NOT private funds

Of course; every other territory in the region has one. This right of centre model that has been embarked upon by the Owen Arthur administration is imploding. The issues with original designs have every thing to do with staffing. I really do not care where the people are brought if from, as long as they are the right people with a long term ENTERPRISING view on development. One is unlikely to find such people from within the ranks of our present domestic accounting, finance, economist, legal and MBA fraternities. I say import the f#ckers …

In the above PDC post, an inadvertence went out. We seek now to correct it now we back on the blog. It should have been “with haste”, and not “without haste”.

PDC

@ Bush Tea

“like luxury SUVs for everyone from government messengers to every statutory senior staff…

@ Well, Well

“I could not believe my eyes………..saw messengers driving ML or MP luxury SUVs high end and stupidly expensive”

Bush Man & Well, Well, you guys got this thing wrong. The central guv’ment does get them SUVs duty free, while statutory departments have to apply to the Ministry of Finance to get duty free concessions; so these vehicles don’t be that expensive …….lol, lol.

That being beside the point, the guv’ment got nuff SUVs fuh true. This administration took a woman from a bank, give her the general manager pick at the Transport Board and a blue Hyundai SUV, and the bus service has gone from worse to worst; took the man from the union, give him the Director job at UDC and a Nissan X-Trail SUV, but he can find time to go on the DLP campaign x-trail to inform supporters how many BLP representatives did not apply to the UDC on behalf on their constituents; Judy at DEMS got a Toyota SUV, but complined that the government continues to neglect that depertment; Dr. Donna got the director job at NCF along with a Nissan X-Trail SUV, but Lashley and Monique took care of that; Stanton has a SUV, but continues to be acting general manager at the SSA; Dr. Leroy must also have a SUV included in the sweet deal at BIDC [he also found the time to be on the election campaign platforms…I was wonering if the general orders don’t apply to him and the union man….Caswell?]. DLP Jolla Barrow got a SUV as the director of the drainage division. Could go on and on, but you are correct, Well, Well.

Art………………I tell ya, SUV mentality.

From what i know the head of EGFL was placed there by Arthur, so if you want your application approved by the board, you better be close to this guy……..Cabinet can approve a small grant, and the board at EGFL cannot overturn the decision, but they can make you wait, a gentleman lamented this…………they need to get the political hacks out of these jobs where people’s futures are left to their discretions………i am for bringing in broad-minded people who are in no way connected to the small minded political landscape

Baf………………i don’t know, they have succeeded only in causing everything to fall apart.

Simmons is at EGFL, isn’t Roach at Fund Access?

Thanks David.Yes Roach is the short Guy.Guess I had it switched around.

David………..my mistake, Hammie, not Timothy……

The boards have remained unchanged. There is nothing to be gained by dragging a Clico official into this. We are faced with two dinosaurs who are still relatively young men. There is NO retirement on the horizon … this is NOT good …! BTW the Chairmen of both boards are also even younger, but again, the boards are a collective.

Thanks for the support

@ Baffy

For sake of preventive embarrassment, you should know facts BEFORE uttering and publishing information. Puerto Rico, following the Spanish American War (1898) became United States territory; its residents, since 1917 are United States citizens. Puerto Rico is yet United States territory, unincorporated but still United States territory. Unincorporated, this means, the area (Puerto Rico) is controlled by the United States government but not part of the United States union of fifty states. Guam also is United States territory, unincorporated but still United States territory.

Puerto Rico is United States property NOT Great Britain

A story of interest:

Justice Dept. targets U.S. accounts at CIBC’s Caribbean wing

The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday that a federal court has authorized the Internal Revenue Service to seek information on U.S. taxpayers who may have accounts at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce FirstCaribbean International Bank (FCIB).

In a move resembling a recent IRS inquiry into Americans with Swiss bank accounts, the department said a court order will let the IRS serve a ‘John Doe’ summons seeking records of FCIB’s U.S. correspondent account at Wells Fargo & Co.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/justice-dept-targets-us-accounts-at-cibcs-caribbean-wing/article11639292/

@ Baffy

Nothing humorous about you, not anymore. . . . The joke is on who. . . . dumb jackass!!!!!

@ Baffy

Seriously, you don’t want to rumble in the jungle with this lady LOOK. I will verbally hurt you, much more than I have already.

I found this New York Times article interesting reading,

NEW YORK TIMES
Economists Agree: Solutions Are Elusive

By EDUARDO PORTER

Published: April 23, 2013

Last week the International Monetary Fund hosted a conference of some of the world’s top macroeconomists to assess how the most intense crisis to have shaken the industrialized economies since the Great Depression has changed the profession’s collective understanding of how the world economy works.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/04/24/business/PORTER/PORTER-articleInline.jpg

Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency

Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the I.M.F. He said economists don’t know “what financial stability actually means.”

Two things struck me about the conclave. The first was hearing George Akerlof, a Nobel-winning economist from Berkeley, take to the lectern to compare the crisis to a cat stuck in a tree, afraid to move.

The second was realizing how, after five years of coping with the consequences of the disaster, there is still so much uncertainty about what policies are needed to prevent another financial shock from tipping the world economy into the abyss again a few years down the road.

“We don’t have a sense of the final destination,” said Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the monetary fund. “Where we end I really don’t have much of a clue.”

In determining what is a sustainable level of government debt, or whether central banks should focus on anything other than inflation, or what should be done to prevent further bubbles from destabilizing economies, he argued “we are still very much navigating by sight.”

If you are one of the nearly five million American workers who have been unemployed for over six months, or one of the six million Spaniards, three million Italians or 1.3 million Greeks without a job or a clear prospect of finding one, this amounts to a tragedy.

Considering that the large and complicated financial institutions that set off the crisis five years ago have only gotten larger and more complex, the gap in knowledge is downright scary.

It is scarier to consider how politicians have chosen to ignore much of what the profession has learned from the experience.

Berkeley’s David Romer counted six shocks that hit the United States in the last three decades alone. The economy dodged the bullet in two — the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the Russian default in the 1990s, which led to the bailout of a hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management.

It took a hit in three — the collapse of much of the savings and loan industry in the late 1980s, the 1987 stock market crash and the dot.com implosion. But it got hammered in the last one.

Economists used to think it was obvious how to contain such shocks. No point trying to stop a bubble from inflating, they thought; it would be impossible to identify in the first place. The best a central bank like the Federal Reserve could do is stand ready to cut interest rates after the bubble burst, patch up the financial system and set the economy back on track. In terms of budgets, governments should aim for a prudent level of debt to retain space to borrow and spend when it was needed.

Now, interest rates have been near zero for years, and growth has not been restored to acceptable levels. And few if any of the economists gathered at the International Monetary Fund’s headquarters in Washington would venture a guess about what level of debt would be prudent these days.

On the eve of the financial crisis, Spain’s net debt was just over 25 percent of its economic output. The ratio of net debt to gross domestic product in Ireland hovered around 11 percent. Martin Wolf, chief economic commentator of The Financial Times, said that Britain’s debt ratio was close to a 300-year low, way below its level during the Industrial Revolution.

It wasn’t low enough, apparently. Five years later, Ireland’s bailout of its banks took its net debt to 102 percent of its economic output. Spain’s debt hit 80 percent of G.D.P. And Britain’s reached 86 percent — the highest since the 1960s.

This is of enormous consequence. One lesson from the crisis — first learned in the 1930s and corroborated in several contemporary analyses — is that when interest rates lose their power to stimulate the economy, additional government spending can help generate real growth. Still, the fear of “excessive” debt has led many governments to cut spending even in the face of economic stagnation.

Countries like Ireland and Spain have pretty much lost their ability to raise money in financial markets. They are now struggling to reduce debt with little success: cutting public spending in the midst of severe downturns only makes economic performance worse, adding to the debt burden.

Yet even in Britain or the United States, which can still borrow at near-record-low interest rates, governments have taken to cutting public spending at the expense of growth and jobs.

Perhaps this is natural. After all, the crisis upended a consensus. Economists and policy makers bred to think that all that was needed to run a prosperous economy was to keep inflation low, strive for fiscal balance and deregulate have found themselves in a more complex world. In this world, financial bubbles matter, capital flows are of dubious merit, low interest rates fail to stimulate growth and government spending becomes the only tool with real traction to spur economic activity.

And there is reason to be cautious. With total government debt in the rich world stuck at around 100 percent of its combined economic output, there is a legitimate fear that a rise in interest rates could tip off a financial death spiral. Moreover, if countries with debt levels well under 50 percent of G.D.P. were so devastated by the crisis, it is hard to imagine what might happen to them if another were to hit them.

Still, the argument against debt is often overstated. Disagreement and uncertainty among economists have given the political systems in Europe and the United States ample license to engage in austerity policies that frankly are proving counterproductive — making recovery more difficult and painful.

In his assessment at the end of the conference, Mr. Akerlof argued that the response in the United States had been reasonable. From the bank bailout to the fiscal stimulus to zero short-term interest rates, “the economic policies postrecovery have been close to what a good, sensible economist doctor would have ordered” for the stranded cat.

But other economists were not quite as sanguine. Indeed, one take-away from the economic conclave is that it may be a fantasy to think that the world’s economies can be steeled to withstand a shock like those the financial system can provide. If so, the urgent task is what kind of limits should be imposed on banking and the rest of finance to temper its propensity to careen toward disaster.

Financial regulation is being tightened around the world. Banks are being required to raise more capital than before. Bigger banks face tougher rules. Still, there is no consensus on which new institutions might be needed to monitor and temper finance, or how tough the rules should be.

What good does the modern financial system do, for the rest of us? What determines financial fluctuations and shocks? How do they affect the broader economy? What can governments do to make them less disruptive? Economists have few answers.

“We don’t have a clue of what financial stability actually means,” Mr. Blanchard confessed.

Mr. Romer said, “Five years into a crisis of this magnitude, we should be, ‘Oh my God, the cat has been in the tree for five years, it’s time to get the cat down out of the tree and figure out how to make sure the cat doesn’t go up the tree again.’”

E-mail: eporter@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @portereduardo

Bushy…………………….you have some explaining to do about the ILO debacle now exploding………….i thought you told me they were a fly by night operation with no teeth, well that world wide body with no teeth are about to put the bite on the government of Barbados.

Observe………………..i like the cat stuck in the tree that can’t move description, that cat may be stuck up there for another 50 years, having outlived all it’s nine lives while there before dying, is there anyway you can get this current administration to read this article, as i said those boys do not keep up on foreign news.

@Observer

It appears from the article you posted the government of Barbados is in deep doo doo and by extension Barbadians. If we read his position correctly he is saying that if reduced interest rates is not acting as a stimulant to the economy the way it has in the past then we have to spend to stimulate economic activity. The problem we have is that we have been fixated on guarding forex which is important BUT as important is not allowing the economy to stall. As Bush Tea would say ‘we goose seems to be cooked’.

@Observer

That is some heady analysis there BUT we always come back to the unsettling question – how long can government sustain current strategy given the current trajectory.

The underground economy is thriving, many trades people are working. I have been trying to get someone to repair a gutter and do some carpentry and several of them are busy. The recession is hitting the retailers, my suggestion is to those clerks and sales associates is to get a skill. Plumbers, electricians, masons carpenters are in demand as well as agricultural workers and gardeners. Survival is for the skilled and the fittest.

but Islandgal the Elites screamed bloody hell and continue to scream as the government tries to build a case for scaling back the spend on university education and a shift to the polytechnic and bcc.

read the 2012 budget

a 24 hour plumbing and other services with an online infrastructure, payments being made online or via cell phones maybe too much to dream of

David, to me the answer is clearly no. Large parts of the society are wedded to their current business models and practices, and have not even begun to envisage a new normal. The various interest groups are dug in and are defending their traditional interests.

Lets see the response to the revised strategy and the budget.

Dr. Worrel, Mr. Sinckler and Mr. Inniss are showing leadership, the push back from the elites and interest groups is most interesting to watch.

The private sector leadership seems fixated on stimulus and deficit reduction. Not sure both are compatible in the medium term.

Lots of properties are on the market for sale, but offer prices still seem high, how will the market clear at these prices? Maybe a change of government or some policy initiative will bring back the building boom.

These are complex and unpleasant tradeoffs and the administration itself may be quite divided on the way forward, while the opposition is not articulating a clear position either. If we take the lead from their chief economic spokesperson and switch to capital spending do we build highways to nowhere like Japan did. will the banking sector locked into investment guidelines based on credit ratings offer the financing? If we go full austerity as per Mr. Straughn what is the channel for private led growth to replace the lost public spend?

We are up the creek, what sources of paddling do we have:

1. Adequate reserves (don’t lose that);
2. Surpluses in the banking sector and NIS (how are these best utlized):
3. A good brand name in the high end tourism, hospitality and real estate market (how do we leverage: Four seasons maybe, support apes hill, almond restart, energy efficiency drive in sector)
4. Good name in international business (improved business facilitation)

what sources of paddling do we need to develop:
1. means testing for some social services;
2. Revamping and/or elimination of statutory bodies
3. Reduce energy costs across the economy;

maybe some statutory corporations should be brought back into the civil service where their spending can be better monitored or be foreced to operate with a maximum subsidy which could for e them to be more commercial in orientation.

None of this is even nearly easy to do

@Observer

The government needs to do a better job bring partners together in the national interest. While you have focussed on economic/monetary issues there is the justice and law and order systems which must be managed in parallel. It is a bad situation which demand that leaders must lead.