By AUSTIN  KALUBA –
PRESIDENT Edgar Lungu has proved internationally and locally that he is a good captain of both the Patriotic Front (PF) and the Government.
Since a captain does not panic when a ship is rocking, but puts measures to steady it, President Lungu has faced the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing the country with a bold face.
The President has gone further by seeking divine intervention calling for national prayers on October 18.
Early this week, President Lungu directed that increased fiscal interventions be made to improve economic fundamentals to stabilise the sharply-depreciating Kwacha.
Unlike other pessimists, the President said increased fiscal interventions would improve the existing economic fundamentals so that there could be a favourable foreign exchange liquidity in the market.
Mr Lungu was satisfied that the monetary policy committee in consultation with the Ministry of Finance would continue to measure interventions and monitor market trends to ensure the foreign exchange market was normalised.
Contrary to what some prophets-of-doom are thinking, the situation is not desperate and can be sorted out soon with enviable positive results.
What the country is going through are mere colds and flus and should help to unite Zambians in surmounting them to come out victorious.
The Great Depression, which was a severe worldwide economic depression in the 1930s, changed American social and political institutions and the way individuals thought about themselves and their relationship to the country and the world.
The experience challenged and changed citizens who were affected, by uniting them in finding a solution and soldiering on against all odds.
Although there had been devastating economic depressions before, the 1930s’ crisis encompassed both urban and rural regions and devastated middle-class and working-class people alike.
After 1933, the expansion of the New Deal meant that the US government now intervened much more clearly in people’s daily lives, employing them and giving them aid, as well as providing new forms of social insurance.
One thing that was clear was that everyone understood that the crisis was not caused by President Franklin Roosevelt or his predecessor Herbert Hoover.
Citizens also did not blame the fall of the stock market on any individual, but knew that an international crisis had begun since most of Europe’s prosperity was built upon the bank loans to Germany, so when investors started to pull their money out of Germany after the crash of the stock market, the banks of Germany and other European states were left weakened.
In all actuality, the global economy was severely in disarray, so much so that Americans found it difficult to cope with unemployment, the depression lasting longer than it should have, resulting in a huge impact on other European nations.
Roosevelt’s advisers sought a policy of government intervention known as the New Deal, which included new agencies to aid in relief, reform and recovery.
This is similar to President Lungu’s prescription for increased fiscal interventions to improve economic fundamentals to stabilise the sharply-depreciating Kwacha.
As it’s sanguine name entails in ci-Chewa meaning dawn, the Kwacha will recover from this temporal sliding.