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tank911 t1_ja8bsej wrote

Reply to comment by Mika0023 in Macron flies to Africa to counter waning French influence by HRJafael

Caspian report on YouTube literally just dropped a video describing exactly this. They basically have control over the monetary policy of several nations.

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Vanished_Elephant t1_ja9gnbt wrote

Big fan of Caspian report.. but that video is full of omissions and is disingenuous at best.

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Bicrg3 t1_ja9gu2g wrote

How so? Genuinely curious and don't know much about the topic

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Vanished_Elephant t1_ja9jmpo wrote

If you watch the video. This youtube commenter (Albe Van Hanoy) has made a good debunk that can be verified with some extra research. Sorry long message:

"Firstly it's important to note that every member country can leave the agreements at any time. France is forcing noone.

4:50 The operation in Guinea (Known as Operation Persil) happened in 1959. Back then France still had colonies, and was by no means the same country it is today. Caspian Report conveniently ignores this date to make it feel more recent, but it was 64 years ago. The current president of France wasn't even born.

6:11 False. France has no Veto power. In fact France has only one representative in the Central Bank of Central African States (With no veto) , and doesn't even have a representative at all in the Central Bank of Western African States.

6:50 This entire section makes no sense and completely ignores what "money" is. Money is only the means to an exchange, and can only be so if both parties agree on the value of said currency. On its own, money does nothing. The CFA Francs are the sovereign currencies of these African States, and as such, if France does a commercial operation using CFA France, it can only be with a partner from one of these 14 countries. So the accusation of France somehow "using the foreign exchange reserves to prop up its own economy" is nothing but an accusation thrown into the air with no source or facts to back it up.

What France does actually do with this money then you ask? It only prints it, and keeps it safe from political instability, rather than having the reserves be held in a country where Al Qaeda terrorist groups operate and could stage an attack on the currency reserve.

Additionally (And importantly), France pays interest on deposits by member countries, and at a fixed 0.7% rate, even when actual interest rates on the market were negative. This is a net loss of money for France.

There is nothing out of the ordinary with printing the money of a foreign state, several other countries relinquish printing to foreign nations: The Guinean franc, Ethiopian birr, Ugandan shilling and Botswana pula are produced in the United Kingdom, The Mauritanian ouguiya, Eritrean nakfa, Tanzanian shilling and Zambian kwacha are produced in Germany, and The Liberian dollar is printed in the United States. But strangely, only France is ever brought up.

7:46 If any country's company does it, it's called foreign investment. When French companies do this, it's called exploitation and colonization. This double standard must stop.

9:05 These figures are simply nonexistent and unsourced.

9:55 This is very misleading. These countries typically outperform neighbouring countries in GDP Growth, and the stagnation reported on the video is not exclusive to the Franc Zone. In fact it is somewhat the opposite: The stability of the CFA Franc made these countries a lot more resilient to economic instability. The COVID crisis resulted in a 1.7% recession in sub-saharan African outside of the Franc Zone. Within the Franc Zone, it was a 0.3% growth.

11:25 This segment completely misrepresents what the Eco is. It is an African initiative, that is encouraged and supported by France. Western African States plan to switch to a new currency, and France won't hold any form of control over it. The centralization of exchange reserves in a French Treasury account will be abolished, among other reforms that will significantly lessen the influence of France. The only thing that will remain will be the fixed exchange rate with the Euro, something African States are all too happy to keep. Presenting this as "nothing but a ruse" is extremely disingenuous and goes contrary to the notion of neutral reporting.

12:20 This is literally false. Mauritania left. Madagascar left. France did not intervene in either case to prevent them from doing so. And Guinea-Bissau literally joined on their own volition in 1997, even though they are not even a former French colony, and not a French speaking country. Why? Simply because they realized it was advantageous. If the situation was as terrible as this video describes, this would be unjustifiable.

I am sure there is a lot more to say, but this comment is already long. Moral of the story: Don't blindly trust a YouTube video just because it has pretty graphics."

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Silverwhitemango t1_jaa04on wrote

Thanks for this long comment.

I watched the video too and this was one of the times where Shirvan (CaspianReport) seemed to be really biased and did not reference his sources.

Asides from the above comment, the video also omitted the fact that 2 of the nations in the CFA, Guinea-Bisseau & Equatorial Guinea, aren't even former French colonies yet they still chose to be involved in the CFA franc currency.

Or even omit the fact that nations like Mali were the ones who requested French military support.

CaspianReport & Johnny Harris are just examples of how sometimes with flashy editing and visuals, you can get away with inaccurate shit to your audience.

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Vanished_Elephant t1_jaad7tz wrote

Not to mention all the cherry picking he does in this video, like when talking about GDP figures and comparing for example Ivory Coast which was a commodity based economy (cocoa, whose prices crashed in the 1980s) and also in the midst of a brutal years-long civil war while neighboring Ghana experienced relative peace and stability. These types of facts matter when covering geo-political subjects. Or the fancy graphics showing the flow of money going from the CFA countries to France and completely lacking any kind of source info. Maybe he should have included actual import/export statistics and realize that the big majority of CFA nations commerce is with the US/Canada/China. Or which mining companies actually most benefit from the natural resources there (hint, they're not French). Anyhow.. this video reeked of clickbait and anti-French propaganda. I'll keep watching his videos for entertainment purposes but a good reminder to be keenly aware of his bias.

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Silverwhitemango t1_jac12vi wrote

Its not just his videos I am worried about.

There have been several anti-France (not so much "anti-French" as in the French people) videos by so-called political channels, and they don't really cite their info on such issues.

Kinda similar to all the anti-US & anti-NATO videos regarding Ukraine but their talking points are distinctively Russia/China.

No one wants to cite their sources properly anymore, and just want to chase the algorithms or fact-check their stuff (Another channel I can think of that keeps getting recommended to me after I un-subbed from them is TLDR news.)

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valeyard89 t1_jaaxroc wrote

I found it very interesting Togo and Gabon joined the Commonwealth recently. They were French colonies, not British.

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Eogard t1_jabsy4w wrote

Wasn't Togo a German colony that was split between Uk and France after the war?

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Silverwhitemango t1_jac0srs wrote

Togoland, yea.

The western part of Togoland occupied by the British got sucked into modern day Ghana.

The eastern part became modern day Togo thanks to the French

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tnarref t1_jaa84uv wrote

I'm not sure he's biased, he might just be repeating what he's read elsewhere with no good understanding of monetary policy to make up his own opinion.

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SaintTastyTaint t1_jaap3r2 wrote

This is why people should not see Youtubers as authority figures on subject matter, but rather charlatans who's entire purpose is to earn ad revenue.

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Kibault t1_jaa8kvy wrote

In this day and age, I wouldn't trust someone with "Caspian" in his nickname. Sounds biased towards some countries around a certain area/sea...

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ZZAABB1122 t1_jaauj9u wrote

You write that

"Additionally (And importantly), France pays interest on deposits by member countries, and at a fixed 0.7% rate, even when actual interest rates on the market were negative. This is a net loss of money for France."

​

That is a deliberate manipulation from your side, interest rates are usually higher than 0.7%. Most of the time it is not a net loss for France but a net gain. Negative interest rates happen far more rarely than positive interest rate. Currently French long term interest rates is at 2.69%.

And then you have the value of someone depositing money in your bank instead of theirs which gives a higher amount of deposits.

Since you are so obviously manipulating in that comment, one must assume that your whole text is nothing but manipulation and lies.

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Vanished_Elephant t1_jabd2lz wrote

The minimum rate of 0.75% was set in 2012. And interest rates have been below 1 and close to 0 for the better part of the last decade. Either way I have no horse in this debate. CFA monetary policy is a very complex issue, and France is cooperating in trying to reform it. France has offered to hand over the reserves to the member countries, but the members were not able to agree. Fact is many of the African elites profit from the CFA system and they're not keen on letting go of it. It's a fascinating subject worth of PHd like research with a wide range of variables. Sadly to get back to what I was originally lamenting, Shirvan from the Caspian Report failed to research/mention. Instead painting his video using very black and white brushes.

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Uptown-Dog t1_jabelfs wrote

How fucking propaganda batman. If you're clueless enough to equate the outsourcing of making physical money with the onerous, deleterious and all-around-fucked-up impact that not being able to set your own country's economic policies on the fundamental level that being on the CFA is then you're absolutely not one who should be uttering a word here.

For those who don't know: being able to set strength or weakness of your own currency is incredibly important in being able to make your own goods cheaper for overseas markets, making them more attractive to buy, stimulating your own economy. This comes with trade-offs, but the need for poorer nations to do this is very, very real. By being stuck using the CFA as their currencies, dooms these smaller, fledgling economies to never be able to compete on the world stage. Hundreds of years from now, unless they change this, they'll still be backwater nations.

And has absolutely nothing to do with how your physical money gets created. Lots of even first world nations outsource their physical coin stamping and money printing to other countries, it's completely out of scope of monetary policy.

France has every incentive to keep them weak and dependent on France. France uses all its available power to keep its neocolonialism going, and it's been stupendously successful. Propaganda works though, just watch the comment I'm replying to to see it in action.

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Mika0023 t1_jabti2z wrote

You miss the point though that they can simply leave the CFA and have all that control

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Lost-Presentation114 t1_jac2vnn wrote

>You miss the point though that they can simply leave the CFA and have all that control

No, you deliberately ignore the part where France bribes and incentives the top leadership to do what isn't best for the country. First world nations bribing and corrupting third world nations is par for the course and it's deeply disingenuous to suggest that doesn't happen - France has means, motive, and opportunities in buckets.

And you also ignore the other times they absolutely wrecked the country that tried to leave. They made a example out of it - and we only have to look at the Middle East and Eastern Europe to see that nothing has changed: countries can and do forcibly use hard power to get their way.

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Nothingtoseeheremmk t1_ja9rgha wrote

Those countries willingly choose to peg their currency. You’re acting like France forced them to at gunpoint

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Mika0023 t1_ja8lf43 wrote

this is what I need. Thanks, will check it out right away.

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