Buy Ambien With Overnight

This is an article I first read on Nigeria Village Square, but later found out that it was originally from ocnus.net. I thought to Buy Ambien With Overnight post it here for comments. I am not an expert on CFA, but I am Buy Ambien With Overnight trying to learn as much as possible about it. So I’m waiting for your comments!

The Economic And Political Effects Of The CFA Zone
By Dr Gary K Busch

One of the Buy Ambien With Overnight most important influences in the economic and political life of African states which were formerly French colonies is Buy Ambien With Overnight the impact of a common currency; the Communuate Financiere de l’Afrique (‘CFA’) franc. There are Buy Ambien With Overnight actually two separate CFA francs in circulation. The first is Buy Ambien With Overnight that of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) which comprises eight West African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Buy Ambien With Overnight Togo. The second is that of the Central African Economic and Buy Ambien With Overnight Monetary Community (CEMAC) which comprises six Central African countries (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon), This division corresponds to the pre-colonial AOF (Afrique Occidentale Française) and the AEF (Afrique Équatoriale Française), with the Buy Ambien With Overnight exception that Guinea-Bissau was formerly Portuguese and Equatorial Guinea Spanish).

Each of these two groups issues its own CFA franc. The WAEMU CFA franc is Buy Ambien With Overnight issued by the BCEAO (Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest) and the CEMAC CFA franc is issued by the BEAC (Banque des Etats de l’Afrique Centrale). These currencies were originally both pegged at 100 CFA for Buy Ambien With Overnight each French franc but, after France joined the European Community’s Euro zone at a Buy Ambien With Overnight fixed rate of 6.65957 French francs to one Euro, the Buy Ambien With Overnight CFA rate to the Euro was fixed at CFA 665,957 to Buy Ambien With Overnight each Euro, maintaining the 100 to 1 ratio. It is Buy Ambien With Overnight important to note that it is the responsibility of the Buy Ambien With Overnight French Treasury to guarantee the convertibility of the CFA to Buy Ambien With Overnight the Euro.

The monetary policy governing such a Buy Ambien With Overnight diverse aggregation of countries is uncomplicated because it is, in fact, operated by the Buy Ambien With Overnight French Treasury, without reference to the central fiscal authorities of any of the Buy Ambien With Overnight WAEMU or the CEMAC. Under the terms of the agreement which set up these banks and Buy Ambien With Overnight the CFA the Central Bank of each African country is obliged to Buy Ambien With Overnight keep at least 65% of its foreign exchange reserves in an “operations account” held at the French Treasury, as well as another 20% to cover financial liabilities.

The CFA central banks also impose a Buy Ambien With Overnight cap on credit extended to each member country equivalent to 20% of that country’s public revenue in the Buy Ambien With Overnight preceding year. Even though the BEAC and the BCEAO have an Buy Ambien With Overnight overdraft facility with the French Treasury, the drawdowns on those overdraft facilities are Buy Ambien With Overnight subject to the consent of the French Treasury. The final say is Buy Ambien With Overnight that of the French Treasury which has invested the foreign reserves of the Buy Ambien With Overnight African countries in its own name on the Paris Bourse.

In short, more than 80% of the Buy Ambien With Overnight foreign reserves of these African countries are deposited in the “operations accounts” controlled by the Buy Ambien With Overnight French Treasury. The two CFA banks are African in name, but have Buy Ambien With Overnight no monetary policies of their own. The countries themselves do not know, nor are Buy Ambien With Overnight they told, how much of the pool of foreign reserves held by the Buy Ambien With Overnight French Treasury belongs to them as a group or individually. The earnings of the Buy Ambien With Overnight investment of these funds in the French Treasury pool are supposed to Buy Ambien With Overnight be added to the pool but no accounting is given to Buy Ambien With Overnight either the banks or the countries of the details of any such changes. The limited group of high officials in the French Treasury who have knowledge of the amounts in the “operations accounts”, where Buy Ambien With Overnight these funds are invested; whether there is a profit on these investments; are Buy Ambien With Overnight prohibited from disclosing any of this information to the CFA banks or Buy Ambien With Overnight the central banks of the African states.

This makes it Buy Ambien With Overnight impossible for African members to regulate their own monetary policies. The most inefficient and Buy Ambien With Overnight wasteful countries are able to use the foreign reserves of the Buy Ambien With Overnight more prudent countries without any meaningful intervention by the wealthier and Buy Ambien With Overnight more successful countries. The fact that as the French GDP grows and Buy Ambien With Overnight the parity of the Euro to the dollar (the main currency of international trade) appreciates there is Buy Ambien With Overnight the constant danger that the CFA franc may be fixed at too high an Buy Ambien With Overnight exchange rate. This dampens the growth in trade between Africa and Buy Ambien With Overnight the rest of the world and allows other countries, especially in Asia, to Buy Ambien With Overnight use their more flexible exchange rates to gain market share, supplanting the Buy Ambien With Overnight Africans.

The creation and Buy Ambien With Overnight maintenance of the French domination of the francophone African economies is Buy Ambien With Overnight the product of a long period of French colonialism and the Buy Ambien With Overnight learned dependence of the African states. For most of francophone Africa there is Buy Ambien With Overnight only limited power allowed to their central banks. These are economies whose vulnerability to Buy Ambien With Overnight an increasingly globalised economy is increasing daily. There can be no Buy Ambien With Overnight trade policy without reference to currency; there can be no investment without reference to Buy Ambien With Overnight reserves. The politicians and parties elected to promote growth, reform, changes in trade and Buy Ambien With Overnight fiscal policies are made irrelevant except with the consent of the Buy Ambien With Overnight French Treasury which rations their funds. There are many who object to Buy Ambien With Overnight the continuation of this system. President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal has Buy Ambien With Overnight stated this very clearly “The African people’s money stacked in France must be Buy Ambien With Overnight returned to Africa in order to benefit the economies of the Buy Ambien With Overnight BCEAO member states. One cannot have billions and billions placed on foreign stock markets and Buy Ambien With Overnight at the same time say that one is poor, and Buy Ambien With Overnight then go beg for money.”

How Did This Happen?

This system of dependence is Buy Ambien With Overnight a direct result of the colonial policies of the French Government. In the Buy Ambien With Overnight immediate post-war period after the signing of the Bretton Woods Agreement in July 1944 the Buy Ambien With Overnight French economy urgently needed to recover. To assist in this process it Buy Ambien With Overnight set up the first CFA amongst its African colonies to guarantee a Buy Ambien With Overnight captive market for its goods. The principal decision which resulted from Buy Ambien With Overnight the Bretton Woods Agreement was the abandonment of the Gold Standard. In short, the Buy Ambien With Overnight new system gave a dominant place to the dollar. The other currencies saw their exchange rate indexed to Buy Ambien With Overnight the dollar. The reserves of the European central banks at that Buy Ambien With Overnight time consisted of currencies of dubious post-war value and gold which had Buy Ambien With Overnight been de-pegged from the fluctuations of the currency. For this reason France needed the Buy Ambien With Overnight currencies of its colonies to support its competitiveness with its American and Buy Ambien With Overnight British competitors. De Gaulle and his main economic advisor, Pierre Mendès France met with some African leaders and Buy Ambien With Overnight developed a Colonial Pact which would enshrine this is in a Buy Ambien With Overnight treaty (with both public and secret clauses). The genius behind this was Jacques Foccart, France’s “Mister Africa”.

Decolonization south of the Buy Ambien With Overnight Sahara did not happen as de Gaulle had intended. He had Buy Ambien With Overnight wanted a Franco-African Community that stopped short of total independence. But when Buy Ambien With Overnight Sekou Toure’s Guinea voted “no” in the Buy Ambien With Overnight 1958 referendum on that Community, the idea was effectively dead. Guinea was cast into outer darkness because of its decision and Buy Ambien With Overnight a Community of sorts came into existence, but the call of full independence proved too strong to Buy Ambien With Overnight resist.

Not really having planned for Buy Ambien With Overnight it, in 1960 de Gaulle had to improvise structures for Buy Ambien With Overnight a collection of small newly independent states, each with a Buy Ambien With Overnight flag, an anthem, and a seat at the UN, but often with precious little else. It was here that Buy Ambien With Overnight Foccart came to play an essential role, that of architect of the Buy Ambien With Overnight series of Cooperation accords with each new state in the Buy Ambien With Overnight sectors of finance and economy, culture and education, and the Buy Ambien With Overnight military. There were initially eleven countries involved: Mauritania, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Dahomey (now Benin), Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Niger, Chad, Gabon, Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, and Buy Ambien With Overnight Madagascar. Togo and Cameroon, former UN Trust Territories, were also co-opted into the Buy Ambien With Overnight club. So, too, later on, were Mall and the former Belgian territories (Ruanda-Urundi, now Rwanda and Burundi, and Congo-Kinshasa), some of the Buy Ambien With Overnight ex-Portuguese territories, and Comoros and Djibouti, which had also been under French rule for Buy Ambien With Overnight many years but became independent in the 1970s. The whole ensemble was put under a Buy Ambien With Overnight new Ministry of Cooperation, created in 1961, separate from the Ministry of Overseas Departments and Buy Ambien With Overnight Territories (known as the DOM-TOM) that had previously run them all.

The key to Buy Ambien With Overnight all this was the agreement signed between France and its newly-liberated African colonies which locked these colonies into the Buy Ambien With Overnight economic and military embrace of France. This Colonial Pact not only created the Buy Ambien With Overnight institution of the CFA franc, it created a legal mechanism under which France obtained a Buy Ambien With Overnight special place in the political and economic life of its colonies.

The Pacte Coloniale Agreement enshrined a Buy Ambien With Overnight special preference for France in the political, commercial and defence processes in the Buy Ambien With Overnight African countries. On defence it agreed two types of continuing contact. The first was the Buy Ambien With Overnight open agreement on military co-operation or Technical Military Aid (AMT) agreements, which weren’t legally binding, and Buy Ambien With Overnight could be suspended according to the circumstances. They covered education, training of servicemen and Buy Ambien With Overnight African security forces. The second type, secret and binding, were defense agreements supervised and Buy Ambien With Overnight implemented by the French Ministry of Defense, which served as a Buy Ambien With Overnight legal basis for French interventions. These agreements allowed France to have Buy Ambien With Overnight predeployed troops in Africa; in other words, French army units present permanently and Buy Ambien With Overnight by rotation in bases and military facilities in Africa; run entirely by the Buy Ambien With Overnight French.

According to Buy Ambien With Overnight Annex II of the Defence Agreement signed between the governments of the Buy Ambien With Overnight French Republic, the Republic of Ivory Coast, the Republic of Dahomey and Buy Ambien With Overnight the Republic of Niger on 24 April 1961, France has priority in the Buy Ambien With Overnight acquisition of those “raw materials classified as strategic.” In fact, according to article 2 of the agreement, “the French Republic regularly informs the Republic of Ivory Coast (and the other two) of the Buy Ambien With Overnight policy that it intends to follow concerning strategic raw materials and Buy Ambien With Overnight products, taking into account the general needs of defence, the evolution of resources and Buy Ambien With Overnight the situation of the world market.”

According to article 3, “the Republic of Ivory Coast (and the other two) inform the Buy Ambien With Overnight French Republic of the policy they intend to follow concerning strategic raw materials and Buy Ambien With Overnight products and the measures that they propose to take to Buy Ambien With Overnight implement this policy.” And to conclude, article 5: “Concerning these same products, the Republic of Ivory Coast (and the two others) for Buy Ambien With Overnight defence needs, reserve them in priority for sale to the French Republic, after having satisfied the Buy Ambien With Overnight needs of internal consumption, and they will import what they need in priority from Buy Ambien With Overnight it.” The reciprocity between the Buy Ambien With Overnight signatories was not a bargain between equals, but reflected the actual dominance of the Buy Ambien With Overnight colonial power that had, in the case of these countries, organised “independence” a few months previously (in August 1960).

In summary, the Buy Ambien With Overnight colonial pact maintained the French control over the economies of the Buy Ambien With Overnight African states; it took possession of their foreign currency reserves; it Buy Ambien With Overnight controlled the strategic raw materials of the country; it stationed troops in the Buy Ambien With Overnight country with the right of free passage; it demanded that all military equipment be Buy Ambien With Overnight acquired from France; it took over the training of the police and Buy Ambien With Overnight army; it required that French businesses be allowed to maintain monopoly enterprises in key areas (water, electricity, ports, transport, energy, etc.). France not only set limits on the Buy Ambien With Overnight imports of a range of items from outside the franc zone but also set minimum quantities of imports from Buy Ambien With Overnight France. These treaties are still in force and operational.

The creation of such a Buy Ambien With Overnight system was not the preserve of the French National Assembly or Buy Ambien With Overnight the result of any democratic process. It was the result of policies conducted by a Buy Ambien With Overnight small group of people in the President’s office, the ‘African Cell’, initially led by Foccart. For the Buy Ambien With Overnight past half-century, the secretive and powerful “African Cell” has overseen France’s strategic interests in Africa, holding sway over a Buy Ambien With Overnight wide swath of former French colonies. Acting as a general command, the Buy Ambien With Overnight Cell uses France’s military as a Buy Ambien With Overnight hammer to install leaders it deems friendly to French interests. In return, these countries give French industries first crack at their oil and Buy Ambien With Overnight other natural resources. Sidestepping traditional diplomatic channels, the Cell reports only to Buy Ambien With Overnight one person: the president. The Cell’s close ties to Buy Ambien With Overnight oil giant Elf Aquitaine, where top executives were jailed on corruption charges, was a Buy Ambien With Overnight source of embarrassment. And a former Cell chief has now been Buy Ambien With Overnight convicted of charges related to arms trafficking to Angola. These highly contentious policy issues never came before any of France’s democratically-elected bodies. African policy is Buy Ambien With Overnight the personal fiefdom of the President’s office.

This was true for De Gaulle, Mitterand, Giscard D’Estaing and Buy Ambien With Overnight Chirac. Sarkozy apparently has no contacts or ambitions in this Buy Ambien With Overnight field and has left Chirac’s Cell in place.

The Impact of the Colonial Pact

Some of the Buy Ambien With Overnight consequences for the Africa countries of the continuation of a policy of dependence are Buy Ambien With Overnight obvious – lack of competitive options; dependence on the Buy Ambien With Overnight French economy; dependence on the French military; and the open-door policy for Buy Ambien With Overnight French private enterprise. However, there are more subtle differences which arise.

The French companies in francophone Africa, by virtue of their protected monopolistic or Buy Ambien With Overnight oligarchic status, contribute a substantial share of the GDP of these countries. More importantly, however, they are Buy Ambien With Overnight often the single largest group of taxpayers. In many of these countries the Buy Ambien With Overnight French corporations pay over 50% of the Buy Ambien With Overnight national tax revenues collected. This gives them a unique status. Quite frequently the Buy Ambien With Overnight French say that without the French companies the economy of the Buy Ambien With Overnight African state will collapse. When coupled with the inability of the Buy Ambien With Overnight country to access its reserves it undoubtedly true. However, it Buy Ambien With Overnight doesn’t follow that Buy Ambien With Overnight private corporations from other countries, like the U.S. or China, would not contribute equally. This is Buy Ambien With Overnight one reason that the French are so concerned with allowing competition into the Buy Ambien With Overnight market place.

Another aspect of this Buy Ambien With Overnight is the inability of these francophone countries to collect taxes from Buy Ambien With Overnight its ordinary citizens. In a country like the Ivory Coast which has Buy Ambien With Overnight been divided for a number of years between the rebel North and Buy Ambien With Overnight the loyalist South, tax collections in the rebel regions have been Buy Ambien With Overnight impossible. The rebels have waxed fat on taxes and fees imposed on their captive populations and Buy Ambien With Overnight the sale of stolen goods from their regions. They do not want to Buy Ambien With Overnight disarm because it will have a deleterious economic effect on them, not just a Buy Ambien With Overnight political one.

The lack of a Buy Ambien With Overnight citizenry paying taxes breeds a gulf between the government and the Buy Ambien With Overnight citizens; mutual responsibility is missing in the equation. It is the Buy Ambien With Overnight job of the National Assembly to legislate for programs based on the Buy Ambien With Overnight supply of revenue to the state, but if there are insufficient revenues the Buy Ambien With Overnight National Assembly is frustrated in its role. If 80% of the Buy Ambien With Overnight funds go to France as part of the CFA franc project there is Buy Ambien With Overnight little left for the ministers and the National Assembly to Buy Ambien With Overnight allocate for social programs.

In many of the Buy Ambien With Overnight francophone countries, suffering under conditions of drought, lack of food; lack of health care; it Buy Ambien With Overnight is only French ‘aid’ to the national treasuries that sustains them. This ‘aid’ is often their own money which the French have shepherded for them.

There are Buy Ambien With Overnight many in Africa who have seen and understood the problem of the Buy Ambien With Overnight CFA franc and the Colonial Pact. Mamadou Koulibaly, the President of the Buy Ambien With Overnight National Assembly in the Ivory Coast has been an outspoken critic of the Buy Ambien With Overnight Colonial Pact and the dominance of the CFA franc. He has Buy Ambien With Overnight written an excellent book on the subject and gives speeches and Buy Ambien With Overnight interviews on the subject regularly. The problem is that very few people understand the Buy Ambien With Overnight fundamental iniquity of this French system; including many Africans.

If African nations are Buy Ambien With Overnight to achieve growth and participate fully in the opportunities of globalisation they must be Buy Ambien With Overnight freed from the fetters of this colonial albatross. In order to Buy Ambien With Overnight attract additional direct investment in the economies, as opposed to just portfolio investment this Buy Ambien With Overnight situation must be changed. In the words of President Koulibaly, “In Africa we do not need alms, our problem is Buy Ambien With Overnight not due to a lack of money. My conviction is that Buy Ambien With Overnight we must first of all clearly state our ownership rights over our own land and Buy Ambien With Overnight the resources in our soil which were taken away by the Buy Ambien With Overnight colonialists when they conquered our countries, and still be taken away through the Buy Ambien With Overnight Colonial Pact”.