Pengestrømme ind og ud af den grønlandske økonomi

Greenland's so-called "white gold" refers to the mineral cryolite, which was once exploited in the production of soda ash and alum and as a flux in the production of aluminum. The metaphor "white gold" refers to the color of cryolite and the capital exports Danish and American companies and corporations accumulated from 1856 to 1987. Cryolite's color varies from transparent to white, yellowish to purple, and black, with white being the most common color.[1] The mineral was scarce in Greenland, where only significant deposits were exploited at Ivittuut in the Arsuk Fjord in southwestern Greenland. The mineral was mined and used commercially for many years by the Cryolite Factory Oresund in Denmark. During the Second World War, the United States took control of Greenland for many years. In addition to the Danish share of revenues, a US company, the Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Company (Pennsalt), was involved in a joint venture with the Danish company for more than 100 years.

The Americans bought the crude cryolite from the Danish company, cleansed it, and sold it to the aluminum industry, primarily in the USA. For many years, the Danish cryolite company and Pennsalt in the United States shared the world market for cryolite. Recently, the Danish State TV DR broadcasted a documentary claiming that some 800 billion Danish kroner, 400 to the U.S. and 400 to the Danish company, were capital exports for over 140 years to the colonial and imperialist center economies. The numbers in themselves are uninteresting. What matters is how much the mine benefitted the colonial centers. The outstanding attempt to do the calculations as converted values from the initial values to the current values is probably inaccurate, but that doesn't change the issue of colonialist exploitation of Greenland's Cryolite resources! Technically speaking, most mainstream economists dismissed the output values (accumulated revenues) as being a wrong predictor for assessing the accumulated value added over 140 years.

This is not incorrect, but it gives a misleading image of capital and income flows going in and out of the Greenlandic economy in relation to the exploitation of cryolite. In a macroeconomic national accounting setting, we can look at this from the production side of the economy and the income side. From the production side, value added to the economy is the output value minus input values (Machinery, tools, logistics, building, etc. – real capital). Looking at this from the income side, the value added is wage income and residual income (i.e., profits and interests earned). What matters here on the production side are the costs (input values) that probably became income for Danish companies operating in Denmark and Greenland. In terms of income, the personal incomes of Danish workers in Greenland and in Denmark are monetary flows going back to Denmark to be consumed and saved there. Accumulated profits are capital being exported out of Greenland, and so are interest earnings. Assuming that Greenland Labor inputs, as with mining in newer times, are limited, the incomes and procurements will mainly be monetary flows going back to Denmark or the U.S. If the 400 billion kr. is a correct measurement, we then would be close to the output values anyway.

Thus, it is a shame that the debate on the economic relations between Greenland and Denmark disappeared with the public broadcasting of Denmarks Radio's (DRs) documentary "Greenland's White Gold".[2] DR has since closed public access to the documentary because it has "received criticism for presenting a too one-sided a picture of the economic conditions and the concrete value creation for Denmark and Greenland." DR acknowledges the criticism – "The overall result and impression in the documentary is skewed and does not represent the intention of the project". Nonetheless, DR now only takes mainstream economists' inaccurate assessments into account, and that is just as skewed as the mainstream focus on the – in this case – irrelevant confusion of output values with value added.