Rising bad debt risk to companies, households

COMPANY failures rose by an annual rate of 23% last month, official data showed yesterday, while nonperforming loans surged 56% in the final quarter of last year, in a worrying trend that the Reserve Bank said should be “closely monitored”.

In its twice-yearly review, the Bank said SA’s financial system remained sound, but it warned that high levels of household debt, along with slowing growth in income and net wealth, might cause problems in the future. More… 

Indebted consumers feeling glum

Johannesburg – Consumer confidence in South Africa has fallen to a four year low, data released on Tuesday show.

According to First National Bank and Stellenbosch University’s Bureau for Economic Research, consumer confidence declined by 10 index points, from +22 during the fourth quarter of 2007 to +12 during the first quarter of 2008.

The first quarter 2008 decline was significant as “it was the biggest decline between consecutive quarters in four years,” FNB said.

The last time consumer confidence fell by such a big margin, was during the third quarter of 2004 when the index declined by 14 index points.
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Is the global credit crisis a free market punch line?

By Ann Crotty

Our editor has kindly declared Business Report an April fool-free zone, which is why you were all spared the chore of working out which of the front page stories last Tuesday was a jape.

This gesture is a huge relief. Not that I don’t enjoy a good laugh, but I increasingly wonder, when reading any paper on any day of the year, whether stories are really true, suspecting that the work of a terrifyingly overactive imagination. Could it be that journalists are conspiring to make the reading public feel a little unhinged?

Take it from me: it is not just the local newspapers, with their daily diet of death and mayhem, that threaten us with cognitive dissonance every day. The appalling reality is that over time you become a bit inured to the amazingly gruesome ways of murdering somebody just for the sake of it.
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