Exactly right. Let me spell out what you just said in terms that people can understand.

Let's suppose that you bought a $100,000 dollar home and you put $10,000 down. Then you can't pay your mortgage.

In a normal process, the bank repossesses the home, they take their remaining $90,000 owed plus fees etc, and you get some of your deposit back. If your home has appreciated, then you possibly get all of your downpayment back AND maybe a little bit more if real estate prices have gone up since you bought the home.

However, if you loan was bought by these sharks, then call you in, and say "Good News -- we are not going to kick you out of your house". However when you sign on the dotted line for the re-finance, the amount is for 100% of what the house is worth. Then if you run into trouble again, the sharks will kick you out, penniless. Your original equity -- your deposit on your house is gone.

Guess who profits? Not exactly the banks. They sold your non-performing mortgage to the snakes and sharks for pennies on the dollar.

Here we go. Another Chinese project that will be partially finished and left to be a lever against the Bahamian government. They already said that they were behind schedule.

Wondering what is the effective interest rate on the "restructured mortgages"? Are the people going to be paying interest only for the first half of the mortgage and the home equity doesn't get driven down.

Nothing lower to the ground than a snake's belly.

I am convinced that ALL of the political capital is tainted in this land.

Truly amazed at the disdain. And I don't understand it. My belief is that applied economics practitioners (ie business men/women) should have a say in management of the single biggest business in the land -- the government.

You may not like him, but the economic activity that he generates is necessary to the country.

... scratches head ...

>Brent Symonette confirmed the FNM sold $40M in work permits. At an average of $1,500.00ea this equates to 26,666.66 non essential blue collar foreign workers entering the workforce.

Beg to differ with your numbers. The average banking/professional/IT/engineering work permit is slightly over $10,500 dollars, excluding processing fees. That is per person. So you simply can't divide $40 million by $1500 to buttress your argument.

I'm not sure that remittances are that much of a problem to the foreign reserves. There are larger issues with the quality of the reserves and the empirical quantity. That is why a dollarized economy would eliminate the precarious position of the Bahamas.

The bottom line, is that the monolithic economy isn't serving anyone, except the political class who profit by influence, and the rest of the Bahamians are in an economic rat's cage unable to truly escape.

That being said, immigration, illegal or otherwise, is way down the scale of problems facing Bahamians.

You can sputter and spit all you want. I just report the facts. The low productivity of the Bahamian worker is documented by the IDBC, the ILO and by every major Key Productivity Indicator study by the World Bank. Take a look at how many employees are at a petrol station. Take a look at how many store clerks there are standing around in any business. If you evaluate employee to dollar turnover ratios, Bahamian business rank above the mean, medial and modal averages in the Caricom countries. Tourism sector analysis reports low worker productivity is an endemic, systemic problem in the Bahamas, and one of the challenges facing organic growth in the SME business demographic.

It is hilarious that my comment sparks outrage, and yet it is the bahamians who keep hiring more unskilled works than the rich expats living here. Can anyone tell me why? It is the Bahamians at the root cause of the high numbers. Guess how many maids the Attorney General has and why they are not Bahamian?

I'll say it again -- as an educated Bahamian patriot, it pains me to say that on the whole, blue collar Bahamians are less productive than their counterparts from other countries, and they are less honest.

I have a Jamaican maid Anna come in once a week to clean my apartment. I pay her $60 for about 4 hours work. She has a key. She is a legal migrant. I went through a string of maids, and everything from money, to tie clips, CDs, to food, to office supplies to my Tommy Hilfiger socks were disappearing until Anna came along.

Maybe because savvy investors don't want Cable Bahamas paper? Transparency issues?

I deal with the rich. This is what I hear from my clients. The Haitians are hired for their work ethic. Bahamians will not work for the wages that Haitians work for, and if they are hired, they do not work as hard as the Haitians. Jamaicans & Filipinos are hired for inside the house -- stuff from the house doesn't go missing as it does when Bahamians are hired. One of my clients tells an interesting story of how a Bahamian applied for a job, and a start date was agreed to. The job applicant then asked immediately for his two weeks holiday commencing on the start date, and he wanted a cheque for holiday pay.

Totally agree about Fox Hell not fit fer humans. Slop buckets in the high security area for Christ's sake. It een fit fer humans, but perfect fer da plp tiefs in the last 40 years.

Back to Fox Hell musings. One of my good friends played for a Bahamian national team. After all the glory gone, he is looking for jobs. He introduced me to his "cohorts". Man dey is cold. Don't think nothing of snuffing out anyone out. No regret. No remorse. No fear. Don't think that they will live to see 40 years old, and don't care about that fact.

So poorly socialised that it ain't funny. No hope. Totally sociopathic. Dr. Mike Neville would have a field day with their heads. Ole Perry's cousin the psychiatrist Dr. David Allen would still be on his knees praying with them at faster than a machine gun tempo. These young men are a clear and present danger to Bahamian society and just about everyone.

What are you gonna do with them? They don't respond to things that normal people respond to. Remediation is impossible.

So the humanist in me says that Fox Hill ain't fit for humans. But what about those who can't be reached with the milk of human kindness?

We just need a criminal justice system that is not tied to the political system to arrest, charge and jail the kleptocrats in power.

I would volunteer to line up and evict Lady Swindling, and freeze all of her assets and return them to the treasury. Gibson would be high on the list. One ting dat makes you go hmmm is how is half-brother went from selling phone cards by vending machines to buying development property for millions of dollars while he was housing minister the first time, playin' footsie wid Anna Nicole and dems.