As this year draws to an end it’s amazing to think that there are only 36 days until 2010, the year that SA has been awaiting for what appears to be decades!
This year has flown, did we actually have Easter this year or did we forget it totally? What happened to November, it just evaporated? I know I am getting older as my rather annoying better half tells me about twice a week, annoying as she looks and grows younger and lovelier by the year, I just slowly decay! I swear there are bits of me that might actually fall off, but then that’s another story altogether.
Yes, as we grow old ungracefully time takes to the wing and seems to receive Rolls Royce engines, that speed us from year to year without even touching down. Financially it’s also been one of those strange one’s, we in SA all sat and watched from the cheap seats as the so called First World crashed and burned.
We seemed to be losing Banks quicker than my favourite soccer team lost matches and world famous institutions were closed, clobbered or castrated by regulators, client flight or credit clamp downs.
Yet through it all SA sat on the outside basking in its physical distance and smug displacement, but no longer!
As the world has begun to emerge from recession or more accurately crawl slowly back up over the lip of the abyss, we have begun to realise that there is no real quick fix here at home. We did not go into recession as steeply as many, but we may find ourselves in the doldrums for longer. It certainly won’t be forever, but it won’t be over in time for the NEW YEAR PARTY either.
Changing the subject, did you see on the TV that there was an auction of the private belongings of Bernard Madoff. People are paying big money for jackets with Madoff written on the back. Are they insane or is this a missed opportunity in SA, my mate is busy running off some J Arthur Brown under pants and KING PROPERTY caps, but I can’t see either producing a real return, can you?
Finally, I have found a sure fine way of making money, are you reading carefully? Ok, you take a great deal of cash, hire a world class architect and build a totally stunning modern classic on a Constantia Wine Farm. You then bring in a gifted young chef with enormous energy and vision, who then serves great food and wine at remarkably reasonable prices and then call it the 1682 Bistro. Ok that should push up my Steenberg stock options! Seriously though, Constantia now has a totally world class product and I wish them all the luck in the world, although I don’t think they are really going to need it!