The Amerikaner Bank we have set up originated with the ideas in the text below (subtitled “a better life”) dating from around 2 years ago. The actual bank – different to the one imagined then – is trading in the Rand as a currency convertible back into gold via the site goldmoney. Our Rands (unlike the promise to pay of California’s IOU’s!) are backed up by the exchange rate between the Rand and gold on the day of each transaction. Maybe… over some time: all Rands will be thus backed up. As of now: Amba is placing rands into circulation via its selected clients only.
a better life
NB The Amerikaaner Bank is being set up in Kingston to moderate a new balance between the economies of the RSA and the USA from Jamaica, via Ireland…
This e-mail was originally sent to our Minister of Trade and Industry, in connection with the Edcon merger. Since then I realized it’s up to me as a private citizen to implement this vision. The govt has its hands full. So I am doing it! For now though, this is just a text to read in conjunction with the e-mail to GATA…
You have to crawl before you can walk, or fly. And as Mick Jagger said: “you make a dead man crawl!!!”
….When Apartheid was finally over and our new Government had a chance to try and run the country in the very best way, for all citizens, it shared the vision of “a better life for all”. Then it set out to achieve this vision on a sound economic basis. Attracting foreign investors was set up as a key objective to create a sound, post-sanctions, economy. SA decided to compete for foreign investments effectively by setting up a free market economy. Something extra our country offers investors who own GOLD could gives us a winning edge; even though other emerging marketplaces offer investors free market economies too.
Let’s seize the initiative and use our potential advantage for the good of all. Not in the narrow sense where the entire global economy necessarily benefits in the short term. Mzansi will benefit the most, and soonest, yet in so doing we shall – looking at the big picture – nudge our Planet towards a better BALANCE: over the longer term. This is something we also have to do since there is no other country with our knowledge of what Nkulunkulu expects from His children: in these times.
New developments have occurred in the global economy since apartheid ended. Our country is no longer going about attracting foreign investment in the very best way because; it hasn’t responded to them… yet. Neither has anyone else! With our approach though: the Edcon merger will become a giant step in the direction of obtaining foreign investment on much more favorable terms, than in the recent past.
BRIEF RECAP with commentaries
When the Cold War ended in 1989, five years before apartheid did, South Africa had been seen as a geographical territory of key importance by both sides owing to its reserves of precious metals, including gold, uranium, and platinum. The Western Powers then adopted a different approach to ensure the supply of these products to them by South Africa would continue on favorable terms. They pretended they no longer have a racial bias, made out they had been unequivocal supporters of the ANC from day one, and postured as advanced, more civilized, trendsetting big brothers whom had already been through a similar struggle for liberation and emancipation “long ago”. This was supportive! It is a stance we should hold them to. Yet we should not either deny to ourselves the reality we are setting a new trend as has never been done before, ever: on Earth. We are not behind trying to “catch up”. We’re frontrunners!
If we look at how racial minorities, including Africans, are treated in these “developed” countries by the majority of voters (e.g. the recent elections in France) and consider the actual history, it’s obvious there is still powerful undercurrent resentment towards African people in some other nations that expresses itself as unjustified reservations and doubts over whether we have what it takes to develop our own powerful economies. To date this has put us in the position (their POV) where we are still only TRYING to prove we can “keep up with them” and the jury is still out.
Or stated differently: the debate over whether Africa is impoverished because it was colonized (and plundered) or, colonizing Africa was a necessary first step to ending its impoverishment, has blurred the real issue. Which is: we have been plundered: emotionally, even more than our natural resources have been ripped off. We can recover much faster, and better – emotionally – if we take back what belongs to us. Their economies DID get where they are today BY using power we gave up to them.
Yes we CAN take it back now. No, we don’t need their consent: thank God!!!
When apartheid ended the underlying quid pro quo between South Africa and the Western Powers became: they would provide expertise, help, and support (in how to set up an open society and a free market economy) that amounted to a kind of insurance to protect the new Government – consisting principally of Africans, elected democratically by other Africans – from the kind of failure that could occur if the mlungu population wanted to destabilize the country, because: we (I am also an mlungu!) might see ourselves as the losers in this new arrangement.
If this was the quid, the quo was that the ANC undertook not to nationalize the mining industry, and continue supplying the developed nations: as always. Inasmuch as this was only a switch to carrots, from sticks: it was essentially no change. Let’s be clear on this. The change to a post-Apartheid reality was huge: and the African people achieved it collectively, using our strength of will. What never really changed was: the rest of the world’s expectation it could continue paying colonial “free market” prices for our raw materials.
And the reason? It’s something like: the existence of precious minerals under the earth in our country is some kind of random meaningless geological accident. We were too stupid to know how to mine them until mlungu came to show us how. All we can do now IS mine them. We lack their ability to process these materials into useful products like… platinum catalysts for emission controls, and… atomic bombs, etc. So we must just export the raw materials: for them to use and profit from. Until ONEDAY we too have an advanced industrial economy that pollutes the environment, which lowers the quality of life for the masses, increases alienation, and generally creates a high tech trash society.
A deep and complicated spell was actually thrown over the ANC leadership. Although we hesitated to call a spade a spade before deciding to go ahead and use this accurate but perhaps controversial terminology, we have decided those who were beaten by this muti must thank us for removing its effects instead of blaming us – since we are also from the same mlungu tribe – for helping to use this muti to beat them.
Maybe we let this spell take hold for a short time: to give the African people an opportunity to realize they must differentiate between mlungu like us, and those others, and; to give ourselves a chance to understand our African brothers and sisters, better. Maybe this whole story has been long, and very complex… But read this if you do want the spell to wear off.
Thanks anyway to this quid pro quo, foreign investors have invested in our stock market, bought property, and other assets; tourism has increased and created more jobs… and we have gone ahead with building houses, educating our children, improving the nation’s nutrition, and installing electricity, water, roads, and telecommunication services where these were not available before. Our general impression of the immigration story that has unfolded during this time (we haven’t checked our facts, yet) is that: few mlungu have immigrated, more than a few have emigrated, many new visitors and immigrants have arrived from Zimbabwe, Malawi, Nigeria; and many other places.
This progress, though excellent, simply hasn’t been enough in that: the people are still suffering too much and want to elect JZ as a populist president even IF he had unprotected sex and has been charged with corruption! Given how patient the people have already been, I can’t blame them, yet the ANC isn’t at fault either for it seems to have done its level best within its (financial) means.
We are entering a scary period of uncertainty where (instead of helping) the G8 could use a divide and conquer strategy to undermine us while pontificating to us we are having the learning experience with democracy that is part of “growing up”. They use the tactic of denying needed help and support to thus set up others to fail, they do. It is pointless to complain though. Mzansi must awaken and SHIFT. For the past eight years (especially) the USA has been creating prosperity for its citizens merely by printing more money! We can find better ways to create prosperity for our citizens and thus defeat the divide and conquer strategy.
The Government and People of South Africa of all races were ripped off by the quid pro quo over strategic metals. These Western Powers are not on the side of the new Government nor of the African population, they have only been pretending to be. They conned us into forgetting how important our “strategic reserves” of raw materials had been during the Cold War. Speaking metaphorically, they teamed up with the big companies that operated our mines all during apartheid and removed Anglo American, Billiton and De Beers from South Africa and listed them on the London Stock Exchange, with satisfaction.
Speaking for just ourselves, personally, Peta, Zane and me, of the Press Family, are not disheartened, perplexed, or dismayed because of what has happened because we know (and therefore understand) the people whom have done this. We can outsmart them any day of the week! Our fellow South Africans have achieved enormous gains over the past thirteen years, principally in self-esteem. Now without any further summation of recent history we present our proposal of a BETTER way to obtain foreign investment on MORE FAVORABLE terms, for Mzansi.
Of course it is based on the importance of our strategic reserves. Why should it not be? The name our strategy is called by is “turning the tables”. It is an accepted practice throughout the world. The only criterion necessary for carrying it out is being able to. The other parties then accept the outcome as if they have been expecting it. The unmentioned possibility has existed all along to their knowledge. Or we wouldn’t even be able to do it. The generic name for such spells is “intimidation”. Intimidation works best when the party being subdued is unaware of it.
They know how important our strategic raw materials are. The measure of how well they know it is how careful they have been to avoid it as a topic of negotiation or even discussion and debate. With “ample forethought” they have ensured (or, they thought and hoped they had ensured) this topic was carefully and properly wrapped up in the concepts of democracy, free trade, the family of nations, and so forth.
NOTE
Please don’t think you have already heard all you need to know! Pay attention and learn how to move things around while keeping them wrapped up just as they are! There is no need to change this thing into an either/or situation, nor to throw away one advantage in order to gain another. Mzansi did already grow up; quicker than they thought we ever would. We are out ahead already; let’s stay ahead. Their problems are not our problems and their problems are self-created (by themselves: this repetition of the obvious is being done for deliberate EMPHASIS.) They have more problems than we do! They are exploiting US to fix their SELFISHLY CREATED problems while reversing this syndrome and posturing as if Africa has huge problems it needs the West – and East – to help us solve. Oh really!!
When it came to the crunch they decided not to help us with our problems, and they know this. We have buried our hard feelings; let’s keep them buried. Now we won’t help them with their problems either (which we didn’t cause, anyway: they can’t say the same about ours) and so let’s just win in our own country on our own terms and even stay friends with those whom have only been pretending to be our friends.
AMBA
We are applying to the Competition Tribunal, and to the Government generally, via the Reserve Bank, for permission to set up the Amerikaaner Bank: Amba, for short. [Note: these ideas for Amba have NOT been thought through yet!]
Amba will create a cartel. It will make the needed raw materials we supply to the rest of the world very scarce. I suppose their price will go up. Then, let’s face it; the Western Powers can retaliate by selling the rand short. This is the sort of “serious approach to business” and solving the real problems of the world going on today. Paper money could have worked. But it has turned into a big joke. Selling the rand short because those doing it make huge paper profits (since they know when to cover) is a sick joke. The rand will always go back up because we are working hard to make our small economy prosper. Meanwhile our import/export traders get thrown for a loop. Very funny! Now Amba will sort this out, as a favor to everyone.
To do this Amba needs, and will in due course request: the right of first refusal to purchase certain of our raw materials, and, the authority to purchase controlling percentages of the equity in companies listed on the JSE, without paying a premium. Let’s make Amba Mzansi’s answer to the Federal Reserve Bank in the USA. If the Fed were regulating the US economy as it claims it does – by adjusting interest rates – sagely responding to accurate measurements of the US economy… that would be ok… IF: the USA were minding its own business and buying only its fair share of what our Earth has to offer. Instead the Fed is adjusting interest rates AND printing money AND using the money it prints to manipulate the key economic indicators it uses to adjust the interest rates AND: doing all this in the way that will cause the US stock exchanges to go up.
They pretend the increase in the value of the stock traded on these exchanges is caused by so many citizens adding value to their economy, but this is not so. A LOT of the increase is due to more money being printed.
Amba will borrow money from South Africa’s banks and use it to purchase the stated locally produced raw materials, which will thus be unavailable to the world economy because Amba will stockpile them: that’s what makes Amba a bank. These raw materials will be deposited in it. Amba’s ability to pay the interest on the money it borrows will depend in part on the increase in value of these raw materials as they become scarcer.
Amba will ALSO borrow money against the value of these raw materials and use it to purchase shares in mature long established companies listed on the JSE. These companies are going to be seen, or treated, more as utilities than as entrepreneurial organizations. They each provide goods and services to the economy, and they each have their market share.
Amba is going to purchase between 52 and 100 percent of their equity and swap it for raw materials of equivalent value. If these companies didn’t like this they could de-list off the JSE but they are not going to do this, because: it is going to be a big bonanza for them to replace their equity with precious metals that go up in value because, Amba is creating scarcity in the marketplaces (without actually being a cartel.)
By means of its swapping process Amba will start attracting foreign investment in the very best way: by rewarding investors in gold bullion (and other precious metals) – who happen to also be foreigners.
Amba will accept deposits of gold owned by foreign investors and use these as collateral for loans from commercial banks to purchase the equity in major companies listed on the JSE. This is how the tables get turned. These are the foreign investors we really need. Anything else amounts to selling off parts of OUR country TO foreign investors! This is madness if you factor in (as most people usually don’t) these foreign investors are using wealth they or their ancestors obtained from colonies: to purchase parts and pieces of what belongs to us.
All hope that these colonizers would voluntarily give back all or even some of what they took disappeared after the UN Conference on Human Rights in Durban which was followed, interestingly, right afterwards by 9/11. It’s almost as if God actually knows what He is doing these days (when He let that happen) because: 9/11 became the excuse for the United States to go on a massive spending spree in order to wage war. They spent more than they could afford to, and put a lot of money into circulation to do this. They did this by selling Treasury Bills; the Chinese Government purchased a lot of them.
Loose ends…
The way the tables actually get turned is: Amba will obtain the loans from the commercial banks first, and then purchase equity in companies on the JSE. When foreign investors deposit gold in Amba the foreign investors will pay the loans from the commercial banks back by borrowing against their deposits in Amba on the strength of an agreement between them and Amba that makes the equity owned by Amba the collateral for these loans.
This is simple. The agreement states: every deposit of bullion in Amba will be secured by its portfolio of equities and the depositor will receive a certificate stating the value of the equities which secure his or her investment. Any depositor of bullion can then go to any commercial bank and say: I wish to borrow money against the value of this certificate issued by Amba.
Then: if the value of the equities owned by Amba ever goes down in value the banks whom have loaned money to the owners of the gold bullion can repossess their collateral which is these equities. But they have no claim over the gold bullion that the investors in Amba have deposited. Amba will sell off some equity and pay it out to the banks claiming this collateral. So far as these banks are concerned these bullion owners invested in unit trusts. So far as the investors are concerned: they deposited their gold in Amba and borrowed money to invest in a unit trust at the same time.
A new quid pro quo. The bullion and the equity are… paired. Their respective value buttresses each other. Think of it as all that gold that was stolen from Mzansi during the colonial and apartheid days… some of it ended up in the hands of “goldbugs” in the USA, and elsewhere. THEY are the natural allies of the RSA. They are the foreign investors we need. And how can the USA accuse us of any wrong when THEIR OWN CITIZENS exercise their democratic and capitalistic rights to invest here to our specifications BECAUSE WE WILL CREATE THE DEMAND FOR (and/or SHORTAGE OF) GOLD BULLION THAT CAUSES THEIR HOLDINGS TO GO UP IN VALUE.
OK Mandisi, and friends: the above only REALLY makes sense when you have received the viewpoint of GATA, the Gold Anti Trust Action committee. This can be picked up at the James Joyce table of www.lemetropolecafe.com
A brief extract to point you in the right direction is:
…this guy Ashley wanted to know how exactly the argument goes that claims the price of gold has been manipulated to prevent gold from serving as a barometer that sends the signal to investors (like it used to) when inflation is going up.
According to these guys inflation IS going up in the USA much more than the official government measurements of it BUT they keep printing more money so the stock market goes up anyway… creating the APPEARANCE of a strong economy.
They wrote back:
Hello Ashley,
The basics are simple. The annual supply/demand deficit is running between 1,000 and 1500 tonnes per year … meaning The Gold Cartel AND central banks must supply (above mine and scrap supply) that amount of gold into the market place to meet demand.
Around 10 years ago, the supply of gold in the central banks was supposed to be 31,000 tonnes, at MOST. Thus 10,000 to 15,000 tonnes of gold is now GONE, leaving 21,000 to 16,000 tonnes left to suppress the price.
It must be kept in mind that a number of central banks WILL NOT part with their gold, which means only a portion of the gold that is left is available for dumping. Most of the foolish central bankers that have sold gold found it to be a substantial loser, as the years have gone by. [The price went up after they sold it.]
Wait until gold makes decade highs and takes out $2,000 per ounce. There will be an outcry how the bankers could have squandered gold in such reckless fashion! Meanwhile, mine supply is on the wane, while gold demand is on the rise; especially in China and India.
Thus, as world financial market conditions deteriorate, The Gold Cartel is headed into a time when they will be overwhelmed by this surging demand and be forced to defend a MUCH higher gold price level, so that it won’t take as much of their gradually dwindling ammo to keep the price from going bonkers.
Hope this helps.
Bill Murphy
This means: when the price of gold goes up and the USA no longer owns much gold AND the service jobs in their economy are not really adding value (but just using up all the extra money they have been printing) they will have to print more and more money to buy things with: the dollar will be worth less and less.
Another guy then wrote:
In regards to Ashley’s question; how can the Central Banks ever run out of gold, when they can repurchase what they sold at lower prices? There are two different, but inter-related markets: physical bullion and futures contracts (paper).
The CBs can’t repurchase the bullion they have surreptitiously disposed of because there is a deficit in physical gold supply. The price of bullion would immediately regain the ground it just lost. There is no surplus of bullion that can be acquired without forcing prices up.
The paper markets are a different story. Here the Central Banks’ henchmen, the bullion banks, can buy or sell at will because there is no effective limit on the numbers of contracts that can be traded. When prices drop, the Cartel players/commercials can absorb the selling at lower levels and make a profit without disturbing the price of gold; that is why the open interest usually falls on these downward moves.
HOWEVER, this is only a paper profit, payable only in paper money. If the profiteers ever tried to move their loot out of paper and into physical gold, the gold price would jump because of the deficit in physical gold supply. So the profits come with a sort of curse; they are doomed to remain in the paper realm and share the fate of that money form.
Paper trades may set the current market price of gold, but only so long as enough real bullion can be funneled into the retail channel to satisfy demand. The day the banks run out of physical is the day the paper markets go poof!
Best wishes,
Peter R.
The “developed nations” intimidated poor little South Africa forcing the leaders of this hapless country (who endured decades of misery and domination long after the rest of the world had beaten the Nazis!) to PROVE they know how to run a country in order to show they are worthy to join the… club (of “civilised” industrial nations.)
“The people” have all co-operated with the Government just out of gratitude to their leaders for ending apartheid, to show solidarity, and for lack of any alternative. The word on the street though is that we accept ourselves and like our country – for the most part – just as it is. We don’t WANT to become “like them.” We just want to be who we are! The people want to get out of poverty, and want decent lifestyles with proper housing, and access to medical care. If the measure of civillization is how sensitive, subtle, and complex people are on the inside: Africa is already a highly civilised continent!
South Africa can stop exporting its precious minerals. It can afford to. It has them. They are assets. They exist in the ground here just like the shares in their trust funds exist for the children born into South Africa’s wealthy families: just because they are born. The concept that the RSA has to export its natural resources in order to bring in the foreign exchange and foreign investors it needs so it can “develop” is false.
The concept that a weaker rand strengthens the economy and creates jobs (by making exports cheaper) is false also!
The main problem is guilt. The African people just don’t have the nerve – yet! – to take the steps that will pull our natural resources off the world market and cause the value of the Dollar to go south. On the lemetropolecafe site the “gold cartel” they keep talking about is a paper gold cartel. South Africa could create a gold bullion cartel and it should: this will be equivalent to obtaining payment of reparations for apartheid.
With a stronger – much stronger! – rand the people of South Africa will be able to buy what we need to repair and restore all the damage that’s been caused to us. We can develop more of a service economy here while the citizens in the USA – with a weaker dollar – can get on with recovering and regaining the traits that once made America great. Traits South Africans already developed: during Apartheid.
We’ll tell you the story of how our own personal experiences developed our capacity to recognise how SA has been getting blindsided by the USA, some other time (if you want to know.) How many South Africans have put it together, yet, that the gold price is manipulated? Or: how this impacts us?
Sincerely,
Peta and Gregor Press
Note: In the extract above in this same color font the implication is: we would need your collaboration and support. Yes, it is possible; no: it won’t be a piece of cake!
