Today Justmoney.co.za will be looking at the financial events that are busy shaping the economy now.
Business Report tells us that Trevor Manuel has returned from the G20 meetings feeling positive that the meeting could have a positive effect on the economy, but that it could also be slow and painful.
There has been talk that South Africa is 'decoupled' from the global economy.
To some extent this is true, our exchange controls and the National Credit Act have protected us from some of the largest domino falls out there, but as Manuel says 'The global economy is indivisible; no decoupling is possible'.
This is perhaps somewhat extreme, and possibly a sign of Manuel's buy-in to the G20 consensus, perhaps even a little angling for G21 status.
The full extent of our enmeshedness to the global economy will be most felt in those sectors that have the maximum exposure.
In other words, sectors that rely on global trade to work, like cars and minerals.
Manuel predicted that these sectors would 'face enormous difficulty'. However he noted that we were still in a relatively strong position compared to others, and that we were still predicting growth, instead of contraction.
The Dispatch came in with a story about the house rental market. There has been much speculation that rentals would rise with the decline in the bond market.
This has not come to pass and now there are predictions that top end rental prices will need to be cut, and that rental increases could be limited to 8 to 10 percent and that in some cases rental increases would not even be possible.
RealEstateWeb had a look at the down turn and suggested that traditional channels of communication were no longer delivering the customers, but that a single ad on Gumtree helped to fill a flat faster and cheaper than traditional newspaper classified advertising.
The article goes on to ask why there are even these big glossy brochures and Sunday Paper pullouts if they are not good value.
The answer suggested is that they are there for the peace of mind of the seller, if you see a big glossy pull out of your house you gonna believe that the estate agents is actually doing something for their commission!
And finally Fin24 reports that Standard Bank has admitted mistakenly breaching the National Credit Act by increasing credit limits without the legislated process being enacted.
This may well be a genuine mistake but the NCA was enacted to prevent these sorts of dodgy lending practises, however Standard Bank has admitted the mistake and apparently has rectified it.
There is quite a lively debate going on on Fin24 comments about this.
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