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SA cannot redistribute its way to prosperity

The world economy is entering a dangerous new phase. Countries are pulling apart, while companies are growing larger. Payment systems are becoming political. Capital is concentrating in a handful of corporate giants. Governments want more control, investors want more scale, and ordinary citizens increasingly suspect that the system no longer works for them. This is not merely a story about the United States (US), China, or Europe. It is a warning for South Africa (SA).

When an ice lolly becomes an economic warning

The most revealing price in the world economy may not be oil, gold, the rand, or a United States (US) Treasury yield. It may be the price of a Japanese ice lolly.

Mid-year reality check: Is your financial well-being structurally sound?

By the middle of the year, most people have not abandoned their financial plans. Something subtler has happened: Life has changed, but financial plans have not.

The world got relief, not rescue

For a few weeks, the global economy stared into an old fear: That politics in the Middle East could, again, become an inflation machine. Oil prices surged, the Strait of Hormuz became the centre of the financial world, and investors dusted off the kind of nightmare scenario usually reserved for crisis decks: $180 oil, food inflation, collapsing currencies, and central banks being forced to choose between growth and credibility.

The next inflation shock may begin with rain that does not fall

South Africans know inflation as a number announced by Statistics South Africa and tracked by the Reserve Bank. Fuel rises. Bread rises. The repo rate rises. Then, everyone asks the same question: When will interest rates come down?

The world is no longer rewarding stories; it is rewarding capacity

For much of the past decade, the easiest money was made in the weightless economy. Software scaled faster than factories. Platforms looked more powerful than production lines. Capital was cheap, rates were low, and the market was willing to pay extraordinary prices for profits that might only arrive years from now. That world has not disappeared. But, it is changing.

Retirement is not the problem; fragility is

For years, South Africans have been told to focus on retirement planning. Save enough, invest for long enough, avoid cashing out, and one day the numbers may work. That advice is not wrong; it is just incomplete.

The end of free insurance

For years, investors lived in a world where bad news was often good news. If markets fell hard enough, central banks would soften their tone, governments would open the fiscal taps, and asset prices would recover before the economy had absorbed the shock. The result was a powerful habit: Buy the dip, because policymakers would not allow the dip to become a crisis. This habit may now be dangerous.

The new superpower test: Who is trusted when fear rises?

The world keeps asking whether China will replace the United States (US) as the next superpower. That is the wrong question. A better one is more brutal: When the world is afraid, whose money does it still trust?