EDITOR'S VIEW
RON DERBY: May bad politics and a weak rand be things of the past in 2019
What comes next year? After years of anxiety over SA's future, this question shouldn't hold as much worry as it did in the past. While the economy is some miles off growth rates above 3%, which we should have been pushing were it not for our bad politics of the past decade, there is a very real prospect that US growth may cool next year. Perhaps it's a bit odd for me to be hoping to see the world's largest economy's growth ease, but its bullishness over the past decade - especially the past five years - has been rather damaging for emerging-market nations such as ours. A strong US economy has fed into tighter monetary policy in that country and, in turn, a strong dollar. That dollar and, admittedly, the bad politics we've seen throughout emerging markets have battered those markets' prospects. Assured by US economic recovery after the 2008 global recession, the Federal Reserve System first increased rates in December 2015 after slashing them to near zero to support that recovery. Si...
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