Momodou Camara (Acca)
Continued from last week:
The timing and introduction of the new banknotes and minting of coins-(if any) is bad and ill conceived. From our financial news terminal here at Money and Markets @ Standard Newspaper, we have been looking at the latest move by the Central Bank of The Gambia.
A PROFESSIONAL CENRTAL BANK
IS A BLESSING TO ANY NATION
The Central Bank which is commonly known as the bankers’ bank have leading roles and responsibilities to play in any democratic dispensation with ours being no different.
The Central Bank is culpable like many institutions in a Post-Jammeh Era after enabling a dictator and acting in many instances unethical and going against finance rules and regulations as per international standards and norm.
The Central Bank of The Gambia is equally a crime scene and a lot should have been done to clean it before touting or entertaining any idea of printing new bank notes or minting of any coins.
But this is Gambia and here we go again while NEVER AGAIN is crying on the sidelines.
Never Again should not only be restricted to human right abuses but into financial crimes and embezzlements and others.
I have nothing against anybody who works at that bank but they have been very instrumental in aiding and abetting a dictator.
I still remember my encounters with them between 2009 and 2012 when I go there to pick up INDICATIVE RATES FORECAST for my Daily Observer Column and how they were scared to work with me to getting the Dalasi analysed.
Gambia O’ Gambia when will public servant start to act ethical and defend the Constitution and do what is right as opposed to enabling dictators and dictatorships? The jury should have been out to take stock of what went wrong at the bank and how to stop? This would have also paved the way for the staff culpable to be trimmed and set a new drive to salvage the Bank and its very strategic position in our national development.
It was indeed for the Bank to oversight or ignore all the pending in house cleansing and other pressing reforms to dwell in the printing of new notes and minting new coins (if any).
This is very sad for our new democracy and a very wrong footing where people who are financially implicated are left to be given new leases of life to wreck havoc on society and the economy.
I am of the opinion that the CBG should have done a great in housing cleaning and mopping than ignoring all reforms and to instead concentrate on the printing and minting of coins for just the shake.
Another wrong strep ad another wrong decision! This is becoming the norm of the day in New Gambia where instead of soling problems and drawing a line to move forward toward discipline, rule of law and ethical living we are going back into our old shells and compounding the problems and ignoring the voices of common sense and good governance and the rule of law.
The same things that we have buttressed about the Central Bank is what is also happening at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, MOFEA.
Like the CBG there should also be a great in house cleansing as there many dead woods in circulation there who are big minuses instead pluses to New Gambia.
The dead woods and pseudo technocrats must go.
The “doogo-doodgo’ syndrome and the promotion of corruption and deals that are for personal gains must be addressed but instead, people are promoted and give more room to break the little that is right for their own selfish ends.
Cry Gambia Cry! How long will our so-called technocrats start to act ethical and doing it right and in the process get it right? This was indeed a very wrong time to print new banknotes and mint new coins as what Jammeh looted has not been established, what went wrong there over twenty two years is not known, those who are culpable in all the wrongs that occurred there are left unsclaped and promoted. I think the CBG should have dwelled upon more important in house and material face lifting agendas than the printing of new bank notes and minting of coins! FINAL!
THE CURRENCY MARKETS
*** No significant changes since June in the indicates rates and they remain as quoted figures as per the 11th. June, 2019.
THE COMMODITY MARKETS IN
THE GREATER BANJUL AREAS
*** Market prices are as at 24th. August, 2019
GLOBAL FINANCE AND ECONOMIC NEWS
Top 5 most influential US economists
Only a handful of economists can truly claim to have played an integral role in shaping US monetary policy. These five figures changed the direction of economic theory across the world, with their works continuing to influence policy.
It’s hard to overstate how much the face of American economics has changed in the past 100 years.
Following the Great Depression, post-war Keynesian economics emerged as the dominant force in economic thought, only to be overtaken in the coming decades by the the advent of freewheeling laissez-faire economics – which is now experiencing an existential crisis of its own.
Behind these seismic shifts were the economists who have helped to shape modern America. World Finance lists the men and women who have had a significant impact in developing US economic theory and influencing policy.
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was one of the most important economic thinkers of the 20th century. Widely considered to be the figurehead for laissez-faire economic policy, he argued for free-market monetarism: the belief that the total supply of money in the economy is the key determinant of economic growth.
His theories on the free market directly opposed the dominant model of Keynesian economics, which proposed that fiscal policy was more important than monetary policy, and government spending should therefore be used to control the volatility of the business cycle.
Friedman believed such intervention inevitably led to large deficits, sovereign debts and high interest rates.
“The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy,” he wrote in his seminal work, Capitalism and Freedom.
Friedman believed the market should be left free, and monetary policy should be used to keep the money supply steady, allowing for the natural growth of the economy.
Alan Greenspan
In his 19-year-long tenure as chair of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan oversaw one of the most prosperous economic periods in American history and was heralded as an economic maestro.
An ‘inflation hawk’, Greenspan focused primarily on lowering interests rates and controlling prices to curb the risk of an economic downturn.
Today, his legacy is controversial.
The monetary policies Greenspan implemented during his tenure are thought to have played a significant role in the economic crisis of 2008.
Having slashed interest rates throughout the 2000s, it’s thought that he encouraged irresponsible lending practices, which contributed to the housing bubble and ultimately helped create the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007.
Greenspan has been reluctant to accept responsibility for the crisis, but he has acknowledged that the events of 2008 exposed a flaw in the ideology of deregulation, of which he had been a strong proponent.
“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he said at a 2008 congressional meeting.
Janet Yellen
Even today, economics remains very much a man’s world.
Since the early 2000s, the share of women studying economics in the US has declined. However, there are signs of progress that are certainly worth celebrating.
One of these is the career of Janet Yellen.
In 2014, Yellen became the first woman to hold the position of chair of the US Federal Reserve, making her arguably the most powerful economist in the world at the time.
In the same year, Forbes named her the second-most powerful woman in the world, behind only Angela Merkel, while Bloomberg included her in its 2016 Most Influential list.
In her role, Yellen made reducing unemployment her primary concern, giving it priority over curbing the risk of inflation.
Her tenure has largely been deemed a success in this regard.
According to The Washington Post, unemployment figures showed the greatest improvement since 1948 during her term as Fed chair. She is also one of the most heavily cited female research economists in the world.
***to be continued***
