Research Projects

We need to better understand the architecture of our financial eco-systems from a critical macro-finance perspective (Gabor, 2020). Prof. Mark Swilling is the Coordinator of the NPC’s Finance Task Team. The NPC has approved a TOR for the project, which will commence in December 2023 with a workshop of experts, together with Steffen Murau. Murau’s seminal work on the architecture of the Eurozone’s financial eco-system is premised on a methodology inspired by critical macro-finance, in particular the proposition that all balance sheets are connected together into a vast unmapped complex adaptive system (Murau, 2020). Every asset is someone else’s liability, and every liability is someone else’s asset. Based on this simple proposition, he compiled his highly insightful analysis. We will do the same for the SA financial system. When done, we will provide the first truly satisfactory explanation for the persistence of inequality since democratisation in 1994, namely that the rules of the game have enabled capital to be allocated in a way that has undermined rather than reinforced the democratic project. The same logic applies to the global economy – a just transition will only be possible if the global financial system is radically transformed. Many are calling for this now. This kind of analysis is an important contribution to the debate.