OUTSIDE VIEW
ANDILE KHUMALO: The Reserve Bank is already steering jobwards as best it can
It is no small feat to have kept inflation this moderate for this long, in such uncertain times
Reading the Reserve Bank's monetary policy committee (MPC) statement this week sent me flashbacks of sitting in a lecture hall in the Shepstone building of the then University of Natal, with a young and rather bright-eyed Adrian Saville waxing lyrical about the relationship between inflation and interest rates. I can almost hear him say: "When interest rates are lowered, more people are able to borrow more money, and that means more consumers have more money to spend, causing the economy to grow. Goods and services are in demand, and inflation increases. The opposite happens when interest rates rise. Consumers borrow less, the economy slows down, demand for goods and services slows and inflation decreases."
Back then, my friends and I could recite this in our sleep, notwithstanding that we had no clue what it meant. Until now...
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