"Utopias" - A Kweku Ananse Short Story By Kofi Thompson

In years past, long before market capitalism swept all before it and conquered the world, Ghana’s politicians would never have dreamt of spending zillions shoring up an overvalued currency that was fast losing its shine.

Their cure for that ailment was called “devaluation” – which was said to be very good for Ghana because it stimulated exports. Life was pretty simple then - and intelligent leaders like Dr. Busia, would rather have pumped the nearly one billion dollars that his political progeny spent shoring up the new Ghana cedi, merely to save their faces, into rural development: in order to secure the votes of rural Ghana for generations to come.

Those were the halcyon days, when some of us cut our teeth as teenagers watching markets in far-off lands, for fun, as a hobby.

Today, in the age of Alice-in-Wonderland economics, we are graying grandparents and although our teeth are falling out, we are still watching markets, both at home and abroad – and are appalled by the opaque way our previous leaders ran the economy, when they held power. But one digresses.

There now follows my Kweku Ananse story, with a moral in it, for those who rule our nation today.

Warren Buffet, the famed sage of Omaha, once said that it is when the tide is out that those who have been swimming without their trunks on can be seen.

In "Nudetopia," a luxury biosphere where worn-out ex-tycoons from the financial services sectors of the Western world go to be rejuvenated in Olympic-sized swimming pools, by delectable bimbos of different races, cameras are banned completely.

Thus, the security people in “Nudetopia” spend countless hours searching for cameras.

Their brief is to make sure that confidence does not evaporate from "Nudetopia" amongst burnt-out former investment bankers and hedge-fund managers looking for fun in troubled times and anxious to remain virile.

Confidence is a pretty important intangible commodity to crooks in the markets - so they like to keep up appearances in “Nudetopia” come what may.

"Samboland" is a corner of Africa in the City of London, where African versions of the US fraudster extraordinaire, Bernie Maddox, operate under the radar-screens of the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA).

There, clueless African regimes are ripped-off on a regular basis – by African crooks running investment boutiques in the UK that call themselves funny names, such as: “Impala,” “Tireko,” and “Sambo.”

They are registered to underwrite bonds and sell other financial products by the FSA – and act in London for many poor African nations (also run mostly by nasty and brutal crooks), which they charge usury rates (in fees and interest charges) to act as “transaction advisors” for.

Thus, bonds for example, are issued by these masters of the universe for governments and business entities in some of the nations in sub-Saharan Africa.

Those financial instruments are usually issued at “Tireko” rates – meaning those nations end up paying zillions directly to the “Tirekos” for sovereign bonds, corporate bonds for state-owned enterprises, etc., etc., (some with rates of interest as high as 17 per cent!), which the “Tirekos” then repackage and quietly sell on to clueless, supposedly-clever blond blue-eyed investors, in London and elsewhere, at more sensible rates, with the coupon difference being pocketed by the “Tirekos.”

Quiet a nice way to make easy and fast money in a global recession – if you are a well-connected African crook running a financial services company in the UK, with local lackeys spread across sub-Saharan Africa: happy and willing to bring you business regularly.

But if you are a “Tireko,” a “Sambo,” or “Impala” raking in zillions in London from desperately poor African nations, you had better pray that the spirits of the ancestors of those you rip off regularly never catch up with you in the end!