South Africa Has Bailed Out A Predatory Lender

By -























An incendiary post at Forbes about South Africa's rescue of African Bank, which was lending far too much money at exorbitant interest rates to poor people who were otherwise shut out of the financial system. How on earth is this a justifiable use of public funds?

Read the whole article here, and weep.

Related reading:

 African Bank has not learned its lesson - SABC


Comments

  1. Anonymous14 August 2014 at 01:39

    I'm not going to weep, I'm going to get a Loan, Duhhh.
    After so many European banks turning one down,
    I understand why some would choose to use the African Bank.

    Many people think some things are bad.
    Except when they do it.

    And, THEY have been doing it for hundreds of years,
    the Europeans.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The golden calf

By -
In my post " The Nature of Money " I noted that money's use as a store of value is secondary to its function as a medium of exchange, and commented that long-term savings should not be held as "money" but rather as hard assets or investments in productive activities. I made it clear that my personal belief is that the latter is far preferable, because it benefits not only the holder but the rest of society too. This attracted the attention of a number of people who appear to have an almost religious belief in the virtue of gold as a store of value. The result was a bruising three days of intense debate on twitter, which was only ended when I blocked several of these people and warned off the rest. I was frankly shocked by the fervour of their belief: the more convinced they were that eventually I would "see the light" the less I wanted to have anything to do with them. I felt much as an agnostic must feel when subjected to the attempts of religious c...
Read more

The fiscal theory of monetary expansion

By -
I am tired of theories of monetary expansion that ignore the considerable role of both commercial banks and fiscal authorities in the creation of money. To hear some people talk, you would think that all that is needed is for the central bank to increase base money (M0), and the total amount of money (M3) circulating in the economy will magically increase. So when the economy is on the floor, monetary conditions are tight and commercial banks not lending, inflate M0 by any means available and wait for life to return. This amounts to believing, in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary, that the earth is flat. In a credit money system, the vast majority of money in circulation is created not by the central bank but by commercial banks. Furthermore, government deficit spending increases the total amount of money circulating in the economy (unless this money expansion is actively neutralised). Therefore the combination of fiscal authorities and commercial banks can create all...
Read more

The End of Britain?

By -
Image
There is a very scary bulletin from the investors' magazine MoneyWeek doing the rounds. It is entitled " The End of Britain" , and forecasts an imminent disastrous financial collapse. I've checked with the editor of MoneyWeek, and yes it is genuinely their production. The reason why it looks different from the rest of their output is because it was written by their marketing department. And that of course gives the clue as to what this is all about. Whether or not they genuinely believe there will be a disastrous collapse is not the point, though to be fair MoneyWeek is generally fairly pessimistic about the UK and has been forecasting a property market collapse for several years now. No, this is all a marketing ploy. They want to scare you into buying a subscription to their magazine. I could just say "Don't do it", but actually as this bulletin is seriously scary I think it would be more useful if I took it apart and debunked it. So here goes. T...
Read more