We have lived through all 12 months of 2021 and I still feel like I never made it out of 2019. Social distancing is supposedly the new normal but it is all still so foreign to me. I lead what many may regard as a reclusive life but when I am required by law to limit inessential travel I begin to feel, I don’t know, apprehensive.
Those who are so lucky so as to be part of a tight-knit family structure are spending the holidays in the company of their kin, reflecting on the year that has been. Yet for others, this is the first holiday that they will spend with their in-laws (good luck, nonkhe). For reasons of good fortune or otherwise, there are also those who are away from family for the first time in their lives this festive season.
In some respects, it’s been a year like any other. When it began, we made certain promises to ourselves and packaged them as resolutions to take into 2021 and beyond. By the end of January, we experienced self-induced amnesia and restored to factory settings. “New Year, New Me” did not come true. Why is it so difficult to live up to New Year’s resolutions?
As it was in yesteryear, we did not find a solution for the now 2-year old health crisis. I would be remiss to not mention that vaccination programs have significantly reduced the severity of symptoms and hospitalisation rates despite the advent of the highly contagious Omicron variant. There has been progress.
Civil unrest erupted in the midst of it all in Eswatini in June over issues of justice for a murderous episode of police brutality against a Swazi youth coupled with political tensions emanating from less than satisfactory socio-economic progress in over 50 years of independence. In July, Jacob Zuma’s arrest sparked unrest of a similar mould in neighbouring South Africa.
The financial markets didn’t seem to care much about any doom and gloom observed in society. All over the world, markets are comfortably in the green. Some have surpassed or are approaching record highs. This was happening before the wider economy started showing any signs of life and before GDP figures started marching towards pre-covid levels.
Stock markets and the economy generally move in the same direction but the relationship is not exact. I like how this video explained it. It’s like a person walking a dog. They move in the same general direction but the dog makes many micro and sudden movements in random directions. For the purposes of this analogy, the person is the economy and the dog represents a stock market.
The welcome news of a quickly recovering global economy do not come without a cost. High price levels are eradicating all the value we had found in cheap money to help us weather the pandemic. It’s already getting bumpy. How we get over this bump will be interesting.
Looking ahead. I hope to develop this blog into a platform that is rich in information. That is the first consideration. The tone has to be conversational and inviting. There’s a lot of formal writing in my life and if I could just write in a conversational tone here and get all of the jokes out of my system before I enter the boardroom and for you to find it entertaining. There’s a win-win.
I have 3 articles that I want to finish soon. I am considering a series of featured articles that focuses on the world’s biggest ideas in fields like science, medicine, philosophy, architecture and business. I think that presents an exciting opportunity for you and I to learn the inner workings of this world that we have found ourselves in.
I feel like Arsene Wenger in 2002 when he told the world that he would finish a Premier League season without losing a single game. I want to make finance make sense to people. This one is an emergency. I think financial literacy is the most important element in achieving success however you may choose to define it. And finally, I am working on an article to begin a discussion about the difference between capitalism and its alternatives. This should be a lot of fun.
I hope you will join me in this pursuit of knowledge and understanding in 2022. To you and yours, happy holidays🎉.
What I’m Reading
I’m still reading Dumas. Yo, let me tell you. I think this book is longer than the Bible. I have read more than 400 pages and I still have 3000 to go. Spoilers ahead. Tread carefully.
Our protagonist, Edmond Dantes, has been framed as advertised last week. He was seized and thrown into jail. After some choice words were exchanged between himself and his jailer, his stay was upgraded. He was transferred from a cell to a dungeon. This is a sad state of affairs for more reasons than one. Monsieur Edmond was actually apprehended at his engagement party.
I know it’s only a novel but still. The rules of life are just messed up sometimes. In the real world, those who are wrongly incarcerated are estimated to be between 2% and 10% (US estimates). In Eswatini, our prison system has capacity for 2 383 inmates but the current prison population is somewhere around 3 796. Take that with a pinch of salt. Our prison system is overcrowded. This is not uncommon. Now imagine being in an overcrowded African prison… and you’re innocent 💔. That’s where the social contract between ourselves and the state breaks into tiny little pieces.
If I was successful in evoking your empathy, you will easily accept my submission that Edmond went a little cuckoo. He went on a mini food strike that lasted all of 2 pages. Then he mustered some courage, clung onto hope and channeled his inner EL Chapo and proceeded to plan his great escape. That’s how far I’ve gotten. The last paragraph I read, Edmond was using his eating utensils to carve out what I assume will become a hole through which he will escape. I wonder how much of this story inspired Stephen King’s Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
The Count of Monte Cristo is enjoyable. There’s a lot of dialogue. Dumas didn’t waste too many words filling up the pages with gratuitous descriptions that do not move the story forward. I respect that.
It was a slow news week. I do not think there was much to miss. Journalists (my primary source) were suffering from year-end fatigue and burnout. If anything at all happened this week, I missed it. Till next Sunday... scratch that... year 👋🏾.
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