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Economics
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Could The LIBOR Scandal Be “The Biggest Consumer Fraud In History”?
12 Jul 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Over the past few weeks we’ve brought you several reports regarding the increasingly worrisome LIBOR scandal. The investigation into interest rate-rigging debacle is quickly snowballing and analysts have now begun wondering if “16 of the world’s largest banks have perpetrated the biggest fraud in history.”
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Hundreds Of Millions Of Rand To Be Poured Into False Bay Coastline, Copacabana Style
11 Jul 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 4 Comments
A huge development is on the cards for the stretch of coastline from Cape Point to Gordon’s Bay. It would turn the area into the Copacabana of Cape Town, MEC Alan Winde has said.
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Eskom Defends R36 Million Staff Parties
09 Jul 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
On the back of numerous electricity price hikes comes the news that Eskom blew more than R36 million on staff parties and team building experiences last year. The parastatal has however come out and defended the expenditure saying fun days are used to commit workers to keeping the lights on.
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Incredible Images Of Massive Chinese-Built Ghost Town In Angola [GALLERY]
04 Jul 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
If you weren’t aware of just how prolific Chinese investment is in Africa, wait until you see these startling images of what’s going on in Angola.
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Confirmed: Barclays Not Alone, As Chairman Quits
02 Jul 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Financial Services Authority (FSA), the regulator of all providers of financial services in the UK, has today confirmed that Barclays was definitely not acting alone, nor was this an isolated case in the authorities’ probe of banks rigging a key interbank interest rate.
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Could The Barclays Scandal Prompt Investors To Run To SA For Cover?
29 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
On the back of news that Barclays bank was punished with a record fine of £290 million by UK authorities for interest rate manipulation, comes the speculation that the crisis, said to involve numerous banks around the world, could help push investors toward South African shores.
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ANC: We Want Six Provinces
29 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 9 Comments
A reduction in the number of provinces is something the ANC led government has often toyed with, but it appears this policy has gained increasing support among party delegates at the ANC policy conference in Midrand this year. The biggest change would see the Northern Cape, Western Cape, and some parts of Eastern Cape merge.
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Barclays Fined £290 Million Over Libor Fixing
28 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Well this is terribly worrying. Yesterday, Barclays bank – one of the biggest banks in the world – was fined a record £290 million for attempting to manipulate the world’s benchmark borrowing rate – the Libor. This is a huge blow to the bank’s reputation and raises questions over the future of chief executive Bob Diamond. Up to 40 other global banks face being named and shamed too.
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Map Of World Weed Use – 2012
27 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Economist has surprised everybody by doing something fun, using the United Nations’ World Drug Report 2012 (released yesterday) to generate a map of the world’s heaviest weed users. The Pacific island of Palau wins easily, with nearly a quarter of people aged 15 to 64 having smoked pot in the past year. South Africa does okay, too.
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Cyprus Becomes The Next Card In The Euro Zone Pack To Fall
26 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Cyprus has become the fifth euro zone country to seek emergency funding from Brussels, and it may require a bailout amount worth up to half the size of its economy. We’re not talking the kind of numbers that Spain and Greece have been after, but when half of your economy is looking a bit worse for wear, it’s not ideal.
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Construction On The Kruger National Park’s First Luxury Hotel Set To Begin
25 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The issue of the construction of a luxury hotel development in the Kruger National Park was discussed at length on 2oceansVibe last year when the weighty issue of hotel development in the Kruger National Park became public knowledge. The first of these developments, to be built near the Malelane Gate, the most convenient entrance from Johannesburg and the airport in nearby Nelspruit, is finally about to get underway.
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Cape Town Estimated To Incur R3,7 Million Loss Hosting Man United
21 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
Much hype has been made about the imminent visit from 19-time English Premier League Champions, Manchester United. But, the City of Cape is expected to make a R3,7 million loss for hosting the event at the Cape Town Stadium. The city’s mayoral committee member for tourism, Grant Pascoe, argues that, despite the loss, hosting the match is part of the City’s drive to market itself as an “events destination”.
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SARS To Get The Power To Search And Seize Without A Warrant
20 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Soon the South African Revenue Service will have the power to search and seize relevant material without the need for a warrant, a tax expert has today told the City Press. The Tax Administration Bill could “have serious and significant ramifications” for taxpayers, the expert continued. However, this doesn’t appear to be a bad thing, if you’ve got nothing to hide.
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Auction Alliance Wins Court Case Against NCC
19 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Yesterday, the Western Cape High court handed down a judgement that ruled that National Consumer Commissioner, Mamodupi Mohlala-Mulaudzi, acted outside of her powers when she summoned three Auction Alliance executives, including Rael Levitt, to appear before the National Consumer Commission earlier this year. It’s a notable victory for Auction Alliance, but doesn’t rule out a criminal investigation into possible fraud.
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Iran’s Oil Exports Plummet 40%
13 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Western sanctions against Iran’s oil exports have shown that they have fallen by an estimated 40 per cent since the start of the year, according to the International Energy Agency. Separately, the UAE is nearing completion of an oil route that totally avoids Iran. Unlucky, Iran.
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Yahoo Forms Content Partnership With CNBC
13 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Yahoo has been criticised in the past for neglecting its original core business of being a search engine, and it may experience more of that with its latest exapnsion into content publishing. However, it has described its latest partnership with CNBC as a key strategy to becoming a “premium media network.”
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Spanish Activists Looking To Sue Former Bank Manager For Financial Crisis
12 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Spanish activists are raising a large private fund to pay for a civil action suit against Rodrigo Rato – the former chairman of Bankia, one of the banks central to the Spanish financial crisis. The fundraiser is following the usual decentralized online-activist structure, with members organizing themselves under the #QuerellaPaRato (“Lawsuit for Rato”) hashtag.
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Knott-Craig Says Telkom Did The Right Thing
08 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Cell C’s Alan Knott-Craig Senior says he’s not surprised by the Cabinet’s decision to turn its nose up at a proposal from Korea Telecom to buy a 20% stake in Telkom. Why: because in the past, foreign companies have let South Africa down. He says governments, especially in developing countries, have to be involved in telecommunications penetration.
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Nasdaq To Reimburse Facebook Investors $40 Million
07 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
You might have picked up in the Morning Spice headlines that the Nasdaq stock exchange said it “owe[d] the industry an apology”. It’s gone a little further now, and says it will set aside $40 million to reimburse investors that suffered losses due to technical problems on Facebook’s first day of trading.
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Cell C Slashes Contract Prices By Up To 50%
06 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Following the announcement that Cell C had drastically dropped their prepaid cell rates, Alan Knott-Craig Senior has seemingly checkmated the competition yet again. Cell C announced today that they would also be reducing their contract rates with the launch of six “Straight Up” packages for postpaid and Top-Up customers on 22 June 2012. This is big.
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Sony Not Making Anyone Believe, Shares Lowest Since 1980
05 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Sony shareholders looked on as they watched the electronics and entertainment giant’s shares fall below 1 000 yen for the first time since 1980 yesterday. The Tokyo stock market took a dive early Monday after a dismal performance from Wall Street, bad US job data, and amid other global economic concerns.
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“We’ve Heard It All Before” – Obama’s New Attack On Mitt Romney [VIDEO]
04 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
On the back of the release of new and depressing US job data, Barack Obama has timed an attack on Mitt Romney to perfection. Obama wants Americans to pay attention to Romney Economics, and “remember, we’ve seen it all before.”
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Spain Reveals €100 Billion Cash Exodus
01 Jun 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
If you thought things were tight in Greece, they certainly don’t look too much better in Spain. In the first three months of this year, nearly €100 billion in capital has left the country. Put differently: about 10% of the country’s GDP.
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Government Considering Special Appropriations Bill To Bail Sanral Out
31 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
As Bloomberg pointed out the other day, South Africa’s credit rating may come under pressure as growth in Africa’s biggest economy slows and the government faces the prospect of bailing out the state-owned road agency. That prospect became more of a reality today when deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe said government is looking into a special appropriations bill to give Sanral a cash injection to allow it to service its R20 billion debt.
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Julius Malema Buys City Press, Writes Excellent Column
28 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 7 Comments
It’s not often Juju gets good press. In fact, we couldn’t really remember the last time it happened. But, we’re going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he wrote this all himself now that he is well into his BA degree in communications through Unisa. Yesterday, Malema touched on some very important notions in a column for the City Press; notions that Nelson Mandela raised as critical 18 years ago.
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Germany Eclipses Solar Power World Record
28 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
This will surprise you. On Friday and Saturday, German solar power plants produced a record 22 gigawatts of energy – the equivalent output of 20 nuclear plants running at full capacity. The country is already a world-leader in solar power, and hopes to be free of nuclear energy by 2022. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, Germany decided to abandon nuclear power, and immediately closed eight plants.
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EU Cookie Privacy Law Will Heavily Impact Digital
24 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
On Saturday, the EU Cookie Directive goes into effect. It’s a European Union law governing the opting in and out of website cookies. The law was ratified in the name of privacy, but, the impact on the digital industry will be immense and, possibly, damaging.
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Finance Minister Fights E-Toll Ruling In Concourt
23 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Finance Minster, Pravin Gordhan, has warned that South Africa would face a dark economic future if the interdict temporarily halting the e-toll project wasn’t set aside urgently. We’d have to brace ourselves for negative international credit ratings. And essential services to schools, hospitals and roads would also be adversely affected, he said.
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Europe Is Working On Emergency Plans For Greek Euro Exit
18 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
European officials have secretly been working on a plan for the worst-case scenario that at this point, seems possible: a Greek exit from the Euro. German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said earlier this week that she didn’t want Greece to leave. But with fresh Greek elections set for mid-June, elections that have already been dubbed as a major showdown between Greece and the rest of Europe, anything could happen.
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Clifton Trawler: Make Or Break
16 May 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 6 Comments
Tomorrow, SA Maritime Safety Authorities will make another attempt to remove the stranded Eihatsu Maru from Clifton’s First beach. Last night, 2oceansVibe spoke to one of the men in charge, Samsa’s chief operations officer, Sobantu Tilayi. Many questions still remain about the reasons why the captain grounded the vessel, but Tilayi said the operation has now reached a critical stage.
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