BANKING SECTOR
ISMAIL LAGARDIEN: VBS faced a liquidity, not identity, crisis
Political economic analyses rarely gain from some Archimedean moment of discovery. They are also not drawn from the collision of neutron stars, or some violent, deep sky event. They are derived from theoretical considerations and from actual life experiences across time. Mono-causal explanations are always fraught. So to suggest that VBS Mutual Bank is in a crisis because it is black is wrong for at least two reasons. First, VBS is in custodianship because it has broken the law, and anyway (second), the bank is not too black to fail…. Among the very many lessons that can be drawn from our political economic history, it is clear that identity politics has shaped almost every aspect of society. There is no question that since the arrival of one of the earliest transnational corporations, the Dutch East India Company at the Cape in 1652, individuals and communities have voluntarily or involuntarily been classified according to externally determined racial identities — often with an att...
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