331–340 of 407 posts
> Ghana produces crude oil, but it has relied on imports for refined oil products since its only refinery shut down after an explosion in 2017 This seems like the core of the story. Nearly 6 years after that incident, Ghana has been unable to repair the factory and refine it's own oil. My assumption is the tale behind that is tragic and timeless corruption.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course the dollar has devalued. That's the whole idea. It's supposed to. At a modest rate of 2% inflation, $1 should be worth 50 cents after 35 years. That's literally how currency works.
That's a policy choice, one which is non-obvious and requires serious justification. Why should people be incentivized to spend their money, morally? The mandatory inflation basically is saying, "spend your money or we'll spend it for you". How does this robbery encourage social mobility and the building of generational wealth, exactly? It's one thing to give handouts to people, and quite another to rob them. It's mo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally speaking yes. If from your question I deduce that you’re worried about how much we already “printed” then do some googling over why the common citing of growth of M2 chart is interpreted wrong. Spoiler - we didn’t print nearly as much as you think we did. And we generally haven’t even scratched the surface of how much more a normal growth of the currency since 2008 was needed. The question that needs to be…
>we didn’t print nearly as much as you think we did You do realize that it's not actually just printed and given to people right? The fed buys government bonds, the people through taxes pay the interests on this loaned printed money. So, the money is printed and loaned to the government, the government uses this printed money to make the rich richer (supporting big companies so the economy doesn't crash, through Blac…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Chinese are demanding Russia trade in yuan because the Russian currency has, through a series of impressive self owns, become completely useless. If the Russian position was even a little less weak it wouldn’t fly because Russians don’t want yuan for the same reason Chinese people don’t, it’s an illiberal currency unsuitable for trade. That’s getting worse not better, because there is a moderate chance if China r…
> because the Russian currency has, through a series of impressive self owns, become completely useless. Huh. Checks forex rates . Not worthless, USD/RUB went from 100 to 60. It's worth 167% what it was before Feb 2022. How do you explain that? So many people forget that the value of a currency derives from considerations of supply and demand. When Russia said it demands to be paid in Rubles for some commodities, the…
I am sorry for sounding like a jerk, but you don't understand the current situation in Russia. Country is under heavy sanctions and they are mountaining more and more every month. A good chunk of sovereign reserves are just frozen. Country is net exporting not because it has that much goods to offer, but because it cannot import anything. Yuans and rupees (and YTL) are spent immediately to buy anything from China or India or Turkey. "Anything" like on anything not on US/EU blacklist, because of course China, India and Turkey are more interested in avoiding secondary sanctions than profit from trade with official terrorist-state.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally speaking yes. If from your question I deduce that you’re worried about how much we already “printed” then do some googling over why the common citing of growth of M2 chart is interpreted wrong. Spoiler - we didn’t print nearly as much as you think we did. And we generally haven’t even scratched the surface of how much more a normal growth of the currency since 2008 was needed. The question that needs to be…
Spoiler - we didn’t print nearly as much as you think we did. And we generally haven’t even scratched the surface of how much more a normal growth of the currency since 2008 was needed. What are you talking about? Aside from the indoctrinated belief that money printing is good and normal, in the past 2 years alone the US has printed nearly 80% of USD in existence. Our debt to GDP is over 130%. If by “normal” you mean…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>They may be seeing a three letter agency from the USA very soon Yeah this shows how little your credibility is. Idiotic meme that was never true
2 points. 1) Please keep this site as a place for discussion and throw information rather than insults. 2) A three letter agency seems believable to me. Do you remember what happened in Libya 2011? It is believed this was in a large part due to their planned move to an afro dollar. https://theecologist.org/2016/mar/14/why-qaddafi-had-go-afri...
I think it's really scary that the powers at be can destroy your 6 million person country overnight.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has everything to do with USD dominance. Ghana is shouting out loud I can’t get my hands on USD. They’re echoing what the global market in general has been pricing. Now true, having your product be a hot commodity everybody wants is good for business but there’s only so much of that before your competitor starts offering a more readily available product. Pepper that with some morally objectionable stances the US h…
> Ghana is shouting out loud I can’t get my hands on USD. That doesn't make sense - just take some gold, and buy USD. Is there some physical shortage of paper or something?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> even though the international settlement system was meant to be apolitical “Apolitical” does not mean “usable by any party for any transaction.” SWIFT policy prohibits using its system in support of illegal activity [0], and the settlement system has been denied to sanctioned countries before [1]. [0]: https://www.swift.com/about-us/legal/compliance-0/fighting-i... [1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2018/11/5/w…
Illegal according to whom?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And if I held a gun to your head and demanded that you accept kasey_junk bucks? China has some of the strictest currency controls in the world. To the point if you are doing treasury operations for an international business there you can’t use your normal financial rails to accomplish day to day tasks like manage payroll. No one, including Chinese citizens, want to keep their cash there. For corporations this manifes…
And if I held a gun to your head and demanded that you accept kasey_junk bucks? I don't believe that's whats happening though. The idea that Russia is holding a gun to china's head just doesn't make sense. Russia and China are part of the BRICS economic treaty, and this treaties main purpose is to see the dollar dethroned. I live in China FWIW and I don't see any of what you describe
You are absolutely right, because it is the other way around. China doesn't want to have problem with US and EU for dealing with Russia in USD or EUR, so it demands Russia to trade in yuans. Russia is therefore forced to sell its' oil and gas for yuans for the price set by China. The only leverage out of that situation is to trade with India and Turkey in rupees and liras, but India and Turkey can't offer lots of goods only China can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Illegal according to whom?
Illegal according to the United States, who regulates the SWIFT system and is the issuer and owner of all US Dollars. This isn't complicated.