Stop talking fool man!

The vanguards of yesteryear, the old monied merchant class who controls 95% of the deposits in RBC do not want to see that happen. All they want to do is continue to hoard money in their local and offshore accounts. They are not interested in investing in this country or being innovative. When less than 1% own greater than 95% of the wealth in a country and that 1% is not re-investing, then you have an economy that looks like ours where they control all of the major industries except domestic gaming. And they mad as hell about that. They are scared to death of competition, innovation and a buy side emancipation.

Any foreigner from anywhere in the world can walk into a hotel casino and start gaming. They can fund an account through an electronic cross border transfer using the international banking system and they can receive winnings electronically through cross border transfers through the international banking system. Yet, folks like you and the so called National risk assessment folks would have us believe that the Gaming Board is credible and competent to mitigate the much higher inherent risks associated with these casinos but are not credible and competent to mitigate the much lower risk of domestic entities that can only open B$ banking accounts, require Central Bank approval for US$ transactions, can only open accounts for Domestic players, can only open accounts after a face to face meeting and can only pay customer B$ in a face to face physical transfer for winnings. Go figure!

This is absolute nonsensical conjecture. Actually how is this effectuated when these regulated entities are audited by the same external auditors that audit the commercial banks and the same Gaming Board that regulates the Casinos and are subject to the same AML/KYC legislation for all Financial Institutions in this country. Are the external auditors and the Gaming Board complicit as well? The Gaming Board has real time electronic access to the systems of these companies and can tell in 5 minutes if there are cash flows other than from customer gaming activity. Further, how do you launder money through your own "regulated" company. That would be the worst case of concealment ever and pure silly talk. Additional, please articulate a coherent theory, because it is either they are really only washing their own money and the profits are fictitious in which case if the profits are fictitious then they cannot also be sucking our economy dry. Otherwise, if the profits are from their business why then can they not do with it what they want. Or is making money only reserved for certain classes in this country.

To be clear transferring cash to another person is absolutely not money laundering. It is no different from person A giving person B cash physically, nothing has changed as cash is still held by the receiving party and it has not entered the banking system. Money laundering involves not only concealing the source of funds derived from the proceeds of crime but also integrating those funds into the banking system after the concealment. This money laundering talk with respect to these money transfers by people who know or ought to know better is the utmost of silly talk I can only suspect for political or other reasons. Just keep your eyes open on the ruling merchant class players who now will enter this market. We have already begin to see some of it. This is exactly why this economy is dysfunctional, too much self-interest influencing and subverting the public interest,

There are multiple ways to fair value the price of a stock and future earnings or more specifically future earnings growth is just but one of those ways. Credit quality, capital base, net interest income and commission fee income are all improving based on the above contrary to your shoe box analysis above. There is much to be said about this bail-out and without opining on the merits of your comments and valuation above please at least be accurate in your comments.

Increasing exports should be a strategic objective, however, immediately we must explore measures and incentivize domestic economic actors to engage in activity that reduces our dependence on imports and drive job creation. Our continued focus on FDI will increasingly require disproportionate and increasing incentives to attract smaller and less impactful investments. Additionally, our FDI model has not and will not lead to sustained economic development not only because of the giant leakage problem it creates for our economy but more importantly because it provides little to no economic linkages to other sectors in our economy and thus have little to no multiplier effect.

I have heard this argument about people and not guns being the problem and always ask myself if that is the case why in 2017 with respect to homicides someone on average is more than 25 times more likely to be killed by guns than by any other method. Specifically, someone is about 20 times more likely to be killed from guns than personal weapons (hands, fist, feet etc), about 10 times more likely to be killed from guns than from knives or other cutting objects and about 100 times more likely to be killed from guns than from narcotics and about 125 more times likely to be killed from guns than by strangulation. The access to the guns and the people are not mutually exclusive and for that reason this argument always seemed to me to be intellectually circuitous because you cannot blame it on the guns blame it on the people and you cannot blame it on the people because they are disaffected.

This issue is a veritable catch 22 and the root cause issue has nothing to do with Bahamasair and everything to do with our over reliance on imports in our economy. Why criticize Bahamasair for encouraging consumers to buy directly from Florida as opposed to a merchant buying it from Florida and the consumers buying it from the merchant. The fact of the matter is that Bahamasair and the local merchants are feeling the same pinch with respect to loss of demand due to the emergence of disintermediation actors, technology and supply channels. The economic policy response must be more thoughtful and broader than the silly talk we have heard from some of our Cabinet Ministers and business persons. It appears as if Mr. Butler is saying that Bahamasair should only transport tourists and let the other private airlines take Bahamians shopping.

By now one may have had reasonable expectations that our Minister of Finance would have realized that he is now a Cabinet Minister and a member of the government that sets policy and thus his words have real consequences. Instead, almost a year after being elected he still sounds like a politician from an Opposition Party. Further, what is equally concerning is his ever changing positions every time a mic is put in front of him.

Just last year Turnquest made the following remarks about this same technology and bank consolidations as reported by the Tribune........... "The bank’s statement yesterday indicated its expectation that such delivery platforms will compensate for the branch closures, but Mr Turnquest told Tribune Business this objective did “not face the reality of our customer base”. “The reality is that if you’re only making a couple of hundred dollars a week, doing business online is simply not feasible,” he said. “If you get paid weekly on a Friday, you’re going into get the cheque cashed that same day to pay your bills.” In the same article. Mr. Turnquest, who was then in Opposition, chastised the governing PLP for not doing enough about the bank closures. However, now that he is in power he appears to be blaming the same guy that makes a couple hundred dollars a week who needs to immediately pay his bills for not being tech savvy. The sad thing is that even if that guy is not tech savvy, that is no excuse and still does not absolve the government from taking a stance on these closures.