Wednesday 21 October 2015

Younger Generation Ghanaians Must Leverage The Positive Money Movement's Ideas For Society's Benefit

"The way monetary economics and banking is taught in many - maybe most - universities is very misleading."
                                                     - Professor David Miles, Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England.

If Ghana's younger generation want to ensure that at a time when global climate change is impacting Ghana so negatively, they, their children and their children's children, can at least enjoy the same standards of living as today's population of Ghana does - if not better - then they had better take their generation's destiny into
their own collective hands.

Instead of putting their faith in the older generation of leaders that have so egregiously failed Ghanaians, because they are unable to think creatively, they would be wise to arm themselves intellectually to secure their future,  by leveraging some of the ideas underpinning the reformist campaigns, for better societies, run by radical youth-oriented organisations across the world, which are freely available online.

To understand why our economy is in such a mess, and how radical action by creative policymakers could help Ghanaian businesses thrive, instead of being destroyed by high interest rates and a free-falling currency, for example, I humbly suggest that every university student in Ghana, calls for the setting up of a Ghanaian affiliate of the International Movement for Monetary Reform, the global arm of Positive Money.org, by the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS).

If all the students in Ghana's tertiary institutions were to access the information available on the Positive Money movement's  website, they would see the sense in NUGS taking such a step - if young people in Ghana are to arm themselves with the requisite knowledge to enable them protect their own individual futures.

Positive Money is a movement for a money and banking system that works for society and not against it.

 Its members are campaigning for the power to create money to be used in the public interest, in a democratic, transparent and accountable way, rather than by the same banks, that caused the global financial crisis - to paraphrase the organisation's online website.

To students in the UK, it points out the fact that "Universities often teach ideas about money and banking that have been out of date for decades" and calls on them to "make sure academics and students in your University understand how banks really work today, and how that affects the main social and economic challenges we are facing today."

And that is the UK, today. One shudders to think what the prevailing situation in university lecture rooms where similar course subjects are taught across Ghana are like.

Hopefully, by learning more from Positive Money. org, some tertiary students in Ghana will begin to think creatively about monetary economics and the banking system - and how radical ideas by policymakers can make the national economy benefit us all: instead of policies impoverishing society, as is currently happening with stratospheric interest rates.

As a patriot who cares about our homeland Ghana's future, one's  hope, is that all younger generation Ghanaians currently studying in our country's tertiary institutions, will leverage  the Positive Money movement's radical ideas, for Ghanaian society's benefit.

 Post Script

Naturally, all the above is also meant to benefit  media entities in Ghana too.  And to help Ghana's media professionals, and those members of the younger generation who attend our tertiary institutions, to police their nation's nascent oil industry much  more effectively, one's humble advice to Ghanaian media entities, and to NUGS and its affiliates, is that they should collaborate with Johnny West's online oil industry transparency platform, OpenOil.net.

That collaboration will enable Ghanaian media professionals, as well as  student's in all Ghana's tertiary institutions,  to have the necessary tools to enable them gather information about the oil industry globally - and demand policies that will make Ghana's oil and gas deposits benefit all Ghanaians: not just a greedy and powerful few.



























No comments: