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Opinions of Wednesday, 26 October 2011

Columnist: Arthur, Patrick Kobina

Flawed Monetary System is the Cause of Global Economic Crises 2

Is it a mere coincidence, that the era where the world is filling up with empty companies, making money on money several times over, there is rampant recessions? It is time to change this disorder before it is too late.**

*Making Money Off Money, Making Money Off Money, Making Money Off Money: *

Money is like the electric current flowing through and turning a motor, making money off money is a form of short-circuiting the current flow that eventually grinds the essential motor of the economy to a halt. Recession and great economic depressions are a consequence of the flawed monetary system. If you have watched the movie ‘Wall Street” then you know well, investment bankers, bond traders (now called casino bankers), manipulate the system to make millions of dollars without doing any actual productive work. Their activities actually decimate the value created by honest labor.

The time has come for governments to set maximum income together with the minimum income levels that are set for low earners. Every aspect of life has a strict minima and maxima and so it is absurd to have an income system that is capped at the bottom but not at the top. When incomes are not capped at the top, honest workers are robbed of their hard earned salaries. It is time to buy a music and movie CD for 20 cents and not 20 Euros, watch a European champions league match between Manchester United and Barcelona and not pay 100 Euros but 1 Euro, attend a U2 concert and pay 50 cents. This will be enough to pay their cost and give everyone a normal wage just like everyone else.

We need to have the era where everyone on this planet will earn just what is sufficient for his or her life to prevent the distortion of the economic system. What is the value of a billion dollars in a briefcase when an extreme drug resistant pathogenic bacterium is snatching a life away but no effective drugs to treat? The world must appreciate the blessing of people like doctors, research scientist, engineers, who are not consumed by the deadly habit of hoarding cash but rather devote their life, talent and energy to provide the essentials of life. Can you imagine a bottle of aspirin costing 100,000 dollars? Can an important and emergency surgical operation cost 20 million dollars? It is unfortunate to have a world where the essential things in life are forced to be as cheap as possible whereas the non-essential like playing golf or football is infused with so much money. Unchecked pumping of money into wrong places leads to distortion of the world economic system; it is time to have cheap entertainment, sports, banking services and a capped earning for everyone.

*Flawed Monetary System is a Great Accessory to Crime and Illicit Trade:*

Systems like air transport are very efficient but it is also fragile and vulnerable, since the September 11th attacks, everyone has to do away with some comfort and privacy so that absolute safety and security can be assured. There is the need to design a much more intelligent monetary system for the world that does not leave it as vulnerable to manipulation by perverted people as is currently happening. Honest and productive majority are suffering from this flawed system.

The flaws may not be intentional but rather exploitation by perverted people to afford themselves easy life. Drug and human trafficking by gangs and cartels is possible due to the loopholes in the monetary system. Illegally acquired wealth is difficult to trace; it becomes visible to law enforcement agencies only when the amounts involved are huge and the transfer route is used for a long enough time.

Many countries have also resorted to excessive borrowing due to the flaws in the monetary system that does not tag an amount of money with its real life value. Many national treasuries just print more and more money as a measure of resolving recessions, making borrowing very cheap. This goes on for so long; people refuse to be productive because there is money somehow. Cheap money has allowed countries to consume what they have not produced, robbing future generation to pay for today’s needs.

*Return to Value Creation; Banking Jobs for Value-Creating Professionals on leave:*

The time it takes to train a fully-fledged heart surgeon, engineer or a research scientist, not less than 15 years, by the time surgeon or a scientist is independent and begins to earn a full salary, they are already 35-39 years old. In their entire career, they will not earn more than 10 million dollars; compare that to the David Beckhams or Tiger Woods’ whose endorsement deals alone can fetch them more than 20 million dollars per year. This is immoral by all measure, we are telling the young people to focus on these non-essential careers because society has decided to throw money there foolishly. Throwing money away on such people is an insult to the face of people committed to difficult but essential career options at end of the day we all shop for the same market.

Returning to real value creation and providing incentives for people to do so is fundamental and existential. How can the world economic system value the talent of a surgeon/scientist/engineer a million times lower than a football/golf player, which is non-essential? It is also time to automate financial services, accounting, and get everyone back to work. There are many real problems to be solved and I shudder to think about the real difference financial institutions make to our lives on the day after major disaster.

In places like Ghana, the dream job of most people is to work in a bank, whilst many social amenities remain in short supply. Humanity is protected and prospers when many honest people dedicate themselves to training and skills acquisition in all the essential areas of life. Honest people are busy working out how the increasing world population is going to cope when fossil fuels are depleted, portable water supply by turning the sea into fresh water. It is proper for all such people to find sufficient livelihood from their honest labor and ingenuity. The current world economic order will force such creative and ingenious people to use their abilities to acquire easy money just to survive. Abandon the long tedious road to benefit humanity because they lose out and are made poorer by this perverted capitalist system.

*Money is like Manure, its only valuable when spread out to make to the plants grow:*

This task is for the United Nations, create a global system that allows unique tag for everyone with his or her career, his or her productivities and his or her earnings. This way taxes can be stratified to make sure that people who make easy money pay a lot more for goods and services than hardworking, honest people like teachers, nurses, researchers, doctors, engineers etc.

---------------------------- Patrick Kobina Arthur (PhD), parthur14@gmail.com http://pakar1-corner.blogspot.com/