----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
It looks like the JSE index quadrupled in the year ending at that July peak. So if the 17% decline matters, doesn't the 300% increase matter almost twenty times more? Or does it only matter on the downside?
Hey there comrade, of *course* it matters that the JSE was the second main speculative bubble in SA (as you'd have known had you taken the flight we paid for in late June and showed up at your gig here in Durban). The bubble attracted vast amounts of pension, insurance, banking and footloose foreign portfolio capital which a decent finance minister would have captured and redirected to productive activity. So instead we wasted all those resources bubbling up, and the bastards who sold first took the profits, leaving the pensioners a whack poorer. Because pension and provident fund excess assets don't regularly get given to the masses, they're funnelled out by the investment managers. That plus our interest rate hike last week and an upsurge of defaults plus the 7% current account deficit makes SA a mirror-image of the US economy, minus seignorage. Hence the idea of the Bantustan. Join us! (And didn't you once write a book on this? Don't I still give that book to students as required reading?)
