Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

aljazeera.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 407 posts

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#301

Post by Gustomaximus »

edgyquant wrote: post #242
happyjack wrote: post #239

It is really interesting that the folks running the show in the USA are able to export a lot of the problems with the $ to the rest of the world. Caribbean nations know this first hand, and have given in to the peg. I worked in oil, and now work in an industry where I sell parts worldwide. I'm not a trained economist, but deal with currency and transfer pricing with labor and goods. Couple things: what a lot of peopl…

>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...

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#302

Post by chaosbolt »

danielschonfeld wrote: post #255
gtirloni wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you advocating for printing more USD? edit: not sure why I'm being downvoted for asking a relevant question

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 Blackrock who gets to decide who gets what based on ..weird values), inflation is a tax on the people already, and they're the ones paying back that loan, and the poor countries get poorer because their dollar reserves aren't enough to buy things from the US and other countries who trade in USD.

So thinking QE on that scale is good is either being a contrarian for the sake of ego or believing everything you hear on CNBC.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#303

Post by sbaiddn »

Ekaros wrote: post #31
peter-m80 wrote: post #26

Honest question: Can someone explain me why using gold instead of dollars to buy oil isn't the same as sell gold for dollars and use those dollars to buy oil?

For two parties to transact in dollars they need either to physically hold large amounts of dollars. Or have access to some shared ledger that is accounting system where transactions can happen. Say A, B, C account. A sells gold and get dollars from account B to account A. And now they can buy oil from owner of account C. But who owns and runs these accounts or the transactions between them? One option is SWIFT syste…

"One option is SWIFT system. Which Russia got excluded in some capacity from. As such it is clear that system cannot be trusted. "

Ya, kicking them off SWIFT was pretty stupid. The spooks and the economists were super pissed.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#304

Post by danielschonfeld »

unboxingelf wrote: post #294
danielschonfeld wrote: post #255

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…

> in the past 2 years alone the US has printed nearly 80% of USD in existence

Often cited and incorrect metric. The fed changed how the count M2 I believe because they started paying interest on reserves during their response to the COVID crisis. Either way the chart often cited showing an increase in M2 is not telling the whole story, namely that not nearly enough USD has been “printed” to satisfy world hunger and needs. (Think, if dollar was a plenty then why is DXY at the close to the second highest in history. Demand outpaces supply.)

You can Google it. Have fun! While you’re at it also Google Triffin Paradox. Read about trade deficits as they relate to a country who’s currency is a global reserve currency.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#305

Post by [deleted] »

georgeplusplus wrote: post #299
kasey_junk wrote: post #295

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…

China demands payment in useless currency. What part of this narrative makes sense to you?

[deleted]

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#306

Post by blumomo »

devnulll wrote: post #289

> 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.

Very similar story in Cameroon. Sole refinery broken since 2019 [0].

Now it’s been imported again…

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/cameroon-refinery-idUSL8N23A...

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#307

Post by yogthos »

happyjack wrote: post #239

It is really interesting that the folks running the show in the USA are able to export a lot of the problems with the $ to the rest of the world. Caribbean nations know this first hand, and have given in to the peg. I worked in oil, and now work in an industry where I sell parts worldwide. I'm not a trained economist, but deal with currency and transfer pricing with labor and goods. Couple things: what a lot of peopl…

> no one wants yen or a currency from a dictatorship

meanwhile in the real world https://www.tbsnews.net/world/china-more-democratic-america-...

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#308

Post by pphysch »

nojito wrote: post #293
ShivShankaran wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because it's not the case at all. de-dollarization is picking up rapidly across most neutral/anti-US countries and this is the start of it. China is trading with Russia in yuan and even India has allowed small players to bypass USD and trade in INR directly https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-allows-internation... Something I have been shouting hoarse is that this war in Ukraine is going to have multi-generatio…

USD in Forex is well over $5T per day USD in oil is barely $3T per year Nothing external will ever pressure USD without the United States having collapsed first.

> Nothing external will ever pressure USD

Not completely true. The current crisis is driven by foreign buyers not being enthusiastic about buying more US debt. The current inflation crisis is directly related to the large amount of price support for US debt provided by the US Fed in 2020-21.

US govt is essentially holding foreign creditors hostage. If you try to move away from US debt, they will just print more dollars and devalue all your (and everyone else's) assets. So the non-Western world (90% of humans) very strongly wants to dedollarize as smoothly as possible. US debt is extremely toxic, which isn't an obvious fact if you look at the surface only.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#309

Post by sedeki »

ponow wrote: post #290
selectodude wrote: post #278

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…

May I ask if you think price stability is of any benefit for a given currency at all? If not, why not?

My intention is to justify inflation from this end.

Re: Ghana plans to buy oil with gold instead of dollars

#310

Post by Gustomaximus »

shyn3 wrote: post #266
avidphantasm wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did we invade Libya?

Libya moved away from the USD and got destroyed. Ghadaffi wanted the African countries to unite and get away from the standard. The American imperialists shut that down fast.

Note is was USD and potentially more importantly French African Franc under threat, as Europe was very involved in this.

And this likely one of several other reasons like ensuing oil/gas flowed to west. And his history of supporting terrorism. Wider arab spring and hope to remove dictatorships.

Post reply on HN