Thursday, March 12, 2009

A DUMMY'S IDEA ON HOW TO SOLVE THE WORLD ECONOMY CRISIS

Since we were exposed for the whole miserable week to the nauseating spins and verve of paracetamol economists who could only offer us panadols like "only good governance can save the economy" - I have come up with this dummy's idea on how to save the world's economy ! :-) 

Here's my take :- 
So,the first world countries now know what it is like to be dumped with shit loads of national debts and to be overwhelmed by the sinking feeling that they may never be able to repay their debts! For years, social activists like Sir Bob Geldorf and U2 frontman, Bono had been pleading to deaf ears, with the G-8 nations to write off the national debts of the poorest third world nations in Africa but nobody listened !  

Perhaps, one way of solving the world's economic woes is to hold a Bretton Woods III Agreement to be participated by all the world's trading nations - principally, IMF, World Bank, U.N and all the Trade Blocs to :- 

- write off all national debts of all nations,to start afresh  
-work out a credit point system to be allotted to all nations to rebuild their economies,according to the size of their GNP's e.g.1 full credit point, half of a full credit point and a quarter of a full credit point 
- 1 point is equivalent to 1 trillion USD, 1/2 point = 1/2 trillion and 1/4 point =1/4 trillion . U.S. and E.U. will have 3 points each,Japan 1 point, China 1/2 point, ASEAN 1 point, India 1/4 point,etc ( the actual ratio and formula can be fine tuned later)  
-for developing economies,the countries have to earn their credit points based on how well they are rated in terms of accountability, good governance, democratic reforms and human rights track record ! 

-for the time being, allow the U.S. to continue to print more money to free up the credit squeeze in all the World's major Banks! [This is not such a crazy idea as one of the premises of the original Bretton Woods Agreement was to give the U.S the leeway to print more money, but pegged to the gold standard, to enable the U.S. to pump monetary aid to help rebuilt the ravaged economies of the war torn countries in Europe and Asia and besides, the U.S. have been effectively,printing banana bank notes ever since Nixon pulled the USD off the Gold Standard,to fund the Vietnam War,anyway]  

- on an agreed time frame, the USD will cease to be the World's single trading and reserve currency 

- the basket of currencies, notably the USD, Euro, Yen, Yuan and Sterling pegged to a Gold Standard (or another option) will be reintroduced. 

- introduce reforms to regulate the World Banking , Financial and Trading Systems ,to make banks and financial institutions accountable for its lending and investment practices, to regulate speculation on shares, commodities and currencies(also to prevent speculative manipulations and attacks on the basket of currencies),to enforce GATT to eliminate protectionism and monopolisation,etc to prevent the manipulation of the price/supply/demand mechanism that has given rise to phantom economies that had taken the wind out of real economies. :-)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Ocho-Onda,

:-) Love your paracetamol economists tag :-).

Very good points raised but a few areas of concern namely:

* the role of Illuminati/New World Order
*impending collapse of world economies
* the gold issue...which is a big bone of contention for US bankers
* the possibility that the current economic woes is the work of a few individuals/an organization to bring about the new world order

pardon my radical views ;) but I would love to hear your views...

Thanks for the great effort in the suggestions and I honestly wish some authorities would be as earnest and sincere as you are!!

Cheers

ocho-onda said...

Hi Paula,

Perhaps ,we have to go back to the basics to look for solutions.
The present world economic crises especially the financial crises in U.S. & E.U., are the direct result of the “hidden hands” of humans behaving badly, that Adam Smith warned about - the same group of greedy bastards, parasites who expected to profit obscenely for not doing actual productive work, like making speculative manipulations and attacks on commodities, currencies and company shares, the same hands behind the steep hike in oil prices that led to hike in costs in transportation,food production, etc,etc..that took the wind out of real economies !
Perhaps what is needed is the acceptance by the so called misguided champions of capitalism that regulation is required to take keep the unseen hands in line - to give capitalism a bit of socialistic verve !
And it may be a good idea to give Keynes’ “gold standardized basket of currencies” more deliberation for possible adjustment and reapplication. It was not fully put to test as the idea was hijacked and sunk by the Americans and we now know why, don’t we, why the Americans wanted the USD to be the world’s reserve currency ! The only “negative” aspect to Keynes’ idea was the apprehension that the basket of currencies would be prone to speculative attacks - which thus underscores the necessity for regulations to control speculation !

A Global Central Bank is a strong possibility but it will work only if it entails wealth creation, not wealth domination ; distribution of wealth among all nations, not centralization of wealth among some nations !

There is hope for the world, after all ! If this dummy with only sixth form economics can think of something, I am sure Nobel Laureates like Stiglitz ,Amartya Sen, noted economists, et al, will be able to brain storm a solution to save the world from economic doom !

One thing for sure,is the need to chop off all the unseen hands !