Zimbabwe, a country rich in natural resources, took so long to figure out that it was nothing but a puppet in the hands of western monetary interests. [...]
It sits on gold reserves worth trillions. It has the world’s second largest reserves of platinum, has got alluvial diamonds that can fetch the nation $2 billion annually and even boasts of chrome and coal deposits.
The magic word is corruption. In order to extract the resources you need to build the infrastructure. In order to process the resources (like clean up the raw metals, etc.) you need even more advanced infrastructure. In order for that to happen, you need to do the long-term investment. You need to educate specialists. And so on and so forth. Why would the Zimbabwe government be interested in that? They already have everything they want. As you know, it doesn't really matter how much wealth you have, the more important that you have more than the others around you. Therefore, the government goes the easy way and outsources the excavation, the processing, and all the rest to the external companies who have the expertise and the necessary tools. The government officials would prefer hand out the contracts to those companies who give them the biggest piles of cash in return. That would only be profitable for the companies if they keep the extracting costs very low, pay very low salaries to the locals, and pay very low taxes to the state. So, in some way the ordinary people's poverty is beneficial to those companies and the government officials. The golden/diamond or similar currency is not any news. While it not only slows down the production economy, it also has clear benefits of hoarding the currency, creating shortages of currency, and slowing down the overall business activity. But it makes the currency more stable, that's true. Gold is gold, no matter who presently holds the power in Zimbabwe and/or if tomorrow there's going to be a civil war in there. So, by introducing such currency, Zimbabwe officials would be richer and the other Zimbabwe citizens would not feel any difference.