Below in italics is the comment I posted on May 5 to a news story written by Neil Hartnell on Commonwealth Bank's recently announced dividends which were being touted by its CFO.

*Notwithstanding the dismal macro economic outlook arising from the global tariff/trade wars instigated by the US, and without regard to CB's soaring general and administrative costs, management decided to spit into the high winds that lie ahead by making a whopping release of loan loss provisions, apparently in order to boost the bank's net income and enable huge dividend payments to be made to its shareholders.*

*No doubt certain of the bank's more high profile 'de facto controlling' directors and shareholders had much sway in this decision to significantly reduce the bank's capital available for loan losses against the backdrop of the difficult times that would appear to lie ahead.*

*And if those facts alone are not sufficient cause for concern, this bank has bet its house on an unusually high concentration of investments made in short-term debt instruments issued or guaranteed by the Bahamas government. This concentration of credit risk has resulted in a structural deformity of the bank's balance sheet that significantly heightens its overall financial risk profile.*

*Because the government has no means to repay its significant indebtedness to the bank, the bank is forced to replace its maturing investments in government debt with investments in newly issued government debt, thereby effectively 'rolling forward' its exposure to The Bahamas government indefinitely into the future. Not good!*

Rather than touting the announcement of record dividend payments, the CFO of CB should be discussing with CB's board of directors (and the bank supervision department of the Central Bank) ways in which CB's unusually high concentration of investment risk, associated with its significant ownership of short-term government debt instruments, can be reduced to help contain and control the related great financial risks posed to the bank and its shareholders.

> The US State Department’s 2025 Annual Report on International Child Abduction designated The Bahamas as one of 15 nations showing “a pattern of noncompliance,” citing chronic delays, lack of legal action, and poor communication with US authorities. The report highlighted an average delay of over seven months in locating children once applications were filed.

>Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted The Bahamas was the only new addition this year.

The noose is tightening.

LMAO

> And he {Pintard} asserted that Carl Oliver, the Government’s acting chief procurement officer, testified that some public officials have “just accepted not to comply” with the Public Procurement Act and its accompanying regulations during an appearance before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Tuesday.

So which government passed the Public Procurement Act without any teeth to hold deliberate violators accountable by facing legal charges with possible penalties of fines and/or imprisonment? Is it the same government that passed the personal financial information disclosure statute for parliamentarians that also has no teeth?

Why is it only statute laws that impose requirements on the public have teeth but not the ones that impose requirements on our elected officials? Pray tell.

CIBC is right and Gowan Bowe is wrong, and Bowe knows full well that he is wrong.

For Bowe to suggest that domestic banks, insurance companies, pension asset managers, etc., are somehow exerting fiscal discipline on the government by refusing to invest in longer duration debt instruments issued by the government, is frankly an absurdity. Truth be told, the government simply cannot afford to issue longer duration debt instruments with higher investment returns (higher interest rates) that these financial institutions and asset managers would be willing and able to purchase and hold as longer term investments.

Put another way, the government is caught between a rock and a hard place. It would like to issue longer duration debt instruments but is unable to do so because it cannot afford to pay the higher interest rates investors would demand for the higher financial risks associated with such instruments. The current lack of alternative investment opportunities for the domestic banks, insurance companies, pension asset managers, etc., has them literally forced to assume unusually high levels of 'roll-over' risk associated with too many investments in short-term government debt instruments that government is unable to repay in cash at maturity and therefore must replace with newly issue short-term debt; hence the term 'roll-over'.

Our government is literally printing Bahamian currency to meet its local funding needs by issuing short-term debt instruments. The problem is the market of purchasers of these debt instruments is limited and already showing signs of being severely strained. This is evidenced by domestic banks, insurance companies, pension asset managers, etc., having an unusually high level of their (or their clients) total assets invested in short-term debt issued by the government.

CIBC has every right to be concerned about the inordinate concentration of financial risk now faced by the locally owned financial institutions like Commonwealth Bank, Fidelity Bank, Colina Holdings, and so on. It is a most serious structural problem for our country's exchange control reliant financial system that the Central Bank, the government and the domestic financial institutions have failed to forthrightly address. CIBC is to be commended for being the adult in the room to stand up and say, "Enough is enough, this simply cannot continue."

What's the matter Davis....is your government just too damn incompetent to properly oversee the enforcement of our country's own laws with respect to firearms?

Perhaps you should spend less time ensuring that certain of our country's senior ranking politicians are allowed to profiteer with their Cuban counterparts off of the modern day slave trade scheme that makes a mockery of the injustices our slave ancestors had to endure.

LOL

LMAO.....Davis was told by Rubio and Bessent to sign it or else.

Robert Carron is of course immediate family to Eileen Dupuch Carron who is a Bahamian lawyer and the publisher of The Tribune newspaper.

You can bet Fwreddy Boy Mitchell is all hot under the collar about this huge windfall for the owners of The Tribune.

Bingo!

Incidentally, the meeting was a very short one. Davis was told point blank that if he and his cabinet ministers value their ability to travel to the US they had better do as they were told and cease all participation in the cross-border human trafficking for profit scheme. The US officials also made it known in no uncertain terms that they were incensed by all of the 'cute' waffling talk that only served to waste their precious time.

Yup. Plenty of strange things are allowed to occur when CJ Winder is the judge. Just ask Sarkis Izmirlian.