one skewed world

Turns out beer in hand I've trapped all sorts of unsuspecting party goers into stunned submission with too intense convo's about our twisted little world. Just this week victims, though they loved it, included a British engineer doing a masters in power Eskom style, a Zimbo theatre type in the country for a week, a retail mogul turned fashionista and the teller at ABSA, poor bastard.....

Parties are the BEST freaken place to design grand world take overs...we all bitch like hell at them, spew forth grand points of view, berate politicians. Perhaps what
our little democracy needs is a giant cocktail party, long islands on tap. We could all talk, debate, argue and discuss and then scattered around could be flip charts, little video cameras and tape recorders to capture it all.

My party fodder of choice at the moment sprouts forth from an awesome little South African economics book called 'It doesn't have to be like this'. The auntie who wrote it is since departed but, damn, her economics have CHANGED MY WORLD! Margaret Legum, look her up four five six, she's rock and roll.

For so long we've all known that the world's a mess. Somehow its totally normal that the same place that makes billionaires leaves thousands hungry. And I'm not talking communism, I like capitalism. I like being able to sit in flash bars, wear good jeans and play with my 2gig, 5 meg camera phone...well, before it got liberated...

But I'm talking about a few little known facts that are so damn simple but just never occurred to me. Where do the millions come from for example. Most of them come from thin air, made up in debt trades and speculation. Millions of Dollars shunted around the world hardly ever buying anything real, never really creating jobs, so handfuls of people can be millionaires. I will explain more later but this is just a taster.

Fact 1:
Banks create money. Not the government. Less then 20% of the money in our country is made by the gov, actually printed. The rest is electronic and created by banks.

A bank only has to actually have 25% of what it lends in real cash. So for example I put R 5000 cash into my ABSA credit card the other day. ABSA got R 5000 more to invest and play with for absolutely free. When they approved my credit card with R 5000, they didn't go and lend me money they had. They just took a risk, they created my R 5000 out of thin air, and one month later I replace the void with real money, for Jam.
Think about it. Millions of Rands EVERY month that the bank just get for free to play with, to pour into capital markets and 'make' more money out of.

In super simple terms that's what's causing the crisis at the moment...banks 'created' money out of nothing and now as people panic and run on their investments the money just isn't there. The banks fold. And to keep the system stable governments have to bail them out. Wait till you hear where all the US' trillions actually come from, you'll be terrified. Most of it comes from poor countries, reall hard cash sucked up by banks and trade agreements and agribusiness, skimming off every country in the world to feed the debt monster that is the US.

I have more to say but just so you know. This is the stuff that's filling my little head.

Of mountains, Mbeki's and cell phones....

True signs of impending doom are failed cell phone connections on the top of table mountain.

I lugged myself up plaateklip gorge with a 3 ton hang over and 3 year old child on my back to summit grand table mountain around midday on Saturday. It was beautiful with the little chatterbox, daughter of a mate, entertaining fellow climbers all the way up.

The night before I'd been skilfully relieved of my cell phone and wallet mid photo pose and now was trying unsuccesfully to talk to my dad about the beauty of this god awful city viewed from a distance. He was having none of it, talking instead only about impending political doom and how the very fact that our phones kept losing themselves was proof of fools running things. Interesting it was.

Now from those humble attempts at an entertaining weekend I'm back in the office trying to summon a plan to develop the most kick as soccer for development centre ever...fun. Now I'm off to play soccer while my ugly mug banters with Lucas and the furry mascot on the box. Interesting times these.