This is a lesson, which we will not likely heed.
The lesson is this: All of the financial experts, including business reporters are clueless.
The whole financial industry is a puffed up bunch of false claims and hopes.
The value of the stock market and digital assets are based on clueless faith in their product by supposedly smart people. Do the realities not prove this over and over?.
How many Bahamians own stock, or crypto currency? In a country of price control?
These companies sway and outright bribe the politicians and regulators here, and everywhere.
They provide no value to a nation's economy except the few tenuous jobs they provide to justify their rape of the economy.
Will we ever learn? Was the bible not fairly explicit about this love of money and the money changers? So, where are the real Christians now?
When people are more prone to believe, than accept knowledge and evidence, this is where we end up.
For the Bahamian people, this FTX scandal means little. Yet, as many commenters have pointed out, it is merely one of a long list of scams and scandals which our politicians seem to have a penchant for.
The real scandal is that we spend between $1,000,000.00 and $2,000,000.00 each and every day paying interest only, for the loans The Bahamian political establishment has taken out in our name. Each day this money leaves our shores merely to pay interest.
Trust me, every prominent Bahamian politician has an exit strategy. Property and bank accounts elsewhere. Why? Because they are well aware of how they have compromised the future of this country. Take a close look at the financial status of each and every important Bahamian government department. The Bahamas is nearing a 100% debt to GDP ratio. This is not sustainable for a country like The Bahamas.
We do understand what happens to a country when they start defaulting on their loans, don't we? They start taking our national assets.
Our Central Bank governor and Finance ministers are not just smart. They are also nearly silent on the very real predicament The Bahamas is in. Their job security comes about by the continued obscuring of reality and the need for radical political change.

Who are the real sharks when a family has to appeal to donors to pay their medical bills?
The world in 2022. My, haven't we come a long way..........?

Slackness is now catching up with us.
According to the stats, it is bound to get worse.
Prepare to listen to more crap coming out of politicians and the police talking heads.

Merely business as usual here, just on a bigger scale.

What did you just say? I was an English major in college. You would get an F in grade school for your uneducated outburst. Sit down and go back into the corner where your teacher sent you years ago.

Empty, hollow words.
Even the ridiculous deniers like Columbopillow are spinning around like a child.
We are finished.
Rising sea levels coupled with greed and ignorance will soon take their toll.

Yes. The storm of incompetence, corruption, and fiscal irresponsibility came ashore some time ago. Before many of us were born, it seems, and shows no sign of letting up.

Ms. Wallace,
COPs have been an absolute failure.
Here in The Bahamas, we have to become educated on this issue.
We are not. And, neither are our leaders.
Further, for others to take us seriously, we have to start doing the right thing ourselves.
So long as our PM cannot say unequivocally to the oil drillers, "get out of The Bahamas for good and forever.", we are simply not serious.
How can we move to step two when the first obvious one is so difficult to do?
We are not serious. And, neither is our PM.
Our PM is trying to decide if the big money will come first from the oil drillers, or from the countries that decide to donate to our cause. He is unable to see, it seems, that both represent the devil.

I agree 100%.
Except that children emulate their parents and caregivers.
To break the cycle of ignorance, we need to have our kids raised by whom?
We missed the educational lecture nearly 2 generations ago.
Uneducated pastors, which is most of them, do not help matters, focusing on belief, as opposed to knowledge. They do not need be mutually exclusive, as they are now.

No decent, semi-intelligent person paying attention to this fiasco believed that The Bahamas acted in good faith.
Clearly, as in every other venture here, Bahamian politicians made sure they, and their family members, were taken care of first.
Most every one of them have homes elsewhere, in preparation for The Bahamas collapse, which they are / were instrumental in bringing about.
The level of delusion and blatant dishonesty in this country is astounding.