Is Ethiopia Doomed?
For an Eritrean, pretending to wear a 20/20 lens, you dwell on snooping around Ethiopian critiques, regardless of their successes and failures. I for example, wouldn’t expect anything neutral/good to come out of people like Monsieur Hidrat or other ELF offspring about Isaias’ government. Because I know that they have bones to pick with him. Without much ado, let’s delve into the topic at hand. The themes in their discussion revolved around devaluation and inflation.
As I said, there are two ways of regulating currencies in free markets; via reserve system and by a currency floating market system. In the former, a local currency is pegged to a dominant foreign currency with respect to an external market. Devaluation occurs when the foreign market overpowers the local market, leaving the local central bank to run out of foreign currency reserve. In this situation, the local central bank will be forced to devalue its local currency with respect to the dominant foreign currency. Say if it was $1 to ¥20 but now becomes $1 to ¥40 (anything bigger than 20). Ethiopia didn’t choose this method, and hence, wailing about devaluation made no sense at all. Totally detached from reality!
Inflation has two causal sources: when the central bank prints money out of thin air or when money is laundered/wasted away with no accountability. To my knowledge, the central bank of Ethiopia has not started printing birr at home yet, so that too is out of the way. That leaves us with no accountability. Accountability comes from succinct scrutiny of the reigning currency market. Wait a minute, isn’t that what the government is trying to do? Furthermore, to date, no country has ever found a silver bullet to tackling accountability, but only through segregation of the three branches of governance and free journalism. To shout about the supposed increase in inflation induced by the borrowing of $20 billion from the IMF, exposes them further to their ignorance of what the currency market means. Governments do this to stamp out black markets that stem from a deregulated market, thereby incurring insurmountable losses to their coffers.
But with the introduction of the currency market, the government will not only have control over its currency, but it will also add a new dimension to a burgeoning market. They now add put, call, short, long, swap and spread. The gain from the spread alone makes the $20 billion IMF loan look like a chomp change. The interview was nothing short of a failed show that’s hell bent on looking for dirt. Those two yelling about inflation repeatedly shows you that they have lost their bearings. It was nothing short of Wingus lending his name to Dingus to bring about chaos into the country by repeatedly shouting technical jargon that has nothing to remotely do with the Beaves and B∪tthead show that is unfolding in Ethiopia. The fish-eyed reporter would have saved his guest, Dr. Grifter, by addressing, given the lack of infrastructure, how the government isn’t supposed to implement the new reform. Alas, every time they show up on YouTube to go berserk about Ethiopia, they never cease to amaze at how bizarrely irrelevant they’ve become.
If anything, more aggressive measures are needed to save Ethiopia from the doom that is lurking around the corner. Next up, should be making the regions understand (via obligatory teaching in schools) how the federation supposed to work. After that, election reforms and the status of Addis Ababa (and its surroundings) as a sperate and independent state… Especially the Tegaru and the Amaharu should know that nobody owns Addis Ababa. Just because Menilik saved us from Italian colonization, it doesn’t mean that people should continue to worship the Amharu and let them in, whenever they get uprooted and stream towards AA. In the same vein, for nearly 3 decades, eclipsing its nemesis Dergi by 10 years, the TPLF duped us into playing vanguard for getting rid of the maligned socialist system.
You are right in one thing about the country being doomed, though: simply because the PM and his cohorts (much like his predecessors and, much too the amusement of many, are getting addicted to wars) are not prioritizing the prerequisites of the federation and the much-needed reform. There was no reason for him to go to war in Tigray, and there is no reason to go to war in the Amhara region either. He can simply abandon them and make them understand that their [mess] stinks like the rest of us. If they want to govern, they should know that they can only do so by forming a party, appealing to the masses, and working with the rest. Not through war nor by force!!! And if these expats can’t see this through, well, I don’t know what else to say but kiss your Ethiopia goodbye because nobody is ready to be subjugated again.
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