STRAIGHT TALK
MARK BARNES: Imagine an autonomous council presiding over the fulfilment of economic ambitions
Direct equity investment, not only loan funding, in business development would be the Economic Council of South Africa’s sole mandate. Imagine that?
I arrived back from an overseas trip last week and sat down to flip through the news channels for a quick catch-up on how things were going on the home front. I found myself lurching from one crisis description to another. Glancing through the Sunday papers hasn’t helped. Our problems have spread beyond individuals. We are on the brink of systemic disintegration. I’m a firm believer in democracy and I can’t suggest an improvement on capitalism, but they both have their faults. I’m not suggesting autocracy or monarchy or any other form of government as an alternative, but the populist vote does not always deliver the best all-round leader into the most powerful position. It is now practically common cause that capitalism has failed to deal with economic inequality through the trickle-down effect from the wealthy to everyone else, through the investment of excess capital. Business is often no different. It is the individual depositors that created the banking institutions that failed ...
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