National Coronavirus Shutdown

The ANC government ordered a stay at home in March, which then became a "Lockdown" on 26th March for 21 days. With only 24 hours warning they banned the sale of alcohol and cigarettes, which is surely one of the dumbest moves any world government has yet to make. Add to that they didn't believe that face masks are important, possibly because there were none available for the public to buy. They also closed the hardware stores, so that you couldn't buy dust masks either. Such is the intelligence and far-sighted wisdom of our Communist rulers.
Of course the 21 day "lockdown" has been extended by another 14 days, which has been really tough on smokers and anyone who enjoys any amount of alcohol, and who only bought enough to last for 3 weeks. The social distancing rules are generally adhered to in the "white" middle-class suburbs, but elsewhere, in the more dense areas they have been largely ignored. (Excuse the pun)
Someone recently sent me a funny but tragic meme that has been doing the rounds on WhatsApp. It accurately describes the situation:

A 20-point summary of the government's COVID-19 strategy.

1. You may not leave your house for any reason, but if you have to, then you may.

2. Masks are useless. But they will protect you. They can save you. No, they can’t. Wear one anyway. If you want.

3. All shops are closed, except for the ones that are open.

4. You should not go to the hospital unless you have to go there. Stay out of the emergency unless you’re having an emergency. Then it will be fine.

5. This virus is deadly but not too scary, except that it might lead to a global disaster. Stay calm. It might not lead to a global disaster. Panicking is fine.

6. Gloves won't help, but they might help. Especially if you wear the same pair for hours, everywhere you go.

7. Everybody must stay inside, but it's important to go outside too. Sunlight will kill the virus but not if the virus kills you first. Get sunshine, but stay indoors.

8. There is no shortage of groceries at the shops, but there are many items missing when you go there in the evening, but not in the morning. Sometimes.

9. The virus has no effect on children except on those it has affected or will affect.

10. Animals are not affected, except the one or two that are infected. We're not sure about science yet, but stay up to date by reading journalists who don't know anything. Science is important.

11. You will have many symptoms when you are sick, but you can also get sick without symptoms, or have symptoms without being sick, or be contagious without having symptoms.

12. In order not to get sick, you have to eat well and exercise, but also don't go outside and don't go to the shops, so be sure to eat processed crap and stay inside. And stay healthy.

13. It's better to get some fresh air, but you may be arrested if you’re getting fresh air the wrong way, and most importantly, don't walk your dogs. The fresh air there is deadly.

14. Under no circumstances should you go to old age homes. The elderly are vulnerable except for when you take them food parcels. Then they're not vulnerable.

15. If you are sick, then you may not go out. Unless you go to the pharmacy to get your medication. Pharmacies are immune from viruses.

16. You may not buy cooked food. Cooked food spreads COVID-19. We will arrest anybody who is hungry and buys a cooked chicken. Frozen chicken is fine. Stay healthy.

17. Taxi drivers are immune from the virus. If you need to go somewhere, then use a taxi.

18. Maintain a safe distance from others. Unless you're in a taxi. Taxis are immune. So are frozen chickens.

19. The virus remains active on various surfaces for two hours. Actually, it's six hours. We think it's perhaps three days. We aren't sure. We are sure.

20. Herd immunity is important in fighting the virus. That's why everybody must stay indoors. Armed soldiers will shoot you if you disobey. Herd immunity is very important.

Fortunatley my brother warned me about the coming chaos in late February, and directed me to Chris Martenson's YouTube channel. It is well worth watching, with timely information based on medical evidence and economic data.
Judging by the way the ANC government has mismanaged the economy during "good times", it looks likely that they will inflict a lot more damage to the economy during and after the "lockdown", which is why I am now referring to it as the "shutdown". Fortunately I can work from home, even though one of my 3 main customers cannot pay me.

FNB's Evil Banking System

I'm unhappy with my bank right now. Given that it's the end of January, this is hardly surprising. What makes it worse is that there are some people at FNB who are trying really hard to paper over the cracks, but underneath their system sucks. Like most banks, it is greedy, manipulative, and criminally irresponsible. So I'm singling out FNB because it is my bank, not because its the worst, or the best. It's just evil.
The "platinum" credit card springs to mind: it's plastic, not metal, but then marketing and lies are always good bedfellows. When I tried to "upgrade" my existing card to the "platinum" card they "approved in principle" a credit limit of 300% of my monthly salary. Yes folks, 3 times what I earn! Are they insane? I asked the FNB CEO.
He didn't deny it, and went on to say they think a monthly debt repayment amount should not be more that 30% of a person's salary. So, notwithstanding the amount I pay on my bond every month is already 20% of my salary before tax, they were happy to burden me with a massive debt every month amounting to 30% of my income. They call this "prudent"; I call it criminal.
The minimum monthly repayment on credit card debt is 10% of the amount owing, plus interest of 21%. Both of these are fixed by law. So the maths is then quite simple: if you repay 30% of your income and that represents 10% of your debt, it seems reasonable to lend you 300% of your salary. What the evil little bankers don't explain is that at 21% interest, your debt doubles every 20 months, so it's going to take a lot longer than 10 months to pay off the debt you incurred in the first place.
They also seem to think they are doing you a favour by lending you so much money. Actually, they are setting you up for a nice little interest repayment and profit. Anyone stupid enough to run up their credit card debt (notice how it's called "credit", not "debt", because "credit" sounds less evil) to 300% their salary is going to spend years getting out of that mess, if they ever do. That's another reason why the bank is criminally irresponsible.
The next "gotcha" is for people like me who keep their credit card limit low. As it turned out, the R800 limit was a little too low, and I inadvertently exceeded it. Twice. At R220 per time. What galls me even more is that if you make a payment on a Sunday, they only process it on the Monday. But they are happy to process debits on a Sunday, and charge the overlimit fee of R220, without even blinking, knowing full well that your payment will only be processed on the Monday.
When I questioned this practice, they tried to lie to me and tell me they processed the debits on the Saturday, when I have both email and SMS proof that it was done on Sunday. (See update below)
The next monumental "gotcha" happened when they "upgraded" my card. I arranged for a more practical limit of R1500, and the R61.25 card fee would be paid monthly, not annually. So they went ahead and changed the card number, issued the new cards to my wife and myself, and promptly charged me the R735** annual card fee. If I had maintained my previous card limit they would have also hit me with a third R220 overlimit fee. Needless to say I was not impressed.
The card division could easily explain to me that this was because, in spite of the fact that they opened the new account this month, my longstanding credit card arrangement still fell under the Usuary Act, not the National Credit Act, and as such they weren't allowed to charge me monthly. (Really??) This led to the most glaringly obvious question: "Why didn't you tell me in advance that the monthly option was not available?" They, of course, shrugged their shoulders and denied any responsibility. (Criminally irresponsible?)
"It's the system" was their only defence. "Well, then, fix the system!" I demanded. Silence.
Silence. Exactly. That's the evil part. The system will extract as many fees as possible in the process, and no, they will not entertain the possibility of improving it, unless that "improvement" means they can extract further bank fees or interest from the public. They are not prepared to modify their system to warn their customers in advance. Why should they? The worst the customer will do is rant and rave at a call centre operator, which is what they are paid for.
The easy part was telling me the reason for the R735** deduction. It has taken longer to fix the problem. This involved creating another new credit card account and going through another credit approval process, this time under the National Credit Act. For this privilege they are now going to charge me a further R135*, but of course they didn't tell me about that when they explained how to fix the other problem. Of course not, because I would have told them where to shove it. Why the need for a card fee at all? Aren't the greedy bastards satisfied with the 5% or more they get from merchants on each transaction, or from the 21% interest they charge when payments are late? Clearly not. And it's not like they have to find the money to lend to their credit card clients: they can "invent" most of it. But that's another story.
One further screw up: when they created the new card account they ignored the credit limit amount of R1500 that I confirmed on the phone, and changed it to R1350 instead. Why? Because they could. So it took another phone call to fix it, plus another phone call to get the new card account to show on my online banking profile. Clearly their system could do with a few improvements. For consumers.


Now you know why I believe that the collective noun for bankers is very appropriate: it's a "wunch" of bankers.
Update Tue 29 January: FNB Card Division has agreed to reverse the second overlimit fee. They claim the deduction was made on the Saturday, but the SMS notification messages were only sent on the Sunday, and (conveniently) blame this on "external service providers", while making no mention of the failure of their own internal email system. My guess is that the deductions are not synchronized with the notifications, and the notifications were only sent the following day.
Basically, the InContact "security" system is not reliable, and therefore offers no "security" whatsoever. It's a good marketing gimmick when it works, and a major pain when it doesn't. Basically, whenever you buy anything and don't receive the SMS immediately, you need to keep the slip separately, and check it off when the transaction eventually appears. In the meantime, the "available credit" figure they provide is misleading and wrong.
**Had I borrowed R735 as a short term loan from FNB, the repayment amount (within 1 month) would have been R824.90, which includes an "initiation" fee of R74.90. Since FNB took the money from me, they charged me an initiation fee of R135*, and didn't even pay interest when they reversed the transaction. I'm sure they don't think anything is wrong either.
Update Wed 30 January: *Card Division has quietly reversed the R135 card initiation fee. I had requested this because I didn't see why I should pay it when it wasn't my fault that I had to apply for a new card in the first place.
So now all the objectionable charges have been manually reversed, but there is no indication from anyone at FNB that the systems that caused them have been fixed. One can only hope, although I'm not holding my breath.

The Business of Politics

Whenever I look at American politics I have to cry, because America's leaders are so corrupt it makes Zimbabwe look like a cake sale. I couldn't ignore the irony of the Huffington Post video about Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, the company that helped make him rich.
What is ironic is that whan Bain Capital (or the mafia) did to those companies is exactly what the politicians, lobbyists and "special interests" (i.e. the banks) did to the political system. Most congressmen are millionaires, yet they are elected by poor people. They add trillions to the national debt, cut taxes to wealthy people and big companies, and their backers (i.e. the banks) make even more money in the interest on all the debt being racked up.
Sooner or later someone is going to have to repay those loans, at $50,000 per person in the USA. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know who will foot the bill. Hint: it won't be the rich bastards who caused the mess in the first place.

Where did our Democracy go?

This is a fascinating episode of The World Tomorrow, Julian Assange's TV show on RT. It focuses on the "Occupy" movement and the realisation by today's leaders that nations are no longer in control of their own destiny, and that decisions are not made by elected leaders, but by power structures that would prefer to work behind the scenes. Organisations like the Federal reserve, WTO, IMF and the like operate without any accountability or oversight.
The super-rich feel nothing about plundering whole continents for resources, and impoverishing the poor still further. South Africa's ruling elite are no different, except most of them probably don't even realize what is going on. I wonder how much longer the Western "economies" will last?

The Next Green Car? 50mpg is a good start

The Tata Nano's price and specifications are impressive: this car costs new what many used cars exceed: INR 100,000 or USD 1,953 or ZAR 18,850. My used Nissan cost more than that! And my car doesn't get 50 mpg or weigh only 580kg.
So why the fuss about congestion and more pollution? If every passenger car on the road in Europe, America and South Africa were replaced with one of these the congestion and air pollution would decrease, and fuel consumption go down, not up. Gas guzzlers like mine need to be replaced by vehicles like this, and the money saved by not having to pay 10 times or more for a vehicle could be used to grow the economy.
Now all we need is an electric version, and the world would be a better place. Companies like GM who can't innovate like this deserve to be put out of their misery.

More Important than the Elections

Earth Hour in South Africa. Get involved.

Why not Join Greenpeace too?

On Saturday I joined Greenpeace Africa. Finally we have a credible organisation to push for green energy policies in South Africa. Now we just need a government that listens.

Lighten Up a Little!

This applies to me too. Lighten up! Thanks to my brother Andrew for this link.
And thanks to the Onion for a great news item:

Economists Warn Anti-Bush Merchandise Market Close To Collapse