Why I look to the skies amid the war and stagflation

By the end of December, after the conclusion of the governing ANC ’ s elective conference, South Africans should have a clearer sense of what the next two years will bring. Unless something dramatic happens at the conference — like the election of someone not involved in the high-stakes game for the ANC president; someone who enjoys high levels of trust and is completely incorruptible, South Africans can expect more of the same.

Sometimes I am glad my main interests are not dysfunctional traffic lights, cable theft or lawlessness on the roads, or in the cluttered meso space of political parties. There are too many details, and far too much noise.

It has been an eventful year in the global political economy. We’re back to war, hot war, with increased threats of nuclear war. This is not to say we had left it all behind completely. War continues its interest in communities and societies around the world.

This year, right-wing politics and populism continued to grow globally, never mind perceptions of “corrections”, such as a return to liberal or progressive politics in, say, the US, Brazil and the Philippines with the departure of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Rodrigo Duterte, respectively.

The election of Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and the continued presence of Vladimir Putin, the Iranian theocrats and the Taliban in Afghanistan, are useful reminders that the world has not quite left despots, dictators, authoritarians and other generally nasty people behind.

Stagflation remains a concern, but not all countries are being dragged down into despondency and gloom. In June Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer at Bridgewater Associates, a US investment management firm, warned that the European world had to brace for stagflation.

“In stagflation, a high level of nominal spending growth cannot be met by the quantity of goods produced, resulting in above-target inflation. Policymakers are not able to simultaneously achieve their inflation and growth targets, forcing them to choose between the two.

“This choice is acutely difficult in Europe due to the simultaneous weakening in economies: nominal spending is being absorbed by higher energy prices, leaving less real growth, while the decline in the euro is raising the cost of imports,” Prince explained.

Yet on the other side of the world, Southeast Asia, where I spent much of the year, is in a position to avoid the worst of the downturn expected from the stagflationary cycle of high inflation and cratering output. In four of the six biggest political economies in the region — Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines — GDP rose faster than inflation during the first half of the year, and is expected to show sustained gains over the third and fourth quarters.

These countries are bouncing back from strict controls put in place during the Covid-19 pandemic, and there is a resurgence in manufacturing output and tourism. Inflation has increased faster than GDP growth in Singapore and Thailand, but this takes nothing away from the gains made by Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

On the other side of the world, Russia’s war in Ukraine captured the headlines for three main reasons (never mind conflict in Palestine, Myanmar or Syria). The first was Moscow’s political and geostrategic reach and nostalgia for its glorious past. The second was because of the effect the war has had on global food and energy supplies. The third is the return of a nuclear threat. Here, there are at least two points I want to make.

In October, US President Joe Biden said the world may be facing “the prospect of Armageddon” if Russia used a tactical nuclear weapon. This sounds hyperbolic, but it brings me to the second point, a personal view. I am convinced that between our own stupidity, abuse or misuses of artificial intelligence and robotics, the climate crisis and nuclear arms, we will eventually cause the destruction of the world as we know it.

This may not happen in our lifetime, but there is precious little evidence to suggest that by the end of this century the planet will be comfortable, or even properly habitable to sustain the type of procreation we have been used to.

I am convinced that as we continue to develop the scientific means, and the actual power to destroy the world — together with the continued lack of a collective understanding of our common humanity — it is highly unlikely that we will make it out of this alive, so to speak. This could happen before we find microbial life elsewhere in the universe.

Which brings me to the most exciting thing that happened in 2022; the early findings of the James Webb telescope, (Yes, I know the launch was actually at the end of last year), and the prospect that we may be able to see far enough into the universe to take us back to the dawn of time — almost 13.5billion years ago.

It’s probably my means of escaping the abundance of reality that swirls around in our society, but sometimes it seems there is more that is of real interest “out there” than there is down here.

SOMETIMES IT SEEMS THERE IS MORE THAT IS OF REAL INTEREST ’OUT THERE ’ THAN THERE IS DOWN HERE