Guy Berger

By 2020 real national income will have doubled, extended unemployment fallen from to about 27%. South Africa will see a shift from a minority middle class condition to a majority one. This view came from Dr Cees Bruggemans, Chief economist, First National Bank, at the Rhodes Politics teach-in, on Friday 28 September, and tackling the […]

Peter Bruce, editor of Business Day, sees nothing wrong with the Washington Consensus — “a perfectly sensibly statement of the obvious”. And for him, while there are many ideas about running economies in the 21st century, most of them pay obeisance to WC principles such as keeping inflation down and not borrowing too much money. […]

Get more specific than the broad macro-economics of the Washington Consensus, and look at how the state-market combo affects poverty and inequality. This was the view of Professor Murray Leibbrandt at the Rhodes politics teach-in on Thursday. Implementing his advice, he painted a picture of a South African imbalance: the market had generated an even […]

Continuing the theme of the Rhodes Politics teach-in, on the heels of Tito Mboweni, academic Charles Simkins on Wednesday weighed in by putting things in historical perspective. (Interesting aside: Simkins’s own personal history includes an illegal wedding — having a reception on the big day when he was supposed to be banned by Pretoria and […]

Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni poured scorn on the labour “left” in a speech at Rhodes University today. He was speaking to the issue of whether the “Washington Consensus” was dead. Though he didn’t say in so many words: from where he sits, it’s not only alive, it ought to be kicking. The concept refers […]