Why can't they get dollars?
I was under the impression that you can buy dollars much easier than oil.
I was under the impression that you can buy dollars much easier than oil.
The reason for that is post 2008 banks have become much more risk averse (seeing what happened to Lehman et al) and they are mostly the conduit through which broad currency is generated. That mechanism is mostly broken unless you’re an ultra rich company like Apple or Google.
So today to make a bank create USD for you you’d be required to have the best of the best collateral namely sovereign bonds. As it stands the US hasn’t taken even close to enough debt and thus issued Treasuries to even come close to the shortage in dollars that banks’ risk aversion has created since 2008.
But using the gold for currency does sound like it could be more efficient, cutting out the middleman.
Note: normally countries maitain a float of foreign reserves for this, and I'm guessing this stash of economic lubrication has run a business dry for Ghana and they don't have the luxury of rebuilding their reserves, and hoping to use gold as a more immediate solution.