OUR BACKS TO THE WALL!

   Our finance minister with years of experience is doing a great job bringing order to our fiscal system.
TRANSFER TO MINING NEWS IN THE INDEX ABOVE FOR THE LATEST ON GOLD AND PLATINUM
   How ever as hard as he tries and he has succeeded in bringing  almost every one on board even the major trade unions as they see the number of jobs declining due to circumstances world wide.
   The major reason is of course that we remain a basic producer of metals and minerals. The demand for these has declined drastically and of course the needs of the poorer citizens have to be met to keep their body and souls alive!
   Therefore I RELUCTANTLY forecast that we will be downgraded to junk status(i.e. non investment grade) ,likely this winter. We are held in such good stead that countries such as Brazil and Russia were downgraded a considerable time before us.
 The good news is we are unlikely to be downgraded further and not if but when demand for commodities improve we are likely to be upgraded before many other countries of the world.
I hope we have learnt our lesson and in future keep strict fiscal discipline!

THE WORLD IN TURMOIL

Sure there is always some conflict going on some where, but usually these can be ignored as they do not affect us directly.
How ever when the largest powers start actively increasing their military hardware ,then we have to take notice.
Rest of this post is beneath updates.
3/6/2015 Real Estate update see index above.
8/6/2015 My Specialist List Update.
10,15/6/2015 smaller cap shares transfer to update above.
The former communist countries namely RUSSIA and CHINA have slowly being moving to  more open societies in the last decade and they have generally thrived. Now how ever  as the capital systems start to struggle due to the world wide recession over the last five years, these countries find they can not meet the aspirations of their restless citizens, as they demand even more freedoms.
Thus Russia has become embroiled in a war with a former part of their Socialist Republics namely Ukraine. As the western countries generally support the latter ,they have whipped up patriotism and suppressing freedoms in Russia.
China on the other hand have started on a massive naval build up, supposedly to protect their coastal integrity ,by claiming islands that belong to other countries , well beyond their borders as their own .How ever this could eventually lead to them taking a greater stake in the mainland, land which is part of Russia now. Russia might regret it's stance to the West, a fact which is not lost to their leadership I am sure!
It is time to settle the Ukraine crises in a manner that is fair to all.
NATO is upping their vigilance after some air intrusions by Russia and the US has promised to help Far East nations with their land integrity.
We  South Africans might have signed a treaty with the BRIC countries ,but we had better stay neutral as 70% of our exports go to the West.

All this might have a good effect upon mining strategic metals and minerals as both sides will want to buildup reserves as quickly as possible.