GPSA Weekly Views

Old Tito was friendly enough to give us another cut in our interest rate. Great for us & hopefully he knows what he's doing for our economy.

The banks all went haywire with making money available to all and sundry not that long ago. With interest rates the lowest in centuries they had to get it out there to make more back. Seems they've been burning their fingers a bit. These days they're pretty sticky about giving the "green" stuff away.

For those with a good credit rating it's still not a problem to get some financing from most institutions, but coming to certain aspects there's a definite line being drawn. For instance, car finance can be a major problem. Banks will not finance cars over 5 years in age, nor will they finance a car on it's second owner, no matter the age or condition. I won't even get into motorcycles.

Some dealers might be so kind as to act as a middle-man (with his cut of course) to facilitate financing. Good example - a mate has a one year old Clio Sport with 90 thousand on the clock. He wants R105 thousand for it. He bought it as a demo from the agents. So it was basically pre-owned by the dealership. He can't sell it privately as the banks consider him as the second owner. So much for that.

So where is this going? Don't really know except that maybe this is the reason why our new car market has been growing from month to month. Your best option is obviously to go and trade your car in on a new vehicle with finance being no problem. And if you cannot make the payments for whatever reason, the bank will be there in a flash to repo the vehicle. Now what happens to this car afterwards is that it'll be put on auction and sold for (hopefully) the outstanding balance to some dude with lots of cash. Now this is where the bargains are.

Just had to get this off my chest.

Not too long ago our finance minister spelled out the budget for us with promises of more money to social welfare. Shock horror. childcare and pensioners are on the short end of the stick already. Non government organisations had to hear today that their subsidies will be cut by 30%. Effectively this means that government subsidies will pay a government organisation R5 grand per child where private childcare gets less than R1 grand per child, if at all.

On top of all this, some idiot screwed up to such an extent that the whole years budget will be spent by September this year. So no money to anyone!

Another gripe I have is with cellphone companies. Years ago MTN and Vodacom announced that they will no longer be blacklisting stolen phones but instead use a method they called gray-listing. This means that they will send an SMS to a stolen re-activated cellphone informing the user that the handset was reported as stolen. Does that make sense to you? It made sense to them though as this meant that more and people could purchase stolen handsets for next to nothing and then go onto the "pay as you go" scheme, which means more money to the operators.

Business Against Crime, the police and our current three network operators have now decided to work together on this "new" scheme to blacklist stolen handsets so that it cannot be used again. Okay, so they made things a bit easier in getting your phone blacklisted, but there is absolutely nothing "new" behind the concept. People get murdered for cellphones and that's been happening for years already.

Instead of initiating this by themselves our cellular network operators has failed dismally in showing any care or concern about the people that keep them in business. We're all in business to make money, but not at the expense of human life.

Weekly View
	14 April 2005
Old Tito was friendly enough to give us another cut in our interest rate. Great for us & hopefully he knows what he's doing for our economy. The banks all went haywire with making money available to all and sundry not that long ago. With interest rates the lowest in centuries they had to get it out there to make more back. Seems they've been burning their fingers a bit. These days they're pretty sticky about giving the "green" stuff away. For those with a good credit rating it's still not a problem to get some financing from most institutions, but coming to certain aspects there's a definite line being drawn. For instance, car finance can be a major problem. Banks will not finance cars over 5 years in age, nor will they finance a car on it's second owner, no matter the age or condition. I won't even get into motorcycles. Some dealers might be so kind as to act as a middle-man (with his cut of course) to facilitate financing. Good example - a mate has a one year old Clio Sport with 90 thousand on the clock. He wants R105 thousand for it. He bought it as a demo from the agents. So it was basically pre-owned by the dealership. He can't sell it privately as the banks consider him as the second owner. So much for that. So where is this going? Don't really know except that maybe this is the reason why our new car market has been growing from month to month. Your best option is obviously to go and trade your car in on a new vehicle with finance being no problem. And if you cannot make the payments for whatever reason, the bank will be there in a flash to repo the vehicle. Now what happens to this car afterwards is that it'll be put on auction and sold for (hopefully) the outstanding balance to some dude with lots of cash. Now this is where the bargains are. Just had to get this off my chest. Not too long ago our finance minister spelled out the budget for us with promises of more money to social welfare. Shock horror. childcare and pensioners are on the short end of the stick already. Non government organisations had to hear today that their subsidies will be cut by 30%. Effectively this means that government subsidies will pay a government organisation R5 grand per child where private childcare gets less than R1 grand per child, if at all. On top of all this, some idiot screwed up to such an extent that the whole years budget will be spent by September this year. So no money to anyone! Another gripe I have is with cellphone companies. Years ago MTN and Vodacom announced that they will no longer be blacklisting stolen phones but instead use a method they called gray-listing. This means that they will send an SMS to a stolen re-activated cellphone informing the user that the handset was reported as stolen. Does that make sense to you? It made sense to them though as this meant that more and people could purchase stolen handsets for next to nothing and then go onto the "pay as you go" scheme, which means more money to the operators. Business Against Crime, the police and our current three network operators have now decided to work together on this "new" scheme to blacklist stolen handsets so that it cannot be used again. Okay, so they made things a bit easier in getting your phone blacklisted, but there is absolutely nothing "new" behind the concept. People get murdered for cellphones and that's been happening for years already. Instead of initiating this by themselves our cellular network operators has failed dismally in showing any care or concern about the people that keep them in business. We're all in business to make money, but not at the expense of human life.	Past Views Current Joke Past jokes Gallery Links Current Exchange Rate Daily News Headlines Articles
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