nextI normally don’t read market news. I feel too intellectually
challenged to make sense, for instance, of the financial headline that read:
“How the recent bear market is a testament to how well capitalism is working”. I
can only guess that it means that the rich and wealthy will turn any situation
to their advantage.
But I am intrigued by the phenomena that go with the flagging US Dollar.
The weaker the Dollar, the less poverty there is. In southern Africa, poverty
should have halved since the demise of the Dollar. One year ago, according to
the one-dollar-a-day rule, a person earning 13 Rand per day was living below the
poverty line. Now a person earning 7 Rand is no longer poor.
As a European UN employee, I am beginning to worry about my pension and
retirement savings because I earn about 30% less Euro than I did 12 months ago.
Did someone transfer my Euros to South Africa to alleviate poverty?
The UNICEF budget, measured in US Dollar, increased. That’s great. But since
about three quarter of our major donors contribute in currencies other than the
US Dollar, shouldn’t anything less than a 20 % increase in this year’s global
budget over last year’s income be considered a failure?
Many our country offices will probably show record expenditure, without having
increased their level of activity.
All of the above might be true or not. For sure, US analysts are not overly
worried, because the cheap Dollar is going to strengthen the competitiveness of
US products. In Europe – so I read - financial experts are not troubled either,
because they say Europeans produce for the European market.
I still have to see an analyst analysing the implications of the current money
market and dollar decline on people who are poor and live in the developing
countries, and proposing solutions. It perhaps doesn’t matter, because – as the
headline above seems to tell us - whatever the next market twist will be, the
poor countries will be holding the short end of the stick.
(6 February 2004)
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