Too young for that, but I do remember as a very young lad, visiting relatives in Moss Town, and I was appalled that a crocus sack was used for a door on the cabin of Mum's godmother.

True dat!

Cuz they don't understand it.

Here is a lesson in Downgrade101. The foreign-currency denominated sovereign bonds are held by institutions like the Royal Bank. The banks/buyers flog them to companies like Goldman Sachs. These are fixed rate, high interest bonds & with a good rating, they should be hot commodities. Buyers such as pension funds & hedge funds buy these things if the credit rating is good.

Typically what Goldman Sachs does, is buy a basket of bonds of similar types -say Caribbean Sovereign Debt. They collaterized these, meaning put them in 1 basket & sell them as investment grade securities. This is a CDO or collaterized debt obligation. They sell shares of this CDO.

Now what happens if the credit rating of the issuers of these bonds falls? The underlying financial investments -the CDO falls in value, because the danger of default rises. Holders of these buy/sell Credit Default Swaps. In other words, they buy insurance against a country defaulting on its debt. Because they buy insurance & pay monthly, this digs into the yield of the interest rate.

2 things can happen. They can push for bond redemption. This means that the government has to come up with the money to buy back these bonds. The government is already stretched for cash & if they get a bill for $300 million, then we are fooked. We don't have the cash & we can't borrow it, because our credit is shiite, so we default & that means eating pigeon & coconut for the lucky ones.

The other option is that the bond is non-redeemable. It sells for pennies on the dollar in the secondary market. They may be strip bonds with coupons, meaning that some of the interest is payable in that year before maturity. The government is also fooked in this scenario, because strip bond coupon redemption on a $300 million bond is anywhere between $15 & $30 million depending on the interest rate & we know that the government couldn't come up with the $40 million to save BoB without more debt, so we are fooked again & facing default.

The last scenario is that the bond is non-redeemable by the holder, but because the holders are buying CD Swaps or insurance, it is not worth the paper that it is printed on when that bond is either traded, or a collaterized version is traded on the secondary market. When it comes due, we are fooked again. It just puts of the bending over for a few years on just this bond.

The bottom line is that some of the debt denominated in American dollars is held as reserves by the Central Bank. If the prospect of default rises, the world's bankers will demand that we have more reserves. We can't come up with them because tourism is down, the economy is not growing & we are fooked. So the Bahamian dollar is devalued. It will probably go down to between 25 and 35 cents & some economists peg the real value at 12 cents on the US dollar. $9 Bahamian dollars will buy one US Dollar.

And that is what the downgrading means and how it will happen.

A loose cannon with no intellect and an unenlightened world view. He fits right in. He is the kind of man that Loretta BlubberButt Turnover likes.

A local professional Bahamian had a foreign colleague attached to an NGO (Non Government Organisation doing charity work here) do some sampling and analysis of the data set of the socio-economic conditions of Nassau, and the results were staggering. I was privy to some of the information.

First and foremost, the systemic unemployment rate is about 30% when you count the folks who have stopped looking, the young folks who have never tried looking but survive day-to-day with unofficial odd jobs or grifting, and those who live in aggregated family groups where one or two has a job, and the rest of the adults in the group do not.

The second major surprise was the amount of Haitians in the New Providence population. The numbers are higher than anyone suspects.

The third major surprise, was the endemic poverty. People are surviving on incomes way below the official poverty line. It is amazing how many there are, and how they keep it together in the face of a horrible economy.

The fourth surprise was the above average incidence of preventable diseases that have economic-impact parameters. Coupled to that, is a genetic preponderance for breast cancer among Bahamian women, and the lack of resources for proper nutrition is a factor.

All of these things are exacerbated by chronic and systemic unemployment. And it is insulting, that the well-fed director of statistics sits up at a microphone in a very porcine manner and announces that unemployment is lower. Even if it were (which is a lie -- it is not), it would only be a temporary stop gap measure to repair hurricane damage, and all of those folks are out of a job or will be shortly.

We are on the razor's edge of economic collapse, especially when the ramifications of the downgrade to junk status of the sovereign debt kicks in.

Actually it was 16 cents for the surplus gunny sacks and and the rest of it went into Neville Whizdumb's pocket.

Actually, if there is a devaluation, the only ones smart enough to hide their money in hard currency in Panama are the numbers guy and Swindlings. The rest of them can be bought for less once currency devaluation comes in.

Sigh ... another nutbar.

The Bahamian economy contracted by 1.7% last year. This year's number will show another contraction, and 2017 will not be better. The government thinks that Baha Mar will save them, but they do not realise that it is their out-of-control spending that is doing it.

I'm with Economist. There will be more VERY bad economic news for the Bahamas in the first quarter of 2017.

The PLP do not understand the law of diminishing returns. It simply states that you have to throw more and more money into something and for that you get less and less returns.

Spending a billion dollars to get Baha Mar going will not affect the economy at all. The workers are Chinese, the money is Chinese and the owners are Chinese. Nothing will stick to the local economy. And knowing the history of construction -- the rice-poopers will not finish when they say they will. They haven't finished a damn thing on time. And when and if they finish it, there is no guarantee that the hordes will come to fill it. That well has been poisoned. Read all of the forums of people who reserved Baha Mar the first time around. Weddings were ruined, holidays were ruined and the Bahamas got a black eye. No one is going to trust Baha Mar again -- especially for an expensive holiday that is not worth the money.

I am still taking bets that Baha Mar will not open when they say it will.