This week we go far afield. To the halls of Parliament in Ghana. Where the power company shut down the power while parliamentarians were debating the President's recent State of the Nation speech. Turns out the Country was $1.8 million behind on its light bill. The debate in Parliament evidently continued in the dark. But the subject was changed to paying the electric bill. After the legislators promised to come up with half the arrears immediately and promised to pay the rest by the end of the week, the power company restored power and members and aides who had been trapped in elevators were finally able to get out.
A little background: Ghana generates a lot of green power from hydroelectric dams, solar and wind. They also generate power by burning a limited amount of fossil fuels. But not enough to power a growing industrial sector and burgeoning tourism, not to mention getting electricity to rural areas which now generate 46% of their power by burning wood and other biomass. The solution is obvious and staring them in the face. Ghana has a resource of one billion barrels of offshore oil. Now that parliamentarians have had direct experience of having no power, will they remove any green inspired roadblocks to using the fossil fuels they have in abundance? Time will tell.
Here's a thought experiment: The United States has, literally, no money to pay its light bill. The daily deficit of the Federal government runs between $4 and $5 billion dollars a day. The only way the electric bill gets paid is by counterfeiting the money to pay for it. Sorry, I mean borrowing newly created money from the Federal Reserve and using that to pay the electric bill. And that gambit is effectively reaching its natural limit: inflation of consumer prices, not just financial assets.
Will it take cutting off the power to bring Congress to a place where it can make the acquaintance of reality? Time will tell. I'm Richard Fields and that's this weeks Report From the Fields