WHAT ELSE WOULD THEY SAY?

In my Blog post titled (Court Rebuffs Criminal Rights Group) I ref­er­enced a January 8^th Chicago Tribune Article Titled: JAMAICA’S DEBT HURRICANE:

I have post­ed the Article here for your consumption.

Jamaica House

Americans con­cerned about the impact of pub­lic debt on the glob­al recov­ery have focused — with good rea­son — on Greece. Closer to home, how­ev­er, the tourism mec­ca of Jamaica illus­trates the cat­a­stroph­ic effects of bor­row­ing way too much, and the painful choic­es that fol­low. This saga, less famil­iar than Greece’s, is a les­son for law­mak­ers in the U.S. and else­where. The Caribbean nation actu­al­ly is in worse finan­cial shape than Greece: Jamaica has more debt in rela­tion to the size of its econ­o­my than any oth­er coun­try. It pays more in inter­est than any oth­er coun­try. It has tried to restruc­ture its loans to stretch them out over more years, at low­er inter­est rates, with no suc­cess. Such a move would be risky for its already ner­vous lenders. So Jamaica is try­ing to wran­gle a bailout from a skep­ti­cal International Monetary Fund. Another dead­line for a poten­tial deal just came and went last week, though nego­ti­a­tions continue.

Jamaica is caught in a debt trap. More than half of its gov­ern­ment spend­ing goes to ser­vice its loans. The coun­try can spend bare­ly 20 per­cent of its bud­get for des­per­ate­ly need­ed health and edu­ca­tion pro­grams. Its infra­struc­ture is fal­ter­ing. It lacks resources to fight crime. It has a lit­tle mar­gin to recov­er from nat­ur­al dis­as­ters such as Hurricane Sandy. To set itself straight, Jamaica needs a restruc­tur­ing, and a bailout with sig­nif­i­cant debt relief. No way can a small econ­o­my that has limped along with growth at less than half the glob­al aver­age for two decades pay back the for­tune that it owes. But as with Greece, as with America, as with the state of Illinois, gov­ern­ment lead­ers have balked at impos­ing the inevitable hard­ships. Saying no to favored con­stituents is no eas­i­er in Kingston than in Springfield.

The poten­tial alter­na­tive is worse: Defaulting on its debt would ruin Jamaica’s prospects for many years to come: It would under­mine the island’s crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant trade rela­tions with the U.S. It would dis­cour­age bad­ly need­ed for­eign invest­ment in its tourism, agri­cul­ture and min­ing sec­tors. The only thing worse than doing what Jamaica must do to live with­in its means would be not doing it. That hard fact is being faced to some degree by debtor nations around the world. Jamaica is an extreme exam­ple of the fate that could befall Spain, Italy, Japan or, yes, the U.S., if debt keeps pil­ing up. The anal­o­gy only goes so far since those much-larg­er economies have bet­ter resources to man­age their finances. Jamaica has few options, apart from beseech­ing the IMF.

The American “fis­cal cliff” deal was good news for Jamaica, which could not afford anoth­er U.S. reces­sion. The island’s finan­cial stew­ards have tak­en some prac­ti­cal steps to depre­ci­ate the local cur­ren­cy and curb infla­tion. The broad­er solu­tion, how­ev­er, is as obvi­ous and nec­es­sary in Jamaica as it is in Greece and oth­er coun­tries mired in debt: Reform tax­es, curb pen­sion costs, cut pub­lic pay­rolls. In Jamaica, that aus­ter­i­ty-based for­mu­la has, unfair­ly, got­ten a bad name. Critics of trade lib­er­al­iza­tion, pri­va­ti­za­tion and dereg­u­la­tion point to Jamaica as Exhibit A of First World poli­cies gone awry. IMF-imposed fix­es more than a decade ago — after pub­lic debt had bal­looned in the 1990s — made con­di­tions worse, the crit­ics say. What real­ly hap­pened, how­ev­er, is that IMF fix­es gave Jamaica a tem­po­rary life­line, but gov­ern­ment nev­er stopped bor­row­ing and spend­ing. The les­son of Jamaica is not that access to cred­it is bad. It’s that irre­spon­si­ble stew­ard­ship is bad. We’re cau­tious­ly opti­mistic that Jamaica’s cur­rent lead­ers will do bet­ter: Finance Minister Peter Phillips says his gov­ern­ment must do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to reduce its out-of-con­trol debt. Job One: Jamaica must make enough painful progress to win the con­fi­dence of the IMF, and of pri­vate lenders.

While the rest of us wait to see whether the island nation escapes its debt trap, we’ll see whether oth­er coun­tries learn the les­son of Jamaica: Stop dig­ging such deep, deep holes in the beach.http://​arti​cles​.chicagotri​bune​.com

Jamaica’s External debt: $14.7 bil­lion (31 December 2011 est.) (CIA fact-book)

As a Jamaican I’ll tell you, I have a range of emo­tions regard­ing the Article, anger is not one of them.

Well as is to be expect­ed the bone-head­ed politi­cians in Jamaica found it with­in them­selves to crit­i­cize the Article rather than face the real­i­ties doc­u­ment­ed there­in. Special advi­sor to the prime min­is­ter, attor­ney-at-law Delano Franklyn said that Jamaica was not in the same posi­tion as Greece which had to make uni­lat­er­al deci­sions to reduce its stock of debt, while Opposition spokesman on finance Audley Shaw said it was not true that his par­ty balked at impos­ing tough deci­sions to address the debt prob­lem when they formed the gov­ern­ment between 2007 and 2011​.Read more: http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com

Delano Franklin left, Audley Shaw right.

Franklyn said the Tribune’s edi­to­r­i­al gave the impres­sion that Jamaica was seek­ing a loan from the International Monetary Fund when it is in fact nego­ti­at­ing with the Fund to get its approval by putting in place the cor­rect fis­cal mea­sures, includ­ing reduc­tion of the debt, in order for Jamaica to approach the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket for fund­ing. Meanwhile, Shaw, a for­mer min­is­ter of finance, took issue with that a state­ment in the edi­to­r­i­al that Jamaica’s cur­rent Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips “says his Government must do what­ev­er is nec­es­sary to reduce its out-of-con­trol debt”. Shaw said the edi­to­r­i­al sug­gest­ed that the debt prob­lem was the fault of the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment. “That is an expres­sion of igno­rance on the part of the Tribune writer. The fact is, it is well estab­lished that our debt prob­lem did not start when I became finance min­is­ter in 2007,” an adamant Shaw empha­sized. Read more:http://www.jamaicaobserver.com.

I want to scream, lets face it,we know­ing these politi­cians are arro­gant morons, we know that they are the quin­tes­sen­tial big fish in the lit­tle pond, a pond by the way which is dry­ing up real fast, but are these clowns for real?

Our coun­try is in seri­ous trou­ble and oth­er than the pre­dictable default igno­rance label they use, because of course no one knows any­thing but them, these two morons could not cred­i­bly refute any­thing in the arti­cle, so they attacked the writer.

This is tra­di­tion­al­ly how they oper­ate , it would be much bet­ter to look at the entire­ty of what was said in the arti­cle and see how the facts stat­ed could be addressed, but that would mean hum­bling them­selves and say­ing “what we have been doing has not been work­ing, we sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue on this path”.

Say what you want about America’s almost 16 tril­lion-dol­lar debt, they can print mon­ey to hon­or their debt oblig­a­tions, yes there would be infla­tion, but the econ­o­my is large enough to absorb some infla­tion with­out wide­spread calamity.

The Americans can point to what they have done with the mon­ey they bor­rowed, whether you agree with how those monies were used is anoth­er con­ver­sa­tion for anoth­er day.

One thing is cer­tain is that they have good roads, good schools and great infra­struc­ture , and yes they have the wars I know , I know, well some Americans will argue that those wars are, and have been in America’s long-term strate­gic interest.

What does Jamaica have to show for the debt bur­den that is eat­ing up more than half of its Gross domes­tic prod­uct, just to pay the inter­est on those loans?

This is an unten­able sit­u­a­tion which is unsus­tain­able, it is guar­an­teed to keep gen­er­a­tions yet unborn enslaved.

This is the heart of whats at stake, yet both sides of the polit­i­cal clown-show is intent on say­ing “who me I did­n’t do it” or “they don’t under­stand what they are talk­ing about”. Of course when it comes to us Jamaicans, no one knows any­thing but us, look where it’s got­ten our country.

Jamaica needs bold lead­er­ship , it will require sac­ri­fice, not nec­es­sar­i­ly severe aus­ter­i­ty which will cause a con­trac­tion of the econ­o­my, or cause even more dev­as­ta­tion to the most vul­ner­a­ble. There will how­ev­er have to be an under­stand­ing that the pub­lic purse will no longer be a pig­gy-bank for whomev­er is in pow­er to do with it what­ev­er they want.

There must be an under­stand­ing that the coun­try can­not get to pros­per­i­ty through bor­row­ing. The coun­try’s lead­er­ship must appre­ci­ate the impor­tance of edu­ca­tion and fis­cal pru­dence. In short the era of thiev­ery and hand-outs must stop now.

Above all Jamaica needs lead­er­ship which under­stands that above all the sin­gle biggest prob­lem fac­ing the coun­try is it’s excep­tion­al­ly high crime rate.

Leadership must be more sophis­ti­cat­ed than what present­ly exist, we sim­ply can­not get to first world sta­tus by pick­ing up man­goes, the world has sim­ply moved past that kind of parochial­ism and simplicity.

Jamaicans will have to look to them­selves as the source of their own progress and less to par­ty. The choic­es right now must be a sane mix of aus­ter­i­ty, and crime reduc­tion, hold­ing the strain on spend­ing is crit­i­cal to get­ting the debt bur­den under con­trol, reduc­ing to a min­i­mum seri­ous crimes and acts of vio­lence will engen­der con­fi­dence, which hope­ful­ly will result in a return of seri­ous invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties to the country.

The prob­lems will not be solved overnight, all stake-hold­ers must be on board if it is to work. Of the stake­hold­ers no group is more crit­i­cal than pub­lic sec­tor work­ers and their unions. Unions will have to learn to stop pos­tur­ing and grand­stand­ing in an effort to broad­en membership.

None of the afore­men­tioned pro­pos­als will come to fruition with the present crop of lead­ers, some of whom could­n’t tell their heads from their asses.