persuaded to cover exactly the same stories in exactly the same way.
Then it’s the afternoon news meeting, the selection of stories and the start of the night shift. Editors have to work incredibly hard to make sure all of the people involved keep their own ideas about what constitutes news far away from the office. You know those pesky night editors – when they think no one is looking they’d sell their grandmothers for drugs, which means they have no qualms about changing the entire production process and all of the stories and then blaming it on someone else.
What you probably didn’t know was that most editors have little spy cameras installed above the night editors in order to catch just such an event. They keep their beady eyes trained on the night editors until it’s safe to finally go to sleep.
But that, in a nutshell, is how the great media agenda is adhered to every day. It’s tough work, especially given that getting journalists to follow instruction is like trying to herd cats. And given that the bulk of the press are least organised people you could hope to meet, organising the agenda is no mean feat. But at least we have one and we’re very, very good at sticking to it. And that is why the world is a mess; why George W Bush is an idiot; why poor people are starving; why politicians are corrupt; why Bob Mugabe is mad; why you don’t earn enough money; why service is slow in restaurants; why petrol costs too much; why Jacob Zuma likes taking showers; why Mumbai went up in smoke; why the globe is in a recession; why Julius Malema is certifiably stupid; why banks are evil; why you always get pushed out of queues; why mobile phone companies charge too much; why a good cocktail has become unaffordable; why you never get the good parking space; why crime is rampant; why Kentucky Fried Chicken never tastes good any more.
It’s true! It’s all the media’s fault! And it’s thanks to the Great Media Agenda!
You’ll have heard politicians say so. The general public says so. Overpaid company executives say so. Hell, these days even our dear finance minister Trevor Manuel says so. So it must be true. The media has just never admitted to it before.
But here’s how it works.
Every morning, just after the sun rises, editors around the country have their first cigarette, get up, make coffee, scan the papers and then dial into the daily conference call. Didn’t know about that conference call, did you?
Well, everyone’s on it. The editor of “You”, the guy from “Playboy”, the head of “Jacaranda Radio”, some oke from the SABC (it’s hard to keep up with who it is because it changes every week) all the financial publications, all the radio dudes, all the television types, “Die Son”, “Die Kat”, “KTV”, “Farmers Weekly” – you name it there’s no part of the media too odd, too little or too irrelevant for that call because, you see, that’s when the great media agenda of the day is set.
And behind that agenda is a broader agenda. Briefly put, the broader agenda is to sow the seeds of negativity, depress the nation, cast doubt on all those who have authority, give credence to spurious rumours and gnaw away at the very fabric of society.
The daily agenda fits in with these goals and might include endless talk about gruesome crimes, politician-bashing, shit-stirring and bold-faced lying about everything.
Once the general tone for the day is in place, the editors wander in to their respective offices and attend the morning news meetings. At these meetings the agenda is never spoken about, but the editor will push people in the right direction even though they propose innocuous stories about nothing in particular. Said editor will put a spin and an angle on all story suggestions.
Then that editor has to control the news editors during the day. Because they can’t be openly spoken to about the great media agenda, it takes persuasion and threats to get them to fall into line.
Then there’s another secret, early afternoon conference call to check that all media are on track to cause the mayhem expected of them. Often the editors are a bit drunk after lunch – this only serves to make them more rabid about the task at hand.
Then later in the afternoon they have to keep checking that the reporters and the news editors are in sync and haven’t noticed that all their buddies in other parts of the media have been persuaded to cover exactly the same stories in exactly the same way.
Then it’s the afternoon news meeting, the selection of stories and the start of the night shift. Editors have to work incredibly hard to make sure all of the people involved keep their own ideas about what constitutes news far away from the office. You know those pesky night editors – when they think no one is looking they’d sell their grandmothers for drugs, which means they have no qualms about changing the entire production process and all of the stories and then blaming it on someone else.
What you probably didn’t know was that most editors have little spy cameras installed above the night editors in order to catch just such an event. They keep their beady eyes trained on the night editors until it’s safe to finally go to sleep.
But that, in a nutshell, is how the great media agenda is adhered to every day. It’s tough work, especially given that getting journalists to follow instruction is like trying to herd cats. And given that the bulk of the press are least organised people you could hope to meet, organising the agenda is no mean feat. But at least we have one and we’re very, very good at sticking to it. And that is why the world is a mess; why George W Bush is an idiot; why poor people are starving; why politicians are corrupt; why Bob Mugabe is mad; why you don’t earn enough money; why service is slow in restaurants; why petrol costs too much; why Jacob Zuma likes taking showers; why Mumbai went up in smoke; why the globe is in a recession; why Julius Malema is certifiably stupid; why banks are evil; why you always get pushed out of queues; why mobile phone companies charge too much; why a good cocktail has become unaffordable; why you never get the good parking space; why crime is rampant; why Kentucky Fried Chicken never tastes good any more.
It’s true! It’s all the media’s fault! And it’s thanks to the Great Media Agenda!
Friday, November 21, 2008
The meaning of business, the meaning of life
Either I’m a very sad fucker for equating the two, or there is a real connection. I’ll opt for the latter. For now.
But a quick look at any business paper will have the cheeriest of people depressed in no time. Automakers are faltering, company profits are being slashed, workers worldwide are being retrenched, financial markets are falling, and stimulus package after stimulus package has done little to staunch the bloodletting. Everything has turned sour at the same time.
But take yourself back to happier times, times when corporate earnings were soaring, commodity prices were stratospheric and everyone was expanding everywhere. How, you’ve got to wonder, did it all go so wrong?
Well, I think there’s a lesson we all forgot. Remember back to when you had yet to get your first real job. The thought of a halfway decent paycheck made one quite giddy. What, you probably wondered, would you do with all that money? Saving some of it looked incredibly easy. And at first it was – because your expenses were probably small. The trick, I once knew, was making sure my expenses never rose to meet or engulf my basic salary.
For a few years that worked, but then there were cars and mobiles and expensive holidays and insurance and medical aid and investments and houses to look after. I should have said “Expenses, meet salary” by way of introduction. Once the first greeting was done, it was all downhill. Expenses ate up salary like a hungry whore after a long night’s work.
Now I’m left dreaming of those simpler days and wondering how I could have been so stupid as to let expenses have their wicked way.
So it is in business. Companies like Citigroup thought endless expansion was prudent. The evil bastards in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries thought the oil price would never fall back to the $50 a barrel level. Automakers thought there was infinite demand for cars. Companies thought profit could grow every year.
How on earth did they all get so stupid? The simplistic answer would be greed. But I think delusion and pure foolishness played a role.
Imagine if Opec had decided that the fundamental value of a barrel of oil was $50 and said that any profit over and above that would be saved cleverly for a rainy day. Imagine if Citigroup had decided that no matter how good times got, it would always run a very lean operation. Imagine if automakers had decided that it was ridiculous to suggest that everyone in a country should have a new car every year. Imagine if companies had curtailed their expansion plans and realised that a certain level of profit was the base level and it should never count on making more.
This kind of thinking would have led to the accumulation of huge cash piles and a lessening of foolhardy ideas about business cycles that go everlastingly upwards. Now then, any clever financial advisor will tell you that sitting on piles of cash is not “efficient”. Bullshit. If everyone had large cash piles right now there wouldn’t be a credit crunch. And sure, maybe that cash wouldn’t have grown very fast and it would have been taxed, but at least it would still exist.
I don’t really understand business’ constant urge to get bigger and bigger and richer and richer. Why does SABMiller have to keep on buying breweries? Why does Old Mutual have to go to China? When is it enough? What happened to running a good solid business that stays home and pays out a good dividend every six months?
All these parties are running on a treadmill and the viscous trainer that is market forces keeps turning up the speed dial. And what happens? Those players start falling off. In fact right now they’re being flung off the back of the treadmill with the propulsion of a jet plane, landing in scraggy heaps.
It would seem they forgot not to introduce expenses to profit. And I’m not suggesting that we immediately change the world order and implore business not to expand, nor run on that treadmill. But I am suggesting that we think about it. That we get a bit more real about the fundamental value of items from oil to cars to bottles of beer.
When enough is enough, then let’s save the rest rather than chasing the unattainable dream of infinite wealth and infinite growth. If we don’t do that, it’s only ever going to end badly.
But a quick look at any business paper will have the cheeriest of people depressed in no time. Automakers are faltering, company profits are being slashed, workers worldwide are being retrenched, financial markets are falling, and stimulus package after stimulus package has done little to staunch the bloodletting. Everything has turned sour at the same time.
But take yourself back to happier times, times when corporate earnings were soaring, commodity prices were stratospheric and everyone was expanding everywhere. How, you’ve got to wonder, did it all go so wrong?
Well, I think there’s a lesson we all forgot. Remember back to when you had yet to get your first real job. The thought of a halfway decent paycheck made one quite giddy. What, you probably wondered, would you do with all that money? Saving some of it looked incredibly easy. And at first it was – because your expenses were probably small. The trick, I once knew, was making sure my expenses never rose to meet or engulf my basic salary.
For a few years that worked, but then there were cars and mobiles and expensive holidays and insurance and medical aid and investments and houses to look after. I should have said “Expenses, meet salary” by way of introduction. Once the first greeting was done, it was all downhill. Expenses ate up salary like a hungry whore after a long night’s work.
Now I’m left dreaming of those simpler days and wondering how I could have been so stupid as to let expenses have their wicked way.
So it is in business. Companies like Citigroup thought endless expansion was prudent. The evil bastards in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries thought the oil price would never fall back to the $50 a barrel level. Automakers thought there was infinite demand for cars. Companies thought profit could grow every year.
How on earth did they all get so stupid? The simplistic answer would be greed. But I think delusion and pure foolishness played a role.
Imagine if Opec had decided that the fundamental value of a barrel of oil was $50 and said that any profit over and above that would be saved cleverly for a rainy day. Imagine if Citigroup had decided that no matter how good times got, it would always run a very lean operation. Imagine if automakers had decided that it was ridiculous to suggest that everyone in a country should have a new car every year. Imagine if companies had curtailed their expansion plans and realised that a certain level of profit was the base level and it should never count on making more.
This kind of thinking would have led to the accumulation of huge cash piles and a lessening of foolhardy ideas about business cycles that go everlastingly upwards. Now then, any clever financial advisor will tell you that sitting on piles of cash is not “efficient”. Bullshit. If everyone had large cash piles right now there wouldn’t be a credit crunch. And sure, maybe that cash wouldn’t have grown very fast and it would have been taxed, but at least it would still exist.
I don’t really understand business’ constant urge to get bigger and bigger and richer and richer. Why does SABMiller have to keep on buying breweries? Why does Old Mutual have to go to China? When is it enough? What happened to running a good solid business that stays home and pays out a good dividend every six months?
All these parties are running on a treadmill and the viscous trainer that is market forces keeps turning up the speed dial. And what happens? Those players start falling off. In fact right now they’re being flung off the back of the treadmill with the propulsion of a jet plane, landing in scraggy heaps.
It would seem they forgot not to introduce expenses to profit. And I’m not suggesting that we immediately change the world order and implore business not to expand, nor run on that treadmill. But I am suggesting that we think about it. That we get a bit more real about the fundamental value of items from oil to cars to bottles of beer.
When enough is enough, then let’s save the rest rather than chasing the unattainable dream of infinite wealth and infinite growth. If we don’t do that, it’s only ever going to end badly.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Dumbing down the collective
I was sitting at a dinner table on Saturday night in Rosendal (a place that has become one of the best kept secrets in South Africa) and the talk turned to American politics.
Apart from taking the mandatory pot shots at the moose-shooting Sarah Palin, there was the usual consensus about the conservativeness of Middle American voters and the general dumbing down of that society.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of my best friends are American. And they’re very clever. And with travelling in the States, I’ve never come across anyone who actually voted for Dubya or who intends to vote for John McCain and his hapless sidekick.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen - I have never trawled the towns of the Midwest where old-fashioned thinking (or pure idiocy) appears to run riot.
If America does choose McCain after two terms of bumbling, war-mongering George Bush, then that country will have to be officially declared stupid. As an aside – I think Barrack Obama will win.
But just as people were having a good go at the backwardness of many US voters, it struck me that South Africa could also be viewed as having actively dumbed down the collective.
From an educational system that is still struggling to teach the nation, to a lack of cheap communications and restricted access to lighting and water, South Africa has not done terribly well when it comes to nurturing its citizens and ensuring skills development.
But to my mind the main culprit is empowerment itself. Let me say upfront that I think empowerment is a social and a moral imperative. It’s just that South Africa’s model of empowerment has been lacking. Sure, it takes time to formulate a concept, implement it, tweak it and tweak it again. But in the 14 years we’ve been at it, how many black people have lost out because our ideas about empowerment have been unrealistic? And how much has that impacted on the national psyche – if there is such a thing?
When empowerment started out the private sector did deals because it had to and it had little rand signs flashing in its eyes because those companies thought they would land loads of governments contracts if they brought in people “with contacts”. All that did was enrich a few while ignoring any sort of skills development ideals.
Then there was legislation and an understanding that empowerment had to be more broad-based. Firms hired black people, offering at times huge amounts of money, but those people were often given rotten mentors or no mentors at all. And when it came to board level appointments, the black directors were only given non executive posts – they were not involved in the day to day running of the companies they joined. In that way, they were used as a front and this practice continues unashamedly today.
By hiring people because of the colour of their skin and then not giving them well-trained mentors with precise goals, South African companies have not done themselves any favours – in fact they’ve added to the collective dumbing down.
Now the returns are playing out in our political scene. There’s a big debate raging about the lack of education of ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema. And a smaller debate about the lack of education of ANC party leader, Jacob Zuma. While education is not everything, it is important when it comes to running a complex economy. And I have a feeling that even if Malema had been given the best education in the world, he would have still been something of an idiot, spewing out violent rhetoric, but at least he might have had some sort of grasp of the tenets of democracy.
Because what we have now is an uprising of the disaffected masses who appear to have little understanding of the necessity for a strong opposition. And the likes of Malema and Zuma play on this. But it’s a dangerous strategy. There is no need to incite anyone to violence, but that’s what they’re doing. The cost to all of us may be terrible. If empowerment had worked better and faster, we may not be facing a crisis but now, if opposition parties gain enough support ahead of next year’s elections, I fear there may be a blood bath.
So before we throw stones at the trials of the US presidential system, let’s have a look at our own country. We are very far from perfect and it looks like none of us have done enough to uplift the collective.
Apart from taking the mandatory pot shots at the moose-shooting Sarah Palin, there was the usual consensus about the conservativeness of Middle American voters and the general dumbing down of that society.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of my best friends are American. And they’re very clever. And with travelling in the States, I’ve never come across anyone who actually voted for Dubya or who intends to vote for John McCain and his hapless sidekick.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen - I have never trawled the towns of the Midwest where old-fashioned thinking (or pure idiocy) appears to run riot.
If America does choose McCain after two terms of bumbling, war-mongering George Bush, then that country will have to be officially declared stupid. As an aside – I think Barrack Obama will win.
But just as people were having a good go at the backwardness of many US voters, it struck me that South Africa could also be viewed as having actively dumbed down the collective.
From an educational system that is still struggling to teach the nation, to a lack of cheap communications and restricted access to lighting and water, South Africa has not done terribly well when it comes to nurturing its citizens and ensuring skills development.
But to my mind the main culprit is empowerment itself. Let me say upfront that I think empowerment is a social and a moral imperative. It’s just that South Africa’s model of empowerment has been lacking. Sure, it takes time to formulate a concept, implement it, tweak it and tweak it again. But in the 14 years we’ve been at it, how many black people have lost out because our ideas about empowerment have been unrealistic? And how much has that impacted on the national psyche – if there is such a thing?
When empowerment started out the private sector did deals because it had to and it had little rand signs flashing in its eyes because those companies thought they would land loads of governments contracts if they brought in people “with contacts”. All that did was enrich a few while ignoring any sort of skills development ideals.
Then there was legislation and an understanding that empowerment had to be more broad-based. Firms hired black people, offering at times huge amounts of money, but those people were often given rotten mentors or no mentors at all. And when it came to board level appointments, the black directors were only given non executive posts – they were not involved in the day to day running of the companies they joined. In that way, they were used as a front and this practice continues unashamedly today.
By hiring people because of the colour of their skin and then not giving them well-trained mentors with precise goals, South African companies have not done themselves any favours – in fact they’ve added to the collective dumbing down.
Now the returns are playing out in our political scene. There’s a big debate raging about the lack of education of ANC Youth League leader, Julius Malema. And a smaller debate about the lack of education of ANC party leader, Jacob Zuma. While education is not everything, it is important when it comes to running a complex economy. And I have a feeling that even if Malema had been given the best education in the world, he would have still been something of an idiot, spewing out violent rhetoric, but at least he might have had some sort of grasp of the tenets of democracy.
Because what we have now is an uprising of the disaffected masses who appear to have little understanding of the necessity for a strong opposition. And the likes of Malema and Zuma play on this. But it’s a dangerous strategy. There is no need to incite anyone to violence, but that’s what they’re doing. The cost to all of us may be terrible. If empowerment had worked better and faster, we may not be facing a crisis but now, if opposition parties gain enough support ahead of next year’s elections, I fear there may be a blood bath.
So before we throw stones at the trials of the US presidential system, let’s have a look at our own country. We are very far from perfect and it looks like none of us have done enough to uplift the collective.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
How Bob caused the global financial crisis
Since the beginning of September, when US mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae went under, the news has become pretty boring. Markets went down. Then they went down some more. Then they bounced. Then they went down. Then there were bail-outs. And interest rate cuts. But they went down again.
It’s been a treadmill of bad news interspersed with a couple of short-lived rebounds. But as the fear and panic spread, fingers have been pointing in all sorts of directions but the right one.
We’ve had the regulators in the US and the UK pointing fingers at hedge funds. We’ve had the hedge funds pointing fingers at the banks. We’ve had the public pointing fingers at the regulators. We’ve even had commentators pointing fingers at former US president Bill Clinton for “forcing banks to lend to poor people”. There’s so much finger pointing going on that people are going to have to start using their toes soon.
But recently I heard the most refreshing theory about what caused the global financial crisis. And given the amount of wild accusations flying about, it’s about as good a theory as any one out there.
The story goes like this. Remember that tsunami that wiped out a few islands and hundreds of thousands of people? The event itself took attention away from one mastermind and that was Robert Mugabe, the not-elected president of Zimbabwe. He used the distraction to have his henchmen beat the hell out of representatives for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). How did he do this? He’s a witch doctor! He threw the bones and chanted a bit and caused a great tidal wave to draw world attention away from Zimbabwe while he re-established his power base.
Then, the theory goes, he killed Pope John Paul II. Bob purports to be a good Catholic himself, but we know that’s not true. For one thing, he evidently doesn’t suffer from guilt. And for another, he’s a mass murderer and there’s nothing very Christian about that.
So he throws the bones and chants a bit and the Pope, who was very, very old anyway, dies. Bob then uses the distraction to violently take hold of more farms in Zimbabwe and institute forced evictions of poor people from the towns around the country. Lovely bloke, wouldn’t you say?
Then we get to 2008 when the Zim elections go awry. Bob is stressing because he didn’t win and no amount of rigging the votes is going to change that. So what does he do? He pulls his ill-gotten gains out of banks in the US and the UK, causing them to go under and the world economy to falter. While everyone looks the other way, he shoves himself and almost all of his ministers back into power.
You may wonder how Bob himself is still alive – he’s very old. But I have it on good authority that he has a body transplant every couple of years – they cut off his head and put it on a new body so that he can keep going. In fact he’s probably 236 years old by now.
So really, Bob’s behind the chaos in world markets and he’s loving it. He has his money, carefully denominated in US dollars, hidden under his gold plated toilet. And if things don’t keep going his way, those bones are coming out and there’ll be a big asteroid headed for earth. It’s enough to almost make you hope he stays in power. Almost but not quite.
It’s been a treadmill of bad news interspersed with a couple of short-lived rebounds. But as the fear and panic spread, fingers have been pointing in all sorts of directions but the right one.
We’ve had the regulators in the US and the UK pointing fingers at hedge funds. We’ve had the hedge funds pointing fingers at the banks. We’ve had the public pointing fingers at the regulators. We’ve even had commentators pointing fingers at former US president Bill Clinton for “forcing banks to lend to poor people”. There’s so much finger pointing going on that people are going to have to start using their toes soon.
But recently I heard the most refreshing theory about what caused the global financial crisis. And given the amount of wild accusations flying about, it’s about as good a theory as any one out there.
The story goes like this. Remember that tsunami that wiped out a few islands and hundreds of thousands of people? The event itself took attention away from one mastermind and that was Robert Mugabe, the not-elected president of Zimbabwe. He used the distraction to have his henchmen beat the hell out of representatives for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). How did he do this? He’s a witch doctor! He threw the bones and chanted a bit and caused a great tidal wave to draw world attention away from Zimbabwe while he re-established his power base.
Then, the theory goes, he killed Pope John Paul II. Bob purports to be a good Catholic himself, but we know that’s not true. For one thing, he evidently doesn’t suffer from guilt. And for another, he’s a mass murderer and there’s nothing very Christian about that.
So he throws the bones and chants a bit and the Pope, who was very, very old anyway, dies. Bob then uses the distraction to violently take hold of more farms in Zimbabwe and institute forced evictions of poor people from the towns around the country. Lovely bloke, wouldn’t you say?
Then we get to 2008 when the Zim elections go awry. Bob is stressing because he didn’t win and no amount of rigging the votes is going to change that. So what does he do? He pulls his ill-gotten gains out of banks in the US and the UK, causing them to go under and the world economy to falter. While everyone looks the other way, he shoves himself and almost all of his ministers back into power.
You may wonder how Bob himself is still alive – he’s very old. But I have it on good authority that he has a body transplant every couple of years – they cut off his head and put it on a new body so that he can keep going. In fact he’s probably 236 years old by now.
So really, Bob’s behind the chaos in world markets and he’s loving it. He has his money, carefully denominated in US dollars, hidden under his gold plated toilet. And if things don’t keep going his way, those bones are coming out and there’ll be a big asteroid headed for earth. It’s enough to almost make you hope he stays in power. Almost but not quite.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
An introduction
Journalists get muzzled way too much. We also have very little bandwidth. It suddenly struck me it would be a good idea to set up a blog. Then I can talk about the issues I'm not meant to talk about. So stay tuned...
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