Last week’s fresh fears prompted by the Brazilian debacle were replaced by a sigh of relief from world markets when Brazil allowed the real to float against the dollar. Indices and stocks which had surged after the new year and went into a dizzying tailspin when the failure of a minor Brazilian province to repay debt was seen as a precursor to global disaster, promptly recovered.
So much for financial prudence. All this did was underline once again the fragility and latent instability of investors. Not, you will note, any inherent weaknesses in the global economy, which has actually absorbed some formidable blows in the past 12 months.
And the Brazilian response also begs a comparison with Indonesia, which travelled almost precisely the same road last year, a road which carried it rather swiftly to a massive 80% devaluation of its currency. I am assured this is unlikely in Brazil’s case, because its economy is so much bigger than Indonesia’s (it is the world’s eighth largest) and because it figures more significantly in the United States’s order of priorities.
While the world trembled, the rand stood up surprisingly well. But it’s also as well to note that the biggest hedge funds weren’t involved in the attack on the South African currency, although there’s evidence the international banks and smaller hedge funds gave the rand a full- blown smack.
And it is worth observing that whereas the trading spreads quoted by dealers before the South-East Asian crisis began in May were hovering around 30 points, they very smartly moved out to as much as 200 points.
All this means that international players were selling the rand short in the belief they would be able to buy back later at cheaper prices. Unfortunately for them, most of this was promptly taken up by South African domestic exporters, which goes a long way to explaining the rand’s prompt recovery. It is a feature of currency markets that they are so often obscure that it’s frequently a case of blind flying to establish (guess is more like it) the weight of positions (and, therefore, prevailing sentiment). There is a need for speculative positions to be revealed weekly without disclosing which parties are involved.
It can’t be beyond the wit of the Reserve Bank to conjure up a reporting system which will reveal precisely this kind of information – to the benefit of our own exporters. Perhaps the Reserve Bank can simultaneously address the matter of a weekly report on the volume of loaned stock circulating the market. Scrip lending and borrowing (dealing in shares you have borrowed from another company)has become a major issue in setting equity prices – especially of the blue chip stocks, which are usually more liquid.
Nevertheless, the flexibility demonstrated by the rand in the past week underlines the view that this is really a good harbinger for interest rate cuts this year.
We need a reduction of at least 4% to take us back to before the South-East Asian crisis gathered momentum (September last year), and the chief economist of one major broker believes interest rate reductions of between 4% and 6% are on the cards this year. So a fierce debate on this subject can be expected as the year develops. In large part, I expect it to take the form of steadily increasing pressure from the treasury on the high street banks to reduce their margins.
Lower rates, of course, will spell good news for the South African bond and equity markets. As long as we are able to demonstrate an inherent financial stability, an exchange rate which, though volatile, isn’t seen to have joined the ranks of the gunslingers, and comparatively cheap equities, South Africa should be able to attract quite large sums into its markets. On balance, therefore, I am inclined to the view that South Africa’s financial markets may find they have a lot more going for them in 1999.
Whatever else it may do for confidence and the “feel-good” factor, what an influx of cash into financial markets doesn’t do is generate jobs. And, more than anything else, jobs is what this country needs. Unfortunately, what stands between employment opportunities and fixed capital investment is the pantheon of often ill-judged labour legislation shepherded into law in one of those delicious ironies by none other than the next Reserve Bank governor, Tito Mboweni. More than any other factor, it is this thoroughly intimidating battery of labour law which sends foreign industrialists off to other countries.
How he must wish now he had been more judicious. What goes around does indeed sometimes come around.