Ghana joins protests over gold sales

[Rob Schaap]

I take your point, Chris - but it's a damned diffcult call - impoverishing
Africans by supporting their economic marginalisation in the hope that a
continental support mechanism involving all nation-states might ensue is
placing an awful lot of faith in a system where clout is ever more a
function of one's relevance to the global economy.  I, too, was under the
impression gold was on its way to the status of lapis lazuli, but Doug and
not a few others have argued we won't know this until a scary market dip
comes along and does not culminate in a flight to gold.

It reminds me of that famous line of Keynes's - Brad has it as his e-mail
signature - about long-run predictions being far too easy a task for
economists ('in the long run we're all dead').  Africa is absolutely
fraught right now - AIDS, famine and barbarism stalk the continent - to
take yet another leg of this faltering stool is just possibly to invite a
calamity of unprecedented proportions.

Only guessing, mind.

Cheers,
Rob.


>Sympathetic though I normally feel to political and economic demands of
>Africa I do not think we should support this demand, in material forwarded
>from the  list STOP-IMF
>
><stop-imf at essential.org>
>
>
>Hanging on to a declining metal for the sake of some jobs is a reform that
>is quite reformist. Economist in fact.
>
>The political gain of demonetising gold world wide moves the agenda forward
>for the control of the world economy and is far more progressive.
>
>Better to intensify demands for a development fund for the whole of Africa,
>funded by measures such as a currency exchange transfer tax.
>
>
>Chris Burford
>
>London