@Wuh?

Why now?

The timing you are concerned with reflects the fact that Clico is a direct symptom of an economic upheaval none of us has ever seen. This is a once in a lifetime occurrence. It is worse than 1973/74 and second only to the 1930s. It will, in my view, threaten the viability of our social systems and potentially our political stability. Open a newspaper and read a few headlines: nations have gone bankrupt; rich nations are threatening poorer ones with protectionism; the hard right is making headway in Europe, pension time bombs have started ticking again; across Eastern Europe nations and companies are teetering on the edge of debt default; and drug money and influence is set to spread further if the events in Guinea Bissau are any guide. And all the while credit is evaporating.

There is a scale of asset and credit destruction en route defying all attempts to fill the holes with printed money. The threat to small open economies like Barbados, dependent on capital inflows from tourism and exposed to over investment in construction, is profound. It is crucial we get policy decisions right in this context. Without seeing things as they are – when, for example, it comes to deciding the fate of an insurer – that won’t be possible and we will waste resources at a time when the tax base is shrinking.

That is the timing. It does not matter to me which shade of party gets the country through this. Only that it is done as best as it can be without artifice and obfuscation. Once again, there are much larger concerns than partisanship and I am a Barbadian first.

I am not sure what you mean about selective ignorance on Sagicor, nor what point the PM made and to which you refer to, nor what “story” it all tells. I have written principally of the accounts not the politics of the accounts.

I regard the first two sentences of your fourth paragraph as valid points and I do not think anywhere in what I have written is there an attempt to suggest otherwise.

Interesting point as to whether I have been moved to write before. I understand your reservations about my bona fides and even the questioning of my integrity despite the fact we have probably never met.

Nonetheless, you deserve your answer. No, I cannot claim to have written to the TnT press. Perhaps if I were a Trini I would have. However, and since you ask, I have been quoted or cited on various aspects relating to the economic crisis in The Daily Telegraph (Bear Stearns), The Guardian (bear market durations), The Financial Times (Paulson Plan, short selling, Baltic Dry Index, Royal Bank of Scotland amongst others) and The Wall Street Journal (Federal Reserve policy). The Times, which you also mention, merely cited my views as they related to the collapse of a UK firm under the weight of accounting fraud unrelated to the credit crisis.

@poppet exterminator

Perhaps we can share the mantle…

I know very little abot CLICO

When i visit http://www.clico.com, I get a list of countries that EXCLUDES barbados.

I have to visit http://www.clicoholdings.com to see the Barbados operation. It’s main page says the following.

CLICO Holdings Barbados Limited (CHB), is a wholly owned subsidiary of CL Financial Limited.,

In other words, CL Financial LTD owns the company outright and there are no minority owners.

CLICO HOLDINGS BARBADOS is made up of five affiliate companies

CLICO INT LIFE
CLICO INT GENERAL LIFE
CLICO MORTGAGE & FINANCE
CLICO BALANCE FUND
CLICO PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT

THREE OF THESE COMPANIES ARE REGULATED. CLICO MORTGAGE & FINANCE BY THE CENTRAL BANK, CLICO INT LIFE AND INT GENERAL LIFE, BY THE INSURANCE SUPERVISOR.

How does one become a SHAREHOLDER IN CLICO HOLDINGS BARBADOS?

… private or public, the law says that if assets greater than $1 million and/or sales greater than $1 million then financial statements have to be filed with Corporate affairs.

The financial statements are thus available to the public once the company is above a certain size.

Check Companies act ….. Section 152.

I guess the thinking behind this is to ensure that large companies, big enough to affect the Country’s economy, don’t indulge in shenanigans and suddenly go unstable unknown to anyone except those intimately involved in their operation.

CLICO may be a private company but once it is above a certain size, its financial statements, in theory, should be publicly available.

Wuh?

My copy of the Companies Act I got in the 1990’s. I hesitate to say that it is an original but it is “old old” as the young people woud tell me.

I was looking for the Act on the net but could not find it.

What makes you think this section may not have been proclaimed?

John,

The Companies Act was introduced in 1982 (I think) and if you check you will see that the old system of Annual Returns by companies was not continued under the new Act. I suspect the relevant section was not proclaimed.

On Keltruth Blog (lies, damn lies and more lies), it was saying quite untruthfully that Clico sued the Registrar regarding the filing of returns and the granting of a certificate of good standing.

I checked the record. That was merely an exparte application that the court would extend the time for filing that is provided for in the Act!

Got you John:

It does seem that whenever anyone highlights the definciences of oh so UWI management class one should immediately desist , bow the bended, and tug the forelock to our intellectually superior…. not me.

If they are acting foolishly they should be told so, and quickly so they do not bring the whole alma mater in to disrepute.

In the name of confidence in a company who has patently ignored our laws and financial regulation we are told to keep quiet and not rock the boat!

Our regulators have tried that policy for five years and look where we are now.

We now find ourselves underwriting the very insurance policies which our Supervisor is paid to ensure are fully secured.

And some duh brains out there ( and on VOB ) think we should keep quiet and not rock the boat!

If there are rules and the rules are not being followed then call not only the people who did not follow the rules to account but also call the ones who turned a blind eye while this was going on.

Just as David is 100% right to point his finger at Owen and claim negligence, Owen should be saying “you got four fingers pointing at you my brother, …. what exactly you did when you was in opposition?”

… then there is the Supervisor of insurance, the courts of Barbados and a large set of professionals like accountants and lawyers whose tails should be roasted.

What is the sense of paying these jokers a huge set of money when they will look the other way in such simple matters of ensuring documented rules are being followed? … no great set of imagination is required interpreting these rules.

We’ll know if the “new” system is going to work as we see some of those who perpetrated the actions and turned a blind eye get their collective tails roasted.

If we don’t, then we know we going to see the same hogwash again.

It may be politically incorrect to speak about sparing the rod on our children, …. but if the example of our adults is anything to go by, our children have been spoilt, … and badly so.

…. just goes to show what being politically correct gets you!!

Maybe we enjoy having spoilt children around us ……. and paying them a pound and a crown.

Anonymous

The opposition sat in Parliament.

Most of them are lawyers, able to read and understand the law and certainly any reference to a statutory fund.

Why is it that it is only after the Government changes that one of the myriad lawyers can suddenly discover the meaning of the words ….. statutory fund?

The whole set of them need their tails roasting.

I can say with confidence that many Barbadians, myself included, have no confidence in any of their MP’s.

… and the story about how terrible the world financial situation is may be true, but how come ICB can be mooted as a purchaser and not a peep can be heard about problems at Sagicor.

Didn’t these two companies exist in the same hard world too and face the same challenges?

Somebodies are responsible and the sooner we see them either coming forward or being specifically named the better.

Many of the people who are responsible have one two or three degrees from prestigious business schools all over the world who make the parents of students pay through their noses just to get their children there.

These are failures too.

Name the culprits, name their schools, let us see them all.

These are the elite who contributed to the problems, these are the elite in whom we can no longer place our trust.

Name them.

There is nothing imaginary about them.

They are real and we need to know them for what they are and what they have done.

John; todays economist, and persons with business and financial degrees, the likes of Prof. Persaud, Dennis Jones aka livinginbarbados, Clyde Mascoll, and Rawdon Adams, are no better than American church leaders, who in good times would lead anyone so misguide into believing that they have some special skill to predict and see into the future. They are all snake oil salesmen.

Adrian Hinds

No truer words spoken.

Those listed above are like snake oil salesmen.

All of a sudden we are hearing of a prof.Avinash persaud who we are told advised G7 countries.

The question I have to ask is,to what result?

These G7 countries are all in trouble now as a result of said advice from ‘these experts’.

As to dennis Jones/lIving in barbados ,he suddenly is an expert who reminds us he has worked at the IMF.

It seems now there are not enough call in programmes for him to give his ‘expert advice’ on.

After you listen to him you realise he is just throwing together words,not giving any solutions,but hoping against hope that some minister in this government will hear his gibberish and give him a big consultancy contract.

Listen carefully or read what he says,is he saying anything that the average person who reads does not already know.

Is there any thing fresh,wise,profound or even practical in his ‘free advice’ or comments.

Me think not.

I say the era of the ‘know-all – know nothing’ snake oil salesmen is over.

Anon, I don’t listen to Dennis Jones, I simply cannot get beyond that accent of his. So I read his comment wherever he posts them. His writing are tolerable and informative, but so far in my experience, I have not been able to view him as credible source for any pertinent opinions on the current global situation, or local and regional for that matter. But this is not conclusive, I am still reading him. In a year or so I shall be able to say one way or the other.

@Adrian Hinds

Snake oil now?

Indeed, I have no predictive powers. Nor did I offer any. Nor did I apply any warranty on my opinions which have been confined principally to accounting data and the excursion covering your logic. Yet you arrive at the “snake oil” tag. Good grief, man. How about attacking the ideas that are actually made?

Totally agree that “experts” should not be kow-towed to. Healthy cynicism is generally a v good thing. Debate should be open with equal weight to all views.

I thought Anon (March 11, 2009 at 8:23 am) made an excellent point – the importance of fresh ideas and solutions. Criticism is half the point. These are the remainder and they are not the domain of only “experts”.

That said, I am not sure what Dr Persaud said to offend Anon but I think the charges laid are misplaced. He has produced much research (sometimes with partners) aimed at finding measures to ease this crisis. And as far back as 2000 he analysed what has turned out to be a large part of today’s problem – ineffective regulation of banks herding behaviour. That essay can be read here:

http://www.erisk.com/ResourceCenter/ERM/persaud.pdf

The point is have a look at what those you criticise have really said rather than what you think they may have said. In Dr Avinash’s case he cannot make anyone, G7 included, take his advice. And I think you will find they did not when it mattered.

Finally, this Avinash/Goodhart article from Jan 2008 may cast some of your criticisms in a different light:

http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto013020081447575749

And no, I have received no payment from Dr Persaud to make these points.

How many Clico or British American insurance policies were sold in say the last month?

Does anyone find it strange that it is PM Thompson who was announcing that Clico insurance would be sold instead of the owners or the T &T gov’t which controls the parent company?

Who (other than Gov’t) would take on the massive liability that is Clico Insurance?

I wonder how many people have quietly taken their money out of Clico in the last week?

What can we say about the Clico affair other than to repeat that memorable scene in Hamlet

“Horatio: He waxes desperate with imagination.

Marcellus: Let’s follow. ‘Tis not fit thus to obey him.

Horatio: Have after. To what issue will this come?

Marcellus: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Horatio: Heaven will direct it.

Marcellus: Nay, let’s follow him.