MARCH ON WALL STREET

OCCUPY WALL STREET

         The twin Towers at the World Trade Center collapsed and our

Commander-in-Chief finally got the Al Qaeda Leader, OSAMA BIN LADEN at

his palace of hiding in Pakistan.  Recently, he also got the

second-in-command Al Alwaiki in Yemen. The brave ones of the NAVY SEAL

landed in Pakistan and accomplished the heroic job. The high-tech DRONE

did the job in Yemen.

           

            Wall Street is a far different story. The marriage in our

capitalist free market economy between the Main Street and the WALL

STREET has come to a collapse, not by a velvet divorce, but by

inability of any power to stop our young men and women by application of

brutal force. Americans have marched many times before in Washington

for Civil Rights and for Peace, and now Wall Street for an end to

economic exploitation.   The march on Wall Street has continued for more

than two weeks, and has resulted in the arrest of about one thousand

people whose only offence has been participation in a peaceful march at

a public place in the City of New York.  The cry for war against the

exploitation of Wall Street has now reached scores of cities and

towns and suburbs) across the United States.

            The rule of one percent for the one percent by the one percent

cannot continue, the Nobel-Laureate economist George Stieglitz has

loudly proclaimed. His voice echoed by voices of thousands of our men

and women, students, unemployed youth, homeless men and women, joined

by workers, teachers and so many others from the halls of education and

research, hospitals and medical institutions. How could denial of any

and all mechanical instrument stop the voice that was heard by the

world?

            Let us recall ENRONISM how the leaders of capitalism

deliberately drove sharp nails into the heart of capitalism. Sub-prime

mortgages, creation of innovative financial products - junk bonds,

derivatives, hedge funds, added so much fuel to irrational exuberance of

Wall Street. They refused to accept any social control. To put Bernie

Madoff in prison has proved not to be a sufficient answer, even if it

was a necessary step.

            The system merits a total overhaul. Wall Street and Main

Street together constitute the village, and the people of the

village must share the village's prosperity. All the people must be

heard. Our noble and ambitious commitment to democracy has been reduced

to our submissive adherence to plutocracy. Men and women in uniform have

been asked to give their lives to defend and ensure the democratic

values in all continents.

            Let us listen to the Oracle of Omaha. The Buffet Rule must be

the rule of those who have made so much in Wall Street. They could

have made it only because the Main Street bought their products. The

Game has come to an end.

            The haves in Wall Street and the have-nots on Main Streets

across the United States can and must come to accept the agenda

of shared prosperity. Marches on the streets by the young Americans

represent a power of the people from the bottom, which cannot be

contained by decrees of power. The march of the American agenda of

freedom. equality and prosperity cannot be stopped. Victories of the

glorious marches of the youth, be it in the Tiananmen Square in China,

and recently in the Tahrir Square in Egypt we must salute. If the ARAB

SPRING has been real; the AMERICAN AUTUMN is all too real.

            The men and women of money in Wall Street are invited to offer to

surrender their one-year's earnings and the march to meet with

the people in the march on Main Street at the bottom of the STATUE

OF LIBERTY and sign an AGREEMENT of total commitment to the American

Dream.  Will the PATRIOTIC MILLIONAIRES take the lead and join hands

with the millions of young marchers on Main Street to say prayers?

The African Union and the African Money

Africa is not a “lost” or a “forgotten” continent.  The people of Africa must assume the responsibility of earning a place for Africa on the map of the world.  The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) is a step in this direction based on five initiatives:

-       Peace, Security, Democracy and Political Governance,

-       Economic and Corporate Governance,

-       Capital Flows,

-       Market Access, and

-       Human Resources.

In July 2002, 53 Heads of State representing 53 of Africa’s nation states, met in Durban, South Africa to establish the African Union (AU) to replace the 39-year old Organization for African Unity (OAU).  The OAU was established on May 25, 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, with 32 participating African governments.  This was the beginning of the African continental integration movement.  However, it focused more on political cooperation without substantive emphasis on economic alliance.  It failed to sustain itself and in 1999, an assembly of the Heads of State and Government recognized the limitations of the OAU and made necessary initiatives to promote continental economic integration.  To quote Kenichi Ohmae (1993): “The nation state has become an unnatural, even dysfunctional, unit for organizing human activity and managing economic endeavor in a borderless world.

The major step to economic regionalization came with the institution of the AU at the Durban conference.  The AU is modeled on the European Union and will have an African Parliament and an African Government with a standing army to settle intra-Africa regional disputes.  The AU plans to have a central bank, AFRICAN CENTRAL BANK (ACB) to issue African Money in twenty years so that monetary policy may be coordinated to facilitate continental economic cooperation and capital flows for investment and industrialization. 

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa was the first chairman of the AU.  He wanted all to know that “through our actions, let us proclaim to the world that this is a continent of democracy, a continent of good government where the people participate and the rule of law is upheld.”  The world eagerly waits for the African Union to deliver what it has promised to the peoples of Africa.

It is instructive to note that the continental economic integration movement in Africa progressed at the same time, when regionalization was gathering momentum in Europe.  With a total surface area of 30.31 million square kilometers, Africa is the second largest continent, next to Asia.  As early as 1970, South Africa joined its immediate neighbors Botswana, Swaziland, and Lesotho, forming the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), and Namibia later joined the group.  Let us recall that Customs Unions (CUs) became a mode of economic integration in the 1940s in Western Europe.  Soon came the Southern African Development Conference (SADC) which brought together the member-states of the SACU and Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi.  The Treaty of Enhanced East African Cooperation (TEEAC) ensuring “free flow of goods and people” amongst Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, is now a reality.  Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan were joined by Djibouti and Eritrea to constitute the regional compact referred to as the Horn of Africa.  The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) includes Member States of Rwanda, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Congo, Gabon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),   the East African Community (EAC), the Common Market for Eastern and Central Africa (COMSEA), the Central African Customs Union (UDEAC), the West African Customs Union (UDEAO) also became   successive steps in the process. Indeed, the European Union went through a step-by-step progression for some six decades since the 1940s..

 Five Mediterranean countries in the northern rim of Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, have historical ties and are geographically contiguous to Middle East and will have a choice to be member states of the African Union (AU) or of the Middle East, a geographical compact which could also have competitive shares of world output and trade.

The sub-regional economic cooperation efforts in Africa, as noted above, failed to produce robust results.  Feature stories on the African continent continued to be dominated by incidents of political instability, corrupt military dictatorship, genocide, mass migration of refugees, and natural calamities including flood, drought, famine and epidemics.  However, it remains to be appreciated that the political and professional leadership of Africa have heard the people and sought to do their best to respond to the eventful changes for the welfare of the peoples of the continent.  The European Union is now a learning model for Africa. The African continental economy has a population base of some 877 million, GDP (PPP) US$ 2.2 trillion, exports US$ 306 billion and imports US$ 231 billion.  Based on sectoral shares of GDP, South Africa is the only mature industrialized economy in the continent, with its shares of GDP at 2,5, 30.3 and 67.1, from its agricultural, industrial and service sectors, respectively.

The AU administration has set up executive, legislative, and judicial branches.  The Assembly with Heads of each member state, and the Executive Council of Ministers perform executive functions. The Parliament, consisting of five parliamentarians from each member state and the Court of Justice with eleven judges, selected by the Assembly, respectively have their legislative and judicial assignments.  In addition, the AU has several Directorates, an Office of the Legal Counsel, and the Secretariat. For financial and monetary policy management, the three institutions are The African Central Bank,

The African Investment Fund and the African Monetary Fund..

            Critiques venture to suggest that the African Money will be reality, if at all, in far out remote date.  Be it noted that the United States of America, with its Proclamation of Independence on July 4, 1776, had no money of its own until 1913 when the Federal Reserve System was set up by an act of the U.S. Congress, which issued the dollar and managed the U.S. monetary policy. The EU has instituted its money, EURO, on January 1, 1999, but the political integration of the EU continues to elude all concerned.

            Continenatlization of the economies on the map of the world is a process and its progress merits thorough study in the context of history of each continent. The continent of Africa is resource-rich with minerals inclusive of gold, diamond, uranium, petroleum, plus forest resources with wood and forest animals. A search for rare earths is in progress.

            Alfred Nobel made a fortune by inventing a precision tool, a special dynamite, which helped European industrialists to dig minerals from the mines in Africa so that they would not be reduced to dust. The annual Nobel Awards including the Nobel Memorial Award as of 1969 are great events and eloquently testify to the benevolence of Alfred Nobel. If Mr. Nobel could rewrite his will dedicating all the funds to the men and women of Africa as a royalty payment for the resources they owned, which the European miners exploited, the African industrialization would have been funded from within. The men and women would have jobs, income, education, health care and prosperity. The African story would not be one of disease, death and abject poverty. The oldest continent on earth where all our grandmothers lived as the study based on DNA tests report, also would be the richest continent. The African story has not been what it could have been. WHY NOT?  The rich industrialized countries of Europe and the USA must be called upon to answer the question.

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            July 7, 2011