WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-09-21 Time: 13:00:04 Posted By: News Poster
By Mariam Isa
Johannesburg – SA PLUNGED 12 places in a global economic freedom index this year, ranking 82nd among 141 countries and jurisdictions, the Free Market Foundation said yesterday.
That took the country’s slide in the past decade to 40 places from 42, it said. “This a matter of grave concern,” said Leon Louw, executive director for the think-tank in southern Africa.
World experience showed that the direction of change was more important than an economic system, he said. “After 1994, the African National Congress steered SA in the right direction, and we were rewarded with steady growth after a generation of stagnation.
“The 2010 report shows that there has been deterioration in every component, which is potentially catastrophic. Unless we return to increasing freedom, we can expect a decline and another round of stagnation,” Mr Louw said.
The index’s components are size of government; legal structures and security of property rights; access to sound money, freedom to trade and regulation of credit, labour and business. All declined in SA last year.
Mr Louw said the main reason for SA’s plunge was a swathe of new regulations, such as the National Credit Act, the Consumer Protection Act, and rules for financial bodies.
“The introduction of massively increased regulations … makes us less economically free,” he said.
Mr Louw was very critical of SA’s failure to lift exchange controls on the rand, which has rallied more than 6% against a trade-weighted basket of currencies so far this year. The trend is widely seen as a blow to the competitiveness of local exports on global markets.
“We haven’t lifted exchange controls like most sensible countries and this would be the ideal time to do it, while the rand is strong,” he said.
“The government’s left hand doesn’t know what the other left hand is doing,” he said. There were no “measurable” benefits to the economy from exchange controls, just additional costs.
The report said global economic freedom went through its first downturn in a quarter of a century last year. On a scale of one to 10, the average score fell to 6,67 in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, from 6,74 in 2007.
Hong Kong kept the highest level of economic freedom worldwide, with a score of 9,05 . Other top scorers were Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Chile, the US, Canada and Australia.
Zimbabwe got the lowest score, followed by Myanmar, Angola and Venezuela. But two African countries notched up the biggest rises in economic freedom this year : Ghana, which climbed to 7,17 from 3,27, and Uganda, up to 7,15 from 4,27.
This year’s report included new research examining the effect of economic freedom on unemployment rates. “The results suggest that high levels of economic freedom lead to reduced joblessness,” it said.
If SA’s government increased economic freedom, that would be one of the best ways of reducing its high rate of unemployment, particularly after the global recession, said Temba Nolutshungu, a foundation director based in Cape Town.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 21 September 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201009210656.html?viewall=1