Some hon members of the official opposition have even distorted the reasons for the depreciation of the rand, probably as part of the agenda to continuously portray the country as failing. The fact is that markets were very volatile on the day of the media briefing on the economy. Traders responded to news from the United States on quantitative easing, a form of very lax monetary policy in the United States. This led to the strengthening of the dollar. Thus the rand's weakness is a natural consequence of lower commodity prices and a surging dollar.