Please close this slush fund and prosecute.

No lie really, returning to profitability most likely will be achieved by selling the portfolio to another bank, who will close branches and drastically reduce staff. The govt will have to cover the shortfall to make depositors whole or partially rely on the depositors insurance at the central bank for accounts less than 50k. Those with larger deposits might be asked to take a haircut. So it can be done, but it calls for radical measures, with the govt running the show, status quo, ain't gonna happen.

Tal you will be pushing up daisies, fertilizing silk cotton trees before this bank returns to profitability under govt ownership. DPM made this statement because this bank is insolvent and they want to prevent a "run" on the bank and by extrapolation all banks. But as for profitability forget it, half the loan portfolio is impaired, and not generating income, the expenses are huge, with a bloated staff. No hope here, sell it, cut our losses and remove this risk from the govts balance sheet forever.

The port has a regulated profit margin of 10% for the next 30 odd years. Hard to see any conflict there.

Have you looked at the balance sheet of BOB? The bank is underwater, to the tune of several hundred million dollars. Of course shareholders should be wiped out, it is called capitalism, the best that could be done is to try to make depositors whole. Sell the bank for what it is worth, half its loan portfolio is impaired, and cut our losses. The FNM has to deal with this immediately, and bite the bullet, we can not continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars with this sunken ship. Also what if after a massive bailout of several hundred million dollars by some miracle this bank is turned around, with govt ownership, it will simply be run in the ground again! Govt needs to divest itself of this and bahamasair, and ZNS, and BEC as soon as possible.

NHI needs to be put on hold until our fiscal house is in order. It is clear the PLP left a treasury that is absolutely broke. Proof is they only took up 10 million of the 30 million BOB bonds and the promise to pay the police after the election. Christie had no funds to pay them before we voted, now we will borrow more money to pay what was promised.

I do not want to hear about any more programs until we have a balanced budget and begin to pay down our debt. No new maternity ward, no nothing, broke people have to begin to live within their means. The plp lied to us and did not use vat to pay down the debt, they used it to expand govt. spending and left the country broke. That is the shameful legacy of Perry Christie, my children and grandchildren will be paying for his wasteful incompetence. He has stolen the inheritance of future Bahamians!

I want to be hopeful but I have to see it to believe it. Einstein said that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. We prosecute almost no civil servant for stealing/ corruption even when in possession of the most damning evidence and then we wonder why our government and civil service has been riddled with dishonesty and corruption since independence. Even when in the rare instance someone is prosecuted and convicted they are given a slap on the wrist. Case in point The bribe taker Fred Ramsey, convicted on 12 counts of bribery of several hundred thousand dollars and the judgement: no jail time, simply payback the amount of the bribe, and a $14,000 fine. What is that? This man should be in fox hill prison. Until we prosecute and incarcerate nothing will change. Start with the auditor general report of the 47 million missing from road traffic, charges need to be brought. We are watching FNM and we demand change and accountability.

I too felt patty roker had a very, very bad night. Not that she was biased for any particular party, simply that she had almost nothing insightful to say beyond pointing out ad nauseum that turnout was lower than expected. She seemed afraid to say anything remotely controversial. Also I wish they would report the results in a timely manner, Darold Miller kept repeating all the candidates names, even their middle ones over and over and over and over and over, each time mentioning finge candidates who never garner one vote. Meanwhile unreported results were streaming in.

Otherwise I felt Miller was spot on in criticizing the ex P.M. For his failure to personally concede. It was embarrassing and an insult to the electorate. Here too Roker fell flat on her face as she felt it was just fine. Again she was too frightened to state the obvious. Some advice, get a monitor that the commentators can read from without squinting, drop patty roker, and try to report the results in a more coherent and timely fashion.

I too am hopeful but the FNM govt has a tightrope to walk in terms of getting our fiscal house in order. On the one hand spending has to be constrained but not too much as govt spending is a huge economic stimulus and cutting back too quickly could do even more harm to the economy. At the least we need a balanced budget as soon as possible. The real key is GROWTH, if we can grow our GDP for the first time in 4 years then the debt becomes manageable and the tax base will increase.

How do we get growth is the million dollar question. It starts with reducing bureaucracy and red tape, it is simply too difficult to do business in the Bahamas, our worker productivity needs to increase substantially, unions reined in and civil servants reduced, the tax system needs to be tweaked with maybe an increase in an efficient tax like vat and a reduction in customs duties and other taxes, and most importantly increase Foreign direct investment by eliminating corruption that was so apparent in the PLP govt.

We are facing a very dire fiscal deficit and this calls for drastic measures. Now is the time to do it! Programs need to be cancelled, urban renewal- cancelled, carnival- cancelled. bec, bob, Bahamasair all privatized. And as hard as it is to say it the civil service needs to be reduced. All over Long Island in govt offices you see persons hired in the last three weeks, just sitting there doing nothing. i feel for them, they want a job but we can not afford it. It is better to take the pain now, than to continually kick the can down the road. Otherwise in 5 years with devaluation the pain will be enormous and there will be massive lay offs of civil servants dictated to us by the IMF. So DPM level with the Bahamian people we can not support the level of govt. we currently have, the credit card is maxed out and you need to be ruthless in reducing expenditure.