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Would dropping the value of its currency be good for an economy?

Should it fall? The Financial Rand was an awkward kludge. Dreamed up by the dreary dictators of Apartheid, it was designed to prevent South Africans from taking their money out of the country. If you wanted to exchange your rand for dollars you first had to buy financial rand. Which were worth nothing.

When the financial rand went, in 1995, the new ANC government was fearful of currency instability. High interest rates of over 20% and severe limitations on exchange control held capital flight in check. Wags worried, with the rand drifting to R5 to the greenback, that South Africa would soon be the 7/11 economy; R7 to the dollar, R11 to the pound.

Long live the middleman as agents become distributors and researchers become retailers

But who is the middleman? Market researchers can be a frustrated bunch. They're always arriving after their clients have chosen their products. All retailers want is for the clever advertisers to sell as much of this stuff as possible.

Forward3D, an internet search marketing firm, has turned that model on its head and become an online retailer. In a recent Wired article the firm explained how they set about doing this.

Finding economic growth when there is no world outside

The whole of the world Imagine you were on an island. It isn’t small, has plenty of resources and lots of people. Despite this, society is divided. There is wealth, there is poverty and there is significant unemployment.

The way to change this - to create jobs and reduce poverty - is through economic growth. There must be more people producing more things, and more people must have more money to buy those things. It is a virtuous circle.

Governments around the world are doing their best to ensure that they promote production at home and consumption abroad. Yet not everyone can be a producer.

Should South Africa get a Brazilian ... model ... of business?

Get a Brazilian? As recently as 2007, Brooke Unger at The Economist posed the question, “Brazil is big, democratic, stable and rich in resources. So why is it not doing a lot better?”

With a population of almost 200 million, its economic growth rate - at 3.3% - felt anaemic next to other emerging markets. Yet Brazil was also one of the last big countries to enter recession during the credit crisis and the first of the G20 nations out of it. From having one of the most economically unequal societies in the world they are now right about average.

Safety, Stability and Regulating the Regulators

Falling, falling Bernie Madoff holds the dubious title of running the world’s largest Ponzi scheme and getting away with it for almost 20 years. Numerous analysts and journalists demanded that the US Securities and Exchange Commission investigate. The SEC cleared him of wrongdoing in 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005 and 2006. In 2008 it fell apart.

Afterwards, no-one could believe how he got away with it.

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