By Kokroko Kwasi Kokuro Oppong-Agyare
The US dollar makes African leaders look unintelligent, useless, and there’s absolutely nothing which they will do that can help fix the problems US dollars pose to them. Sad!
The tactics the US plays in the world economy and its currencies makes one wonder why the whole world is adamant towards US since 1971. Africans, particularly Ghanaians, will never understand why they have so much natural resources and yet complain they’re still very poor.
Fact, all our MONEY and wealth is determined by world market prices in dollars, of which no African leader has a say, and can never price any of its natural resources, particularly GOLD (which is real MONEY) even in their own currencies.
Conversely, when it comes to the Western market, there are no world market prices on the products they manufacture such as mobile phones, cars and TV sets. It seems as though we have tried all means to fight and rescue our local currency from the dollar with salient strategies, yet, no concrete results to show for the fight.
Psychologically, no leader in the world will sit down for its currency, which has direct effects on the economy, to become so useless, causing its citizenry suffer untold hardships.
US currency, world’s problem
When I deep-dive into the mischievous games US Federal Reserve (FED) plays on the world, I weep bitterly about my dear nation Ghana and its leaders. I now understand why the Treasury Secretary, John Connally, said in 1971: “The dollar is our currency, but it is your problem”.
For as far as the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency, it will be the nightmare to every economy in Africa.
This is because the Federal Reserve, which is owned and controlled by private individuals who print Fiat US dollars for the world trade, mostly lower interest rates and the results are more fiat dollar supply (which is debt) and indirectly causes inflation to rise for most nations.
High interest rates mean fiat US dollar’s value goes up and the price of import for most nations goes up as well, which causes high inflation, unless those nations have enough US dollars to defend their currencies.
The results of the actions by FED caused the British pound’s fall to its lowest since 1985 against the dollar; the euro is at its 20-year low and my dear nation Ghana’s currency, good Lord have mercy!
At the peak of all this, the only solution to save the world’s economy against the US dollar is cryptocurrency. The FED cannot control crypto and it can never be the only world reserve cryptocurrency for trade worldwide.
Cryptocurrency
I watched a group of central bankers from different nations discussing cryptocurrency at a conference in Paris last two weeks. Among the panellists were the heads of the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank and anyone who actually understands crypto can describe that as hilarious.
Naturally, they started with the old anti-crypto tropes: “the lack of transparency” and how criminals use crypto.
These are completely laughable points. Criminals use currencies as well. Should we cancel those too?
Central banks are among the most prominent regulators in banking, yet have completely overlooked a fractional reserve system where commercial banks are only required to keep 10 per cent (or less) in reserve.
In other words, these people are perfectly fine that commercial banks gamble most of their customers’ money on the latest investment fad of the day. It is fine to be outraged when a few stable coins are not 100 per cent reserved. More importantly, they should be equally outraged that commercial banks are not even 10 per cent reserved.
The biggest laughs, though, took place when these central bankers started speaking on rolling out their own digital currencies. The FED wants to create a Dollar Coin and the European Central Bank wants a Euro Token. This is rib-cracking funny, given that these people have no clue about technology!
The Federal Reserve’s most important payment system, Fed ACH, which processes over 50 million transactions per day, still takes two to three days for payments to clear. It’s so outdated, it’s as if they’re still sending satchels full of cash via Post Express.
It’s also ridiculous that the people who have failed in every possible aspect of their responsibility think that they’re qualified to administer a brand-new financial system.
Inflation
These central banks failed to anticipate inflation. They failed to recognise it. They failed to do anything about it for more than a year, and now they are hell-bent on causing a recession. They have pretty much been a complete disaster, yet now they want to be in charge of crypto too.
Are these people serious? To me, this is really one of the great benefits of crypto and of real assets. Holding paper money is ultimately a vote in favour of central bankers, an expression of confidence that they know what they are doing.
Personally, I have little confidence in these people, and that is why I think it makes sense to hold other types of assets that they do not control, including real assets (real estate, commodities, productive businesses, etc.). Let’s decentralise crypto assets and digitalise our cocoa beans!
The household of Americans is drowning in a debt of US$16.15 trillion in the second quarter of 2022 alone and this keeps increasing every day. This tells me, we Ghanaians are far better off psychologically related to debt, which will help our mental health.
The very life of the “superpower” runs solely on debts and more debt! How many Ghanaians buy cars, houses and many more on debt? Ghana is poor in debt (dollars) but extremely rich in MONEY (Gold).
No clue
If the West took US$155 billion worth of our Money (Gold) within the last five years for free and we are at IMF looking to borrow US$3 billion debt, it is so clear that the elites in Ghana have no clue the differences between MONEY (GOLD), cash which is the receipt of Gold and currency, which is just fiat based on nothing but paper and ink.
Our educational system from the West taught us that money is money, cash is money and currency is money but as a matter of fact, J. P. Morgan was right by saying in 1912 that, “GOLD is the only MONEY and anything else is credit.”
Why do we leave our MONEY behind and disgracefully go to the IMF for credit (SDR)? We have been wrongly educated from the West to leave our money to always come for credit (Dollars).
Then in Ghana, the elites must give only one reason why the West will educate them about currency and its superior
workings, so that we the Africans can overtake them. Oh, just think about it. If not, look at the impressive CVs of our leaders from 50 years, and still they can never solve the currency related problems.
The solution is with a home grown leader. Trust me on this!!! No country in the world can help Ghana but Ghanaians.
