I'll tune you what: we're safe, my chinas

Global flight to safety? Here, okes, right here! You want bladdy safety, we got safety. We're safe, my chinas.

Cor, what a week. And the rock 'n roll's not likely to stop any time soon, either. For every 500-point collapse that causes us to pull our coats over our heads and mutter darkly comes a blue-sky rally that gets everyone punching their fists in the air as if the world hasn't, in fact, ended and we're not all in stock market Hades.

I love it when, after a bad day, the pundits start jabbering about "risk-off" and how weird it is that investors are still running for the perceived safety of US government bonds.

It's perfectly logical! Treasury bills are the world's most liquid market - who wouldn't run to them when they find themselves in times of trouble? It doesn't matter that the US government is bankrupt, they can sommer print more dollars any time they like and cover their debts.

Then, a day later when stocks rocket, the experts get their underpants in a twist trying to explain that investors were reacting to "less bad than expected" data and were magically moved once more to buy risky assets. Or some other such rot, as if we're a school of mindless pilchards thrashing ene mass in a shallow sea.

Er, come to think of it, that is a bit what we're like - and by "we" I mean the blokes in suits and the computers they programme to skim profits from every market movement, up or down. The volatility of the past few weeks must be making a lot of people very rich indeed.

But back to the opening paragraph. Perversely, given the innate inferiority complex of South Africans, our markets will continue to be seen as a safe source of returns ("safe" being relative, of course).

On Friday, for instance, all by itself, the JSE staged a glorious W-shaped loop-en-val that saw 500 points lost and regained on the day. This was before US markets confounded everybody by not falling on their faces.

What do foreigners see in the JSE? Well, don't ask me - ask one of those fancy-pants analysts. All I see is a vast lake of international money sloshing into US bonds and then sitting there, dumbstruck, while stocks take their weekly bath. Then it all rushes out again - and it will keep doing this, because US bond returns are laughable.

And where do the sardines run next? Back to the shark-free shallows of emerging markets like SA. At present global capital prefers our bonds to our shares. Offshore buyers have driven SA bonds to what we may think are ridiculously optimistic levels, but at a 6.6% yield for the R157 (maturing in 2015), there's plenty of value staring frightened foreigners in the face - particularly since the Reserve Bank is highly unlikely to raise interest rates, or be overly panicked about inflation, for at least another year. Make it two years.

A good way to gauge what the world thinks of us is via the spreads on credit default swaps.

Never mind! You don't have to understand what those things are. It's enough to know that the larger the spread, the more investors are prepared to spend to buy "insurance" against the chance that a sovereign nation will default on its debt.

Credit Market Analysis, a London-based posse of chaps paid to worry about such matters, this week published a list that happened to include SA among the sorry list of usual suspects. Blow me if we're not rated at about the same level as France and Mexico, wavering around the 150 mark.

The super-good guys, like Norway (40) and Australia (80) are not worth comparison, but SA's way better than Bric darling Russia (190) and emerging sweetie Poland (200) and in a different league compared to the rats and mice of Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy and Dubai.

I tune you again: we're safe. (Cue gallows laughter.)