Russell Lamberti

Russell Lamberti is head of research and strategy at Sakeliga, a South African business club whose members take up their constitutional duty to resist excessive state power and build a just commercial order. He is the co-author of When Money Destroys Nations, a study of Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation.

Written with Philip Haslam, When Money Destroys Nations traces Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation from the first rounds of unrestrained printing to the collapse of the currency in 2008, largely through the accounts of people who lived through it: how they were paid, what they used as money once the notes failed, and which parts of ordinary commercial life kept working. The parallels the authors draw to developed economies are deliberate.

He founded the macro research firm ETM Macro Advisors, was chief strategist at ETM Analytics and co-founded the Ludwig von Mises Institute of South Africa. At Sakeliga he directs research for an organisation whose purpose is a commercial order that works despite the state rather than through it, which in a country with unreliable public services means practical work on procurement, infrastructure and municipal failure rather than commentary alone. He read economics at the University of Cape Town.