11th hour e-toll interdict attempt: FF Plus

marine1 said:
I support this good luck guys but I doubt it will be successful, the corruption machine is far to strong
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Yeah, it's probably too late now. SANRAL and the ANC have far too much invested in this already.
 
hawker said:
Yeah, it's probably too late now. SANRAL and the ANC have far too much invested in this already.
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Correct. The whole government pension fund was invested and millions more are given to them by government from other sources.

If the e-Toll system has to close down, the whole government will fall into disarray. A civil war will not be stopped as government employees, old Apla members, Mkhonto members and more take up arms in order to get their money back. This is just one reason, there are many more the public is not aware of as yet.

Also, government decide the outcome of constitutional court cases, and if any case make it there the outcome is clear.
 
House said:
Correct. The whole government pension fund was invested and millions more are given to them by government from other sources.

If the e-Toll system has to close down, the whole government will fall into disarray. A civil war will not be stopped as government employees, old Apla members, Mkhonto members and more take up arms in order to get their money back. This is just one reason, there are many more the public is not aware of as yet.

Also, government decide the outcome of constitutional court cases, and if any case make it there the outcome is clear.
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Okay really now, we have to start dealing in facts here. GEPF has over R1 trillion AUM and their exposure to e-tolling is around 1.50% of their total AUM. If anything, government employees have 1.50% at risk, and 56% of this is government guaranteed, so there is no realistic risk to them apart from the bond yield and lack of a secondary market for Sanral bonds. At most their risk exposure is about 0.85% of the fund and there are natural hedges against the downside of bonds that they would have taken.

Yes, it was in all likelihood a corrupt deal in my opinion. Such exposure is ludicrous in and of itself and even though they deny ulterior motives, I believe that this does not match the risk profile of their fund. But it will not result in government falling into disarray. It will not tank their pensions. And it will not result in civil war.

Really, if we're going to object and take a stand then let's at least do so with proper facts and not scaremongering...
 
All this palava for a 1 day delay? Or do they expect the court to bend over forwards?
 
DJ... said:
Okay really now, we have to start dealing in facts here. GEPF has over R1 trillion AUM and their exposure to e-tolling is around 1.50% of their total AUM. If anything, government employees have 1.50% at risk, and 56% of this is government guaranteed, so there is no realistic risk to them apart from the bond yield and lack of a secondary market for Sanral bonds. At most their risk exposure is about 0.85% of the fund and there are natural hedges against the downside of bonds that they would have taken.
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I think the exposure for pension funds is quite a bit more than this as a result of the sentiment issue. GEPF depends on a certain level of credibility in its investment choices and the downgrading of SANRAL doesn't help them.

Whether it is true or not is irrelavent to the fact that GEPF is taken to have bet the farm on infrastructure projects in South Africa in the GFIP vain and a failure on GFIP bodes badly for that bet. Of course the threat is greatly exaggerated and you have the standard too big to fail positioning at play.
 
Paul Hjul said:
I think the exposure for pension funds is quite a bit more than this as a result of the sentiment issue. GEPF depends on a certain level of credibility in its investment choices and the downgrading of SANRAL doesn't help them.
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Sentiment dictates price and factors into the bond yield, which I've pointed out. It does not change their mandate though, and their "investors" hardly have a choice in the matter...

Paul Hjul said:
Whether it is true or not is irrelavent to the fact that GEPF is taken to have bet the farm on infrastructure projects in South Africa in the GFIP vain and a failure on GFIP bodes badly for that bet. Of course the threat is greatly exaggerated and you have the standard too big to fail positioning at play.
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Agreed...
 
well my general proposition is that the travesty of things like etolling is that there is no accountability to the "investors" because they are conscripted

it is impossible to know what harm is going to actually come to civil servants pensions from this fiasco but what we can be certain of is that it is not pretty - "privatizing" the GEPF would not have produced any better a result
 
Paul Hjul said:
well my general proposition is that the travesty of things like etolling is that there is no accountability to the "investors" because they are conscripted

it is impossible to know what harm is going to actually come to civil servants pensions from this fiasco but what we can be certain of is that it is not pretty - "privatizing" the GEPF would not have produced any better a result
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Let's not overstate their risk here. It is a vanilla financial risk of at most 0.85 - 0.86%. There are also financial instruments that act as natural hedges against bond exposure which GEPF are mandated to utilise. 56% of all outstanding Sanral bonds are government guaranteed, and this would be the pool/tranche that matches their risk profile, so in all likelihood it is far less than 0.85%.

Regarding the private market though, this certainly wouldn't have happened. The private market did not fully subscribe to Sanral's entire medium term note programme, to such an extent that government had to get involved and subsequently provide guarantees. And this was irrespective of their ratings. The private market understood the risk. This absolutely wouldn't have happened in a private market. The capital required for this project would have been unattainable from the private capital markets - simple as that...
 
a free market would not have allowed this sort of horse**** - my point being though that "privatizing" GEPF (as a monopoly) hardly equates to a private market instead we can be fairly glad that GEPF is mandated in some of the ways that it is but a proper competitive private pension fund market would be infinitely better.

I am not sure that in the long term there will be any real harm to the value of the pensions but there is a risk and calculating that risk to %s of value doesn't quite state the uncertainty created. It is a massive FUD creating exercise.

My personal fear and it is a little on the conspiracy side is that there is a bit of a parallel strategies game with the infrastructure bet namely that if certain conditions arise the ANC will privatize GEPF and make some big changes to the IDC etc ...

- it is the uncertainty games that is not pretty
 
I don't think the law allows them to privatise government pension funds, and if they did, I struggle to see a method by which they could reasonably apply it as a mandated contribution only to that fund, without a choice, while applying a different set of rules to the rest of the private market...
 
DJ... said:
I don't think the law allows them to privatise government pension funds, and if they did, I struggle to see a method by which they could reasonably apply it as a mandated contribution only to that fund, without a choice, while applying a different set of rules to the rest of the private market...
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the current legislative framework certainly doesn't provide for it but nothing in the Constitution prescribes same and securing a majority in Parliament doesn't seem inconceivable to me at all.

There is no method by which it could be reasonably mandated without a choice or by which it is appropriate for different rule books but the Telecommunications Act?
 
Paul Hjul said:
There is no method by which it could be reasonably mandated without a choice or by which it is appropriate for different rule books but the Telecommunications Act?
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Well this is the crux of the issue. They wouldn't ever allow for such a choice to begin with, or they risk volatility with their AUM, which would be disastrous to the fund. They'd also land up losing control over funding of infrastructure projects because of this. I think you can take your tin-foil hat off for this one...:D
 
sadly I own no tin foil hats

I do however believe in infinite cleverness paired stupidity
ways of doing really bad things with disasterous consequences for certain (often but not always) greedy purposes
 
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