If, to begin with, the region arranges a meeting and openly wonders whether the Americans will attend? Good lord! Strategically, what is the region's leverage? And if we have no leverage, how are we going to run a financial centre?
The fact that we are rushing about trying to comply, rather than developing a financial centre that eliminates FATCA concerns, shows that what we are developing is already obsolete.

Professor Gilbert NMO Morris

the bahamas government nor the bahamian people will see a dime of that money: There are a few considerations. When you "find" oil, you amongst the 1000s of issues there are two important ones:
a. How you get it and the costs,
b. and the market price of oil per barrel, which affects the previous costs. So therefore, here is what is likely to happen: The lead firm will confirm its find and say to the government we will pay you a royalty. Let's suppose the royalty is 90% of profits, just to be overly optimistic. The government would never see a dime. Why? Because the firm with the rights in the Bahamas, will sell the rights to the proven reserves to a larger company. That company will determine what it costs to pump the oil from the depths. The government will only gain income, even if its on the gross, from oil that passes the Relief Valve. But nothing will. Because when the large Company buys the rights, they will Cap the Wells immediately. That is because, oil prices would need to be over $200 dollars per barrel to make its economically feasible to pump it. So Caping is like storage until the market price makes pumping feasible.
A final point: if the oil has a high sulfur content, (Sour), then that adds refining costs too. There are lots of oil finds all over the world. The question is, is it financially feasible to pump it. If the find in the Bahamas was a "monster find" (and it could become that), the question will be the cost of pumping - including environmental protection costs - relative to the profit yield based on the market price over time."

Professor Gilbert NMO Morris

Mr. Gilbert is correct. Moreover, if one wishes to establish a Medical Tourism industry, participating physicians have an incentive to practice at higher levels of professional proficiency, because they benefit directly - in the case of Captives - not only from competence, and a reputation for competence.

Captives can be structure also as a "claims control mechanism". If deals are made by foreign companies to provide packaged medical services, those companies are more likely to control frivolous claims. These two divides - the physician side and the patient side - are impacted by Captive Structures in such a manner that it creates a competitive wedge when compared to "defensive medicine" in the US or delayed treatment in Canada.

Professor Gilbert NMO Morris

Roberts shows that this issue is not about VAT. Its about birthright and manhood. It concerns our capacity to plot a path in the face of challenges owing to our actual and relative size.

Amen....for Roberts....exit stage left....lights out!

Professor Gilbert NMO Morris

Seriously?

In the US, New Jersey has just permitted Online Gambling, added to two states, including the US financial centre Delaware; where you can open a bank account with a pulse.

The US is not wrong to demand stricter money laundering rules in respect of Numbers in the Bahamas. However, the Bahamas has put itself in an invidious position: the Government ought to have been able say, "mind your own business" and what is good for the Goose, is necessary for the gander. But we have boxed ourselves in and therefore the US gets to occupy a curious position: It is a country where online gambling for citizens is legal and so a risk to money laundering, telling the Bahamas, where online gambling for citizens is illegal, that they risk higher incidences money laundering because of gambling.

Do you get it?

Its the Pot call ing the Kettle mingy!

It is a country where money laundering risk is at its highest, where financial institutions nearly destroyed the global financial system, telling a micro-state that its systems pose a risk. And we cannot answer because we boxed ourselves into a situation, in which a cultural practice (numbers)....running knowingly under our noises....has now been openly defeated as an illegal practice, yet it is not likely to cease.

This is how we become Esau!

Professor Gilbert NMO Morris

I am amused.
I was thinking when I saw the headlines that the call for writers, was a call for research writing, to discover, layout and advance a vision for the Financial Services.....however, it is merely to figure how to comply aggressively, with what someone else wants.

When will face the fact that if you are running about to comply with some dictat from abroad, you do not have an industry?

When you are in this mode, you are not refining your products. You are not developing your services model. You are not improving competitive balance. Instead, you cannot do any f these things, because tomorrow, after running on your tongue to satisfy the latest foreign demand, you will find yourself met with new demands which again, you run your guts out to comply with.

The Bahamas is a small nation. Its not excuse for having small imagination.

Mr. Turnquest is absolutely correct!

Professor Gilbert NMO Morris

Niel is right.

But I fear, even though Treasury is acting extra-territorially and ultra vires, we never have a strategy in place to force them into compliance. And that is because we are NOT, very NOT, a financial centre. We are a jurisdiction that by accident and intuition began offering financial services of a low end sort, and we have continued in that vein...and now that we are facing real world forces, we think using terms like IGAs mean anything.

Mr. Moree mentioned following Switzerland. However, Switzerland is...well, bloody switzerland! and we are very NOT Switzerland.

I fear too, for the same reasons principles enshrined in the Vienna Convention on Treaties (1969), such as "reciprocity", 'agreement by force', or any other breach of comity and actual international law by the US will go unanswered. That is because you cannot be late, sloppy and unprepared and go after the largest economic force in human history.

Have we even bothered to asked ourselves what we ought to have been by now, having lived in the shadow of the American behemoth?

Its seems all we have to show for our proximity is air miles to Miami and an ever ready capitulation to Lex Americana Universalis. (The Law of America made Universal). And now we lack the discipline to do more than make safe noises this late in the game; blindly, stood naked, wailing about our fancy clothes.

Professor Gilbert NMO Morris

MOODY is NOT Wall Street! And neither is any firm we traditionally think of as Wall Street; they are all in New Jersey or Charlotte, NC.

Moreover, if we know what is good for us, why do we care what "Wall Street" thinks. The very fact that we speak of it in such a way, demonstrates an obsequious tendency which has been the lynchpin of our misguidance.

Professor Gilbert NMO Morris

The IMF has promoted VAT for the last 30-years, increasingly in small developing nations. It is an elegant tax on paper. But it is better suited to manufacturing countries where there is actual value added. Let's look at the issues:
Government income:
Recently, the Finance Minister of Barbados reported that VAT delinquencies are unsustainable. (http://www.gisbarbados.gov.bb/index.php…). Barbados is a well-organised society. If Barbados cannot sustain with its well-oiled system, how can we in the Bahamas?
You will hear Bahamian ministers and adherents to VAT cite the technical design of VAT as if it is holy writ. It is not.
Mission Creep:
A central problem implementing VAT in a disorganised society, particularly where that disorganisation is owing in part to size is "mission creep". Because there will be so many exemptions and Zero Rating, and because companies will rise and fall below the Rate Threshold (with some companies financing inventory from Refunds), you will require a massive enforcement team. As such, very soon, you will have to raise the VAT rate to pay for the new people to enforce the old rate as we rush down the Jamaican road to prosperity.
The RATE:
In almost every case in the region (except Dominican Republic, where they can hardly collect taxes), the VAT rate has doubled within 7-years of introduction. Even in the UK the rate has doubled. Moreover, in almost every country where the rates have doubled, there has been no tourism development. A reason that Dominican Republic has in fact surpassed the Bahamas in room count and stopover visitors is because in part it is cheaper to build there because the VAT rate does not prejudice new developments. (When was the last time you heard of significant developments in Jamaica or Barbados?)
The problem is that we do not have a comprehensive picture of our competitive or comparative nexus and how our systems ought to be designed based on what those measures reveal.
For instance, we have basically (and unthinkingly) accepted that we must phase out Customs Duties (which is the wrong tax as well), to join in trade arrangements such as the epa, csme and WTO, all of which are meaningless to any foundational understanding of the potential options for the Bahamian economic future. Our customs duties do not protect any industry (save a few items), and so ought never to be bargaining chips in any trade negotiation. They are not excise taxes, but merely a lazy unimaginative way of raising government revenues, which we have followed slavishly since colonial times.
In 1999, I warned that the strategies of both parties would destroy financial services. They have. In 2003, I wrote that the government should convert our reserves to gold when it was $319.00 per ounce. We did not do that and lost an opportunity to reap billions of dollars. Now I am warning that VAT is not the tax for us.