Poor Class you live in a capitalist country. Capitalism was contrived to make the rich get richer and the poor to support the rich.

They call it the trickle down economy. The more money the rich make the more they will let trickle down…..or not.

The BLP Opposition seems to be saying that were they in government their policies would attract growth and economic buoyancy. It is a bit like religion, it will require a leap of faith by the electorate given the global economic quagmire which now exist.

What I believe some are saying is to subsidize the price of oil to key businesses or risk an overall increase in the cost of living. Oil is bought in US dollars so you really are not talking subsidies, maybe just selective adjusting the exchange rate when prices are converted to Barbados dollars depending on who the local consumers are ..

But David I looking at selective pricing so that businesses are not impacted (including supermarkets, utility and productive operations). The idea is to manage the cost of living yet still have ordinary plebs pay for gas at the 2 to 1 conversion rate.

As for analysis, I would still like to know how the implementation seat belts and helmets has impacted on the deaths and hospitalization that has occurred as a result of vehicular use. Does the word “analysis” appear in the Barbadian dictionary?

Just saw this on bloomberg. S&P now has a negative outlook for Germany, France and 13 other eurozone countries. So the government of little barbados with its economy dependent on tourists and capital flows from these countries should be pilloried for also having a negative outlook. I am coming around to the view that a lot of local commentators are either ill-informed or politically motivated. Maybe its class warfare as Poor man says, they want the lower class to bear the major burden as we adjust to this severe global crisis.

S&P Jumps Into Politics Again With EU Outlook Warning
Standard & Poor’s, rebuked by Warren Buffett in August after downgrading the U.S. over government gridlock, is again injecting itself into the political process, just as European leaders are poised to meet for a summit aimed at ending the region’s sovereign-debt crisis.

The ratings firm put Germany, France and 13 other euro-area nations on review for a downgrade yesterday, saying “continuing disagreements among European policy makers on how to tackle” the region’s debt crisis risk damaging their financial stability. The move came four months after S&P cut the U.S. to AA+, saying “extremely difficult” political discussions over how to reduce America’s more than $1 trillion budget deficit tainted the credit quality of the world’s largest economy.

Bondholders questioned the timing of S&P’s move, with European Union leaders planning to meet Dec. 8-9 in Brussels to end a crisis that led to bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, and now threatens to engulf Italy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy presented a plan earlier in the day to rewrite the EU’s governing treaty to allow tighter economic cooperation.

“S&P should back off,” Anthony Valeri, a market strategist with LPL Financial in San Diego, which oversees $330 billion, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “It complicates the job of the EU leaders to resolve the debt problem.”

$8.1 Trillion

Grades may be lowered by one level for Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Netherlands and Luxembourg, and as many as two steps for the other governments if the summit results don’t satisfy S&P’s criteria, the firm said. More than $8.1 trillion of government debt would be affected if S&P does downgrade all the nations, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Germany and France are rated AAA.

“The upcoming European summit,” S&P said in a report, “provides an opportunity for policy makers to break the pattern of what we consider to have been defensive and piecemeal measures to date, overcome individual national interests and preferences, and advance a credible response to the crisis that would go far towards restoring investor confidence.”

The move to tie ratings to the outcome of the summit drew criticism from European Central Bank Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny of Austria, who said in an interview that it “highlights the problem that rating agencies increasingly are assuming a political role.”
‘Increasingly Problematic’

“There is no doubt that rating agencies have an economically important role to play, but the way in which this is happening at the moment is increasingly problematic as it creates pro-cyclical effects, that means effects that make the crises worse,” Nowotny said yesterday in Vienna.

S&P said in a statement yesterday that it decided to review the region’s ratings before the summit because the risks of a deepening crisis have “risen markedly.”

“Policy makers appear to have acted only in response to mounting market pressures,” S&P said, declining to comment beyond the statement.

Finding a solution to Europe’s debt crisis took on greater urgency last month as yields on Italy’s surged past the 7 percent threshold that led Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek aid. Italy has 500 billion euros ($669 billion) of bonds maturing in the next three years, more than the current size of the EU’s rescue fund.

U.S. Downgrade

The yield on Italy’s 10-year bond fell 73 basis points, or 0.73 percentage point, yesterday to 5.95 percent before S&P’s announcement, the lowest level since Oct. 27 on a closing basis.

In a joint statement, the governments of France and Germany said they “recognize” the move by S&P and “affirm their conviction that the common proposals made today will strengthen coordination of budget and economic policy, and promote stability, competitiveness and growth.”

New York-based S&P, a unit of McGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP), downgraded the U.S. to AA+ on Aug. 5 from AAA, saying the U.S. government is becoming “less stable, less effective and less predictable.”

While the S&P 500 Index of U.S. stocks plunged 6.7 percent on the first trading day after the downgrade, Treasuries rallied, sending yields to record lows. Treasuries due in 10 years or more are 2011’s best-performing sovereign securities, returning 26 percent as of Nov. 30, according to Bloomberg/EFFAS indexes.
‘Quadruple-A’

The ratings company’s decision on the U.S. was flawed by a $2 trillion error, according to the Treasury Department. S&P disputed the Treasury’s assertions and said using the department’s preferred spending measures in its analysis didn’t affect its credit grade.

Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and the world’s most successful investor, said S&P erred and the U.S. should be rated “quadruple-A.” Buffett is also the largest shareholders of Moody’s Corp. (MCO), the parent of Moody’s Investors Service.

Downgrades of Germany and France would affect the rating of the 780 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility, the bailout fund for struggling euro member countries that has funded rescue packages for Greece, Ireland and Portugal partially through bond sales.

If the EFSF has to pay higher interest on its bonds, it may not be able to provide as much funding for indebted nations. Yields on the EFSF’s 3.375 percent bonds due in July 2021 rose 2 basis points yesterday to 3.6 percent, according to Bloomberg prices.
‘Tremendous Pressure’

The outlook change is “disastrous for Europe,” Mark Grant, a managing director at Southwest Securities Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said in an interview yesterday on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart” with Lisa Murphy and Adam Johnson.

“Every bank now in Europe is also going to be downgraded as the sovereigns are downgraded, many corporations in Europe will be downgraded, the euro is going to come under tremendous pressure worldwide,” Grant said. “There’s just a whole lot of dominoes that are going to fall because of this report.”

Regulators have tried and failed to rein in credit-rating companies, which the U.S. Congress has said helped fuel the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression by assigning top grades to subprime mortgage bonds, Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, said in a telephone interview.
Proposed Rules

“Why are they pulling the trigger now?” Rupkey said yesterday in a telephone interview. “There’s a danger of putting too much power in the hands of these institutions and causing in effect a race to the bottom.”

The EU proposed rules last month to increase regulation of the credit-rating companies while postponing plans to ban them from giving assessments of countries negotiating international bailouts.

S&P also cited “high levels of government and household indebtedness across a large area of the eurozone” and the increased risk of a recession in 2012 as reasons for yesterday’s change in outlook. The firm said economic output in Spain, Portugal and Greece will likely fall next year, and that there’s now a 40 percent chance of a decline for the entire region.

The “negative” outlook on CC rated Greece, which is 10 steps below investment quality, wasn’t changed, as its grade “connotes our belief that there is a relatively high near-term probability of default,” S&P said. The firm kept its “negative” outlook on Cyprus’s long-term rating and placed its short-term rating on “creditwatch with negative implications.”
‘Credible Backstop’

Europe may stem its debt crisis by moving to a “full fiscal union” in which all countries assume responsibility for the euro area’s sovereign debt or by “a much larger commitment” by the ECB to support sovereign-debt markets, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Nov. 30 in a research note.

The threat of a downgrade may make it more difficult for Merkel to convince the German people that supporting peripheral nations is in their interest, Noel Hebert, a credit strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities USA Inc. in New York, said yesterday in a telephone interview.

“If it starts threatening the creditworthiness of the country itself, that’s a much harder row to hoe for Germany,” Hebert said. “It heightens the internal tensions that Merkel has politically.”

Sovereign Issuer: Ratings Placed on Watch:

Austria AAA
Finland AAA
France AAA
Germany AAA
Luxembourg AAA
Netherlands AAA
Slovenia AA-/A-1+
Slovakia A+/A-1
Portugal BBB-/A-3
Ireland BBB+/A-2
Malta A/A-1
Italy A/A-1
Spain AA-/A-1+
Estonia AA-/A-1+
Belgium AA

To contact the reporters on this story: John Detrixhe in New York at jdetrixhe1@bloomberg.net; Zeke Faux in New York at zfaux@bloomberg.net

in his last outing owen had massive real estate inflows and foreign borrow to provide the forex to fund his growth strategy. I for one would need to hear where he plans to get the forex to fund the growth strategy they are alluding to.

Didn’t Arthur admit that the need to fund compliance/regulatory issues today means that tourism receipts will not do it for Barbados. He used this position to explain why his government was bullish on FDI of the real estate variety.

Pssst … Don’t let nabody know, keep it quiet but Justin Robinson slowly building a case for 4Seasons … shhhhhh

@David

Three weeks ago S&P lowered Barbados’ economic outlook from ‘stable’
to ‘negative’. One would have believed that Barbados is a super power when he/she saw/heard the comments from the Cave Hill economic professors and doctors, editor of the Broad Street Journal, our own BU economic guru etc. etc… I wonder how they feel when they read headlines like the following which appear in today’s edition of the Telegraph Newspaper..and RTE News?

(1) ”S&P threat of rating cuts may hit eurozone rescue”’

(2) Fifteen out of 17 eurozone nations – including Germany – were threatened with downgrades to their credit ratings in a move that may imperil the foundations of a landmark rescue deal agreed on Monday.

(3)Standard & Poor’s today placed the top AAA rating of the EFSF bail-out fund under review for possible downgrade

According to the young people, are Bajan economists fuh real?

Chuckles

Stop mekkin’ sport … You well know that the first responsibility of any Government, and I mean any Government (which includes its Central Bank and academic lackeys who are paid with tax dollars) is to paint a picture of confidence and optimism … that is what they see themselves as being paid to do. Then they are going to turn around and devalue the currency (after all in the know have gotten what they could out of the local Banks).

What do you think of the government agreeing to bajans buying up to $1,000 duty free?

Minister says he expects no forex loss but a saving instead as some persons might buy stuff locally that they might otherwise buy overseas. it might be true for some online purchases.

YOU CAN MODIFY YOUR BIKE.

THe ALL ELECTRIC CAR DOES NOT USE GAS . THIS CAR CAN BE CHARGED AT HOME FROM YOUR SOLAR PANELS . GOOD BYE TO USE OF GASOLINE .

byd vehicles :

THE TRANSPORT BOARD SHOULD EXPLORE THE ELECTRIC BUS .
NOTE THAT THE BUS HAS SOLAR PANELS ON THE ROOF.

BARBADOS CAN SAVE MILLIONS BY USING ELECTRIC CARS AND SOLAR POWERED CHARGING STATIONS.