Hal Austin
Introduction:
Once more the government has promised to announce plans for the nation’s great economic escape then on the day of reckoning it all came to nothing. Tuesday was a political and economic blow out. But by now this should not be a surprise. Barbados is a nation living on its collective memory, of time when it was great nation, when a simple 166 sq mile island was highly valued throughout the world.
However, times have moved on and, sadly, our political masters have not; they have left us drifting without a moral compass. After years in crisis, the government and its advisers are still like a ship at sea without a captain; our prime minister continues to remain silent, while loudmouths like Donville Inniss continue to hog the public space. And, worst of all, prime minister Stuart continues to show a loyalty to the gross incompetence of Chris Sinckler which boggles the mind.
By now it is obvious, even to Mr Sinckler himself, that he has been promoted beyond his competence; he is out of his league and leaning on a former professor who has lost touch with modern economics only goes to expose his ignorance even more. Tuesday’s circus in parliament was only the latest of this merry go round, of blister and bluff and gross incompetence. What had begun as an unfortunate but manageable economic crisis has, through inertia and ignorance, grown in to a massive meltdown that not only threatens intergenerational relations, but will continue to stagnate for decades.
Programme for Chance:
By now any government, even this one, would have had a programme for change in place, even if it could not implement all its plans. Had the DLP government acted within days of its first election the problem would have been reduced to manageable proportions within two to three years and the economy would have been a good place now. Even if it had acted positively since the recent general election at least they would have had the benefit of the doubt.
This delay, however, is a manifestation of its collective policy inertia, of an ability to think through, far less put in place, policies to resolve the nation’s economic problems. By now, ideally, government should have prioritised youth employment, making all entry-level public sector non-specialist jobs part-time and targeted at 16-25 year olds. Further, it should have incentivised the private sector to offer new jobs to the same cohort, provided they were not related to the business owners, and back this up with a programme of training and further education. It should have raised the school leaving age to 18, and in the process reduced the age of majority to 16, shifted the focus of state-funded education to the pre-school and five-to 16 year olds. At the same time it should have upgraded entry level teaching recruits, compel all teachers aged under 44 to improve on their qualifications and expand the life-long learning sector along with new ways of delivering education, from classroom to the internet.
Instead of tackling the problem of youth unemployment, government chose to listen to former economists who had learned nothing from the global crisis, both in terms of theoretical understanding of macro-economics or in terms of policy-making. One terrible part of this economic ignorance that passed for advice was that the government/central bank should not introduce a policy of monetary stimulus. In fact, government should have embarked on a strategic and prudent money-printing programme, to fund infrastructural developments which would not only provide jobs, but would have benefited the nation enormously once the recession was over. The threats from money printing were mainly inflationary and this could be managed through tight controls of banks’ capital liquidity through putting the breaks on consumer loans and compelling the banks to lodge higher deposits with the central bank, the lender of last resort.
After nearly 20 years of inflation targeting the management of inflation should be the one skill that the central bank has. There are also other ways of controlling inflation, including putting restrictions on the rampant consumer credit that is infecting the nation, such as cheap loans from Canadian-owned banks to buy expensive cars and have them polished. In all this the central bank and ministry of finance have remained silent, when in reality they should have acted immediately to impose restriction on such irresponsible lending.
Further, tougher controls on capital ratios and capital adequacy would have been most appropriate, given that the Basel 111 proposals only stipulate minimum reserves. It is economic lunacy to stockpile nearly Bds$1bn, pessimistically expecting some external shock to hit the economy plunging the nation in to an even deeper crisis. Such a fanciful expectation is not based on rational historical data; in fact, actuarially such an event takes place once every 200 years. Of course, this does not mean that there should be no sound planning; but this should be based on reasonable assumptions.
Government should have used half the foreign reserves to fund infrastructure and use half the remaining reserves (bds$250m) in the derivatives markets while keeping the other Bds$250m as reserves. The government should also encourage the national insurance scheme to upgrade its investment strategy in line with national development, including investments in food security and funding small and medium enterprises.
Government should also use planning legislation to extract trade-offs from big developers, either true demanding that 20 per cent of all big hotels and property developments be allocated to social housing, or, conversely, that the value of the 20 per cent be handed over to the NHC to fund social housing. Smaller developments, such as supermarkets, should be encouraged to fund the building of youth and social clubs for villages and small towns.
Infrastructure Developments:
At the very core of the dash for greater tourism should be a broader leisure and tourism policy. This could be achieved by asking simple question: what is the demography of our target market? What are their interests, once out of the water? It is generally agreed that we are looking for the high net-worth client, mainly from the UK and the rest of Europe, but also from North America, in particular Canada. So with a mature clientele, our offerings must go beyond ragga music and the vulgarity of much of what passes for popular music. Older tourists like to know the history of the place they are visiting, so a historical walking tour with trained guides, will appeal: heritage sites, with the guide explaining why they are of interest; Oistins, and explaining why it is not just the Friday night free party, but a long history in the middle 17th century with the Cromwell and the Commonwealth, and how this contributed to early American democracy. There could also be a train line tour, with a proper explanation of the rise and fall of the Barbadian train companies. The list is endless and there is no shortage of local experts. Government should also have given serious consideration to the construction of a fun fair bridging Ragged Point and Culpepper Island, rather than allow an Irish-Canadian to turn that prized area in to more luxury homes for wealthy foreigners. The BLP/DLP governments (they are both culpable) should have stepped and compulsorily purchased the land in the name of the national interest. And, to top that, I would like to see a monorail running east from the airport to Codrington College in the first phase, stopping off at the Ragged Point funfair.
Analysis and Conclusion:
The economic crisis in Barbados is worsened everyday by the decoupling of real wages and rising price inflation from the easy availability of cheap debt. Ordinary households are trapped in a well of debt and instead of sending them a rope to help them out, we are piling on more weight to keep them down. And, in desperation, they are grabbing at the very straws that will eventually bury them. With a payroll of over 30,000, productivity in the public sector is very hard to measure and with a bullish trade union sector, headed by the BWU and NUPW, and the moribund Social Partnership, industrial relations with civil service unions are often a Faustian deal. These are the deep structural barriers top economic recovery, which government is doing its best to avoid. Any reforming government must sort out the trade unions; the reasons for their creations both sides of the Second World War are not the same now. Society has moved on and the interest of the nation have superseded those of any small sector, whoever they are. Any ethical government must sort out those big businesses that avoid their fair share of taxation and wider social responsibility. This policy and administrative incompetence and conservatism is a recent development.
In the decade from 1954 to 1964, the Adams BLP and Barrow DLP introduced some of the most radical policies in any post-war democracy.
Apart from the introduction of universal suffrage, Adams built St Margarets’ School, the Parkinson, St Joseph; he built the QE Hospital, Grazettes and the Pine Housing areas to clear some of the city slums; most spectacularly, he built the Deep Water Harbour, transforming trade in Barbados, within a year of the invention of container shipping. Yet, for all this, Grantley Adams is the single most ignored of our national leaders, the man who changed our social history. For those young people masquerading under the DLP banner, the 1961 Barrow Administration moved with a monetary stimulus programme that remains as fresh as day light in my memory, even if some have turned out to be less interesting than they seemed. He filled in the Careenage and got rid of the lighters that transported sugar out to the ships in Carlisle Bay and returned with other groceries; he made radical changes to education, expanded the public sector, turned tourism in to a significant industry. Barrow introduced CBC (a much better broadcaster in those days than it is now), and much more. One thing Grantley Adams and Barrow had in common was that they did not fear big capital projects. Our modern politicians do, they are terrified of anything that is not a hotel.
Finally, the economic crisis was a good opportunity to fine-tune our model of democracy and governance, by reducing the age of majority, introducing a recall of members of parliament in certain cases, an annual declaration of assets by all elected officials, government departments to publish annual reports, decentralisation of power and authority, in particular for head teachers. The senate is crying out for reform, transforming it from an institution which simply rubber stamps government business in to a proper revising chamber made-up of a good proportion of experienced people with the knowledge to challenge government proposals. This is a government that is comatose, caught napping on the job. While they prevaricate the nation is declining.
“Any ethical government must sort out those big businesses that avoid their fair share of taxation and wider social responsibility” – extracted from the above Hal Austin article.
Hal Austin, a certain future coalition government of Barbados and of which the PDC shall be a part of shall Abolish TAXATION in this country, and replace it with the right programmes and strategies and such like for the government being able to make far better use of money in this country.
TAXATION IS TOTALLY ABSOLUTELY WRONG, EVIL AND DESPICABLE, irrespective of whichever race, sex, religion, class the person whose remuneration that is targeted for theiving criminal TAXATION is from; or irrespective of whether the size of the person or the entity whose remuneration that is being targeted by the government for unproductive barbarous TAXATION is small, medium, large; or irrespective of whether the amount of the person’s or the entity’s remuneration that is being targeted by the government for evil wicked malicious TAXATION is small, medium or large.
Such a coalitional government shall – by a certain time of becoming at the helm of the government of Barbados – STOP TAXATION in this country.
One of the fundamental missions of this coalitional government shall be to help create for Barbados a post-TAXATION whereby the government will no longer be pursuing deliberately massively or otherwise – and as an evil criminal fascist ideology policy – the stealing robbing from the remunerations of the relevant people, businesses or any other entities of this country.
PDC
MR NATIVE SON, you have said it all and we say that nothing could have been done because of the international recession and all our problems are as a result of the policies of the BLP administration who were booted from office in 2008.
Inadvertence,
In paragraph 2, line 5, of the above PDC post, it should have been written as: “the person’s or the entity’s remuneration that is being targeted……..”
PDC
Hal Austin;
This is the best “Notes” you have penned. Hope the Government has copied and circulated it for all its advisors and will try urgently to correct the missteps and follow the paths you have outlined to some measure of recovery.
A brilliant piece of work.
A lot of Talk. That’s all.
By not some pressure group should have been formed to put some pressure on the Government who if they can not stand the heat would run far from the kitchen. It is when a country’s people have abdicated their responsibilities that ignorant governments get away with dong wrong A lot of frightened people dey bout. Talk is cheap
Talk produces nothing but talk.And the blog owner smiles all the way to the Bank,so talk might not be that cheap afterall. Bajans like nuff talking especially this generation because that is all they can do. They like to feel their lips hitting together. So when they not talking, they eating and getting obese with food and obese with talk. There is an obesity of talk—Yap Yap Yap .
I usually find your style rather wordy 🙂 but this was an excellent article. Which sadly will be attacked by one side or another (perhaps both) on this blog for all the wrong reasons and somebody gine talk ’bout how you nose big or how you doan live hey and how you tief a banana in 1992 and half the people will be sniffing up some red herring backside and lose total sight of the content. Keep writing, some of us are still listening and watching objectively.
Talk is cheap indeed especially when a JA states that BU generates money from a hosted WordPress blog. Isn’t always obvious when the lackeys attempt to obfuscate? Hell if the Eager 11 couldn’t get done how easy must it be.
David
As a sign of respect for Mandela Is it possible to temporarily replace the Xmas banner with a picture of him.
@Sargeant
Good suggestion, will work on it.
@Hal
“Our modern politicians do, they are terrified of anything that is not a hotel.” go to Google and type in Sugar Point Development/Barbados.
This guy Hal is talking crap and you guys on this blog are just drinking the kool-aid.
A money printing program? You think this is the USA which holds the world’s reserve currency?
Firstly, The Central Bank is already engaged in money printing in order to finance Government’s Huge deficit and help Fumble to continue postponing fiscal adjustment. This has already started to put a strain on the Foreign Reserves , forcing the governor to meet with Unions to talk about cuts.
In other words “GAME OVER”.
@Hal
I repeat you mean well and often raise sensible solutions to some of the problems, but the cut and paste without contextualizing unsettles me.
Owen did introduce what is called planning gain back in 2007 to get private developers to help finance social housing as a condition of planning permission. Secondly, the success of such a policy relies heavily on viability and if you research the S106 agreements from the UK that you are promoting you would realise that since 2010 many had to be renegotiated with some cancelled. I am a big supporter of an apprenticeship programme.
Further, Under a fixed exchange rate, direct monetary policy is ineffective and possibly dangerous , you would have a better shot at expansionary fiscal policy. But this government has already exhausted the latter option but running up these huge deficits with declining capital outlays.
by*
@ Alvin Cummins | December 6, 2013 at 6:05 PM |
Remind us (again) when this project is to start? January 2014? You better have a word with the GM of the Port Authority to see if he has a similar timeline in mind. Can you tell us how the project will be financed and by whom?
HalI,
I am showing you that the government has major capital works in train. As I saaid, go to Google and put in Sugar Point Cruise terminsla. You will see the plans; well advanced, for the construction, through reclaiming land(35 acres to be dredged and filled in, just opposite the present Pelican village) for the construction of Six piers to accomodate the largest cruise ships in the world, The Oasis class. this will also include the construction of other facilities for shopping entertainment, for accomodating
small business and other opportunities for other entrepreneurs.
Make sure you check it out for I will be coming back at you.
In addition, the reason the lighters went out of use is because they became obsolete with the building of the Deep Water Harbour
@Miller,
If you had gone, like me, to the presentation held By Barbados Port Inc, held at the Barbados Port Inc, or if you had heeded the invitation published in the newspapers, and also broadcast on the radio, to go down to Barbados Port Inc and peruse the Environmental Assessment (Social) Study, you would have had all these questions answered. The discussion of the other Environmental study was scheduled to take place shortly after I left the island (October), so I missed it.The engineers involved in the design, testing and construction were there, they made a Power Point Presentation, there were questions and answers;I asked questions regarding the effect of these piers that are to hold Six mega ships at three piers. to be built on 15 acres of reclaimes land. there was a a nice reception after, the principals of Barbados Port Inc. (including the manager of the Port) were there, and Representatives of Royal Caribbean Cruises; the owners of the Oasis line of cruise ships who will be using the piers, and later home-porting their ships there, were also present. I am not privy to the intriacies of the financing but Royal Caribbean Cruises are investors in the development. It will not start in January 2014; nobody said it would begin in January, but 2014, according to my calender, will run from January to December, so January does not have to be the starting date, lots of work has to be done before it actually begins, I read all the work that has already been done the studies and plans for removing and transplanting coral etc, so that the dredging will not be so devastating to the environment. I have my notes both from the environmental report and from the presentation, so I am in a position to argue. but I saw surveyors at work with regard to the relocation of the outflow from the sewage plant. So it has actually begun.
Talk to the manager, you seem to know him, or at least you should.
@Miller,
left our something . I asked questions about the effect of this construction, and the movement of these mega ships, on the fishing industry, especially when the fishing boats leave to go out to sea when the cruise ships are to come into these piers. the engineers assured that this had been studied, the concerns had been taken into consideration, and they promised that “detailed information would be made available to the Fisheries department.” .
@ Alvin Cummins | December 6, 2013 at 7:59 PM |
“It will not start in January 2014; nobody said it would begin in January, but 2014, according to my calender, will run from January to December, so January does not have to be the starting date,..”
Alvin, are you in your right mind by implying both your MoF &MoT are pathological liars? The MoF said in his August budget speech that the cruise terminal project is scheduled to start January 2014 and it will form one of the major capital works to generate growth and bring the economy out of its torpid state. He reiterated this position during last Tuesday’s sitting of the HoA.
The MoT also confirmed the start of construction of the cruise terminal along with the partial reopening of the Almond resort in St. Peter; both scheduled for a January 2014 as boosts (or should it be boast in his case) to the tourism industry and especially the coming winter season in the case of Almond.
In case you are of the view that I speak from the same rear end as you do, here is what the MoF said in his budget speech of August 2013:
“Finally, just this past week I signed off on the financing plan for the Cruise Pier Project at the Bridgetown Port. With this out of the way the developers can now forge ahead with plans to initiate close to 160 million Barbados dollars in construction work at the site, with 90 million dollars of that expected in the first phase of construction. We anticipate that work should be able to commence in January of 2014.”
Now if you check the same website (Sugar Point Development/Barbados) you are asking Hal to check you will see that this same project was scheduled to start at the end of last year 2012.
Here is what a Press Release (embedded in the same webpage) of October 24, 2012 announced: “Work on the new Barbados Cruise Terminal, know as Sugar Point is expected to start by the end of this year.”
Now who are the lying jackasses?
Didn’t the MOF promised word on Four Seasons very soon a couple months ago?
@Miller,
I am going to be technical and “picky”.
You said that the MOF said..”We anticipate that work should be able to commence in January of 2014.”
What is “work”? Has January come yet? Didn’t I say that surveyors were already at “work”? Isn’t this “work on the project? If a doctor plans to do surgery will he begin the operation before the lab tests? The se are preliminary to the operation but are an integral part of the “work” of the surgery.
Did he say that “construction” was going to begin in January 2014? Could it be started before the papers were signed? Where are the lies? Could all the financing papers be signed before the elections? The press release you quote was in October 2012. Come on be reasonable.
“Finally, just this past week I signed off on the financing plan for the Cruise Pier Project at the Bridgetown Port. With this out of the way the developers can now forge ahead with plans to initiate close to 160 million Barbados dollars in construction work at the site, with 90 million dollars of that expected in the first phase of construction. We anticipate that work should be able to commence in January of 2014.”
Where are the lies?
@Miller,
Based on your comments you KNOW about the plans, but in typical BLP fashion you tried to give the impression that nothing was happening or going to happen.
Now I am going to be technical and picky. te MOF said:
“We anticipate that work should be able to commence in January of 2014.”
What is”work?” I already said tatIhad seen the srvyors at work. If you are going to perform surgery part of the preliminary “work” is performing lab tests, which are integral to the surgery. the survey work is integral to the commencement of construction. The dredging will be integral to the construction. So ” work” has already commenced. However, January has not yet come, and as far as my calender says, 2014 runs from January to December, so there is lots of time for “construction” to begin.ou have to areeI am correct.
Additionally, according to Hnderson Bovell, over 1.4 billion dollars left the island. HOW? Who facilitated this transfer of money out of the country? Did the Fraud Squad know this? Is there money laundering taking place here? Perhaps Henderson should be questioned closely about what he knows of this matter, and who else is involved? Both the Central Bank and the police should become involved in this matter.That is a lot of money to have knowledge of its movement out of the country. Was it by money tranfer; electronic or otherwise?
Can we cout on your help in this matter?
Anyhow y
Mr. Austin, you write rubbish every week as if the country where you reside is not experiencing economic problems of great magnitude. Why don’t you take a leaf out of Gline Clarke’s books and call a spade a spade. Do you read the British tabloids?
The following is an article which apparently escaped your notice but I will post it to remind you of the problems which are steering the David Cameron’s Government in the face.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/10099326/Theres-a-worse-crisis-on-the-way-unless-we-get-serious-about-tackling-debt.html
There’s a worse crisis on the way unless we get serious about tackling debt
By Allister Heath
6:27PM BST 04 Jun 2013
For all of the talk of austerity, Britain is still drowning in debt, private as well as public.
Families and companies have only just started down the long road towards fiscal responsibility, with the belt-tightening likely to continue until the end of the decade; and the public sector is still adding more to the national debt pile every week than the private sector is repaying.
We still aren’t remotely living within our means and – for all the genuine pain in some quarters – still haven’t made a decisive break with the irrational exuberance of the 2000s and the cultural delusions that accompanied it.
The political establishment remains unwilling to admit to itself, let alone to the public, that the welfare state is going to have to be massively pared down, and that individuals will need to consume less and save more.
Instead, it’s still largely business as usual in Westminster: George Osborne’s plans to subsidise another credit-fuelled housing bubble are terrifyingly reckless, and Ed Balls’ policy to cut pensioner benefits amounts to £105m a year, saving 0.01pc of the £720bn in government spending.
There has been some progress, of course, but it remains too limited. Household debt has fallen from 111pc of GDP at the start of 2009 to 99pc at the end of last year, according to official data analysed in a recent note by Michael Saunders, Citigroup’s brilliant economist. For private firms excluding banks, debt has dropped from 121pc of GDP to 108pc.
his is a decent readjustment, with individuals and businesses trying to put themselves on firmer footings – and helps to explain why banks’ net lending remains relentlessly negative – but this process has much further to go.
Together, families and non-financial firms’ debt is still worth 208pc of GDP and is merely back to levels last seen in mid-2007, a time when leverage was already utterly unsustainable. Current debt levels remain much higher than they were a decade ago (170pc of GDP) and 15 years ago (128pc of GDP).
Nobody knows what the “right”, sustainable level of private sector debt is, and it depends crucially on expected productivity, wage and jobs growth, as well as on inflation, but it is certainly far lower than today’s levels.
A fair bet is that the private sector’s debt to GDP ratio will have to fall back by another 50 percentage points or so; even if nominal GDP grows by a highly optimistic 4pc to 5pc a year over the next few years, net borrowing will also have to fall every year until 2020.
Debtors will actually have to repay loans, not merely assume that a growing economy will bail them out. This will depress consumer spending as well as corporate investment, unless the rise in the stock market continues, unlocking alternative sources of finance for companies. Inflation won’t bail us out: with private sector wage growth now almost zero, higher prices reduce household incomes just as much as they cut their debt, making no real difference.
Anybody who believes that private sector debt has ceased to be a problem should stress-test their own finances. Could you cope if the base rate rose to 5pc, from today’s 0.5pc. Or 8pc? Or 10pc? Even if you could survive, could others? Could your employers? If not, that means that the debt burden needs to be lower.
The current, extraordinarily low levels of Bank interest rates, combined with quantitative easing and subsidies for credit, are an aberration. At some point, they will be replaced by more normal conditions, something for which millions of households are still not ready.
Shockingly, even after the recent repayments and write-offs, the combined debt of families and non-financial firms remains 82pc of GDP higher than they were at the start of 1997, just before Gordon Brown became Chancellor.
By contrast, as the Citigroup research paper points out, America’s private debt burden rose by a more reasonable 39pc of GDP during that time, helped by massive deleveraging and write-offs in recent years, and even the eurozone’s 58pc of GDP increase is lower than ours. Forget the US sub-prime crisis or the euro bubble: we were the real debt junkies, and will continue to pay the price for our stupidity and the previous government’s incompetence for years to come.
Only Greece, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Portugal and Cyprus currently have more private debt (as ever, excluding the banking system) than us, a horrible reality which shows that the British should not mock the woes of mismanaged, peripheral eurozone nations.
We would have gone bust and had to beg for a bail-out had we joined the single currency and been unable to rely on quantitative easing. The UK economy continues to rest on the bed of nitroglycerine first identified by Bill Gross, the US investor, in 2010.
It gets worse. The Government has increased its own debt burden so much that this has more than compensated for the deleveraging by families and private firms. General government debt has reached 90pc of GDP, up from 43.5pc when the crisis erupted in mid-2007.
Combined UK private and public debt (as ever, excluding the balance sheets of City banks) therefore reached a recent record of 298pc of GDP at the end of last year, higher than the eurozone average of 268pc.
Total debt levels only rose moderately in the UK between 1987 and 1997, increasing from 144pc of GDP to 178pc of GDP. They then started to shoot up, hitting 207pc of GDP five years later and 253pc at the start of the crisis. When Ed Balls insists, as he did this week, that the last Labour government didn’t spend too much and didn’t push the national debt too high, he is focusing exclusively on the government’s official, on-balance sheet national debt prior to the crisis.
But Gordon Brown fostered an unsustainable private sector credit bubble, grabbing a large chunk of the proceeds as tax. When the music stopped, the economy collapsed and the public finances were left with a gaping hole.
Osborne’s unbelievably silly plan to engineer his own neo-Brownite mortgage boom, combined with hugely overpriced housing, may temporarily halt the private sector’s deleveraging. This would give the Government a short-term boost, bolster consumer spending, buy some “growth” and help the Tory party’s election hopes, but would store up even greater problems for the future.
At some stage, the bond markets will pop, house prices will plunge, another large economy will implode, the cost of borrowing will soar and we will suffer another recession. At the moment, neither the private nor the public sector would be able to cope.
Unless we become serious about tackling private and public debt, the next crisis, when it eventually comes, will be unimaginably devastating.
Allister Heath is editor of City A.M.
@ Seaman
I read Allister Heath almost everyday. And, yes, the UK rebalancing is uneven. But I am not here to defend George Osborne.
For the record, I think Allister’s understanding of economic history is offbeat. As a result, I oppose almost all his views. Reading him, either in the Telegraph or CityAM, is bad for my blood pressure. To be polite, I do not think he is that bright.
If you want to see him as the great interpreter be my guest. I would rather listen to Frank Alleyne..
The essential point of the above 1.27 am, December, 7, 2013 post by seaman is a tremendous point indeed and can apply to Barbados.
Also, the yearly rate at which this false fictitious fraudulent money debt has been increasing in Barbados has been staggering.
We have stated time and time again “on here” – BU – and many other places – that this is one of the very fundamental problems facing Barbados.
Money, or its uses, CANNOT give rise to MONEY DEBT and money CANNOT be used to payback MONEY DEBT. Furthermore, MONEY DEBT CANNOT exist!!
Indeed, it is primarily through the socialization and indoctrination into the minds of many millions of people of these false fictitious and fraudulent ideologies, philosophies and psychologies by certain power and influence groups (governments and their so-called education departments, financial institutions, etc) within and without many countries, that there has been much social political acceptance by many of these same millions – and very much to their ontological existential detriment – of these destructive ideologies, philosophies and psychologies.
The destruction significantly comes in its contribution to the continuous upward movement to even alarmingly higher higher levels of the real actual cost of use of money (local foreign) in this country and its real and gradual devastating impact on the nominal incomes, payments and transfers of the relevant people and other entities in this country.
So, rather than deal seriously with these kinds of unavoidable basic issues many people in Barbados – including many of those people that are using this blog network BU, including the lead participant David – continue to treat with levity and insouciance such fundamental and crucial matters of the false and despicable ideology of MONEY DEBT and the deleterious effects that it helps to bring on the livelihoods of thousands upon thousands of the Barbadian people.
PDC
Imagine that as a primary result of money/cheque transfer agreements between these relevant financial institutions and themselves, thousands upon thousands of people in Barbados are repeatedly monthly putting monies into money banks, credit unions, finance houses, and are putting these monies towards OUTRIGHT NOTHINGNESS/ MONEY DEBT that does NOT exist!!??
Imagine the hypnosis the madness the wickedness the devilism to which these people are subjected to when already they – many of us – are the PART OWNERS of this money!!??
Imagine these people working hard doing business and then thereafter taking much of the money come by, and putting it towards NOTHING!!??
Imagine these people having OWNERSHIP of buildings, vehicles, and craft, and that such OWNERSHIP at this stage itself is anchored on legal agreements, which sometimes rightly properly refer to their – these people – own use of their own money, and/or which sometimes wrongly refer to their and the relevant financial institutions use of valid cheques for some others (building contractors, owners/controllers of companies/businesses, etc) to use!!??
Imagine that some of these agreements sometimes ultimately lead to some of these people and the relevant financial institutions negotiating and agreeing to the access of some others (building contractors, owners of companies/businesses if so) to use some of their own money, or to use cheques leading to their own money – out of the relevant financial institutions, whatever the transactions involved!!??
Now, imagine that having done these things with their own money and these people and their non-money businesses having secured OWNERSHIP to buildings, vehicles, craft, that this OWNERSHIP is from the start already totally compromised by this illogical repeated putting of monies to NOTHINGNESS BUT into the vile clutches of the relevant financial institutions!!?? (this is essentially where the wicked fraudulent deceitful criminal subterfuge takes place)
Imagine that this ownership is threatened in various ways by the same financial institutions, when these people stop put money in these financial institutions, or when they become too much in so-called arrears to these financial institutions!!??
It is this crass constancy redundancy illogicality of behaviour that suggests the oligarchic political exploitation dehumanization to which these people – some of us – are wickedly subject.
Well, a certain future coalitional government of Barbados and of which the PDC shall be a part of shall by the introduction of the appropriate measures and policies help make sure that an end is brought to this mind catastrophe of PUBLIC DEBT in this country.
PDC
@Hal
I not here to defend anyone in your country. Every day David of BU asks contributors not to kill the messenger . Why do you want to kill Allister Heath for stating the following facts
(1) For all of the talk of austerity, Britain is still drowning in debt, private as well as public.
(2) Families and companies have only just started down the long road towards fiscal responsibility, with the belt-tightening likely to continue until the end of the decade; and the public sector is still adding more to the national debt pile every week than the private sector is repaying.
(3) We still aren’t remotely living within our means and – for all the genuine pain in some quarters – still haven’t made a decisive break with the irrational exuberance of the 2000s and the cultural delusions that accompanied it.
(4) The political establishment remains unwilling to admit to itself, let alone to the public, that the welfare state is going to have to be massively pared down, and that individuals will need to consume less and save more.
Instead, it’s still largely business as usual in Westminster:
(5) George Osborne’s plans to subsidise another credit-fuelled housing bubble are terrifyingly reckless, and Ed Balls’ policy to cut pensioner benefits amounts to £105m a year, saving 0.01pc of the £720bn in government spending.
It would appear as though you think very little of Frank Alleyne when you say that Allister Heath is not so bright and then in the same breath state that you would prefer read Frank Alleyne. Apart from Hal Austin, tell me who else think that you are more qualified to speak on economic matters than either of the erudite economists?
Readers can judge for themselves.
Allister Heath, 33, is Editor of City A.M., the daily business newspaper distributed in and around London and digitally. Under his editorship, the paper, which has now grown to a print circulation of 100,000 copies per day, has become an influential voice in London’s business community. Heath’s trenchant daily column in the paper covers economics, finance, politics, geopolitics, business strategy and other subjects and has gathered an increasingly large following.
His articles have been published in a wide range of publications, including the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Wall Street Journal, the JC, the Literary Review and the Spectator, where he also serves as an associate editor.
He is an increasingly regular presence on the TV and radio. Recent appearances include BBC1′s The Big Questions with Nicky Campbell; BBC1′s Sunday Morning Live; and Channel Four’s Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story, now out on DVD. He is regularly interviewed on BBC2’s Daily Politics and Sky News (where is also a newspaper reviewer). He is a weekly presenter’s friend on CNBC’s Strictly Money show. He has also contributed to a range of other outlets, including BBC News, BBC London, Al Jazeera English, Bloomberg TV, NBC, Fox News and others. On the radio, he is regularly interviewed on Radio Five Live (including frequently as part of its Editor’s slot), LBC and the BBC World Service.
Heath is a frequent public speaker, specialising in the outlook for the City and the economy, business trends and financial literacy. He often chairs conferences and seminars organised by corporates, think-tanks and trade associations.
His first book A Flat Tax: Towards a British model, with a foreword by Steve Forbes, was published in 2006. It was heavily drawn upon by George Osborne’s Tax Commission, chaired by Lord Forsyth. Heath recently became the Chairman of the 2020 Tax Commission which is investigating what the ideal tax system for the UK would be and will report in 2012.
Prior to taking over at City A.M. in March 2008, he was Editor of The Business magazine, a publication he originally joined as economics correspondent and leader-writer when it was a Sunday newspaper in 2002. He was also a regular contributor to The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday. While at The Business, he also served a two-year term as a Wincott visiting professor of financial journalism at the University of Buckingham.
Heath was born and schooled in France. He moved to the UK to attend university, graduating with a BSc in economics from the London School of Economics and an M.Phil in economics from Hertford College, Oxford University.
@seaman
Well stated.
@ Hal
You write as though Barbados is richer than your country. Your people are seeing hell and you never tell readers of this blog that there are similarities between the austere measures which your Government has implemented and the ones the Barbados Government have implemented or plan to implement. Your Government has cut funding for education, school meals, healthcare welfare and housing and on top of that it has cut Legal Aid which means that your people will not be able to dispute unfair evictions and babies will not have their interests represented in family disputes. The next time you write an article to BU criticizing the economic situation in Barbados , I would like you to tell readers that similar or worse conditions exist in your country and in Europe.
@ Seaman
Don’t be stupid. Barbados IS MY COUNTRY, not Britain, Do you think if I go to China I would become Chinese? Is this meant as a joke, or has our educational system declined to such an extent.
If you do not know what you are talking about then keep quiet. I am not defending this Conservative government, but the UK economy is growing; you may not agree with their remedies, but they have ideas.
In Barbados we have a government which, after six years, do not have a clue what to do.
I am sure that one reason for your anonymity is that you do not want to show off your ignorance, but plse re-read what I have written. It is not a criticism, but a critique.
You talk about Allister’s credentials. I have been a journalist before Allister was born; I have been a financial editor before he was a journalist; we have had a similar education, although at different universities; I am prepared to accept that he, and all the UK financial journalists, analysts and think-tank fellows are much better informed than I, but should that deny me the right to have an opinion?my ideas. Tell me what I got wrong. By the way, I am aware who he is.
@Hal
I am happy being called stupid since you think that the only person who has sense is Hal Martin. Yes, the UK Government knows what it is doing and the economy is growing , give Barbados a chance to implement some of the austere measures which your Government have implemented and still implementing and our economy will improve like yours. Only 24 houirs ago, the chancellor also announced another £3 billion of public spending cuts as he warned that the job of clearing the nation’s deficit is far from finished. He also stated that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that the 2008-09 recession had been worse than thought — with £112 billion wiped off the British economy. Was the recession worse for the Barbados economy ? You begged me to shut up if I don’t know what I am saying. I would like you to stop writing if you don’t know what you are writing.
wow, this is great stuff, but I dare not comment, unless I do so under the name Bajanred
@ seaman
I would like you to stop writing if you don’t know what you are writing.
*************
Cuhdear…. and do what instead…?
But Bushie would like to suggest to Hal that if you are so thin skinned as to resent criticism, including what you may consider unjustified criticism, …then THAT may be a good reason to follow in Peter Wickham’s footsteps and write for the Nation or Advovate instead, where few readers bother to read beyond the photo captions….
LOL…not saying that you write as much shiite as PW of course…. Few have been able to reach that depth since “Dictionary” assaulted onlookers with his long winded diatribes…
… Bushie must however commend ac on her ongoing attempts to fill the breech…or is it to ” dig deeper into the pit….” LOL aha Ha muh belly… 🙂
@ Bushie
I do like criticism, but I want the beef, not just someone saying I don’t like you. Say what you object to so I can debate with you, not just shout from the sidelines.
.
@ Hal Austin
Yuh meet yuh match !!! Deal wid Seaman now. Fuh de longest time yuh get bout hay writing a load uh rubbish and talking down to people while pompasetting bout your qualifications . Deal wid Seaman ; and I din know dat yuh so thin skin as to get suh personal wid somebody that show yu up!! Man yuh mek muh shame .
If I can intervene, I would disagree with Hal’s assessment of the elder Adams and Barrow and suggest that the younger Adams did more than both to direct Barbados onto a services-oriented trajectory, from which it continues to benefit.
And again, because we all know THE EFFECTS OF THE SHORT ATTENTION SPAN, …for WITHOUT A VISION, PEOPLE DO IN FACT PERISH (for example, losing women and children by the hands of men and men’s lives therefore being lost to mental sickness and/or in prison or by suicide, etc.) …so therefore, let US not forget to include:
>>>IF THE GOVERNMENT OF BARBADOS really wants a better way of life for its people, taking the recommendations of the HUMAN RIGHTS community is crucial. DISCRIMINATORY ATTITUDES, CUSTOMS AND PRACTICES are at the root of DOMESTIC AND SEXUAL ABUSE in this society which also is effecting efforts to REDUCE THE SPREAD OF #HIV/#AIDS. Everything is connected. IT’S TIME TO TAKE THINGS SERIOUSLY! Turn down the music/dancing and it’s entrancing side effects and turn up the reading/researching/and probing into the IMAGINATION for some IDEAS to combat this war on LOVE FOR SELF. <<<
ANOTHER FRIENDLY REMINDER from July 2012: "From her meetings with officials, Ms. Pillay said she identified several challenges that Barbados still faces in relation to #human #rights, including issues related to #discrimination, #stigmatization and #marginalization, as well as a lack of adequate sanctions for sexual harassment and the psychological and physical impact which #domestic #violence has on children." (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=679769678721360&set=a.379712502060414.89990.378528335512164&type=1&theater
@Seaman
So what is your point?
@ Hal
“we have had a similar education, although at different universities
The man went LSE and Oxford. Where did you have your “similar education”?
@PDC
What future coaliton government will PDC be a part of? Stuuuupse
Money is a non-tradeable, non-consumable, usable, measurable, socio-psychologically reactable to, physical commodity – and the only one of its kind in this world – that carries denominations for purposes of its users paying for its uses (at the same time they are using it) out of their own incomes, payments and transfers (nominal).
PDC
MONEY is NOT a medium of exchange.
It has long been promoted by many persons especially so-called economists that the principal function of money is as a medium of exchange.
This has been proven by the PDC to be entirely false.
Furthermore, MONEY is NOT a medium of exchange in any form or fashion.
Rather, the use of money by its users is as a natural consequence of these users – in COUNTLESS LOGICAL NUMERICAL ORDERS, WAYS and DIRECTIONS and in multifarious commercial contexts – on one hand – seeking to get and getting the use of NUMBERS IN MONEY – in those specific COUNTLESS LOGICAL NUMERICAL ORDERS, WAYS and DIRECTIONS – in order to get and represent the specific users’ nominal remunerations – and on another hand, and at some other times – having successfully got money to represent the particular users’ nominal remunerations – seeking to dispose and disposing of NUMBERS IN MONEY – in those particular COUNTLESS LOGICAL MUMERICAL ORDERS, WAYS and DIRECTIONS – in order to get and represent nominal costs to those same nominal remunerations , and on a further hand, and at other more times – having successfully got money to represent the specific users’ nominal remunerations – seeking to save and saving those NUMBERS IN MONEY – in those particular COUNTLESS LOGICAL NUMERICAL ORDERS, WAYS, and DIRECTIONS, in order to get and represent nominal savings of those same nominal remunerations.
PDC
Hal’
Have you checked out the Sugar Point Cruise site yet
More good ideas.