Corporate (and eventually personal income tax) are inevitable. Look at what US and EU have done to our (former) banking industry. If we are going to have to compete on financial products and quality of services etc., might as well get out while we are still marginally ahead. I wonder about service when I am standing in line at the Canadian bank I bank with for one hour or more to do a basic transaction that takes you 5 mins in any US or EU bank. Opening any account in any bank in the Bahamas takes 3 to 6 months. In the US I can open a financial account on-line in 10 minutes - can even do it from Nassau! Where do we get off thinking we are competing with that? To renew my ATM card I spent an hour in various lines at the bank after having informed myself beforehand (thankfully, otherwise I would have had to make at least 3 one hour trips to bank as with every trip the mindless clerk or bureaucrat you eventually talk to would add another document needed) that I needed 3 pieces of ID (for which the clerk had to get up and waddle over to the copier and make copies and then waddle back like it was Sunday on the beach) and I had to sign multiple documents all of which were printed and stamped and signed by clerk (they love doing that - think they are adding value) in triplicate!! I haven’t mentioned that at least 2 of 3 papers printed were torn in quarters and placed in a pile in front of me, as if the tall pile of ripped up and useless paper and mindless bureaucratic waste was a credit to the office. This is just to renew an ATM card which in the US or EU you receive in the mail (don’t get me started on the Bahamas Postal Service) a few weeks before expiration and then you activate in a few minutes by phone or online. Yea, we gonna compete real good with that? What, we ain’t good enough to get those goods and services available in other countries?
What we need to do since our financial industry is toast is to accept this and negotiate with the US and the EU accordingly. We should demand that if we conform to their standards and requirements that in return their citizens who choose to bank in our jurisdiction should be treated exactly the same as if the bank in our jurisdiction was in their national jurisdiction: reciprocity. We should also then demand of our banks that they treat and provide their customers with products and services at the same level as their US and EU counterparts. While we are at it we might also take advantage of mindful and sensible progress, get off our high arrogant horse, and dollarize our economy and currency.

I heard Brave was at a dinner party in Lyford Cay during the week prior to his Covid diagnosis. Now, can you think of the many ironies if this were indeed true? And by using the word “ironies” I am being kind to Brave.

Ironic only place to legally get food is to line up for a government handout. How Orwellian!

Apparently Davis is seriously ill in ICU and Darville is at his home.

Medi-Nazis will continue to sadistically torture the citizens of The Bahamas. Power to people who should never have been given such powers has gone to their heads. Unfortunately there is not much we the people can do about it. We have become accustomed to being treated in a paternalistic and condescending manner by those with political power. We are both an arrogant and docile nation of entitlement to things we cannot afford and don’t deserve.

A government of vision and backbone would have kept our economy OPEN and instead invested the $100+million they have already spent on covid related NIB payments to build 1000 new ICU beds. Our Chinese friends built a hospital in 10 days. For $100 million they could not build us a hospital in a month so we would not have to be worried about “flattening the curve” because we were smart and instead chose to respond to the virus by raising the threshold - aggressively increasing our ICU capacity instead of destroying our economy and livelihoods? We would have been better off investing a fraction of the economic and financial loss the government policy has inflected on us into our laughing-stock “health care system“. Who are they fooling. Meanwhile, private sector is broke, but public sector has not had to make the same tough decisions because they - who’s policies have destroyed our livelihoods and sent us all to food lines - are still getting their salaries, and the Ministers are bragging about it. , how the public sector has not furloughed, layed-off, terminated, or reduced salaries or benefits of any worker.

** “To date, there has been no furloughing, lay-offs, terminations or a reduction or deferring of benefits for any worker in the public sector,” Minister Wells said**

What about the private sector, bud? Why are you forcing us to furlough, lay-off, terminate or otherwise defer pay and benefits? Why are you forcing us out of business? And you brag on hon how well you and your business is doing not having to furlough, lay-off, terminate or otherwise defer pay and benefits!!

Instead of spending $100 million on assistance to those suffering economic catastrophe because of your policies, you should have had the vision and the leadership to have spent $100 million to build a 1000 bed hospital and kept our economy and our lives OPEN. Instead of wasting time to “flatten the curve” you should have invested our tax payer money in aggressively raising the threshold. But then you politicians would have no excuse for your power hungry foolishness.