What utter economic nonsense. Was it fair or equal competition when these same dealers controlled 95% of the industry market share and consumers had limited to no choice, option or alternative but to buy from them? Your argument is similar to saying that it was not fair competition that the airplane and other more efficient means of transportation came along and put the Rail roads out of business. Must the government intervene on behalf of these dealers to give them some favorably policies and time to figure out that the fundamental market dynamics in their industry have changed and that they are losing ground because they are failing to adjust?

I ain't smart enough to understand your other worldly cryptic complex messages! But if you wanna talk economics I may be able to keep up.

Mr. Albury it is called competition and the free market forces of capitalism. Competition and free market forces level the playing field for consumers against entrenched oligopolies like Mr. Albury, Rupert Roberts and the other merchants who have failed to innovate and think they have a God given right to charge Bahamians high prices to purchase basic goods and services. We need more competition in this economy not less. Consumer taste with respect to automobiles have changed due in large part to the fact that the price that you charge for a new vehicle is out of the reach of the average Bahamian. What makes you so special to think that the government must intervene and disrupt free market forces on your behalf just because you do not have the business acumen to adjust your business model to be consistent with the current consumer market sentiment for vehicles. Put on your big boy pants and compete and stop crying like a crybaby.

The reason BahaMar would have factored in any downgrade in the first place was because of the sovereign/country risk posed not only by it's delay in opening but more importantly by the imprudent and obviously bias intervention of government in what was essentially a commercial contractual market based dispute. I find these comments from the Chamber particularly disturbing and misguided especially in light of the obvious what appears to be systemic corruption and conflict of interest charges being lobbied at Cabinet Ministers with respect to this BahaMar project. An environment of systemic corruption and conflict of interest by top ranking government officials alone is sufficient grounds to downgrade an economy because in such an environment self-enrichment of the political players is the most important incentive in decision making and not GDP growth, high employment or efficient use of VAT revenue.

So if Minnis has glazed over greedy power hungry eyes for just thinking about the money in the public purse, I am curious as to how you would describe the tiefing men and women who were the last to be seen with the missing money?

I would prefer dimwitted than dimwitted, corrupt and tiefing. Can it really get any worse than the entire dim witted, corrupt and tiefing Cabinet of the current government.

Really..... well then of course we must arm ourselves! An eye for an eye so in the end the whole country is blind.

There is much to legitimately criticize the police about but not in this instance. In this instance they are doing exactly what they are suppose to do and would have been negligent if they had done nothing. It is precisely because this guy is a nut job that they had to do something. Events always occur in the backdrop of context, and context matters. Just suppose that he actually has a gun, talked about it on social media, actually hurt someone and the police waited until after the person was hurt to act. Some of the same folks on this blog would be here now calling the police all manner of derogatory names for their incompetence. The means must be congruent to the end. As much as you or me may want the PLP gone we must not encourage threats or insinuations of violence. That is not who we are!

One of the reasons I am so pessimistic about our future is that we have party leaders like Bran whose lack of substance on a range of issues is just stunning. At least Turnquest on occasions make a little sense, however, on this issue he has missed the mark. Whereas lack of access to capital is certainly a barrier to business success, merely having capital is certainly no guaranty of success which makes the above statements in my view absolutely nonsensical. Success requires not only capital but innovation, successful market offerings, value creation as well as sound business acumen. Prior to webshops over 95% of the capital in this country resided in the hands of less than 2% of the population. Turnquest says we do not want to establish oligarchies but the fact of the matter is that is what we have had way before webshops. Wake-up everybody. Due to structural constraints in our economy, capital and access to capital have historically remained stagnant in the hands of the privileged few with the average Bahamian having little to no access to risk capital. Our economic system and traditional financial institutions have reinforced these structural constraints by the manner in which they have operated in our country over their entire one-sided relationship with us. The seminal economic question for all of us should be "why has capital remained so stagnant in this country and what are the institutional or other barriers to access to risk capital and business related credit in this country and why do these barriers exist". That is where the real conversation and dialogue about national economic development should begin. We can develop a thousand national economic plans but until we find answers to those basic questions we are only wasting time and we will remain stuck at the starting line in the get set position without equality of opportunity that allows the full expression of Bahamian entrepreneurship. In my view the only thing these guys have proven is that if Bahamians have access to capital or in other words access to opportunity, average Bahamians can drive first world quality economic development even in the Bahamas. I and many of my expat friends own units in Venetian, and for Bahamians to have designed, construct, develop and operate a real estate project the scope of Venetian, which in my view is comparable to any high-end gated community in the USA, proves that with capital average Bahamians can compete with any foreign firm if given the opportunity.

He must not remember the late Paul Adderley's pledge to unwind the Sol Kerzner Atlantis deal. If ever a deal cried for stop and review this Baha Mar deal would be it.