Peru quakes as Eurozone shakes

Eurozone leaders delivered relief to markets this week, confirming the positive vibes that had driven equities for days before. Ominously, however, bonds in the peripheral Eurozone economies didn't join the party. On Thursday the ECB bought Italian bonds to drive home the message but by Friday close the Italian 10-year yield was pushing back at 6% and an issue of 10-year bonds fetched slightly more than 6%. This is not a good formula - yields well above nominal GDP growth can trigger a debt downspiral. So an earthquake averted for the time being but tension remains. A real earthquake hit Peru, a country no stranger to tremblers, registering 6.9 Richter. This time thankfully the quake appears to have done limited damage to person and property unlike in 2007 when hundreds died and 40000 homes were wrecked. Hopefully this story just fades away but it is a reminder that the western coast of South America is constantly at risk. Peruvian miners appear unaffected so, although it is one of the world's major metals producers, commodities are unlikely to be hit. Many mining analysts are focused on supply now forgetting that demand issues are far more important when the world slows down, as it is now. The QSL is my only one on AM from Peru. It's a beaut - Radio Neuvo Continente, Cajamarca with only 1.5kW - heard in Morgan Bay, South Africa in 1992. This is a self-prepared card which I sent to the station and it also sent a nice letter in Spanish with details about the station and the region.

Another minute to another midnight in Eurozone

Yet again it's one minute to midnight in the Eurozone. With Greece tottering on the edge of default, Eurozone politicians are playing another round of footsie with the markets. It's a three-pronged programme: leverage up the EFSF, recapitalise the banks and bail-in private sector holders of Greek debt even more than agreed in July. Sarkozy has run afoul of Merkel in calling for the EFSF to be given bank status to allow it to access funds from the ECB. It seems like this is just not going to happen even though it and would potentially allow the ECB to create unlimited amounts of moola to back the peripheral Eurozone states. ECB funding in this way would likely violate EU treaties and therefore require another round of parliamentary voting. Slovakia held out on the recent EFSF vote owing to recalcitrance of libertarian party leader, Richard Sulik, a self-professed Austrian School of Economics supporter. The Austrian School hasn't had much of a look-in in this crisis so far. Wrangling is set to continue through Wednesday - markets have taken a positive tack over the week, albeit volatile. There may be disappointment next week. The QSL is from Slovak Radio, heard on two AM frequencies in London in 1999.

Whales get better deal than Dalai Lama

Back in Cape Town for another few days and luckily the nor' wester came in on cue again. Got up early and headed for Muizies on a grey, warm morning. The offshore wind was p-p-perfect, into a medium swell. Caught stacks of waves. The shark-spotters had the black flag up - visibility poor. There were surprisingly few surfers so I guess the shark scare is still reverberating around the bay. Suddenly I looked up and about 300m out saw two huge eruptions of white water. A couple of southern right whales were cavorting, leaping clear of the water and arcing over  nose first, with their huge crescent tails looping in behind. I thought how silly it is that these mammals have such easy access to our shores while poor Dalai Lama can't get a visa to attend Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday bash. I mean Tutu can be a pain but he should be able to invite Lhamo Dondrub (his birth name) if he wants to. It's testimony to the clout that China now wields on the African continent. The irony is that most South Africans are completely ignorant about the way China has just rolled over Tibet, a country whose people are genetically different from the majority Han of China. Incidentally, Dalai is Mongolian for 'ocean'. Mongolia is a land-locked country - go figure! The QSL is from the old Radio Beijing using the transmitter in Lhasa, Tibet. It was heard in Johannesburg on short-wave in 1989. Lhasa transmitters still come in very well into Cape Town.

Columbus' China was Grand Turk

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Full moon, leap tide, steady offshore breeze, good swell, black flag. I found time to go out again this afternoon at Muizies. Two sharks had been spotted earlier in the day and the spotters had had a field day: white flag (with black shark) - the most dangerous; red flag with white shark (shark spotted recently) and black flag with white shark (visibility too poor to tell). The latter was up when I arrived late in the day and there were about 50 surfers. The tide was near the high water mark and the paddle out back was short. I caught stacks of waves, some holding up quite well. I have to admit that I kept my feet in the footstraps and when I fell off got back on pretty fast! Usually I keep clear of the other surfers but today I stuck with them. Not sure what the theory of this really is - safety in numbers, or just makes you feel better. The local surf shops are complaining bitterly about the loss of business since the Clovelly attack. The press is constantly schmoozing around looking for a story - 'lead with the bleed' - it's sick. Columbus Day in the US and markets are taking a breather there, while Europe rallied some more on the Merkel-Sarkozy 'deal' to capitalise banks. Ho-hum. There's a big dispute about Columbus' first landfall. He thought he was in China, silly man, but he was really just on the other side of the Atlantic. One of the islands in the frame is Grand Turk. Here's a QSL from Caribbean Christian Radio on Grand Turk heard on AM at Sheigra in Scotland in 1996.

Dexia to the shark

Dexia's CDS spreads have widened out alarmingly for some time. The sub debt has signaled major distress for quite a while and the pile-up finally got to the retail public who overloaded the bank's telephone helpline. The shares were plummeting last week and then suspended on Thursday. Now Belgium, France and Luxembourg have agreed on a rescue deal to bail it out. As with the sovereign peripherals in Europe, contagion is the issue and focus will now shift to other threatened Eurobanks like SocGen. The Eurozone story continues to play out as a fire flares up and is extinguished, only for another to flare up somewhere else. The markets continue to wait for a 'bazooka' solution but it isn't visible yet albeit that a number of ideas are zinging about. In the meantime, Cape Town is boiling but the locals will only put toes into the water in False Bay because of the shark attack at Clovelly. The shark-spotters are running the red flag up on the beaches which is supposed to indicate that a great white was spotted within the past few hours. But actually they are not spotting them right now. They are just putting up the flags because everyone is so flipped out by the attack. There are also a bunch of whales in the bay so there is no shortage of action. Some surfers went out anyway at Muizenberg with a light northwester making a good shape. I popped in for an hour this afternoon. The QSL is from Radio Trafic in Houdeng, Belgium, heard on AM in Otford, Kent in 2001.

Torrid temperatures and Tesco's testing time

It's October already. Past days have hardly been blogging weather with the mercury recording temperatures in southern England last seen in Victorian times, so the media says. Mercury up but spending down. Tesco, which takes 1 in every 10 pounds spent in British shops, reported one of its biggest-ever falls in sales, a sign of the hard times affecting consumers, even for basic non-durable goods. The authorities are going through all kinds of contortions to avert slowdown, including a freeze on council tax for next year. But the sense of entitlement remains pretty well entrenched. We had a taste of this when we heard where my son's old mates in England went to celebrate the end of A levels. In South Africa the kids went on Plett Rage - Plettenberg Bay is a seaside resort about 6 hours drive up the coast from Cape Town. The London kids went to .... Crete. Adjustment lies ahead, for some years, methinks. Gone are the days when youngsters could put everything they owned into a Beetle. The QSL is from Crush 1278 a low-powered student AM station on the University of Hertfordshire. I heard this one afternoon and dropped them a line. Tesco's HQ is also in Hertfordshire, a few miles north of London.