Early in 2012 I wrote this article. Now read this article dated 14 April 2015 by Magnus Heystek, investment strategist of Brenthurst Wealth in South Africa.

The key numbers/phrases in Heystek’s article is “2007″, “20 percent down in real terms”. In my article it is “25 percent in real terms”.

Today I think a 25-percent drop in real terms won’t be the end of the road. I’m not able to say where and when the downtrend will level out. Maybe not at all.

Here is an opinion piece from the Financial Times which is so close to what I’ve been saying ever since the first day of the banking crisis, that Financial Times will forgive me for re-posting the piece here in full.

[Read on]

On October 6, 2008 I wrote  (here) under the headline “Cowboy capitalism is dead” that we’re heading back to the 1950s and 1960s, when bankers were “grey men in grey suits”, earning little more than the local school teacher. [Read on]

Many years ago I wrote about the high regard I have for people who “get going when the going gets tough”. Then I mentioned I get goose bumps every time I observe someone “getting going” when he has to.

For what I mean with “getting going when the going gets tough”, read my first post.

Yesterday I had another one of those goose-bump moments. This time my 12-year old daughter was responsible. I thought I should honor her achievement by shortly relating the story.   [Read on]

What a mess South Africa has become. What a sad, disappointing mess….

That’s all one can say after reading this report (and specifically the comments of the citizens below the story).

For someone sitting outside and looking in, the situation gets doubly sad when I notice how “desensitized” the good people (99% of them are good) have become after so many years of so much crime.

Powerless to change anything, they do the only thing they can in their situation – look the other way…pretend nothing has happened.

I cry for you, my beloved country.

Every country which gives in to the oil company lobby and the promise of cheap energy, is a step closer to a fracked-up Karoo. The latest step in that direction was taken when France turned pro-fracking a few weeks ago. Until then, France strengthened the case of anti-fracking organisations, such as the Treasure the Karoo Action Group (here).

That bulwark’s gone now and we seem to be sliding ever closer to the inevitable.   [Read on]

As far as I know, the role religion played in the peaceful hand-over of power by the white minority in South Africa to the black majority in 1994 has never been highlighted in the media. Maybe, because the church (as an institution, with its functionaries) was in the bag of the apartheid government. And a story highlighting the positive role religion played would simply have been too contradictory to be credible. [Read on]

In Germany newspapers and news agencies are closing down now at the rate of almost one per week. Today it was the turn of Financial Times Deutschland (FTD), my favourite local business daily. As a subscriber (2002 till the end) I was convinced the FTD was a far better read than the “mother paper” Financial Times on the island.  [Read on]