It is a small sign, but hopeful and interesting. In the last week: Billy Masetlha has drawn on deep ANC traditions to argue that the role Cosatu and the SACP are playing threatens the ANC’s ability to lead all classes and groups in South Africa. He has restated a clear premise of traditional ANC thinking:Continue reading “Signs of light as new old guard curbs Polokwane ideological excess”
Category Archives: Macro-economics
A back-to-the-future quote from FDR
Here’s FDR in an interesting quote I dug up. It’s from about 1935 – in the lead-up to his re-election in 1936 – and it is made to a journalist from the Hearst organisation. This gives one a sense of how threatening was the Great Depression – to the very system of capitalist accumulation itself. This is,Continue reading “A back-to-the-future quote from FDR”
The Spirit of Polokwane?
… probably Johnny Walker Blue Label … The leadership of the African National Congress are feeling quite satisfied with themselves – and they have some justification. They have finessed both the SARB governorship and the transition at the Treasury and everyone, apparently, feels like a winner. For now. The two positions about which the financial marketsContinue reading “The Spirit of Polokwane?”
Trading Tito for Gill
President Zuma’s announcement yesterday (Sunday) that Gill Marcus will replace Tito Mboweni as Governor of the SARB in November is likely to feed anxieties about policy continuity – despite reassurance that policy at the SARB will not change under Marcus. The issue is not that Marcus is less competent or more likely to side with organised labour’s attacksContinue reading “Trading Tito for Gill”
Architects of Poverty – Book Review
Architects of Poverty Architects of Poverty by Moeletsi Mbeki (Picador Africa – Pan Macmillan 2009) R152 at Exclusive Books in the V&A Waterfront …it was the Africans who caught the people in the interior and sold them to the owners of the ships that transported them to the Americas to be sold into slavery. SoContinue reading “Architects of Poverty – Book Review”
Excerpt from Architects of Poverty
Architects of Poverty by Moeletsi Mbeki (Picador Africa – Pan Macmillan 2009) R152 at Exclusive Books in the V&A Waterfront – if you can find it where they are hiding all their copies under a table right at the back … conspiring with the evil Minerals-Energy Complex (MEC), no doubt. First things: Time and tideContinue reading “Excerpt from Architects of Poverty”
Vampire Capitalism
We are not there yet. There is still a way to go. But the dark territory is along here somewhere. The signposts loom more frequently out of the night and you can feel the icy chill. If I was the director of this movie I would have the little children huddle closer and the music would be so low and scaryContinue reading “Vampire Capitalism”
Inflation targeting – the lovely discourse
You might not be aware of it, but there is “a lovely discourse” about inflation targeting going on. These were the gentle, if slightly quaint, words of Pravin Gordhan as part of an expression of support for SARB governor Tito Mboweni yesterday (June 23). This comes after months of Cosatu’s blustering against inflation targeting: threatening to callContinue reading “Inflation targeting – the lovely discourse”
Nic Borain 