LETTER: Reserve Bank must get the printing presses rolling
Persuade the central bank to take over Eskom’s R500bn debt
Nedlac’s dull-as-dust economic recovery plan will founder because it ignores the 25-million 18- to 65-year-old taxpayers and the unemployed. Excluding the ANC, it is commonly agreed that one priority is to pay less for electricity. So let André de Ruyter get on with it, but twist the SA Reserve Bank’s arm to take over Eskom’s R500bn debt.
Using its printing presses is strictly in line with section 225 of the constitution, which empowers the Bank to exercise its powers as central banks customarily do. In 2002 Ben Bernanke, later chair of the US Federal Reserve, explained that in an emergency “the US government has the technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes, at essentially no cost”...
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