Richard J Grant

 You will find my most recent articles at  https://richardjgrant.substack.com Articles from 2007 to 2021 will continue to be found here on Blogspot.

Downward-trending inflation ensures rand will not become worthless Despite the recent inflationary pulse, monetary conditions now suggest a resumption of the downward trend within a year 03 AUGUST 2021 - 10:32  RICHARD J GRANT “The rand is worth nothing,” was a regular refrain 30 years ago. It was not true then, just as it is not true now. But by 1991  ...   Continue reading at Business Day https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2021-08-03-richard-grant-downward-trending-inflation-ensures-rand-will-not-become-worthless/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1627979858

See all:  https://richardjgrant.substack.com Most recent articles:    Delta, epsilon, … short gamma: Or how we can ruin everything https://richardjgrant.substack.com/p/delta-epsilon-short-gamm a Bolt down the debt ceiling https://richardjgrant.substack.com/p/bolt-down-the-debt-ceiling

To the South African Reserve Bank:  The Viability of a Domestic Credit Card Scheme for South Africa April 2021 https://www.freemarketfoundation.com/article-view/the-viability-of-a-domestic-credit-card-scheme-for-south-africa Governments are ill-equipped for market participation Private markets, when free, are self-correcting in a way politically influenced markets cannot match 20 June 2021 https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2021-06-20-governments-are-ill-equipped-for-market-participation/

How limits to economic freedom are behind SA’s failures Business Day - 12 SEPTEMBER 2019 by RICHARD J GRANT Economics is entirely about human relationships. None of the other “scarce resources” would have any value at all without people. No resources are employed without the employment or attention of at least one person. And there is no “economy” without an exchange between at least two people. We are blessed, though, to have millions of people with whom we might find friendship and with whom we might engage in mutual service through exchange. Throughout the centuries people have engaged in trade with others near and far. Today we can buy goods made by people from almost anywhere in the world, people we are unlikely to meet. Yet, through a complex supply chain, we have a network of friendships, mostly anonymous and distant, each of which is consummated through the mutual benefits of trade. Our connection to those people makes possible the lives we lead and the stan...

Private-property rights are a litmus test of a government’s respect by Richard J Grant Business Day - October 10, 2018 It is a common temptation in the months before an election for politicians to promise the moon to those voters they fear might be attracted to the similarly lofty promises of a rival party. But it would be easier to send someone to the moon than to deliver on many of the more shameless promises made by desperate politicians. The latest attention-grabbing promise, through which South African politicians have made world headlines, is that the expropriation of land without compensation will ... READ MORE  

The Bank’s shareholders have little influence over policy, but their involvement is essential for transparency and openness , writes Richard J Grant 03 July 2018 - Richard J Grant Recent calls to "nationalise" the Reserve Bank imply that the Bank is a private entity, raising questions about the correspondence between legal definitions and the realities of control, policy making, and administration. In fact, the Reserve Bank is a statutory creation of Parliament, which also determines the main policy goals that the Bank is tasked to fulfil. More than half of the Bank’s board of directors, including all the executive directors, is appointed by the president of SA in consultation with the finance minister and a governmentally appointed panel. That panel, in turn, approves a list of candidates from which eligible private shareholders may elect the remaining board members. The private shareholders have … Continue reading at Business Day https://www.businesslive.co.za/...

We Can Do Better Than the Nashville Transit Plan by Richard J Grant   The proposed Nashville mass transit plan is not exactly what we would call a “lean startup.” With an optimistically estimated cost of $9 billion to be spent over the next 15 years, the new transit plan makes the Metro Nashville 2018 budget of only $2.2 billion look lean by comparison. If the transit money were spent evenly over 15 years, that would be $600 million per year of additional spending, a 27% increase over the existing budget. The trouble with the transit plan is ... Continue reading at the Tennessee Star http://tennesseestar.com/2018/04/02/richard-grant-commentary-we-can-do-better-than-the-nashville-transit-plan/

Water for all and water for none Mining Review     March 1, 2018            AUTHOR: Richard J Grant    www.pexels.com Cape Town is not the first city to face a drought, but it is predicted to be the first major city to run out of water. Municipal water restrictions are in effect and “Zero Day” is expected to arrive in June 2018, at which point the municipality will be unable to supply any water to its residents. Continue reading at Mining Review   https://www.miningreview.com/water-for-all-water-none-cape-town-global-context/

Water for all and water for none 27 February 2018                            Dr Richard J. Grant Cape Town is not the first city to face a drought, but it is predicted to be the first major city to run out of water. Municipal water restrictions are in effect and “Zero Day” is expected to arrive in June 2018, at which point the municipality will be unable to supply any water to its residents. The short-term supply problem is serious and although the current drought might be the most severe in the lifetime of anyone currently living, it is not said to be the worst drought ever faced by the Cape Town region. In the past, Cape Town has prospered and always survived the vagaries of the weather. People choose to live in cities for the very reason that they flourish in the presence of other productive people with whom they exchange goods, knowledge, and ...

Economic Freedom of the World: 2017 https://www.fraserinstitute.org/profile/richard-j-grant Published in September 2017

In an amusing modern twist on mercantilism, India has actually been trying to discourage gold imports. Last month, the Indian government increased its import tariffs on gold, silver, and platinum bullion imports to 10%. It also banned the import of coins and medallions in the hope that it might help stop the slide in the value of the rupee, which continued to fall to a record low last week. Consistent with the old mercantilists, India already has rules requiring that 20% of imported gold be used in exported products, such as jewelry. Last month, the government expanded the categories of gold to be subjected to this restriction. The stated objective for all this is to reduce India’s current-account deficit, which hit record levels this year. It is hard to believe that they expect this to encourage capital inflows, but apparently they do. India is not a gold producer, but even in South Africa (which is a major producer) some politici...

by  Richard J. Grant   Mark Shuttleworth is a South Africa born tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist who is perhaps best known in the rest of the world for being the second “space tourist” to spend time living and helping with experiments on the International Space Station. After a year of training and reportedly paying about US$20 million, in early 2002 Shuttleworth rode on Soyuz spacecraft to spend about eight days on the space station. Shuttleworth had the wherewithal to buy his space ride since 1999, when he sold his four-year-old Internet security company to VeriSign for about US$570 million. Since then, he has used his wealth to finance and build new companies as well as to fund charitable ventures. But living in South Africa, with its restrictions on capital movements, created problems for Shuttleworth’s international operations. This soon prompted him to take advantage ... Continue reading at FORBES   http://www.forbes.com/sites/richa...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, June 9, 2013 Bigger government tends to corrupt. Or, Who has the greater electoral need to hide the truth? by Richard J. Grant Link : http://www.tennessean.com/article/20130609/COLUMNIST0110/306090064/1007/OPINION?nclick_check=1 For other articles see also Forbes :   http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardgrant/

When Public Choice Trumps Public Finance by Richard J. Grant Published at FORBES, Sunday, May 26, 2013 with archives . Link :  http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardgrant/2013/05/26/when-public-choice-trumps-public-finance/

Published at FORBES with archives . A shortened version was published in The Tennessean , Sunday, May 12, 2013 . by Richard J. Grant When our political leaders tell us lies, we can forgive them when they do so for clear national security reasons. That is, when they lie to protect us, not merely to protect themselves. We can also forgive error when it is not due to negligence or incompetence. Uncertainty dogs our decisions at the best of times, but during an emergency requiring immediate action the uncertainty can bite hard. The official immediate response (or lack of response) to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi might have been explained away retrospectively as an attempt to minimize losses. It might be argued that fewer Americans would have died in the attacks had everyone obeyed orders to stand down. A decision based on this belief would be forgivable, unless those in charge should have made a better assessment of the full context and had a bet...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, April 28, 2013 and at FORBES with archives . by  Richard J. Grant In scientific controversies, as in political contests, the people most ignored are those who would prefer to vote for “none of the above.” In political contests, we must often take sides between the two remaining “most electable” candidates in order to minimize the damage that will ensue. But in scientific controversies we are not so constrained. That is why this column never endorsed the 2010 study by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that purported to find a sudden increase in “debt intolerance” in countries whose national debt levels exceeded 90 percent of GDP. The problem was not with the concept of debt intolerance, but rather with the portrayal of the 90 percent level as some sort of natural threshold beyond which economic growth rates would be severely curtailed. Even before reading their article, it could be guessed (correctly, as it tu...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, April 14, 2013 and at FORBES with archives . by  Richard J. Grant Throughout history, inflation’s advocates always found some reason for governments to create new money. We receive most of our incomes as money and we calculate our wealth in terms of money. When any one of us receives more money, that person rightly feels wealthier. But it does not follow that the existence of more money in general would make us all wealthier. It is true that as we have grown wealthier, historically the quantity of money has tended to grow along with that wealth. The biggest deviations from this tendency have occurred during periods of fiat-money inflation or debasement of the coinage. In each case, the consequent monetary depreciation resulted from government officials trying to get something for nothing. The newly printed money, or the new coins minted from diluted alloy, was directed toward the special purposes of the government officials and their su...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, March 31, 2013 and the full version at FORBES with archives . Richard J. Grant A reader writes, “The Center for Economic Policy and Research found that the minimum wage would be $21.72 an hour if it kept pace with increases in worker productivity.” Touting data from the same study, in a U.S. Senate committee hearing last week Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) noted that the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 falls short of the productivity indexed estimate of “about $22 an hour.” She asked, “What happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn’t go to the worker.” Sen. Warren’s question is absurd for the same reason that it would be wrong to assume that all senators share her economic illiteracy. Just as not all senators are equal, not all workers are equal. Each worker’s productivity level differs from others depending on attitudes, skill levels, and the types of tools available to the worker. Productivity is generally higher in...

Published in The Tennessean, Sunday, March 17, 2013 and the full version at  FORBES with archives. Richard J. Grant In how many states have the governors or legislators claimed that their state would be a net beneficiary of federal spending for Medicaid expansion? There are supporters of Medicaid expansion in all 50 states who do make such claims. But not everyone can be a net beneficiary of subsidization. When redistribution is the game, someone must be a net contributor. What becomes important here is that the burdens borne by such contributors are not necessarily relevant to the decision process. The question of whether Medicaid expansion brings net benefits to a state is a less-useful predictor of a state politician’s actions than is the expected effect of that expansion on the politician’s reelection chances. ... READ THE FULL ARTICLE Richard J. Grant is a Professor of Finance and Economics at Lipscomb University and a Senior Fellow at the Beacon Center of...