Formal employment is not something to be sneezed at. For starters, there’s the near-certainty of a salary hitting your bank account on the same date every month. Being on the receiving end of said salary also implies that you’re not the person who’s in a state of anxiety over finding the money to pay that salary.

If you work for the right company you also have the chance of bonuses or share options that could dwarf your salary. And, depending upon the labour laws in your country of residence, it could be almost impossible to get fired.

But the picture isn’t entirely rosy. For starters, you’re committed to 10 ‘rush hours’ per week (i.e. five days per week of the morning and afternoon commutes), which I suppose is fairly manageable. No, the time when you truly pay the price is on a Saturday morning. This is the time of the week when everyone who works nine to five comes out to do the things they couldn’t do during the week, because they were at work.

Shopping centres are jam-packed. Their parking lots are battle zones, where otherwise upstanding members of the community commit random acts of rage and violence upon similarly normal people. There’s no getting away from it; no matter how upmarket the shopping centre, the people frequenting them on a Saturday morning are working class.

You may suggest online shopping or banking as a solution. It is, kind of, but what’s the point of ordering something for home delivery when you’re never there to receive it?

Accountants would calculate the hourly cost of labour (or return, depending which side of the salary you find yourself) on the 40 hours per week implied by the stereotypical ‘nine to five’. Economists are more likely base their calculation upon the time that’s being sacrificed.

So, the rational employee would want to be paid more if a job required a longer or more arduous commute, or for a job that otherwise makes greater inroads into leisure time (e.g. the pain of Saturday morning shopping). I’d go so far as to suggest that the hour between 6.00 and 7.00 am would require higher remuneration than any hour between nine and five.

None of this applies to those of us who work from home, whether we have our own businesses or telecommute. However, even a conventional work-from-home arrangements seems too much like … well … work. There’s nothing like the internet to dangle fantasy, tantalisingly, before one’s eyes. In the spirit of ‘career porn’, here’s a run-down on a few ways of making a crust without getting dressed, or brushing your hair (i.e. online):

Blogging
Here’s a chance to take your passion, no matter how ‘niche’ it may seem, and turn it into cash. The cost of hosting a website is dirt cheap, thanks to the efforts of the likes of FatCow, UK2, 1&1 and many others. Using WordPress (and the potent Thesis Theme) it’s possible to have a professional-looking website up and running in minutes. But, getting the kind of traffic that would make your blog interesting to advertisers – which is how your rent is going to be paid – takes a lot more effort.

Online shops
Much of the above is true for ecommerce (WordPress has a very effective plugin for web shops), with the additional benefit that you can be selling stuff to an audience all around the world, 24/7, without having the cost and time investment of an actual shop. Some shops may not even require an investment in inventory, but as with blogging, the lifeblood of the business is traffic. If you already own a substantial mailing list you could be on your way.

Betting
Professional gamblers are characterised by the ability to find value in the odds, or employ skill in finding an edge. And, internet platforms like Betfair enable gamblers to both lay and place bets, which puts the gambler in the middle of an active marketplace. Numerous guides on the subject are available: Betfair Espionage , Project Betfair, 500 Every Week from Betfair, Sport Trader, and the ambitiously named Betfair Bullion. I read a story about a guy in the UK who makes his living by betting on Eurovision. Regardless of the market, the principle is generally the same: place a bet at long odds and lay it off at shorter odds. The ideal situation is to go into the event with the opportunity of making a profit regardless of the outcome.

Trading
Here’s your opportunity to find your inner George Soros. Various forex (FX) platforms (eToro is just one example amongst many) offer huge leverage, which means that you can soar like an eagle if you get it right, or crash spectacularly if you’re wrong. Forex trading is possibly the most advertised service on Facebook, with alluring claims of how many thousands of dollars can be made on a weekly basis. Something tells me it cannot possibly be that easy, but these guides have other claims (Forex Trading Machine, Forex Robot and Forex Overdrive.)

Spread Trading (aka spreadbetting) operates on a similar principle, in that the positions are leveraged, but the underlying instruments are equities rather than currencies (although commodities and currencies are generally offered on the same platforms as well). In basic principle, holding a blue chip stock via spread trading isn’t any different to owning the actual shares, as long as the price doesn’t hit your stop loss. Proceed with caution!

‘Creatives’
Almost every creative profession – photography, design and writing, to name just a few – can be practiced from a home base. OK, so getting dressed will be required from time to time, but one does need to interact with other people, after all.

Any ‘work from home’ Google search will reveal thousands of opportunities. The bottom line, though, is that doing any of them successfully requires professional and persistent application. Just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean that Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours aren’t applicable.

The difference is that you can expend those 10,000 hours in a manner that frees you from the horror of Saturday morning shopping trips.

(Disclosure: this website contains text links and advertisements, some of which generate revenue for me – at no extra cost to yourself – should you make a purchase after clicking on them … it’s part of my strategy for avoiding Saturday morning shopping.)

“… there is nothing either good or
bad, but thinking makes it so”

I’m sure I wouldn’t be alone in nominating this observation, penned by Shakespeare for his character Hamlet, for a top ten list of the world’s most succinct bits of wisdom. It is valid in every field coloured by subjective opinion, which means it applies to everything from music to sport and politics.

My immediate interest in the phrase is its application to food, an area at the vortex of subjectivity; a subjectivity made all the more dangerous by the fact that few people reference their culinary opinions with an acknowledgement that, at the end of the day, it is seldom more than opinion. And, those likes/dislikes are often based upon deeply hidden psychology.

The world of food has thousands of potential examples, from the texture of mashed potato, to rare beef, to raisins in muesli. You name it: out there is someone who hates what you love, and vice versa.

Even within a loved food group there are items with greater status. Hence, beef fillet is premium when compared with brisket, and cod is more highly valued than most other fish. About this I don’t have a great argument, but I do think it’s unfair to dismiss something because it isn’t at a premium in its group.

Take hake, a low-priced, widely available fish in South Africa. Spaniards value it sufficiently to pay the cost of air freight required to get it to Spain, but in its country of origin higher-end restaurants dare not put it on their menus because of its association with cheap fish and chips.

Fresh hake is delicious, and it doesn’t take complicated preparation. Simply brush the flesh side with some tarragon butter and pop it into the oven for five to ten minutes. Its white flesh has a mild flavour and shouldn’t have any bones if it’s been well filleted.

My evening engagement last night was a dinner at Sidedish (Rose Street, Bo-Kaap). I was already committed to taking a taxi home from it, but I wasn’t entirely certain how I was going to get there.

As it turned out, I was running late, so didn’t have time to wait for a taxi to take me there. I also didn’t want to leave my car in the street overnight (and then have the hassle of retrieving it in the morning). So, I jumped on my bicycle and raced across the City Bowl (mostly downhill, it must be said). I’m certain the journey took the same length of time as it would have by car (I even had the pleasure of overtaking a Porsche) and I could almost imagine the trees and other elements of Nature cheering my eco-friendly means of transport.

The return journey was easy, thanks to Unicabs (021-4861600). Valentino had me home in a flash, for less than R50. What I didn’t realise, until his phone call on my home number at 4.38 am, is that my mobile phone had slipped out of my pocket while I was in the taxi.

He’s just returned my phone. So, this is a huge thank you to him and to the unknown passenger who handed the phone to him later last night.

(In case you’re wondering about the bike, I need to be in the area later today (with bike rack) and will pick up the bike then.)

The world’s economy got into a mess as a result of gorging on cheap credit. Thus far, the only solution is a ‘hair of the dog’ one. In other words, toss more cheap money at the problem in the hope that an extended period of liquidity (i.e. lots of money sloshing around the economy) will ultimately induce sufficient commercial activity to restore solvency.

It’s a dangerous gamble, but no less of a gamble than banks took when they made all those sub-prime loans to NINJAs (individuals that had No Income, No Job, and no Assets). Actually, it’s criminal what those bankers did. The amazing thing is that they’re all getting off scot free; they’ve kept the bonuses they earned in the process, and governments ‘happily’ shifted the problem onto their balance sheets. OK, rant over.

The thing is this, governments operate under similar principles as businesses. They have income (taxation), they have expenses (the fiscal budget), and when the two don’t balance they borrow. Reduced economic activity is having an obvious effect on tax revenues at the same time as governments are under pressure to spend more money in an attempt to kickstart the economy. In a normal commercial enterprise the managers would ‘cut the cloth’. This could, kind of, be manageable if politicians didn’t run governments, but politicians always have to have the next election in mind while they’re implementing the promises from the previous one. In short, they have to be careful not to piss the voters off too much.

It has become increasingly fashionable for governments to table ‘austerity’ budgets. Satisfying their growing debt obligations is only possible if they reduce their expenditure. But the populace of developed economies have become more than a little addicted to the benefits of governments’ spend on various social programmes. I get a sense that the budget cuts are much less severe than a pragmatic numbers person would implement.

We could be in for a gruelling time as austerity makes its way around the globe. Interestingly, the word is derived from the 19th century phrase “to get one’s gruel” (i.e. punishment). Gruel, of course, is food one wouldn’t normally associate with the banker class. It’s historically been for poor people, and it doesn’t have any good connotations.

However, it doesn’t need to be this way. Gruel and soup are closely related, and soup may ultimately be the solution to many people’s budgetary problems. Also, based upon my experience of eating nothing but soup for two weeks after a throat operation a few years ago, it is also a slimming diet.

So, my advice is to make a big pot of delicious, wholesome soup on a Sunday. Load it with low-GI, low-fat, super-healthy pulses (think lentils, peas and beans). You could add some meat or chicken stock for additional flavour, but it’s as good if you keep it vegetarian (or even vegan). Take a container of it to work every day for lunch, and make austerity work for you. Yes, you’ll save money at the same time as doing good for the environment and your body.

It all comes down to liquidity. I know for certain that a liquid component to one’s diet (i.e. a nutritious soup for lunch) is going to save money at the same time as promoting good health (especially when compared with lunching on a Big Mac with fries). On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether liquidity will save the world economy.

(The US government’s recently announced $600 billion QE2 programme, on a very rough calculation, could buy every person on the planet a lunch of wholesome pulse-based soup, for about 150 days.)

It is easy for cynics to question the efficacy of gatherings such as the recent G20 summit. Certainly, the summit’s most immediate tangible output consisted of a group photograph.

Cynicism aside, what the picture does demonstrate is that the world of economic and financial leadership is very male, perhaps to the detriment of the world’s economy (read more about that here). Opportunities for women have expanded dramatically, but it remains difficult for women to be taken seriously in certain fields, of which economics apparently still is one.

It doesn’t help that France’s ex-Justice Minister, Rachida Dati, recently referred to inflation as fellatio. OK, so the two words do sound similar in French, and ‘inflation’ may be a consequence of the act, but it doesn’t help women’s cause, especially when Dati’s attractiveness makes her a desired dispenser.

I went to a lunchtime talk on Friday, presented by Maria Ramos, who is an economist, and could certainly have been in line for a G20 appearance had she remained in government (and yes, while she downplays it, she is attractive). She is currently the Group CEO of Absa (a subsidiary of Barclays), with a long list of other directorships, achievements and accolades. I don’t recall her spending much time talking about inflation, but she did get me very excited when she started talking data.

The numbers that fired my neurons were the ones dealing with youth unemployment in various parts of the world (generally above 20%, and in some countries up to 30%). The European view is that the phenomenon is structural, and therefore immune to a low interest rate environment. The American solution is based upon crashing interest rates in the hope of stimulating the economy.

Actually, I’m probably wrong in my observation that the G20 delegates could not agree on anything. Jobs – or, the absence of them – are one crisis the entire world is facing. The most worrying grouping to be affected by this are the youth, who comprise one-quarter of the workforce, but half the unemployed.

The consequences of millions of young adults remaining unemployed aren’t good. For starters, lower tax collections have a number of knock-on effects, none of which are positive. The potentially more serious implications are socio-political ones. The combination of testosterone, youth and being disaffected are a toxic cocktail, of which civil unrest and other destructive behaviours are a likely outcome. One has to wonder if Islamic militancy would be a threat of similar size if Pakistan, Afghanistan and others were not as impoverished as they are.

G20 Protestors

Whether one is Spanish, German, South African or American, creating jobs for entrants to the job market are a critical necessity. The How-To part is more challenging. Given the extent of the challenge, especially against the backdrop of the credit crisis, my view is that the situation requires a degree – and type – of creative thought that has not yet been applied by government officials. The fact is, the skills set that is going to get someone into a government position cannot include groundbreaking thinking.

No, “it takes a thief to catch a thief”. The situation requires original thought, preferably on the part of people who are entrepreneurial, or who have experience of what the jobs coal face looks like.

Economists can tell you about the economy in aggregate. They can slice and dice GDP, inflation, budget deficits, or any other collected data. They can show what rate of employment growth is necessary. They definitely can talk data. But the question is this: how many of them have real-life experience of creating jobs? Even the most progressive department of trade and industry is populated by people who are exceptionally skilled at spending their budgets, but who are unlikely – ever – to have run their own businesses.

During Maria Ramos’ presentation there was an observation from the floor that corporates do not create jobs; in fact, they shed them to cut costs. The solutions have to come from elsewhere.

Government has a role to play, in the way it shapes the business environment. Corporates also have a role to play, because of the scale of their procurement. But the solutions require a whole bunch of ‘foxy’ people, to borrow Clem Sunter’s terminology.

When I was a little boy, I thought that trees made the wind, in a classic case of mixed-up cause-and-effect following from my observation of co-existing wind and swaying trees. While I was clearly wrong on this phenomenon, the cause and effect chains in finance and economics are less cut and dried.

I’m of the school that has great respect for an income statement. It’s not that I don’t value the need for a solvent balance sheet, but sound balance sheets are the products of profitable businesses (i.e. good income statements over several years). Capital has to be created before it can be deployed.

By implication, I therefore favour a bottom-up – entrepreneur-centric – approach to job creation. Foxy is good (but not in the sense of FHM magazine!).

I’m sure that our government employs a large number of technocrats with solid academic backgrounds. However, in the words of Einstein, “imagination is more important than knowledge”.

Part of my thinking process behind starting Slingshot was the belief that creativity – original thought founded in imagination – has a disproportionate effect on an organisation’s end results (i.e. the slingshot effect). If there is a ‘job creation’ government body, or forum convened by big business, I’d happily join it. I don’t currently have the one miracle solution that will ‘make South Africa work’ (double meanings intended), but I believe that those great ideas are out there.

Pictures of the violent protests that have characterised G20 gatherings are more newsworthy, but I think we’d all prefer the group photos of central bankers and finance ministers. Even if they’re mostly men.

Benoît Mandelbrot, who died recently, is the mathematician who invented fractal geometry. His work, which covered a wide variety of fields, also included examining the models that are generally used to predict the behaviour of financial markets.

He came to the conclusion that most such models operate on the ‘Joseph’ principle (i.e. 7 good years, followed by 7 lean years). These models, potentially to the ruination of those employing them, neglect what he described as the ‘Noah’ effect, which is similar to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s ‘black swan’, except that Taleb is more of a philosopher.

It isn’t difficult to find examples of such cataclysmic events, which could euphemistically also be called ‘outliers’. Basically, they are not easily (if at all) predicted on the basis of historical data. A proper assessment of risk needs to make allowance for such events, but generally doesn’t.

I’ve been thinking about people’s attitude to, and management of, risk. I may be in danger of being branded a heretic by the rest of man-kind, but I’m wondering if women and men don’t have different ways of viewing and managing risk. The fact that the majority of participants in financial markets are men may skew the whole thing, in the sense that there are fewer women with the potential of having cocked-up the world economy to the extent that men have (see, it’s even called a ‘cock’-up).

I can’t think of a single rogue trader who was a women (perhaps they’re just better at not getting caught). And, what are infidelity scandals, other than the outcome of inappropriately applied risk assessments?

Think about it, if you are the president of the United States, what are the chances of indefinitely hiding your naughty behaviour? As to Tiger, keeping a lid on that many indiscretions is nigh impossible. Just one moment’s rational thought would have told him that the risks were vast, and growing every time he made a new conquest.

And yet, on the golf course, he successfully managed risk all the time. Any ball in the rough, or the layout of the course (water in a danger position close to the green, for example) requires an assessment of the respective outcomes of each strategy.

I can’t think of a prominently placed woman who got herself involved in an infidelity scandal. Yes, there are women involved when powerful men are being unfaithful, but I think it’s a somewhat different risk analysis.

I also can’t think of a colossal corporate collapse perpetrated by a women. Two of the biggest – Enron and WorldCom – were both headed by men. Name any large Ponzi scheme, and you’re likely find a man at the top of the pyramid.

The origins of the credit crunch lay in vast amounts of money being lent on the basis of historical default rates (“safe as houses” mortgages). Those were the existing models of risk assessment, as criticised by Benoît Mandelbrot, which didn’t take into account what would happen to default rates when mortgage interest rates increased, or when property values started going down. Or, if banks indiscriminately dumped mortgages on millions of people who couldn’t actually afford them (which they then on-sold to pension funds and other investors all around the world).

Men may joke about women’s driving abilities, but it’s certainly preferable to get home from work and say, “Honey, I crashed the car”, than to say, “Honey, I crashed the economy”.