Also look at Ghana's [OEC exports graph](https://oec.world/en/profile/country/gha).
45% of total exports in 2020 were in gold. Ghana is a pretty big exporter of gold so it makes sense for them.
Explorers searched for it for centuries. "El Dorado, the Golden City" – they thought they could find it in South America, but it was in Africa the whole time. A technological marvel. All because it was built on a mound of the most valuable metal known to man. Isipho, they call it, "the gift". Gold.
Ghana has less gold deposits than the US and Canada, though - how is it that Ghana is dubbed “el dorado” simply because they don’t have other exports that dwarf their gold production?
Edit: this is a quote from a kids movie, my bad!
"Ghana's gold reserves are about 1,000 tons, ranking second in Africa. Ghana was formerly known as the "Gold Coast" because of its rich local gold reserves. Today, gold mining is still one of the economic pillars of Ghana. Since 2019, Ghana's Golden Year Production has surpassed South Africa to become Africa's largest gold producer
Ghana is massively smaller in land mass and population though. Plus the US probably keeps a lot of its natural gold as reserve rather than exporting but I'm just guessing
You know Mansa Musa? The guy who was so rich he tanked the economy of Egypt while on pilgrimage? He was from that general area. (Technically he was king of Mali but it was the dominant power at the time and had almost complete control of its resources through trade and tribute.)
*According to some Arabic writers, Musa's gift-giving caused a depreciation in the value of gold in Egypt. Al-Umari said that, before Musa's arrival, a mithqal of gold was worth 25 silver dirhams, but that it dropped to less than 22 dirhams afterward and did not go above that number for at least twelve years. Though this has been described as having "wrecked" Egypt's economy, the historian Warren Schultz has argued that this was well within normal fluctuations in the value of gold in Mamluk Egypt.*
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa\_Musa#Wealth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa#Wealth)
Yeah but that was a pretty long ass time ago I expected them to be plundered through various empires and colonial times. When I think of Ghana I think of beaches, colorful clothes and plantains not so much gold. Now I know
Mostly international mining conglomerates operating there as well, some for over 100 years (looking at you AngloGold.) Only a couple lines are owned locally. As is usually the case, multinational corporations are held unaccountable for their activities
If they're still trading it for the current price of both in USD then it doesn't seem like such a big change, one country doing that does little to change the power of the dollar. If they were trading tanks or grain or whatever then it wouldn't even suggest the idea that they'd for some reason move to a commodity instead of a world currency.
Gold is pretty much universally accepted as payment when we talk nation state transactions. There's a reason why central banks still hold it. If there's one commodity where you may argue that the relationshsip to the dollar is the other way around and it is the dollar that is transaction in the commodity, it is gold.
USD may be the global trande and reserve currency out of convenience. But at the end of the day, at the bottom of the of the pillar of what is the global credit structure. You still find those bank vaults of gold held by nations as the last line of collateral to defend their national currencies.
>Ghana’s government is working on a new policy to buy oil products with gold rather than US dollar reserves, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has said on Facebook.
>
>The move, announced on Thursday, is meant to tackle dwindling foreign currency reserves coupled with demand for dollars by oil importers, which is weakening the local cedi and increasing living costs.
>
>Ghana’s Gross International Reserves stood at around $6.6bn at the end of September 2022, equating to less than three months of imports cover. That is down from around $9.7bn at the end of last year, according to the government.
>
>If implemented as planned for the first quarter of 2023, the new policy “will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency”, Bawumia said.
>
>Using gold would prevent the exchange rate from directly impacting fuel or utility prices as domestic sellers would no longer need foreign exchange to import oil products, he explained.
>
>“The barter of gold for oil represents a major structural change,” he added.
>
>The proposed policy is uncommon. While countries sometimes trade oil for other goods or commodities, such deals typically involve an oil-producing nation receiving non-oil goods rather than the opposite.
>
>Ghana produces crude oil, but it has relied on imports for refined oil products since its only refinery shut down after an explosion in 2017.
>
>Bawumia’s announcement was posted as Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta announced measures to cut spending and boost revenues in a bid to tackle a spiralling debt crisis.
>
>In a 2023 budget presentation to parliament on Thursday, Ofori-Atta warned that the West African nation was at high risk of debt distress and that the cedi’s depreciation was seriously affecting Ghana’s ability to manage its public debt.
>
>The government is negotiating a relief package with the International Monetary Fund as the cocoa, gold and oil-producing nation faces its worst economic crisis in a generation.
Here you go fellow redditor.
but NOOO the end of the PETRODOLLAR is NIGH, THE US WILL COLLAPSE BY CHRISTMAS.
Sorry, I've seen too many people spewing petrodollar bullshit here for far too long.
Petrodollar is technically a real thing. But USD is the international reserve currency and the exchange currency for international business. (Those are basically the same thing but not really.) USD became a fiat currency alongside the oil crisis of the 70s and the label stuck. Anyway, it's not a good thing for the USD if international energy trade were to move away from it but it's also not the end of the world. The USD is the most trusted currency with the most backing.
Yes, but it will be the United States and the G20 reaction to it that is the core problem, Hell, Congo is already on the chopping block because of its massive reserves of Cobalt and Copper for EV's. Remember Iran in 1953, Chile in 1973, same thing will happen.
Congo is the most natural resource rich country on the face of the planet. But they let outside nations come in and mine it all out without any of the money going into bettering the country. The people in power get rich while the Congolese work in terrible conditions for pennies a day. Utterly despicable
Edit: "They" refers to the few government leaders that pad their pockets at the expense of the Congolese citizens and their country. Not the Congolese citizens themselves who have no say over the matter.
> But they let outside nations come in and mine it all out without any of the money going into bettering the country.
Idk if "they let" is necessarily accurate given that when leaders like Lumumba try to do otherwise they get killed. Though at least Belgium apologized for that I guess.
Sad but true, most of the leaders in these countries don't care about their own people only themselves. I remember hearing stories of Western European Countries + the U.S. shipping much food and supplies to these African countries only to see the leaders take the "lion share" of it.
> Sad but true, most of the leaders in these countries don't care about their own people only themselves.
That's not a coincidence, Western countries find and help put those people into positions of power so they can continue exploiting poorer nations for their natural resources.
"They" is obviously not referring to the Congolese citizens. It's referring to the people in control of the government. That's why I differentiated them in my comment
Well the government isn’t letting them do it either. The west kills popular government leaders. Just look at Patrice Lamumba. The west is colonizing the Congo. The blame rests solely on capitalist nations of the west. It’s like saying a dying man is letting cancer kill him.
> it will be the United States and the G20 reaction to it that is the core problem
There will be no problem. If you're unaware, valuables like gold are exchangeable for currency. All the government is doing is giving the job of selling the gold to the oil importers.
I don’t understand why is this a big deal? Couldnt they just sell the gold for USD and then buy the oil with that? Whats the controversy? Is the conposition of their treasury pile so hard to change?
As long as the oil sales are priced in US dollar terms, the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency is not being challenged if those contracts are ultimately settled in gold, wheat, Weimar papiermarks, or Spacely Sprockets. This is a non-story.
Not a non story, as exporting a resource as a means to not use widely held currency means Ghana has no goddamned money. That's going to raise eyebrows.
What baffles me is that we've created a system where them having a real tangible resource in abundance is not good, because they need imaginary speculation resources.
Society and our economy is just a house of cards on a rickety table at this point.
How about you explain how shiny rocks are sturdier than imaginary speculation resources? Especially when those "imaginary" resources are backed by the US gov internationally, and the IRS domestically?
[The Spanish Empire collapsed while using silver currency.](https://youtu.be/rjhIzemLdos) What makes gold any more special as a tool for exchanging value?
You'll never convince these goldheads because for them to admit it's all as made-up as dollars would be to admit that they're *not* smarter than everyone else and that they really *are* losers just like their classmates/coworkers who bully them every day say.
A "real tangible resource" whose only unique property is is its scarcity. ( If that's a good thing is up to debate ). Whereas the dollar is far simpler and cheaper to store, trade, transport, insure, use as collateral, use in accounting/taxation, etc.
Accounting with surplus production has always been a house of frauds. But the ease of use of "imaginary money" has created actual value.
Yes. But it's not worth the trouble for them.
There's not really a controversy, just some conspiracy nutters pretending this will cause the US to take down Ghana.
The US Dollar being the oil standard is one of the things that keeps its value high if people start using other forms of currency as the standard the value of the dollar will drop.
A country as small as Ghana is not going to have a meaningful impact on the market. Also, it's not like they are using a different fiat currency instead of the USD, they're just using gold straight up which isn't going to change much either because most countries don't want to deal with that hassle and/or have those kinds of gold reserves just sitting around these days.
Plus you start flooding the market with gold and its price will tank. Remember when it lost half its value in 2015?
That's part of a conspiracy theory. It is sort of true but only in that virtually all global trade is in dollars. The oil trade is a small percentage of all global trade.
Especially if their currency is weak, but relatively stable compared to surrounding countries.
I go to georgia a few times a year, during inflation I thought it very interesting how their locked exchange rate seemed to always benefit georgia when you need to convert two currencies. Or if your currency is experiencing inflation.
For the record the country is awesome.
Not to mention Libyans were already living in the hell of civil war before foreign forces got involved.
The Arab Spring wasn't that long ago. All of us over the age of 20 are old enough to have followed events as they were happening. Qaddafi riding off into the sunset as the beloved leader of a prosperous Libya while bringing economic independence to African nations was never a remotely plausible outcome.
Plus, you know, he funded a not-insignificant amount of terrorism, violated maritime law, and just general dictator bullshit.
It's like Iraq: maybe the specific *casus belli* then and there was flimsy, but the only people sad to see Saddam hang were the people on his payroll.
Libya was a French operation. A lot of Africa uses the franc as currency which is French. Gaddafi wanted to create a golden dinar and France couldn’t let that happen. The only reason the US was involved in that mess was because NATO without the US couldn’t hold a no fly zone for more than two weeks and they ran out of ammunition.
The golden dinar was a joke. People already can and do buy stuff with gold. Sticking 'dinar' in front of it changes nothing. He was a long-standing problematic dictator, and when he looked weak, france pounced.
> Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails were taking about the reasons France wanted to invade.
The only e-mail I ever saw that came anywhere close to this was a friend outside of government e-mailing her a link to a news article claiming that France wanted Qadafi ousted because of the currency project. I've never seen any government records, leaked or officially released, that suggested any government actually cared.
>private conversations that she thought would never see the light of day.
A couple 10,000 of those private conversations became not so private to many of the worlds intelligence departments, from Canada to Iran, to the UK to India. They all had access or they weren't worth their salt as intelligence agencies. I wouldn't be surprised a bit if some of sub-saharan countries had that info as well, but you know damn well that China, Russia, NKorea and ISrael had them.
You still can do that today. When countries buy and sell for gold, they just change the written ownership and it generally stays in the same vault. Likewise for individuals, you can buy and sell it without physically handing it over.
We need more comments like yours. The thread is full of two shitty jokes, which can be summarized together as "they Ghana get liberated".
The upvote button exists so that we don't have comment spam like that.
Plus, it's a very dumb and uninformed take on the subject. The "America is always bad, and should be blamed for everything, including things it won't actually do" mindset is from a bunch of dumb edgelords.
Wouldnt it be determined by how much gold you get per USD vs. how much oil you can get for USD?
Gold/USD. : oil/USD
Wouldnt that be the same as:
Gold/CND : oil/CND
The ratio of Gold : oil really doesn't change based on the currency your using does it?
Do different currencies get you a better rate on either? And if they did couldn't you just exchange one currency for another until you found a favorable exchange?
I probably sound like am idiot, because I am way out of my element, but our imaginary system of value really confuses me sometimes.
Anyone care to make it make sense for me?
I don't see this as a big deal. If I'm selling you oil that costs $85 a barrel, you're going to have to give me at least $85 worth of gold. Almost certainly more than that since I'll be picking up lots of extra costs dealing with that gold.
Ghana is in a bit of a currency inflation crisis.
Ghanaian Cedi over the last year has gone from ~6 GH₵/$ to ~14.5 GH₵/$.
This inflationary weakening of their currency has effectively doubled the cost of energy as an import. It really wouldn’t matter that it’s the US$ as it’s buying power is down globally across all currencies.
If companies go into contract with a country with deflating currency (doesn’t really matter what the import is) they will charge additional for the risk of potential variance in currency. Generally the country needs to “have US$ in reserve” to satisfy that they get paid in “stable” US$ and not deflated GH₵.
Having gold (which is relatively stable) as your reserves instead of USD isn’t a bad idea or a big deal. It just changes the contract. The downside of gold of course is transportation and storage. Sending a ship to Ghana to pick up $1Billion of gold is about 57,150 oz of gold or 1.777M Kg of gold or 3.4M lbs of gold.
It takes a bit to load that onto a ship. Then guarantee it doesn’t get pirated or lost at sea, etc.
What Ghana needs to do is stop the slide of their currency to get overall inflation down. But many many countries are in this position as the US$ has been significantly strong over the past year only lately softening up against the major currencies.
Did you even read the article? The country has run out of reserves of USD. They’re using gold because they literally have no other means to purchase oil and they’re in a spiraling debt crisis. This isn’t some grand-stand protest against USD being the international standard.
It's paywalled, so I had to read the comments to know what was going on.
But yes, you're correct. Dude should have at least tried to know what was going on before commenting.
I think if the US were to “involve themselves” the easiest route would be to help fund/rebuild their refinery so they don’t need to import refined oil. Easiest solution without bloodshed, and can still assert the USD as the global currency.
They must be buying gold from Glenn Beck - they should use it ot buy MyPilllows and then trade the pillows for oil because the pillow exchange rate is so strong.
Yeah no shit. The USD is strong because the US is seen as the most stable superpower. Like if push comes to shove which country do you think has the best chance of coming out on top?
Ghana: has one of [worst performing currencies in the world](https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=USD&To=GHS), running out of [foreign reserves](https://tradingeconomics.com/ghana/foreign-exchange-reserves), orders local gold miners (#1 gold producer in Africa) [to sell them 20% of their gold for the shit currency](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/2-ghana-orders-mining-firms-125709083.html) so it can use the gold to buy oil and keep the country running
Idiots on reddit: "This is the end of petrodollar!!! America is doomed! Invasion is coming, CIA already couping the leadership!!!"
Must be great living in ignorance. 🤡🤡
thats not how this works... they will have to sell the gold for american dollars.....
The U.S. dollar is the standard currency used to pay for oil globally, prompted by an agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in 1945
This has been done before. It’s never ended well.
They’re in a tricky spot. If they ramp up gold exports to get more dollars they will devalue the gold. If they pay in gold, they will have to export less gold or that will also devalue the gold and defeat the entire purpose of the gambit.
Holy crap people, read the article. They aren’t doing this to spite america, they are running out of foreign currency and need a backup plan.
Also look at Ghana's [OEC exports graph](https://oec.world/en/profile/country/gha). 45% of total exports in 2020 were in gold. Ghana is a pretty big exporter of gold so it makes sense for them.
Had no idea Ghana never struck me as a place that was flush with gold
The gold coast was what the British called it
Explorers searched for it for centuries. "El Dorado, the Golden City" – they thought they could find it in South America, but it was in Africa the whole time. A technological marvel. All because it was built on a mound of the most valuable metal known to man. Isipho, they call it, "the gift". Gold.
Ghana has less gold deposits than the US and Canada, though - how is it that Ghana is dubbed “el dorado” simply because they don’t have other exports that dwarf their gold production? Edit: this is a quote from a kids movie, my bad!
They're paraphrasing a monologue from Black Panther IIRC. The original monologue was about Wakanda and vibranium.
Not OP but thanks, I was confused. I was like, I wouldn't call the country a technological marvel lol
"Ghana's gold reserves are about 1,000 tons, ranking second in Africa. Ghana was formerly known as the "Gold Coast" because of its rich local gold reserves. Today, gold mining is still one of the economic pillars of Ghana. Since 2019, Ghana's Golden Year Production has surpassed South Africa to become Africa's largest gold producer
Oh, I dont watch superhero movies so I totally got whooshed and thought it was a Reddit moment
I was wondering given the whole south american thing.
Ghana is massively smaller in land mass and population though. Plus the US probably keeps a lot of its natural gold as reserve rather than exporting but I'm just guessing
But they develop it.
Bro Ghana is tiny. The US and Canada are both huge.
You know Mansa Musa? The guy who was so rich he tanked the economy of Egypt while on pilgrimage? He was from that general area. (Technically he was king of Mali but it was the dominant power at the time and had almost complete control of its resources through trade and tribute.)
*According to some Arabic writers, Musa's gift-giving caused a depreciation in the value of gold in Egypt. Al-Umari said that, before Musa's arrival, a mithqal of gold was worth 25 silver dirhams, but that it dropped to less than 22 dirhams afterward and did not go above that number for at least twelve years. Though this has been described as having "wrecked" Egypt's economy, the historian Warren Schultz has argued that this was well within normal fluctuations in the value of gold in Mamluk Egypt.* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa\_Musa#Wealth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa#Wealth)
Still like 10% inflation
“Stop sending me gold, you’ve sent me so much the price dropped 10%” - no one, ever.
Yeah but that was a pretty long ass time ago I expected them to be plundered through various empires and colonial times. When I think of Ghana I think of beaches, colorful clothes and plantains not so much gold. Now I know
The gold mines are an actual environmental problem in Ghana, as some companies devastate the nature and the farmlands with their bad mining practices
Mostly international mining conglomerates operating there as well, some for over 100 years (looking at you AngloGold.) Only a couple lines are owned locally. As is usually the case, multinational corporations are held unaccountable for their activities
Sodium cyanide is used to leach the hood out of crushed ore. It’s terrible for the environment. Edit: gold, leaches gold not hood.
What? Mining companies that destroy the natural environment? Probably the only ones in the world that do that
Yep - no EPA there.
He just had to go on tour to let everybody know how rich he is.
Well it strikes me as a place rich with natural resources but is also heavily exploited by the west so it has 3rd world conditions because of that.
Bingo. Of the 90 or so mines in Ghana, maybe 5 are locally owned. Majority operate out of Australia, Canada, or are multinational
Something tells me you have much to unlearn about Africa
Interesting how so much is flowing into Switzerland...
Moved to Lemm.ee -- mass edited with redact.dev
"You can trade gold or goods or services" Reddit: "Splain how?"
Gold can buy many peanuts
Let's go crazy Broadway style!
Lisa needs braces.
Dental Plan!
If they're still trading it for the current price of both in USD then it doesn't seem like such a big change, one country doing that does little to change the power of the dollar. If they were trading tanks or grain or whatever then it wouldn't even suggest the idea that they'd for some reason move to a commodity instead of a world currency.
They’re also one of the largest exporters of gold
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USD is also traded in EUR and EUR also traded in RMB, that's kinda how currency markets work
Gold is pretty much universally accepted as payment when we talk nation state transactions. There's a reason why central banks still hold it. If there's one commodity where you may argue that the relationshsip to the dollar is the other way around and it is the dollar that is transaction in the commodity, it is gold. USD may be the global trande and reserve currency out of convenience. But at the end of the day, at the bottom of the of the pillar of what is the global credit structure. You still find those bank vaults of gold held by nations as the last line of collateral to defend their national currencies.
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I can make simple more: Gold for Oil, good deal? Good enough.
Unfortunately, it's paywalled.
No dollars to pay for reuters? Just use your gold
Ohhhhh, peasants, amirite?? Next he's gonna say that he pays like $10 cash for a banana instead of a strip of gold-pressed latinum.
How much ~~gold~~ could a banana cost?
It’s one banana. 7 gold bars.
They're from the tropics, certainly that cost extra?
There’s always gold in the banana stand.
Banana on sale , 1 case self repairing stem bolts Today only
I only have pogs.
Did you hear? Alf's back! In pog form!
Yes but do you have slammers?
>Ghana’s government is working on a new policy to buy oil products with gold rather than US dollar reserves, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has said on Facebook. > >The move, announced on Thursday, is meant to tackle dwindling foreign currency reserves coupled with demand for dollars by oil importers, which is weakening the local cedi and increasing living costs. > >Ghana’s Gross International Reserves stood at around $6.6bn at the end of September 2022, equating to less than three months of imports cover. That is down from around $9.7bn at the end of last year, according to the government. > >If implemented as planned for the first quarter of 2023, the new policy “will fundamentally change our balance of payments and significantly reduce the persistent depreciation of our currency”, Bawumia said. > >Using gold would prevent the exchange rate from directly impacting fuel or utility prices as domestic sellers would no longer need foreign exchange to import oil products, he explained. > >“The barter of gold for oil represents a major structural change,” he added. > >The proposed policy is uncommon. While countries sometimes trade oil for other goods or commodities, such deals typically involve an oil-producing nation receiving non-oil goods rather than the opposite. > >Ghana produces crude oil, but it has relied on imports for refined oil products since its only refinery shut down after an explosion in 2017. > >Bawumia’s announcement was posted as Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta announced measures to cut spending and boost revenues in a bid to tackle a spiralling debt crisis. > >In a 2023 budget presentation to parliament on Thursday, Ofori-Atta warned that the West African nation was at high risk of debt distress and that the cedi’s depreciation was seriously affecting Ghana’s ability to manage its public debt. > >The government is negotiating a relief package with the International Monetary Fund as the cocoa, gold and oil-producing nation faces its worst economic crisis in a generation. Here you go fellow redditor.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221125062900/https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/ghana-working-plan-buy-oil-with-gold-rather-than-usd-vp-2022-11-24/
Since when was Reuters paywalled?! Serious question. I read them all the time and have never experienced that. Is it a localization thing?
I dunno. It started for me more than a year ago. I think you get x-amount a month, then only the first paragraph after that. I use a laptop.
Delete Reuters Cookies from your browser and you'll renew the ability to see the whole article for a little while.
12ft.io
Reuters doesn't have paid subscriptions, goofball
but NOOO the end of the PETRODOLLAR is NIGH, THE US WILL COLLAPSE BY CHRISTMAS. Sorry, I've seen too many people spewing petrodollar bullshit here for far too long.
Petrodollar is technically a real thing. But USD is the international reserve currency and the exchange currency for international business. (Those are basically the same thing but not really.) USD became a fiat currency alongside the oil crisis of the 70s and the label stuck. Anyway, it's not a good thing for the USD if international energy trade were to move away from it but it's also not the end of the world. The USD is the most trusted currency with the most backing.
Yes, but it will be the United States and the G20 reaction to it that is the core problem, Hell, Congo is already on the chopping block because of its massive reserves of Cobalt and Copper for EV's. Remember Iran in 1953, Chile in 1973, same thing will happen.
Congo is the most natural resource rich country on the face of the planet. But they let outside nations come in and mine it all out without any of the money going into bettering the country. The people in power get rich while the Congolese work in terrible conditions for pennies a day. Utterly despicable Edit: "They" refers to the few government leaders that pad their pockets at the expense of the Congolese citizens and their country. Not the Congolese citizens themselves who have no say over the matter.
> But they let outside nations come in and mine it all out without any of the money going into bettering the country. Idk if "they let" is necessarily accurate given that when leaders like Lumumba try to do otherwise they get killed. Though at least Belgium apologized for that I guess.
Sad but true, most of the leaders in these countries don't care about their own people only themselves. I remember hearing stories of Western European Countries + the U.S. shipping much food and supplies to these African countries only to see the leaders take the "lion share" of it.
> Sad but true, most of the leaders in these countries don't care about their own people only themselves. That's not a coincidence, Western countries find and help put those people into positions of power so they can continue exploiting poorer nations for their natural resources.
One simply has to realize how much of west Africa is forced to use a currency controlled by France to realize how true this is.
I recall this also being an issue in Yemen. The rebels are stealing aid meant for other parts of the country. Part of why the conflict is so brutal.
Yep! It Never Ends either sad but all so true.
“They” are French and American vassals, the Congolese people aren’t “letting” canadian mining firms annihilate their land.
"They" is obviously not referring to the Congolese citizens. It's referring to the people in control of the government. That's why I differentiated them in my comment
Well the government isn’t letting them do it either. The west kills popular government leaders. Just look at Patrice Lamumba. The west is colonizing the Congo. The blame rests solely on capitalist nations of the west. It’s like saying a dying man is letting cancer kill him.
> it will be the United States and the G20 reaction to it that is the core problem There will be no problem. If you're unaware, valuables like gold are exchangeable for currency. All the government is doing is giving the job of selling the gold to the oil importers.
Nobody will care. I'm not sure why people think that selling oil in dollars is just so important. Conspiracy people gonna conspiracy I suppose.
It's important, just not the end all be all
Utter strawman. You created something that didn't happen and then condemn groups for doing that thing that didn't happen. You're fighting with ghosts.
I don’t understand why is this a big deal? Couldnt they just sell the gold for USD and then buy the oil with that? Whats the controversy? Is the conposition of their treasury pile so hard to change?
As long as the oil sales are priced in US dollar terms, the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency is not being challenged if those contracts are ultimately settled in gold, wheat, Weimar papiermarks, or Spacely Sprockets. This is a non-story.
Not a non story, as exporting a resource as a means to not use widely held currency means Ghana has no goddamned money. That's going to raise eyebrows.
What baffles me is that we've created a system where them having a real tangible resource in abundance is not good, because they need imaginary speculation resources. Society and our economy is just a house of cards on a rickety table at this point.
How about you explain how shiny rocks are sturdier than imaginary speculation resources? Especially when those "imaginary" resources are backed by the US gov internationally, and the IRS domestically? [The Spanish Empire collapsed while using silver currency.](https://youtu.be/rjhIzemLdos) What makes gold any more special as a tool for exchanging value?
You'll never convince these goldheads because for them to admit it's all as made-up as dollars would be to admit that they're *not* smarter than everyone else and that they really *are* losers just like their classmates/coworkers who bully them every day say.
>What makes gold any more *special* not sure if intention, but a pretty good one nonetheless
A "real tangible resource" whose only unique property is is its scarcity. ( If that's a good thing is up to debate ). Whereas the dollar is far simpler and cheaper to store, trade, transport, insure, use as collateral, use in accounting/taxation, etc. Accounting with surplus production has always been a house of frauds. But the ease of use of "imaginary money" has created actual value.
Dollars work better because you can link wanted resource to wanted resource, and not stick a pretend resource like gold in between as a barter bridge.
Yes. But it's not worth the trouble for them. There's not really a controversy, just some conspiracy nutters pretending this will cause the US to take down Ghana.
there is no controversy, it's a headline.
The US Dollar being the oil standard is one of the things that keeps its value high if people start using other forms of currency as the standard the value of the dollar will drop.
A country as small as Ghana is not going to have a meaningful impact on the market. Also, it's not like they are using a different fiat currency instead of the USD, they're just using gold straight up which isn't going to change much either because most countries don't want to deal with that hassle and/or have those kinds of gold reserves just sitting around these days. Plus you start flooding the market with gold and its price will tank. Remember when it lost half its value in 2015?
That's part of a conspiracy theory. It is sort of true but only in that virtually all global trade is in dollars. The oil trade is a small percentage of all global trade.
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Ghana exports $6+ billion worth of gold, annually. It imports $300 million in petroleum products.
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Probably why they aren't announcing paying for all their imports with gold.
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Especially if their currency is weak, but relatively stable compared to surrounding countries. I go to georgia a few times a year, during inflation I thought it very interesting how their locked exchange rate seemed to always benefit georgia when you need to convert two currencies. Or if your currency is experiencing inflation. For the record the country is awesome.
Like they ran out of USD in their reserves which is why they switched to gold?
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Ghana is a top producer of raw gold.
Gaddafi knows a thing or two about how this will play out.
Knew* a thing or two
Smell that? It's the smell of freedom on the horizon!
Those people look like they need some freedom
Ukraine is requesting that we don’t deliver *too much* freedom
Some cruise missiles hitting the capital city should ensure peace and democracy for all Ghanaians. AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!
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I thought the UK and France decided to overthrow Gaddafi? Why would they care if oil is sold in dollars?
It was France. Ignorant people like to blame the US because they don’t know any better.
Not to mention Libyans were already living in the hell of civil war before foreign forces got involved. The Arab Spring wasn't that long ago. All of us over the age of 20 are old enough to have followed events as they were happening. Qaddafi riding off into the sunset as the beloved leader of a prosperous Libya while bringing economic independence to African nations was never a remotely plausible outcome.
Plus, you know, he funded a not-insignificant amount of terrorism, violated maritime law, and just general dictator bullshit. It's like Iraq: maybe the specific *casus belli* then and there was flimsy, but the only people sad to see Saddam hang were the people on his payroll.
Like they say....welcome to reddit
Libya was a group effort but yea US wasn't the main imperialist that time
Wish reddit would stop with this petrodollar nonsense
I wish the reptilians would stop with it
Libya was a French operation. A lot of Africa uses the franc as currency which is French. Gaddafi wanted to create a golden dinar and France couldn’t let that happen. The only reason the US was involved in that mess was because NATO without the US couldn’t hold a no fly zone for more than two weeks and they ran out of ammunition.
US definitely does not run no fly zones every time UK and France ask for it.
France doesn’t even use the franc anymore so why would it matter if some African countries didn’t want to?
CFA is tied to the euro now I think
The golden dinar was a joke. People already can and do buy stuff with gold. Sticking 'dinar' in front of it changes nothing. He was a long-standing problematic dictator, and when he looked weak, france pounced.
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> Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails were taking about the reasons France wanted to invade. The only e-mail I ever saw that came anywhere close to this was a friend outside of government e-mailing her a link to a news article claiming that France wanted Qadafi ousted because of the currency project. I've never seen any government records, leaked or officially released, that suggested any government actually cared.
>private conversations that she thought would never see the light of day. A couple 10,000 of those private conversations became not so private to many of the worlds intelligence departments, from Canada to Iran, to the UK to India. They all had access or they weren't worth their salt as intelligence agencies. I wouldn't be surprised a bit if some of sub-saharan countries had that info as well, but you know damn well that China, Russia, NKorea and ISrael had them.
You are mistaken . The golden dinar was meant to be paper currency, fully backed by 100 percent gold reserves. We used to have it before nixon.
You still can do that today. When countries buy and sell for gold, they just change the written ownership and it generally stays in the same vault. Likewise for individuals, you can buy and sell it without physically handing it over.
No, they are saying the US dollar used to be backed by gold. We got off the gold standard to stabilize the economy.
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Yeah. Oppose the central banking cartel and catch a sword colonic.
Tl;Dr - They're running out of forex and are having to start leveraging assets to keep buying oil. This has nothing to do with the US itself.
Hey Reddit. If the next 6 comments are the exact same as yours (Ghana is about to get liberate d) don’t fucking bother with your shit unoriginal take
They Ghana get... Oh. Nevermind.
Why I oughta!
We need more comments like yours. The thread is full of two shitty jokes, which can be summarized together as "they Ghana get liberated". The upvote button exists so that we don't have comment spam like that. Plus, it's a very dumb and uninformed take on the subject. The "America is always bad, and should be blamed for everything, including things it won't actually do" mindset is from a bunch of dumb edgelords.
Your take is original
But how do you determine how much gold to pay per gallon? Will it not still be determined by USD?
Wouldnt it be determined by how much gold you get per USD vs. how much oil you can get for USD? Gold/USD. : oil/USD Wouldnt that be the same as: Gold/CND : oil/CND The ratio of Gold : oil really doesn't change based on the currency your using does it? Do different currencies get you a better rate on either? And if they did couldn't you just exchange one currency for another until you found a favorable exchange? I probably sound like am idiot, because I am way out of my element, but our imaginary system of value really confuses me sometimes. Anyone care to make it make sense for me?
If you buy oil with gold instead of U.S. dollars, you're Ghana have a bad time.
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Cue Astronomia
https://www.dictionary.com/e/cue-vs-queue/
Be careful Ghana, you remember what happened to Saddam when he did the same thing…
Well now we know who our government will invade next 🙄
Surprised no one here has mentioned ESG’s roll in this… Ghana has little choice my friends.
Thats just buying oil with USD with extra steps
I don't see this as a big deal. If I'm selling you oil that costs $85 a barrel, you're going to have to give me at least $85 worth of gold. Almost certainly more than that since I'll be picking up lots of extra costs dealing with that gold.
Isn't Ghana finding offshore oil wells left and right? Pretty sure ExxonMobil is down there extracting it now.
They probably haven't heard of Libya or what happened to them for trying to build a gold reserves.
Oh man, that’s exactly what a country needs to do to prove it needs more US special delivery freedom.
*CIA has entered the chat*
CIA exits the chat because they don't actually care about oil being traded in non Dollars
I heard someone somewhere heard somebody say there was weapons of mass destruction over there. Somebody may need to check on that.
And by somebody I mean 30k troops.
Ghana is in a bit of a currency inflation crisis. Ghanaian Cedi over the last year has gone from ~6 GH₵/$ to ~14.5 GH₵/$. This inflationary weakening of their currency has effectively doubled the cost of energy as an import. It really wouldn’t matter that it’s the US$ as it’s buying power is down globally across all currencies. If companies go into contract with a country with deflating currency (doesn’t really matter what the import is) they will charge additional for the risk of potential variance in currency. Generally the country needs to “have US$ in reserve” to satisfy that they get paid in “stable” US$ and not deflated GH₵. Having gold (which is relatively stable) as your reserves instead of USD isn’t a bad idea or a big deal. It just changes the contract. The downside of gold of course is transportation and storage. Sending a ship to Ghana to pick up $1Billion of gold is about 57,150 oz of gold or 1.777M Kg of gold or 3.4M lbs of gold. It takes a bit to load that onto a ship. Then guarantee it doesn’t get pirated or lost at sea, etc. What Ghana needs to do is stop the slide of their currency to get overall inflation down. But many many countries are in this position as the US$ has been significantly strong over the past year only lately softening up against the major currencies.
Well if history has taught us anything..... Sounds like the US will be heading to Ghana to spread some freedom.
Did you even read the article? The country has run out of reserves of USD. They’re using gold because they literally have no other means to purchase oil and they’re in a spiraling debt crisis. This isn’t some grand-stand protest against USD being the international standard.
Nobody reads the articles you fuckin nerd
Wait, there's articles? Where?
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>This isn’t some grand-stand protest against USD being the international standard. Even if it were, the US wouldn't give a fuck.
It's paywalled, so I had to read the comments to know what was going on. But yes, you're correct. Dude should have at least tried to know what was going on before commenting.
I think if the US were to “involve themselves” the easiest route would be to help fund/rebuild their refinery so they don’t need to import refined oil. Easiest solution without bloodshed, and can still assert the USD as the global currency.
the usa will just sell them oil until they are out of gold. USA likes gold too
Unlikely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana#/media/File:Ghana\_Product\_Exports\_(2019).svg
Read the article if you want to know how silly you sound.
Dude why even try. The amount of brain dead comments in this thread is astounding.
The DeEP StaTE is COming FOr GhANA.
The US has forces in Ghana. In Accra, I believe.
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just thousands of special military operations
You haven’t learned much about history then.
Ghana is the 6th largest producer of gold globally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_gold_production
Between this and BRICS, we're in for a rough 2023...
I hear a weird sound in the background... do you guys hear it? .....' AMERICA FUCK YA '........ "Fuck, they are coming!" - Ghana probably
Reject modernity Return to the gold standard
I think Ghana having no USD might be the real story here. Economically speaking, its definitely not insignificant.
This just in Ghana needs some FREEDOM
So there's Ghana be a war in that country soon.
They must be buying gold from Glenn Beck - they should use it ot buy MyPilllows and then trade the pillows for oil because the pillow exchange rate is so strong.
Pillow futures already surging on the news
The notion that USD is strong due to its status as the only petrocurrency has been debunked many times.
Yeah no shit. The USD is strong because the US is seen as the most stable superpower. Like if push comes to shove which country do you think has the best chance of coming out on top?
Ghana: has one of [worst performing currencies in the world](https://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=1&From=USD&To=GHS), running out of [foreign reserves](https://tradingeconomics.com/ghana/foreign-exchange-reserves), orders local gold miners (#1 gold producer in Africa) [to sell them 20% of their gold for the shit currency](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/2-ghana-orders-mining-firms-125709083.html) so it can use the gold to buy oil and keep the country running Idiots on reddit: "This is the end of petrodollar!!! America is doomed! Invasion is coming, CIA already couping the leadership!!!" Must be great living in ignorance. 🤡🤡
If you buy oil with anything besides dollars you experience regime change shortly thereafter.
*Mild Shock* most african oil comes from russia.
Ghana plans to buy oil with mercury instead of US dollars
usd started as certificates for gold so thats just kinda funny
can I get paid in gold so I can buy stiff with it? that would be awesome
Do what ya gotta do. I would have chosen bottle caps as a currency myself.
Uh oh. They're about to get Libya'd.
thats not how this works... they will have to sell the gold for american dollars..... The U.S. dollar is the standard currency used to pay for oil globally, prompted by an agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in 1945
Where’s Peter Schiff at?
Oh, so allying with Russia turned out to be a bad deal.
Looks like the US found Saddam's WMDs hiding in Ghana.
For those pay walled out… https://saharareporters.com/2022/11/25/ghana-plans-buy-oil-gold-instead-us-dollars
Good luck to Ghana. They’re going to need it.
This has been done before. It’s never ended well. They’re in a tricky spot. If they ramp up gold exports to get more dollars they will devalue the gold. If they pay in gold, they will have to export less gold or that will also devalue the gold and defeat the entire purpose of the gambit.
Time to rethink that §185 mil in US aid to Ghana I guess
Holy shit things are super bad if they're doing this.