Limpopo Leader - University of Limpopo

21 20021 200WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS21 20021 20020 40020 20020 00019 800tTHERE’S A WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS GOING ON. Everybody knows that. Our television screens and newspapersare full of it. We’ve all heard about such things as sub-prime lending, credit crunches, collapsing banks,economic recessions, tens of thousands of job losses, increasing numbers of home repossessions. There havebeen sombre recollections of the Wall Street crash of 1929 when not a few investors jumped from skyscrapersrather than face disastrous stock exchange losses. If we’re students of economics we may even have enteredinto the current philosophical arguments symbolised by Adam Smith, the 18th century father of laissez faire,on one side, and on the other Maynard Keynes, the arch proponent, after the Great Depression of the 1930s,of state intervention into and control of national economies. But what does it all mean – and not least forordinary South Africans? In the pages that follow, some answers emerge from the Turfloop campus of theUniversity of Limpopo.19 60019 40019 20019 000To begin with, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Tito Mboweni, is an honorary professor in the Departmentof Economics and at the end of March he was on campus to deliver his annual lecture. He had some wisethings to say to a packed lecture hall. As counterpoint, the caretaker director of the School of Social Sciences,Professor Sello Sithole, examines the socio-political consequences of the economic recession in South Africa.Both these contributions make for essential reading for those interested in the economic mysteries andanomalies that stalk abroad in the world today.18 80018 600P A G E 1 0