Liberta

Legacy 2009

Francois Viljoen — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:28:01 +0000

The day you die, the only thing you leave behind is your legacy. What will your legacy be? Legacy is camp for young men, who are still at school (grade 10 to 12). This year the camp is running in Cape Town, from 12 to 18 December 2009. You can get more information about the camp by downloading [...]

Reader Q & A: Interest rate predictions for next two years

Francois Viljoen — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:28:13 +0000

Hi Francois What are your interest rate expectations for the next few years? I’m especially interested in rate estimates till September 2011. Regards, Zafreen Hi Zafreen I wish I could say with certainty what will happen with the economy, inflation and interest rates over the next two years, but unfortunately the best I can do is make an educated guess. I expect [...]

Interest rates at 28 year lows

Francois Viljoen — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:03:46 +0000

The latest interest rate cut by the SARB brings interest rates down to the lowest level they’ve been in 28 years. The prime interest rate is currently touching a 28-year low, which was equaled briefly in April 2005. Before that the last time South Africa had interest rates lower than what we have now was in February [...]

SARB lowers interest rates

Francois Viljoen — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:32:05 +0000

The SARB’s monetary policy committee (MPC) announced today that they’ve decided to lower the repo rate by another 50 basis points. The latest rate cut brings the repo rate down to to 7.0% and the prime interest rate down to 10.5%. The move comes as a surprise to many economists who believed that no further rate [...]

Inflation continues its downward trend

Francois Viljoen — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:56:51 +0000

The CPI and PPI inflation figures for June 2009 are out. The year-on-year headline CPI inflation rate for June 2009 is 6.9%, 1.1 percentage points lower than the figure for May 2009. PPI inflation also came in lower at -4.1%, also down 1.1 percentage points when compared to the figure for May 2009. You can check out this [...]

How to display the current interest rate, inflation rate, or GDP growth rate on your website

Francois Viljoen — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:40:34 +0000

I receive a lot of emails asking about the current inflation and interest rates. So I decided to create a few widgets. You can use these widgets if you want to display the current interest rates, inflation rates and/or GDP growth rates on your own blog or website. The widgets automatically fetch the latest figures that are [...]

Love, Life and Financial Planning

Francois Viljoen — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:23:41 +0000

In the end, all that remains is faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is cash flow. One of my friends made this joke the other day. I found it amusing, because (shockingly so) it rings with truth. Bad financial planning is probably one of the leading causes of divorce, depression, destruction of dreams, motivators [...]

Is there anything in particular…

Francois Viljoen — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:49:30 +0000

…that just makes your heart beat abnormally fast?

What is a Recession?

Francois Viljoen — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:03:43 +0000

A recession is a sustained economic decline. An economy is usually regarded to be in a recession if it experiences a decline in GDP for two consecutive quarters. Recession An economy that is in a recession is a shrinking economy. Recessions are usually accompanied by a decrease in production, a general fall in household income and an increase [...]

GDP Growth Rate in South Africa

Francois Viljoen — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:12:48 +0000

This page shows the current GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth rate, as well as a graph and table of the GDP growth rates in South Africa, since 1993. swfobject.embedSWF("/common/open-flash-chart/open-flash-chart.swf", "chart_gdp_growth_rate", "560", "200", "9.0.0", "expressInstall.swf", {"data-file":"%2Fcommon%2Fcharts%2Frate_chart.php%3Fchart%3Dgdp_growth_rate_chart.php"} ); The current GDP growth rate is document.write(latest_gdp_rate);% (based on the GDP data for the quarter ending document.write(latest_gdp_rate_date);). The GDP growth percentages shown [...]