Academic studies illustrate how few women there are in senior management roles in all industries, and in the financial sector in particular. Yet, they indicate that gender diversity is good for business, with one study finding that companies in the top quartile of female representation on the board have 53% higher return on equity than companies in the bottom quartile.

Due to economic uncertainty, a rise in inflation, various debt crises, and intense price pressures, global investors are returning to gold as a secure investment. The increase in demand has pushed the price of gold to a new high, fuelling an unprecedented mining boom in countries with rich mineral deposits, such as Colombia, writes Rachel Seifert in an article on openDemocracy.

The idea that the world’s leading economies should consider adopting a modified global gold standard as part of a new dispensation for international currency rates, first mooted in November last year by World Bank president Robert Zoellick, could gain new traction in the wake of the recent debt-ceiling crisis in the United States.

The eagerness with which global miners are investing in Africa belies the risks that operating mines on the continent offer the unwary investor. “Beyond the standard risks that miners have to deal with anywhere, like commodity price and currency fluctuation, operating a mine in Africa has a number of risks unique to the continent” says Robin Hancock, Business Development Executive at Alexander Forbes Risk Services.

South Africans are receiving a media overload of the ANCYL (ANC Youth League) and its leader now that Malema fatigue has started to set in. But there are still occasions when Malema and company stray so far off course that a response becomes inevitable.

The first week of August 2011 will probably go down in history as the time when the American dollar effectively and finally lost its status as the world’s foremost reserve currency -- and European leaders were told by the market that it does not believe they have a credible plan in place to deal with the Euro zone’s sovereign debt problems.

A news picture flashed around the world this past week depicts unemployed American protestors with placards reading “America does not belong to Wall Street”. In another universe that may as well have read “South Africa does not belong to Cosatu

I had better be careful what I say here this week. These days in South Africa people like me are getting skinned alive, or worse even, they are being fired, their columns shredded and their ideas and thoughts bagged, zipped up and buried as if it were nuclear waste. All because of what they say, or rather write.

There was a sense of dejá vu for the All Blacks, who stretched their unbeaten run at Eden Park in Auckland to 22 games and 16 years when they compre-ensively outplayed the Wallabies to retain the Bledisloe Cup in their Castle Tri Nations match at this venue.

According to Eleanor Roosevelt universal human rights begin…”in small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. …  Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.  Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world,” writes Jennifer Lee in commemoration of Women’s Day.

The developing crisis between the governing ANC and its Youth League could be extremely bad news for stability and the economy for South Africa, while the fixation on the symptom of Julius Malema is probably preventing us from seeing the woods from the trees within the context of a wider, even global, reality of a despondent generation.

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Proverbs are a wonderful tool of language to capture wisdom. They mostly endure through the ages and live on way beyond the circumstances or history that gave birth to them. One such proverb that came to mind during recent times amid the European sovereign debt crisis is the warning, beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Will Orlando Pirates produce another sterling Premier Soccer League season after opting to bring in Julio Cesar Leal as coach and luring SiyabongaSangweni, SameehgDoutie and Rudolf Bester to the club? Or will Ajax Cape Town finally fulfill their promise after coming so close in the Premier Soccer League last season?