NPP ON STATE OF THE ECONOMY

NPP Chairman Jake Obetsebi Lamptey

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has addressed a press conference on the state of the national economy in Accra.

The full text of the statement issued at the conference is published below;

Ladies and gentlemen, we have had the occasion, several times in the past, to comment on the poor economic management by the NDC administration and the consequent poor state of the economy. 

We have commented on the excessive and illegitimate expenditures during the 2012 electioneering campaign by the ruling party (the NDC), the resulting huge deficit and debt, the excessive borrowing from the domestic market, the crowding out of Ghanaian businesses from the credit market, the growing unemployment, the unbridled taxation (including taxation on condoms), government indebtedness to utility companies, and the general corruption and mismanagement of public finances.

In February this year, President Mahama also admitted to the nation that Ghana’s economy was in distress and that the meat was down to the bone. It was a face-saving admission that, having been in power for four years, the NDC government was presiding over bad economic management. Seven months on, things have gotten worse. There is now consensus, even within government, that the economic situation has now deteriorated into complete crisis. The signs are everywhere.

Our debts are rising alarmingly. From a total public debt of GH¢9.5 billion in January 2009, Ghana’s public debt stands at GH¢43.9 billion (49.5% of GDP) at the end of August 2013. Between December 2012 and August 2013 (that is within the last 8 months), government added GH¢8.8 billion to our public debt. This means, we are borrowing at a rate of GH¢1.1 billion per month. This is not just unsustainable, it is also unreasonable! And out of this recent increase in debt stock, about 63% (that is GH¢5.5 billion) comes from domestic sources. With this huge appetite for borrowing from the domestic market, it is grossly absurd and disingenuous for government to blame banks for high lending rates to businesses and individuals.

It also needs to be pointed out that this 49.5% debt ratio means the country is on the verge of crossing the 50% threshold. Beyond this threshold, international credit rating agencies will downgrade our credit rating. Already, this debt figure does not include the greater chunk of the US$3 billion Chinese loan. If Ghana is downgraded, the B+ rating bequeathed by the Kufuor administration will be lost, and Ghana will have to borrow at very high interest rates.

Ladies and gentlemen, in spite of this excessive borrowing from both domestic and international markets, the NDC government can still not meet its statutory obligations. What does this mean? Every year, government collects various taxes and levies; income tax, value added tax (VAT), national health insurance levy (NHIL), petroleum taxes, communications service tax (or talk tax), condom tax (recently), taxes on outboard motors and cutlasses, etc. Government is required by law to put some portions of these taxes into specific accounts to pay for specific services to tax payers (that is, you and I). These accounts include the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF), the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), the Road Fund, etc.

The sad and bitter truth is that, for this year, 2013, government has collected the taxes alright. People have paid income taxes and all kinds of taxes, and government has collected them. Unfortunately, the Mahama administration has failed to pay these monies into the various accounts. The DACF which is used by the district assemblies to provide social services to the people is in arrears of GH¢652 million, according to government’s own statement. To be forthright, government, having collected taxes from the beginning of this year, has not paid a pesewa into the DACF. The NHIF used for the delivery of health services is also in arrears of GH¢350 million. The Road Fund used for filling potholes and doing other road maintenance programmes is in arrears of about GH¢400 million. The GETFund used to provide education infrastructure and related support to Ghanaian public schools, from basic to tertiary levels, is also in arrears.

So, not only is government borrowing excessively without telling us what they are using the money for, government cannot account for taxes paid by you and I for the purpose of delivering social services, and therefore statutory payments into these accounts are not being paid.

The consequences for the welfare of ordinary people are many. Districts assemblies in our rural areas are the hardest hit. Government’s insensitivity to the plight of Ghanaians means garbage is not collected regularly in Bole, nor are potholes patched in Cape Coast. It also means roofs of school buildings and other public facilities public schools ripped off by storms cannot be replaced in Akatsi. Further, district assemblies cannot afford to pay their utility bills. In Kumasi, the ECG recently cut off power to KMA for non-payment of its bills. Even money to buy A4 sheets to run their offices is not available.

About two weeks ago, several government cheques bounced at the local government level because the accounts on which the cheques were to be drawn had been quietly closed upon the instructions of government. Most development and local government initiatives have come to a standstill because government has not transferred the needed resources to the local level. This is a serious problem. In the past, we all complained when these funds delayed for a month or two. What is happening now has never happened before in these proportions. It is unprecedented and unbelievable that a month to the presentation of the next budget statement, government has collected taxes but has not paid a pesewa into the district assembly common fund. This is crisis!

But the problems are not limited to the DACF. The arrears on the NHIF has serious consequences for the health care of ordinary Ghanaians. No wonder that national health insurance scheme is no more working. Since  there is no money in the NHIF, service providers are not being paid for their services, as a result of which patients who go to hospital with their NHIS cards pay for even paracetamol.

Also, anti-snake venom badly needed in the rainy season to neutralize snake bites in rural areas cannot be provided. What at all is government using the taxes for that the Mahama administration considers more important than the health of the people?

The GETFund is not fanning any better  Most contractors who have executed GETFund projects are either out of business or reeling under huge debts. So educational infrastructure from basic to tertiary education is not being upgraded.

Yesterday, contractors in the Brong Ahafo region, who had been contracted to provide classroom furniture two years ago, issued an ultimatum to government to pay them or face legal action. Educational material and general logistical support to our educational system are not being purchased. This will affect the quality of our education. Worse still, complimentary grants such as school feeding and capitation grants are also in arrears. The school feeding programme and capitation grant that expanded enrolment in basic school are now under serious threat. This will negatively impact the nation’s roadmap to attaining the MDG on 100% pupil enrolment by 2015.

The same story is repeating itself at the Road Fund. Routine road maintenance has come to a halt. Potholes are developing on almost all our roads, causing fatal accidents. The bitter fact underlining all this is that road fund levies collected from you and I cannot be accounted for by government.

The irony of the situation is that, while government has failed to meet its constitutional and statutory obligations, it continues to make payments on non-statutory obligations to its cronies. We shall revisit this matter into greater detail in due course.

Ladies and gentlemen, when government took the Eurobond recently, we were told that part of the money would be used to settle contractors government was owing. Ghana has received all the Eurobond money alright, but to date, the promised payments to contractors have not happened, and contractors and suppliers continue to suffer. Once contractors and suppliers are distressed, businesses go down, ordinary people lose their jobs, and both corporate and income tax revenues go down. This affects the livelihoods of people and the economy adversely.

So with all the oil revenues which previous governments did not have, with all the many loans contracted, with all the donor grants, with all the Eurobond money, oil many  with the component CDB loan so far disbursed, and with all the tax hikes, the Mahama government cannot make statutory payments.

The painful fact is that, a government that engages in so much indiscipline and recklessness in its expenditure pattern in an election year as the Mahama government did in 2012 will certainly live to reap bad harvest. This is the crisis confronting Ghana’s economy today.
We thank you for your audience.

Young, Black, Gifted and Underemployed

US President Ronald Reagan

By: Edward Wyckoff Williams

When it comes to jobs, income and acquiring wealth, race still matters more than education.

President Ronald Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign is notably remembered for a political television commercial with the opening line, "It's morning again in America." The optimism expressed in the narration suggested that improvements to the U.S. economy since the recession of the late 1970s were due to Reagan's policies. It was a winning message. But the ad featured all-white faces and excluded African Americans and every other racial minority.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Great Recession of 2007 has been compared to America's economic woes under President Jimmy Carter. This card was mostly played by Republicans during the 2012 election; they hoped that the stain of Carter's one-term presidency might spell doom for Barack Obama by Democratic association. That didn't work.

What wasn't discussed was the plight of American workers during the recession years of Reagan's first term, which saw lifetime wage declines and long-term wealth gaps, and no full recovery from extended periods of unemployment and underemployment. History is now repeating itself, with the worst disparities affecting young black and brown people.

Research based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 15.9 percent of Americans were "underemployed" in 2011. This includes the long-term unemployed, discouraged workers who have abandoned looking for work altogether and part-time workers who can't secure enough hours to sustain a living wage.

For young people -- with high school diplomas and four-year college degrees -- the landscape is even worse. The underemployment rate for 18- to 24-year-olds was 28.6 percent in 2011, compared with 16.6 percent for 25- to 34-year-olds and 12.8 percent for adults over the age of 35. Disparities based on race were staggering: 42.6 of African Americans under 25 were underemployed, and 32.6 of Hispanics. Only 24.5 percent of young whites were underemployed.

President Obama's recent commencement address at Morehouse College alluded to difficulties faced by young black males entering a fragile labor market, and the underlying statistical data are undeniable -- showing that young people who pursue a college education may be at a disadvantage over the long term because student-loan debt is crippling the millennial generation.

Despite a steady economic recovery, most private-sector jobs created have been for low-skilled service-sector work. American industry is competing with the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), while U.S. corporations continue to move jobs offshore. Generations X and Y (those under 40) in this country are outmatched by advanced technologies that rely on fewer workers, and these young people must compete with citizens of developing economies, who work longer hours for less pay.

Lisa Kahn, a labor economist at Yale University, studied the earnings of men who graduated from college during the deep recession of the early 1980s and found that the higher the unemployment rate was at the time they graduated, the less they earned. And those workers never caught up. "The effects were still present 15 or 20 years later," she said. "They never made that money back." Kahn posits that the same is happening today.

Darrick Hamilton suggests that "occupational segregation" plays a large role in the wage gap. "Nearly 90 percent of U.S. occupations can be categorized as racially segregated," said Hamilton, co-author of an Economic Policy Institute paper called "Whiter Jobs, Higher Wages." The study showed that in jobs in which black men were underrepresented, the average salary was $50,533 annually, but in occupations in which black males were overrepresented, the salary was $37,005. Controlling for education and skills, the racial discrepancy persists.

Researchers at the Urban Institute believe that this emerging income gap is turning into a wealth gap. They found that the average net worth of people ages 29 to 37 had fallen 21 percent since 1983, while the net worth of 56- to 64-year-olds had nearly doubled. This means that millennials may be the first generation in U.S. history to acquire less wealth than the generation before it.

This phenomenon is exponentially compounded for African Americans. According to the Census Bureau, the wealth gap between whites and blacks nearly doubled during the recession, with whites having 22 times more wealth than blacks. The median household net worth for whites was $110,729 in 2010, versus $4,995 for blacks. This was exacerbated by the mortgage crisis of 2007-2008 as black and Hispanic families disproportionately lost homes to foreclosure -- victims, too often, of bad loans and discriminatory banking practices.

Employment, income and wealth are interconnected, and as African Americans experience deeply entrenched underemployment -- regardless of the cause -- the result is that a generation of people who hoped for greater prosperity than their parents faces diminished opportunity and higher levels of poverty.

As the class of 2013 dons hats and tassels, data show that college education is losing its premium value. According to an Associated Press report, 1.5 million graduates in 2011, or 53.6 percent of those under the age of 25 who have a bachelor's degree, were jobless or underemployed -- the highest share in 11 years. And 37.8 percent of employed college grads were working in a role that didn't require a degree, according to a report by the EPI. By comparison, only one-fifth of 16- to 19-year-olds were unemployed -- suggesting that young, college-educated workers are struggling more to find employment than those with high school diplomas.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the outlook for educated African Americans is even grimmer. The EPI report found that blacks with college degrees still lagged behind their white counterparts. In 2007 the unemployment rate of young black college graduates was 8.5 percent, rising to 21.9 percent by 2010. By 2012 that number had improved to 10.8 percent. White college graduates experienced an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent in 2007, which rose to 9.4 percent in 2010 and fell to 8.7 percent by 2012. This means that race remains a key factor in employers' hiring decisions.

That theory is borne out by research showing that black immigrants from the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America have struggled as much as native-born African Americans. In fact, they do worse, according to Patrick Mason, professor of economics and African-American affairs at Florida State University.

A popular myth is that black immigrants do better than native-born blacks. Mason, whose research is presented in "The Low Wages of Black Immigrants," argued that if black Caribbean males were doing better, "it might suggest that [this racial wage gap] was not due to discrimination." 

It seems when it comes to underemployment, income disparity and wealth gaps, race matters more than education levels. And for generations X and Y, the nation's progress toward racial equality over the past 50 years may not translate into dollars and cents.

Israel Doomsday N-base revealed by US

An Israeli Patriot anti-missile system (L) and an Arrow anti-missile system (R) are seen at an Israeli military base

By Gordon Duff

A location and details of a top secret Israeli base which could be used to launch nuclear attacks on China or North America was published last week. Immediate moves were made to “spin” the story away.

The base, intended to house Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) built in cooperation with India is also to include, not just a doomsday “Fuhrer-bunker” for Netanyahu and the Zionist elites but storage for nuclear, biological and chemical warheads as well.

According to intelligence sources in Pakistan, India is supplying Israel with missiles capable of carrying 10 MIRV (Multiple Independent-targetable Re-entry Vehicle) warheads each with a range of up to 11,000 miles. A single missile from this US financed complex could knock out all major population centers on America’s eastern seaboard.

The thermonuclear warheads and guidance systems for these advanced weapons were made possible through espionage activities tied to AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

Newspapers claim the underground base, one of a series being built across Israel, is part of an air defense system. This is, of course, utterly absurd.

Air defense systems are designed for stealth and mobility and never require huge underground facilities. Air defenses are meant to protect, not to “be” the primary target.

Scamming America to death

An Israeli program to use American funds earmarked for missiles defense on a nuclear command bunker and ICBM silos was “accidentally” exposed by the Department of Defense last week.

America needs more “accidents” of this kind.

Detailed plans on the massive underground facility at Tel Shahar, intended to be Israel’s answer to NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain fortress in Colorado, were made public when the US published over 1000 pages of documents, including key information on location, design and vulnerabilities to attack.

In an attempt to “put the genie back in the bottle,” Israel and key media assets in the west published deceptive and inaccurate accounts.

From SheeraFrenkel at McClatchy News, “The Obama administration had promised to build Israel a state-of-the-art facility to house a new ballistic-missile defense system, the Arrow 3. As with all Defense Department projects, detailed specifications were made public so that contractors could bid on the $25 million project. The specifications included more than 1,000 pages of details on the facility, ranging from the heating and cooling systems to the thickness of the walls.”

Why Israel has gone “M.A.D.” (Mutually Assured Destruction)

Until a week ago, Israel, in combination with Turkey and Arab “friends” was unassailable in the region due to its American equipped air force.

Russian President Vladimir Putin changed all that when Syria’s own S 300 air defense system came on line. Israel’s air forces are now useless against Syria, a nation scheduled to be “erased from the sands of time” by Israel, part of a multi-stage global strategy against Iran, a strategy to be coordinated with India against all of South Asia and the Caspian Basin.

Putin’s “red line” left Israel only one card to play, a “nuclear wild card” devoid of credibility without deliverable long range nukes stored in hardened silos with command and control deep underground.

America, either duped or fully complicit, has given Israel that capability, a “Samson option” first strike against any nation, even America.

One might want to ask why nuclear bunker facilities for up to 80,000 elites from among the “chosen people”are being financed by the United States, a project reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove.

The “Arrow 3” fraud

The Arrow 3 missile system, designed to be a mobile launched high altitude missile interception much like the Russian designed S 300 system now active over Syria, was funded based on the unsubstantiated hypothesis that Iran’s nuclear program was, not only advanced, but that Iran would have small “missile deliverable” warheads soon.

Israel demanded the system as protection from Iranian nuclear missiles, which, according to a new IAEA report, may well never exist.

However, advance copies of the IAEA report due to be released on Monday, June 10, 2013, show that America’s intelligence assessments indicating Iran has no military nuclear program have been right all along.

The report cites that every “gram” of nuclear material has been accounted for and none has been transferred to weapons related programs.

“Nuke pundit,” David Albright is typically the source for all information used to substantiate claims of nuclear weapon development by Iran. To check on Albright’s credentials, we went to Clinton Bastin, an editor at Veterans Today and former chief nuclear weapons designer for the US Department of Energy.

In a 2011 interview with Jim W. Dean, Bastin said the following about his friend and longtime associate, David Albright, “David Albright, a physicist, former colleague, president of the non-government Institute for Science and International Security in Washington and a former consultant for IAEA inspectors, is recognized by the US news media as an expert on nuclear weapons but is not. I called David several months ago to correct inaccurate information attributed to him by New York Times reporter William J. Broad.

I also mentioned that Pakistan probably did not have many nuclear weapons because gun-type weapons require about 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium. David said that he had seen drawings of Pakistan’s weapons and they had solid cores but were implosion, not gun-type. With that statement, I realized that David did not understand basic concepts of nuclear weapons.”

Bastin went on further and pointed out that controls long in place in Iran made it impossible for any nuclear material to have been “redirected” and that Iran’s program to enrich uranium gas to 20% could never realistically result in weapons grade material.

Both the US and Israel have known all of this all along, know this and have lied about it.

Press complicity

The Arrow III missile system was debuted on February 13, 2013 on the front page of the Jerusalem Post. This system, designed, at least as the American people are told, is depicted in a full color graphic showing the following components:

- “The Elta Electronic Industries subsidiary of IAI Electronic Group developed the Green Pine early warning and fire control radar for the Arrow 2 system. The radar carries the designation EL/M-2090 and includes the trailer mounted radar and antenna array.”

- Two other vehicles provide generator power and targeting control.

- The third vehicle tows the launching system.

Note that every component includes a “vehicle.” What, exactly, goes into the “Fuhrer-bunker” that we are told houses the Arrow III system?

When the press films or photographs a launch of an “Arrow” missile, they carefully include only the top portion of the mobile launching tube. Do they wish us to believe that, somehow, these tubes are hundreds of feet below the earth?

Can they keep “cropping” photos forever?

Thus far, the controlled press seems to miss story after story. Recently, the same press when photographing Senator John McCain on his secret trip into Syria forgot to “crop out” the Al Qaeda commanders McCain met with.

The underground “Temple of Doom”

Back in 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared on television with media pundit Tim Russert. Rumsfeld told a worldwide audience of the secret bunker complexes that spread across Afghanistan, able to house thousands, interconnected with secret monorails, undetectable by air.

Thirteen years later, the US forces have yet to find one of these bunkers. They never existed.

The ones in Israel, however, do exist. Anyone capable of downloading an “online” bid specification can see the scope of these massive projects, conclusive proof that preparations for “doomsday” are underway in Israel.

A careful read of the “material handing” specifications is rather curious. Israel denies having nuclear weapons. No American president has ever admitted knowing of such things, a question former White House correspondent Helen Thomas has asked of every American president prior to the untimely end of her outstanding career.

Now even school children with their iPhones can read about Israel’s underground nuclear weapons storage, about equipment for storing, protecting and deploying nuclear weapons.

What they may not know is that the money that might have helped finance their college education paid for this highly secret and equally highly illegal equipment.