Too late now, LG, the die was finally cast with the profligacy of World Cup , 3$ and Veco.

Blaming immigrant labour, incompetent politicos, global downturns, educated workforces who won’t work have failed to cut it.

Were on our own now, big style.

No handouts, lifebelts or pity.

The long warned of global restructuring is happening and we unfortunately are on the wrong side of the fence.

Hard work and economies will give us a chance to pull through if improbably we still have the never-die spirit of our
predecessors, unfortunately singing of Pride and Industry will not.

As our government has reneged on its major manifesto promises, not through economic necessity but the cynical “like it or lump it” contempt for the voters, it looks like we are heading for the proverbial SHTF.

Clico will be bailed out of its innovative investment strategies but the bailees have to bear the consequences of an empty Exchequer.

Everyone of us bears the burden of the meltdown fallout, except the fat cats who benefitted from the crazy regulation system allowed to develop in the last 20 years.

Sad to see all those doomy predictions coming to pass.

Look at the story from the beginning, not from the end, and the issues of debt (national and personal) predate by a few thousand years the creation of modern institutions, as your Babylonian reference makes clear. (Islamic banking forbids the making of money from money, so elements of the principle are in tact, but few countries practice Islamic banking. There used to be usury laws in many countries but most governments took them off the books.)

I won’t go into analogies about national and personal responsibilities. But debt does not come out of thin air. Those who contract it may be less than open about what they are doing and what may be the consequences. But, in a democracy, those who support those they vote for also have an obligation to keep looking and checking what their representatives are doing.

Get people to ask themselves on what basis they believed the betterment of their economic and social lives would be built. “I do not know” is not an acceptable answer.

On the back page of the Daily Nation, July 16, 2009, there is a fairly interesting news story under the caption: DOLLAR FIX, and with the by-line: “Exchange Rate to blame for tourism woes”.

The story reported Mr. Gordon Seale, managing director of the Sand Acres Hotel and Bougainvillea Beach Resort, as saying that the fixed exchange rate that exists with the Barbados Dollar and the US Dollar has been identified ( presumably by Mr. Seale) as the most serious problem affecting the tourist industry of Barbados, and therefore with such a destructive mechanism around local hotels become less competitive each year as a result of inflation ( although the news reportage in making such a premise and then drawing such a conclusion must be fraught with some fear by the average reader of drawing the wrong conclusion).

Furthermore, Mr. Seale was reported as having said that for several years inflation in the so-called Barbados economy has been reaching six or seven per cent, which was often greater than that in the United States, and that the fixed exchange rate parity eroded the margins of small hoteliers, resulting in no money for upkeep and leading to a bad reputation for the island.

Well said, we in PDC must say to Mr. Seale. But, we are thinking that Mr. Seale might have gone further and examined the fact – and this is if he did NOT really do so at that particular meeting of the Intimate Hotels at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre last Wednesday – that it is NOT just the fixed exchange rate parity that Barbados has with the US Dollar that continues to assist in bringing about massive material, production, debt, financial and other problems to the tourism sector of this rather small economy, BUT that it is also ALL the Exchange Rates Parities that Barbados has with other countries and the very destructive effects that they continue to help produce that have been taking a great toll on NOT just the Tourism sector of Barbados, BUT ALSO the entire productive, distributive, social and personal sectors of this country.

Indeed, the costs incurred by Barbados of retaining such parities are of such great proportions that they totally overwhelm what ever little benefits Barbados gain from them and by having them.

Also, it is very disgraceful that Barbados – as well as so many other esp. so-called developing countries, are seen by many people in Barbados and elsewhere as “extensions” of, say, the US, UK and European economies. So, rather than becoming “more autonomous” away from these economies we are seen to be importing the “prices” of the goods and services of these particular economies into our local sectors, and to their great and unholy detriment. e.g. the actual situation whereby there are co-relationships between high import “prices” and the rising costs of living and doing business in Barbados. The afore-going argument is also another definite area that Mr. Seale should have critically looked at and in a context whereby there have long been constantly widening trade and investment gaps between those particular economies and ours.

Thus, it is unfortunate that we in PDC have this to say – and this is if the DLP and BLP are seriously NOT thrown out of parliament by a certain time, say, by 2018, and their former places taken up by some people-centered, progressive nationalist parties with some bold and imaginative policies and programs, that our beloved country is – at this stage – almost truly heading in the direction of becoming a very indebted, very rickety and failed state in the long term. And, what a tragic state of affairs such would be indeed, esp. given the very significant efforts of the late Grantley Adams and the late Errol Barrow!!

Hence, against the backdrop of such foreboding thoughts, it is entirely reprehensible and disgusting that both DLP and the BLP Governments would over the years have been continuing to support such old archaic exchange rate parities systems for Barbados and continuing to support the dreadful practice of importing the “prices” of goods and services from overseas ( we are NOT hereby dealing with the actual goods and services), even though the evidence is there for them and many others to realize that these systems and their underpinning philosophies would have been causing – in concert with the operations of other systems like the TAXATION SYSTEM – unprecedented catastrophic and massive damage to the above mentioned sectors of this country.

Therefore, we have properly established in our party that whenever we become at the helm of the government of this country – and let us say again that if there were ever to be these Exchange Rate Parities with the Barbados Dollar and this regime of importing foreign “prices” into Barbados still in existence then, primarily because of the present lack of foresight and political will, et al, NOT to do away with them on the part of these stupid DLP and BLP factions, that consistent with our mandate that it shall be our bounden duty to ABOLISH ALL those Exchange Rates Parities with the Barbados Dollar, the importation of “foreign prices” into our domestic market, as well as Abolish systems like the evil TAXATION system.

Such nefarious systems will be replaced with some very effective and modern ones and ones like the one mentioned above that will cater to the greatest development possible of the country and within a decent time.

So, down with Exchange Rates Parities, down with the importation of ” foreign prices” into our domestic market, and down with these visionless and backward DLP and the BLP factions.

PDC

I took it for granted that people know of the partner system, but if not, here is a good simple explanation, http://www.gdrc.org/icm/partner-sys.html.

@LIB

Your comment aptly illustrates the point of BU’s contention. Barbados depends on tourism revenues + FDI to adequately service its debt and economic development ie capacity building. What has Barbados done in the last 15 years to reorder the economic fundamentals to buffer the risks wrought by external shocks? Instead we have become a willing participant in the mosaic of the global phenomenon of globalization. Your response will be to question alternatives and that we don’t know, what we know is the current model is unsustainable.

Economics is a balancing act. We quite simply do not have the resources to offset the necessary debt that we incur.

The governments of the past and present all have the same problem: “What can we do to decrease the gap between expenditure and revenue?”

The BLP administration gambled and lost, on what they thought would have been a bumper crop, with the World Cup. In essence they were left holding the bag (It appears that there was some deceptive marketing to that effect).

Tourism is a fickle child… one day it would play and the next sulk in a corner. We have seen that happen time and time again.

The only other option is financial services. We need a good solid infrastructure and a well educated workforce to maintain it. So we are back on the debt treadmill – running, but getting nowhere fast.

Once expediture surpasses revenue, we cannot win.

The world powers know this and have created many ways to dominate the world using financial tools.

What do you really think globalisation is? Developing states are slaves to these old masters.

The large developed countries have no problem with destabilising a country, so they can control it and its resources.

Just look at what China is doing in Africa now. Look at how the US and UK use their influence to control oil, iron ore, diamonds, buaxite, etc.

Why colonise a country when you can control it from a distance?

There can be no reasonable denial by any one of the fact that what we in PDC refer to as the institutional productive debt and investment losses culture has been the one main and primary cause of the perpetuation of two very gross and fundamental problems in our country’s material and financial affairs.

These two main and fundamental problems are the humongous institutional productive debt ( a form of debt) that has constantly been created and maintained in this country – and which many people in Barbados quite rightly identify with the practice of financial institutions lending to the local non-financial private sector for productive purposes, and the serious lack of proper money/value circulation in the country, which many people in Barbados doth rightly identify with the state, persons, businesses and other entities increasingly not being able to access enough monies/money value, at given times – and mostly as they would like at the same times, esp. with regard to fulfilling the objectives of properly running their own affairs and settling their own debts.

No doubt about it these two types of national, sub-national, individual problems interact with each other at different levels of business and commercial activity in this country, and sometimes with severe repercussions throughout the country.

Anyhow, it is these two main and massive problems within the material productive and distributive and financial affairs of this country that have fundamentally helped to create yet another severe local recession at this juncture, for primarily the broad masses and middle classes of people of Barbados to brutally criminally experience. As a matter of fact, Barbados has entered a period of serious depression.

As well, it is those very despicable and backward of political ( legal ones too) policies and laws – and which are Western and Euro-centric in nature and/or that have long been locally adapted to fit our Barbadian circumstances along with their ministrations ( institutions) – that are central to the functioning of this wicked institutional productive debt and investment losses culture in Barbados.

Thus, these laws, policies, practices, and ministrations have also been fundamental in assisting in bringing about this very terrible recession.

Such laws, policies, ministrations include but are NOT limited to the following:-

1) evil TAXATION laws and policies like the Income Tax Act, the Value Added Tax Act;

2) wicked Interest Rates laws and policies, like minimum deposit rate policies of the Central Bank;

3) backward regressive repressive financial institutions, like the Central Bank that manages and regulates itself – under the Central Bank Act, and other financial institutions in this country – like the Royal Bank of Canada and other institutions, that have been founded on the basis of other political financial laws and policies in this country;

4) demonic mortgage and other money lending laws, policies and practices that involve persons and other entities who – under whatever mis/arrangements – would have previously gone and borrowed the people’s money/value from financial institutions for esp. productive purposes, but who would then later be seen illogically senselessly having to repay equivalent amounts of what is theirs and the people’s money, to those relevant institutions, plus demonic interest;

5) also demeaning, dehumanizing political laws and policies like the Financial Intermediaries Act , the Cooperative Societies Act, that wickedly criminally allow local or locally based international banks, credit unions and other relevant financial institutions to exercise proprietary rights and interests (as if their were the owners of this money) over the Barbadian people’s money/value, rather than making it profoundly clear that they are simply some of the local managers of the people’s money stock, and this is the way these local or foreign institutions ought see it always; and

6) asinine political financial laws and policies that allow banks and other financial institutions – in this case insurance companies too – to register their operations in Barbados as single whole entities, rather than it being the case that these laws and policies should rightly command these foreign enterprises to enter into joint ownership arrangements with local institutions at all times so that that they ( these foreign enterprises ) are ONLY capable of owning a maximum 51% of the ownership in these local/international enterprises, and so that there would be realized far fewer repatriations of these huge profits that are reported in the newspapers as being made by such extant foreign owned financial enterprises;

The clear and unvarnished fact is that these laws, policies, practices and ministrations are essentially elitist driven and politically exploitative in nature – meaning that their intent is NOT ONLY to subject the masses and middle classes to the totally unnecessary control of an elite minority in the country; is NOT ONLY to make sure that the masses and middle classes are NEVER so well propertied and monied ( mainly individualistically) as much as the elites are in the country; BUT ALSO as well to make sure that the masses and middle classes are to NEARLY ALWAYS earn far less than they put in in innumerable business and commercial contracts and arrangements, and that the elites and the state come by far more than they put in at the same time as the above categories of people, in such similar circumstances in Barbados.

No doubt these intents have been dastardly successfully realized in their countless manifestations over time, and “over and over again”.

Clearly, when the masses and middle classes – the real backbones of human physical activity in this country – and, by extension, the entities that they own – are so much engulfed in institutional productive debt and are incurring many unbearable investment losses, and, too, when those entities like the state and financial institutions and big business that depend so much on them for financial succor and to carry out their exploitation schemes, and, too, when almost all of the aforementioned are altogether unable to access the people’s money value system as they would like and thus to allow the proper circulation of money within the country, primarily because of the operations of this wicked institutional productive debt and investment losses culture, it must ultimately mean that Barbados will continue to foolishly enter into periods of so-called booms and busts, with the masses and middle classes getting the least amount of benefits during “booms” and the elites and the state getting the most benefits during such times, whereas these same masses and middle classes would get the most pain during “busts” recessions and depressions and the elites and the state suffering the least pain during these times.

Finally, the fact is that this beloved country, Barbados, does NOT have to go through any recessions or depressions, or, as a matter of fact any booms and busts periods, once the normal trade with many countries still obtains. Such a rationalization is more simple than most of us in Barbados think, and, once the majority of voters put the right parties in governmental office, and they, in turn, put the right political financial laws, policies and systems in place in this country.

So, what international economic and financial circumstances are the causes of our local depression what!! What UNMITIGATED NONSENSE AND TRASH!!

Well, down with the damn DLP and BLP!!

So long!

PDC

@Bajeabroad

Think this is the second time you have posted the above comment and both times it has resonated with a bang within the BU household. Clearly a disconnect between what is required to sustain our success as a country or being conformist.

@Themis: A view I have expressed on the recent thread on cricket goes to the argument that we are/have become a region of stability and that implies we move for gradual not radical change. There is chicken and egg there. To move to other points we may have to get out of our ‘comfort zone’. It is an ongoing question whether we have what we really prefer or if we have reluctantly accepted the way we are/have become.

@Themis: I understand your point about planning and uncertainty, aka why reinvent the wheel? But some clearly do not and the region has not been short on ‘wanting its own solutions’. (This discussion has a parallel in notions of independent nation states, and Seaga’s reiterations on dollarization are on a similar path. The basic question being what value separate central banks and currencies?)

If we are so much in debt then would the Minister of Finance explain the rationale of the government in acquring Sam lords castle.