It is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel that has been lightening up October skies.

A damaging strike season has done its worst in mining,  and we can now also see it in August and September data releases in the motor industry and construction, and thus in manufacturing.

It affected the national mood, with business, consumer and purchasing manager confidence back in negative territory and this also keeping retail and motor trade subdued, something the building trade in any case still very much remains.

The GDP growth for 3Q2013, to be released mid-November, will be again atrocious, confirming a very subpar year at or near 2%.

Contrary to all this negativity, the Rand has not kept depreciating, indeed coming back from its lowest levels. The bond market has been coming back from a recent tapering-induced edginess. The stock market keeps on setting new records even as it navigates one global potential crisis after another.

We are being invited to extrapolate poor 3Q2013 South African results into next year, with dire warnings about what still awaits abroad, especially in America, and us supposedly having to prepare for the worst.

Yet there is also a sense that we have for now seen the worst domestically, while the overseas crises keep being somewhat overhyped and over discounted, surprising us with the upside that then tends to follow.

I am not in the former camp. The latter message has much more appeal for me.

One wonders whether AMCU in mining and Numsa in industry still have a few truly disruptive arrows to deliver. If they have, it probably will come after next year’s election and will have a bearing on next year’s GDP.

But for this year the contours of the output disruption, lack of confidence and defensive spending withdrawal seem to be baked into the cake. This includes steady unwinding of the unsecured lending boom propping up parts of the retail revival.

Domestically, we seem to have made a step-down in growth aspirations and may have stabilized it near 2%. We keep of course talking about the National Development Plan and how this will save us by upping our game and thus increasing our growth, but for now this may mainly remain talk.

Better public sector performance, greater infrastructure rollout, more private business and household confidence isn’t something that grows on trees. It has to be achieved, won, in the long run but also the short term.

More inspiring is how the global economy keeps finding its way among dangerous shoals, with growth steady (if disappointingly slow) in the US, recovering (but still excruciatingly low) in Europe, impressively aggressive out of the starting blocs (but for how long?) in Japan.

There continues to be much handwringing about the many structural challenges facing China, demographically, financially, spending mix-like.

Whereas its growth will likely slow longer term, even with a tumble or two, as is the standard recipe for nearly every EM start-up eventually, Chinese growth is not obviously in catastrophic retreat at this point. If anything, it is holding up.

That keeps the EM story largely intact, slower but not collapsing. Instead, the bigger question is whether the advanced rich world will revive its support for EM growth rather than delivering a fatal stab wound, mainly through an assertive US policy right-sizing.

Here, hype and overreaction compete for airtime.

Yes, a few US government employees are having unplanned (paid) leave (billed as shutdown). No, the US Congress will not allow a debt default, though indulging in the odd game of chicken (billed as showdown). In reality it has all been showtime, but too many around the world (after all it is mainly THEIR money at stake) don’t see anything funny in any of this.

Even so, the US antics probably have caused a few folk to exhale only slowly, with such defensiveness weighing on spending and risk-taking decisions. Thus 4Q2013 US GDP could disappoint, along with its labour market.

The Fed is data-dependent to a fault now. Even as the risk of debt default recedes, the US performance may remain slow enough to delay tapering of bond purchases or otherwise at least temper her policy instincts.

That should revive the risk-rally worldwide and give EM space more time to adjust to the changing global outlook, specifically the US policy change that will be playing during 2014-2018 as the Fed exits its emergency unconventional policies.

There remains palatable fears that too many trillions are wrongly positioned for higher bond yields today, and that the EM strains will become overpowering.

This is a view.

Importantly, this coming US policy adjustment won’t be like 1979-1982 (Volcker abruptly attacking inflation and catching out Latin America) or 1994 (Greenspan Fed behind the curve rapidly tightening and catching out Mexico) or 1997-1998 (catching out Asia).

This won’t be an emergency policy tightening. What is looming is a very slow exit, an unprecedented slow exit, despite all the naysaying, BECAUSE all big global financial crises have long non-performance playouts.

Too much needs to be repaired, reinvented, redone, re-juggled, confidence regained, income and wealth restored, wits recovered, leverage rediscovered, for it to be otherwise.

Governments remain in austere modes. Households have deleveraged and are not in a hurry to do differently, except in exotic property locations such as London. Businesses sit tight on strong balance sheets, but with CEOs petrified of making a misstep. Banks are only slowly coming back, still shaken.

It is BECAUSE of all this that central banks need to be accommodating, facilitating, supportive.

The more markets want to hurry their repositioning, the more central banks will hang back. It will be a strong tussle, and a long one stretching over years.

EM will gradually pay more for its money again, but this will likely be a slow conversion. Though there is bound to be volatility, there need to be no global stampedes if central banks apply countervailing pressure as quick market adjustments don’t suit in the least.

This suggests the risk of EM capital outflow should not be overhyped, except for true basket cases in need of reform overhaul, of which there are some.

Despite all South Africa’s many weaknesses, its relative condition offers a relative attractiveness to outsiders. Finance will continue to flow, if at a price, but it won’t be a price we are not familiar with. This is different compared with being threatened by a crisis discontinuity in our external accounts and its resulting strains (like 1985 or 1998).

Slow global recovery next year will offer SA only minimal support for its export growth. Manageable global financial adjustments will keep us funded. The Rand may not even move much out of its present 9-11:$ trading range.

SARB will not move interest rates through early 2015, only from later that year being confronted by inescapable higher policy rates overseas.

Our inflation is likely to be back to being target-bound below 6% shortly and through 2015.

Global market conditions and our own corporate earning results and protective Rand shock absorber should keep our asset markets gaining.

The resulting wealth effect will underpin business and middle class confidence, if at low levels, reinforcing natural private ebullience, thriving all the more forceful in its own right in the absence of strong government leadership and its preoccupation with politicking.

Our growth will keep coasting near 2% for now, well in the shade of the 6% African growth north of us, but many of our companies, professionals and not a few households will benefit, directly and indirectly.

In this mode we can keep going a long time while contemplating more meaningful political and structural reforms presumably due over the longer run. It is this that will keep the growth hopes alive. This, and the possibility of new windfalls in the next decade.