Everything that you say about us was true in 1973. It een true no more. Invoking the "God keep blessin' us" clause ain't gonna help. It is the clause most invoked when a child is born out of wedlock -- "God could bless it and it might grow up to be Prime Minister" and the kid in a few short years is dying in the street while the sun bakes his blood into the pavement.

What 82,111 fired workers? Is this another one of your statissticks where you said there was exactly 437 Black Friday marchers when there was over 700 in a small section of the photograph?

I do not deny that Bahamians get the short end of the stick when it comes to labour relations. Not at all. And sometimes it is grossly unfair. But in this world, there is the Golden Rule -- he that hath the gold makes the rules. It has always been that way. The foreigners contribute, capital, knowledge and business acumen, and we contribute grunt work. And we would like to think that we are equal partners, but we are not. Low value human capital is expendable, in spite of being told that we are all god's chirren. We are just children of a lesser god.

That 16% profit is on the backs of Bahamians needing to buy food and the stuff of life. My Gawd, I sound like that commie Tal, but it's true.

We have sold our birthright, our beaches, our dignity and our economy long ago. You call me a colonial because of my pragmatic view of free enterprise. The "Comrade-Shiite" doesn't cut it. We are not a socialist or a communist country. Socialism is an abject, unsustainable economic failure. A job is not a right, except in communism. If you think that I have colonial attitude towards workers, just wait the the oriental overseers grab the reins of the economy. Your pay, if they choose to give it, will be a lot of chopstick-licking and crumb-catching from a dirty, well-used rice bowl.

Bahamians are screwed, and nothing can help them unless the country is torn asunder and remade to a better paradigm.

As fer Hog Island, we say back when "Sure you kin have it if you make us jobs.". So we gave it to them. And now that we don't have it any more, it taunts us by being in our face, and on our land, and we are not allowed to visit or conduct binness there. Thank you fooking PLP.

The fear that you talk about, should be generated by reading the newspaper and thinking critically. The Bahamas is on a downhill economic spiral, and has been for years.

The average Bahamian worker is trapped. There is an over-supply of tourism-related skills and an under-supply of jobs. And as John pointed out somewhere, the employer of today wants younger workers. They work for less money, are eager and chirpy when they have no reason to be, and they have no bad work habits yet. In the service industry, the current way of thinking is that one provides the minimum level of service possible for the cheapest price. People like the long-time doorman at Breezers, his name escapes me now, but his ilk are not in demand anymore. Every time I went for a conference there, he would recognise me by name.

All this to say, that if you are a teller at bank, work in the tourism industry, or work in the service industry, the chances that you will not be employed in 5 years is over 50 percent. And there are very little options in this country.

When you mention buying food and paying light bills, those are the human elements behind the jobs, and those elements take a back seat to the job dynamics in the economy. Get ready for a lot more of wailing a gnashing of teeth, and a lot more of "unchristian-like" behaviour from employers.

Employers are not here to look after people -- they are here to make a profit, and if they don't, they pack their georgie bundle and leave. The unions and most people here thinks like my grammy used to say "Erry crab find dey hole." That's not true anymore. Jobs leave and dey een comin' back.

The Right Honourable HA Hubigetty knew that, and he tried to diversify the economy, but the treasonous PLP passed out ham an turkey fer votes, told the folks that the Hubigetty idea was a hologram, and the third pillar plan fell by the wayside pushed by head-valve damaged Crisco Butt.

So more paycheques going to stop suddenly ans permanently. As Dry Bread sing, it's a "Long, Hard Struggle".

There seems to be a real sense of entitlement among the unions and workers. Contrary to the real business world, they think that having a job means a forever pay cheque, even in businesses that have a low quotient of human capital -- unskilled labour. This used to be the case years and years ago, but that doesn't reflect the modern business reality of today.

Once upon a time, if you had more than a couple of jobs on your resume, you were deemed flighty and not a good risk for staying at your job. If you got a job with say the telephone company, that would be the last job that you would ever need, and you retired with a pension. With today's economy and today's reality, that is not the case anymore, in the Bahamas or elsewhere.

The only workers that are really safe in today's reality, are the educated and the professionals. Middle class jobs are fleeting, and that is why Donald Trump was elected president in the US. People want a return to job security which doesn't exist any more.

It is no consolation to the terminated employees of course, but it is the new reality.

I would suggest that Perry take his probe and sh.... never mind, he likes that sort of stuff.

Fixing the illiquidity is the problem. You need a market-maker. To be a market-maker, you have to put up money, and buy when no one else wants to buy, and have some to sell and do so when no one wants to sell. A market-maker knows that with cyclic fluctuations, they can come out on top, either via commissions or waiting for the market cycles rise or fall to cover their activities. When you don't have any activity for a year, either in buying or selling, a market-maker is useless.

We have a too small, too monolithic economy to efficiently run capital markets, which is the whole point of a stock exchange.

The "new" website is done by amateurs on a Wordpress template. Real capital markets require a platform, not a rinky-dinky website.

We simply need to shutter BISX. It is a joke and an unworkable model in this economy.

Par for the course. Royal Bank is already looking to sell its book of business in the Bahamas. Buh bye !!!