LETTER: Cyril Ramaphosa needs a Roosevelt moment
We need decisiveness to clamber out of our widening hole
Thank you, John Catsicas, for proposing that President Cyril Ramaphosa establish a government of national unity to tackle the shambles he inherited (“One party cannot do it”, January 30). However, in criticising the example of President Franklin Roosevelt’s decisive first 100 days in 1933, Catsicas ignores the worldwide consequences of Winston Churchill’s irrational decision in 1925 to return to the gold standard at pre-World War 1 values.
Even Churchill, as Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, later acknowledged it was the worst decision he ever made. To support Churchill’s blunder, the “Fed” and Hoover administration in the US maintained excessively low interest rates. The New York stock market first boomed and then crashed. The rich got richer, but the poor got poorer. One of many repercussions by 1933 was the rise of Adolf Hitler...
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