Oh joy. Celebrate. We are only a half of a piece of crap instead of an entire piece of crap. But wait 9 months, then we will be there all the way.

The bottom line is that Christie has nothing. I am sure that the Chinese will put a few people on the project for awhile to make it look like they are working on it. But there are no operators standing by to run the hotels. There are no project managers. There are no inspectors. There are no client acceptance measures in place. In the event of a miracle that they actually do some work, it won't be suitable for an occupancy. This is really a load of crap.

The hope here is that once it is built, they will sell it. In commercial realty, after a new customer takes possession of the building, there is always a re-fit, re-branding process that usually takes a year. Hotels have their own decor and colour schemes. At best, if the property gets done, and if it gets sold, there is a year process on top of the completion. And yet Crisco Butt the Prime Minister thinks that he can fool Bahamians with smoke and mirrors.

While I agree with your assessment of Bran, I am amazed at your blindness and devotion to the PLP. You are like a Trump supporter. Everyone knows that Trump is a serial liar, a racist, a misogynist and a narcissist. In a similar vein, everyone knows that Perry is a liar, a narcissist, a weakling and the leader of a band of corrupt thieves, half-men and kleptocrats. And yet you drink the kool aid and sound the hosannas, not realising that they have driven all the love, truth and goodness out of you, bringing you down to their gutter level of sub-humans. Sad. There is not a single PLP patriot.

A stopped clock is right twice a day. Bran is right on this one.

So now, the Canada, Taiwan, and just breaking, the US have issued travel advisories.

I would suggest that to save the tourists, Obie, Crisco Butt, and the entire cabinet & PLP caucus run naked up and down Bay Street to divert Zika mosquitoes from the tourists to themselves.

I would suggest that Mayonnaise Gibson and Hanna Martin do the same thing, but the sight of that would flood Bay Street with vomit. The upside is that Crisco Butt would say "Hey look, a public swimming pool".

I'm willing to bet that the work doesn't get started on time, and it doesn't open next year at all. Some key indicators coming out of China:

-China's overall debt has risen rapidly since the global financial crisis. Outstanding debt was $26.56 trillion, or 255 percent of gross domestic product at the end of 2015, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

-The central bank is holding off on cutting bank reserve requirements or interest rates for fear such moves could put downward pressure on the yuan and fuel outflows from its foreign reserves.

-For most of 2016, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, had used the lower interest seven-day rate, with cash injections nearly every day.

-Chinese five- and 10-year treasury futures fell today. The yuan and the benchmark CSI300 equities index both edged lower.

It een looking good for a few more billion dollars from EXIM.

Willing to take bets now, that Baha Mar will not be open in 2017.

Sigh birdie ... more dead good news.

(1) They say that the work will be finished in late winter of 2017. Wanna bet? The Pointe is already behind schedule and won't open when they promised.

(2) Waiting to see if the Bahamian contractors get paid. Have you noticed that Prime Minister Crisco Butt is like Donald Trump -- says whatever comes to mind whether it is true or not.

What I don't understand about the PLP sphincter-wipers like you, is that Crisco Butt has lied and lied and lied and now you believe him? Just how gullible are you?

Why is the deal secret? If they have nothing to hide, they would be shouting it from the roof tops. I bet you that some taxpayer money is going to pay off the Bahamian contractors. It will all come in in April when we get a regime change.

Anyone hoping to get re-hired is not going to say anything bad.

Who is going to occupy it? The big hotel chains have been burned badly. Stop-over tourism is down. The resort is a shoddy build, not up to standards. This is putting lipstick on a sick pig and trying to sell it.

While all of this is fine and dandy, what is not dealt with here, is the desirability of the tourism product. One would suspect that the American desirability to visit Cuba after years of embargo is very large. The desirability to visit the Bahamas is small, as evidenced by less than 30% of the cruise ship passengers get off the boat at Prince George Wharf in Nassau.

Can the desirability factor be rectified? Perhaps. However there must be infrastructure in place. Current tourism trends show that there the trends are for experiential tourism. Witness the popularity of the zip lines through the rainforest canopy in Costa Rica, or taking a gondola ride in a faux Venice in Las Vegas.

The only exploitable Nassau assets are the beaches, which aren't that exciting and have a crime level attached to them. There are flamingos on Inagua, but it is tough to get there, difficult to exploit and probably bad on the environment. People love the Atlantis "Swim with the Dolphins", but then you get operators like Blackbeard's Cay where the dolphins are mistreated and the who thing reeks of exploitation and animal cruelty.

Tourism is a failing pillar of the economy, as is the tax haven stuff. What the Bahamas really needs, is entry into the first world of knowledge industries, global trade, and value-added services due to geo-political factors.

The fiscal problems of the country are too deep to re-invest in the tourism product, and as it stands the current infrastructure is not sustainable in the long term.

Cuba would be the largest beneficiary of the legislation mentioned above.