March 04, 2023

Surfing the Wayback Machine: 2017 with Fadhel Kaboub

1 hour 7 minutes

Dr. Fadhel Kaboub was recently appointed Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development of the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC), an international intergovernmental organisation founded by countries from across the Global South. In honor of Fadhel’s new position, we’re releasing Steve’s very first interview with him from back in the day when we live streamed onto Facebook. Steve thinks his questions are very different today — more disciplined. Some of us can’t get over how young he sounded. It was only five years ago!

Fadhel and Steve discuss the spectrum of monetary sovereignty from full sovereignty to completely non-sovereign. Fadhel explains the structural debt traps developing nations find themselves in. They have deficits related to lack of sufficient food or energy production, forcing them to rely on imports.

“Those are things that, no matter what you do as a central bank, you're not going to eliminate those structural issues unless as a country you start investing in renewable energy so that you don't have to import fossil fuels anymore or you invest in a sustainable agricultural policy to let you have food self-sufficiency.”

The hole in their trade deficit leads to depreciation of their exchange rate.

“And then the next morning or the next month when you as a country try to import food or fuel, you're going to import it at a higher price. So you'd be importing inflation into your domestic economy ... The inflation is related to a weakness of the productive capacity of the domestic system plus the imported inflation that happens because of the depreciation of the exchange rate.”

Fadhel and Steve also discuss the devastating effects of unemployment and the potential of a Job Guarantee Program for developing countries.

Dr. Fadhel Kaboub is Under-Secretary-General for Financing for Development of the Organisation of Educational Cooperation (OEC). He is an Associate Professor of Economics (on leave) at Denison University and President of the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

@FadhelKaboub on Twitter

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