“The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.” George Bernard Shaw
The entire hubbub surrounding the proposed Ethiopian Commodity Exchange has Mitmita tickled and a little atwitter. Nothing gets us girls more hot and bothered than a commodity exchange or a stock market—the most capitalist of tools. We have in fact joked about this possibility since 2001 because we are avid followers of NYSE and the NIKKEI.
Try as we might however, we can’t muster up the requisite enthusiasm for this latest antic from our favorite faux Marxist/Leninist turned über capitalist Prime Minister.
We are sure that people who will no doubt scream “you are ruining opening day at the Exchange for us” will label us as naysayers but our obligation is not to be popular but to report the truth. Well. We would also like to be popular. But sometimes we are willing to sacrifice our eternal need to be liked for the good of the nation.
So we do truly hate to put a damper on the celebrations (we do love us a good party) but we are aghast at the suggestion that Ethiopia is not only ready for a commodity exchange but that the nation is able to begin and sustain such a system. Perhaps someone should clue in some of these would be financiers that what lies within the gates of the Sheraton is not Ethiopia. The hotel in its grotesqueness might have begun to resemble a little province or even a region of the country. Except it’s not. We know for some of you, holding your noses, haughtily complaining that the poor are just simply depressing, averting your eyes to the truth lining the streets leading up to the gates of the hotel has become your reality. Yet it doesn’t mean that because you can get your macchiato just as you like it and the guard’s English is better than yours, that you are now ready for a commodity exchange.
Let us begin with the basics.
First, free markets follow free societies. Having established a free democratic Ethiopia, the regime now boldly enters the free market enterprise! Except they haven’t done the former and the latter is still a twinkle in the Prime Minister’s eye. If the jailing of dissidents, journalists, and members of the intelligencia et al under the surreally absurd charge of treason and genocide are all marks of a free society, then we would have been well on our way. Except they aren’t and we are going nowhere fast. Before we can talk about in what town and in which cities we are planning to house this exchange, we should be concerned about how to have conversations with our neighbors and families that are actually private. A regime that spies on its own citizens, squelches all independent thought and suppresses free flow of information and exchange can only outwardly mimic a so called free market economy.
Second, markets function on perception. More than anything else, what keeps the western markets running is the deep belief that the various institutions of the country are stable. That they are viable. That there is a continuity of sorts. This is the same belief that allows these countries to have elections and seemingly effortless handoffs from one administration to the next (Granted, we will concede that the Bushies have engaged in vast violations of civil rights when it comes to voting but the premise remains: a stable political, economic and social environment allows for a peaceful transition of power). So in essence markets function because the populace has faith in the banks, in the regulators, in their government. Ultimately, they have faith in the transparency of the system. Reader, we know you will be shocked to hear this but we do not have such a system in place and we are millions of Meles, err, miles, rather, away from achieving it with the current regime.
To the imagination of many a ferenji, the country is on it’s way to becoming this hotbed of capitalist activity. The rest of us see a regime that can’t get a handle on inflation, can’t feed its own people and has a pesky penchant for liquidating the opposition. But what do you care about inflation or transparency in governance. Mitmita knows that so long as you are able to get your plot of land in coveted locales in Addis, your sauna at the Hilton and daily manicures/pedicures, you’ll scream, “let them eat cake.” The current Ethiopian regime, on the other hand, is holding the country “steady” with its U.S. imported guns, its chokehold on all fundamental freedoms and its steal boots on the neck of the press.
This leads us to our third point: stable institutions. There are none in the country.
Rampant corruption is about the only thing that has been institutionalized in Ethiopia. Second to it might be the efficient way in which the regime disposes of its opponents. Perhaps the most interesting part of the article detailing the set up of the commodity exchange was the discussion of electronic screens which will be set in “20 market towns” and will project real-time prices. This sentence is followed by discussion of the current method that uses “donkey drawn wagons.” The juxtaposition struck us since we know that not too many miles outside of Addis, not even hours away from the Sheraton, we have seen women carrying water on their heads.
Can we figure out how to institutionalize access to clean water across the country? That would be more beneficial to the population than this artifice of modernization that they are proposing.
Finally, economics divorced from human rights is essentially bankrupt. This regime wants to have all of the accoutrements of a modern society without any of the accountability. People remain in jail on trumped up charges, those disappeared are never discussed and the regime rules with impunity. Much of the country subsists on an average of two dollars daily and in the rural areas, the Economist has reported that villages survive on six cents a day. This economic strangulation is in addition to the erosion of fundamental human rights. Ethiopia's refusal to protect fundamental rights essential to a democracy has created a "brain drain". Potential contributors to the economy, which express views different from the regime, are forced to live in exile or flee to avoid facing imprisonment or death. A society's economic system and social and political institutions are linked, human rights analysis should not be applied as a second prong in a two-step solution to Ethiopia’s economic woes.
Yet. We know this is really about perception. We’ll admit it. Exchanges, markets, stocks are all very sexy. It’s a sophisticated alluring esoteric world. It has a mystique and the gang in Addis is thinking that it will bestow upon them some coveted title—similar to that given the Asian markets a few years back.
Just like the elections in May 2005 bestowed on Ethiopia the title of a democratic state! Remember that?
Except they didn’t.
Just like changing from army fatigues to tailored suits and dropping the antagonistic communist language made our Prime Minister the dapper don that’s the darling of the West.
Except he isn’t. The emperor has no clothes and all that.
We just can’t be bullish on the prospects of the commodity exchange. These folks must be using the “if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quakes like a duck”, then it must be a commodity exchange theory of economics.
We are girls who are very easily bored by people who are seeking to benefit at the expense of the poor. Greed, may be capitalist, but ultimately it is boorish and it is what is at the heart of this commodity exchange proposal.
The charade of modernization must stop.
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