Thank you to the Economist for the invitation to deliver the welcome keynote address at “The Investment Agenda Johannesburg 2015”. The first part of the title of the Investment Agenda, “No Man Is An Island”, is taken from a poem of John Donne. To quote a little further from that poem: “No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main…” This expression can be related not only to our personal lives, but lends itself particularly well to the world of financial markets and economics. Each part of the economic and financial system, while separate, is driven by similar factors with many interdependencies. For example, the global financial crisis of 2008/09, started off as a crisis in the housing sector, but quickly broadened to money markets and other areas of the financial sector