Crisis in Turkey 'a warning to SA'
Meddling with central bank a recipe for disaster - Kganyago
The central cause of Turkey's financial crisis, which has fed fears it would spread to other emerging-market economies such as SA, was credibility, said Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago. The lesson for South Africans is those "who think that they would like to meddle in a central bank, they only need to look at Turkey and see what the consequences of meddling with a central bank are," he said in an interview with the Business Times. Turkey's deepening currency crisis is largely self-inflicted and centres on the concentration of decision-making in the hands of its populist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has taken over monetary policy from the country's central bank with his unorthodox economic views.Erdogan, who recently won re-election, believes that high interest rates are inflationary, so despite a currency that has weakened 35% this year the central bank hasn't raised rates. Raising rates is the only tool central banks have to protect the value of a currency. "You can...
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