To be perfectly honest, Baha Mar has me stumped. I am a proponent of the Darwinian school of business. I don't believe in government intervention in business. The government knows nothing about business. For the life of me, I cannot figure out the hold that that senile Baltron Bethel has on Perry Christie. When he ran the Hotel Corporation, it bled red ink all over the place. The reason that I bring it up, is that the government should not be meddling in this Baha Mar soap opera. Nor should the Chinese government be given a free hand at running Baha Mar. The correct actions of the government should be to try and oust the Chinese who are the evil perpetrators of this mess.
If Izmirlian can't make it happen with his Delaware move, than it should fail. But for the life of me, it is counter to every business philosophy for a government to oust a private investor. It sends a real bad message for a country who is addicted to Direct Foreign Investment.
Here is what I do know. There is an economics Law of Diminishing Returns. Stated succinctly, it refers to a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested. This typically happens at EOL or End Of Life of a project, venture, business or economic activity.
In early stage, if you threw a million dollars at a tourism venture in the Bahamas in the 1960's, you got ten million dollars back in profits. With the state of tourism now, a million dollars is not enough to even start a tourism venture in Nassau. What does that tell you? Law of Diminishing returns kicks in.
Will Baha Mar fail? Probably. Better minds than mine who are devoid of localised hope and localised economic participation in Baha Mar say it will totally fail (the learned reporter who actually figured out the true situation before anyone else knew and made it public comes to mind).
What I do know, is that what the government is doing now, is dead wrong. The government has no answers. The Chinese have no answers. They have a boatload of their own domestic economic problems now with the stock market.
The most logical, sanest thing to do, is to let Sarkis Izmirlian have his head to try to save it. He is the only one in the whole playing field with any business sense. The government should hands off and tools down. If he fails, than Baha Mar wasn't a good idea. If he pulls off a miracle, we will all benefit. There are no miracles in Perry Christie's bag. There is only money that his kleptocrats have stolen from you and I and the country.
As I have recently learned, the Bahamas is rich in natural resources in the bio-tech field. I mean really rich. Local sponges have cancer fighting chemicals in them, and local plants are incredibly valuable as pharmaceutical precursors. Unfortunately, we don't have the minds, the vision, the capital, and the correct government to make this a much needed pillar of our economy.
Let me give you some history. I was the first that broke the news on social media that the Izmirlians made their money by being the peanut kings of West Africa. I researched it back in the day, when they announced that they had found a buyer/developer for the trouble Cable Beach properties. I opined back then, that they didn't have the money to pull it off.
However, it all seemed hunkey dorey when they got the Chinese involved, and everyone knows that the Chinese are trying to increase their sphere of influence on America's doorstep. However, I don't think any of us thought the that Chinese would treat the sovereignty and the reputation of the Bahamas in such a cavalier manner as to destroy what is left our tourism reputation and make us look like rubes in the business world. And that is what happened. They deliberately missed the deadlines, giving us a black eye to the world -- and they are equity partners in the project. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
The Chinese are villains here, and it pisses me off that the Izmirlians are being vilified for trying to be another Sol Kerzner.
Whether Baha Mar fails or not, or whether the Izmirlians have the royal jelly to make Baha Mar work is a mute point now. They proved their intentions by putting their own money into the game. They were blindsided by the evil Chinese, and like sheeple, the Bahamians are lining up behind the faeces-for-brains PLP have a big Chinese hotel party in the Bahamaland.
As to the future of Baha Mar, whether the Izmirlians retain it or not, I have the following observations. Sometimes a location just doesn't work in business. You see it often. At a particular corner, a business building will keep on going through tenants and no business prospers at that location, yet just a hundred yards down the road, another like business thrives. The extremely picturesque gas station on Kemp Road comes to mind. Well, the Cable Beach properties just don't seem to work. Atlantis works. The British Colonial Hilton works. Cable Beach -- not so much.
If the Izmirlians fail, it doesn't mean that they should be demonized for trying. I am still amazed that you do not have the mental machinery to recognise what the PLP are and what they have been these past forty two years, and it truly baffles me. It is almost as if PLP supporters have been micro-chipped to negate their moral compass and suspend their patriotism and belief in what their rationale minds are telling them -- unless of course TalRussell, you are being paid to promulgate lies on their behalf at the expense of the sovereignty of these islands in the sun.
Delaware was there right from the start as the holding company on top of the chain. The reason is because of the backwards business laws of the Bahamas. Phil Ruffin was incorporated in Delaware, and the monies that Phil Ruffin owed the government is still owing, despite the fact that Perry Christie accepted plane rides in Phil Ruffin's private jet.
If you examine my statements (on Bahamas Issues before Delroy Meadows closed it down) and here on this site, I was skeptical of Baha Mar pulling it off. I still am. Not enough market differentiators.
However, what really bothers me, is the vilification of Izmirlian in trying to save his project. He is putting his skin in the game with his money. The real trainwreck is that gender-dysphoric, brain-damaged Perry Gladstone Christie and his corrupt tiefs and bumblers in the cabinet who are raping the Bahamas in the worst way possible. The idiot retard prime minister said in his independence message that he hoped that the rule of law still applied in another 42 years, and it made me choke on my souse, because his merry band of PLP sub-humans in the House of Assembly do not respect the rule of law now. Especially the corrupt scum called Allyson. The way that she lied about legal opinion to circumvent the Auditor General examining how Urban Renewal gave away taxpayer money to cronies is criminal, as well as squelching Gray's judicial interference. We are a total banana republic.
And if you are worried about Bahamian land of Baha Mar, you are a day late and a dollar short. Bahamians own neither hilltop nor waterfront anywhere in the Bahamas. We are like Indians on a reservation, because our entire economic model involves selling the country to the highest bidder, which in this case, seems to be the Chinese now. Put that in your pipe and smoke it and perhaps gain some real insight into the state of this country.
And yet the PLP kool-aid drinkers are cheering the Chinese on. If the China-lovers been following the news, they will have noticed the Chinese stock market crash in the past few days. And Crisco Butt and Mayonnaise-Gibson are peddling Bahamian sovereignty for chopsticks.
Oh please! Your true colours are showing. He carried the project when it was dead and no one else wanted to carry it. I guess you don't mind being indentured to the Chinese and Bahamian sovereignty means nothing to you. Get your silk dress ready and start cooking da rice without da peas.
What blows me away is how these people blithely pontificate as if there was a level playing field in the Bahamas, and of course there is not. As you point out, the Attorney General (whom you call churlish and I call corrupt) has influence over the outcome of the court system and the truth-be-damned, and that makes for a fixed playing field, and everyone knows about. For that reason, we will never be a world class business center.
I had some clients come in to look at investing some money here. Apparently the Bahamas has incredibly rich botanical and biological resources to extract precursors of a very very valuable pharmaceutical product. The stuff just grows wild here and in great quantities and this biological creates anti-epidemic drugs.
These clients spent a week here. After reading the papers, visiting a lawyers office (who wanted to skin them alive -- fresh meat through the door) and examining the business licencing, work permits and FDI approval process, decided to take their money elsewhere.
We could have had 100 harvesting jobs at twice the pay of service jobs, 50 processing jobs, 20 high end lab technician jobs, 10 business and sales jobs and 10 management positions. After a week of just looking around, they decided that it would be horrible to do business here.
They thought that business licencing based on pro forma revenues was ludicrous. Where they came from a business licence cost $400 whether it was for a small business or a multi-million dollar business.
Concur with the assessment of much higher number than 11,000.
A bunch of us were sitting around the other day, discussing the huge amount of school leavers, and no where to employ them, and their lack of literacy and basic skills. One economist opined that all major problems present a money-making solution. Ergo, there must be a way to tap this unexploited human capital of unemployed youth in some way.
Quite frankly, we came to the conclusion that the problem is unsolvable. Someone mentioned getting foreign investment for setting up a call center. One can easily see why that won't fly by watching tourists buy stuff at the Burger King by Sandals or the fast food places on Paradise Island. In many cases the tourists cannot understand Bahamianese spoken by the young people. Here is a direct quote from Facebook about the Swindling statue: "It ain't da fact of hearin da truth we dan know all of dis y bring it back up come on man an een no one under no one spell but can we go a day with out pointin fingers". So call centers are out because of fluency skills in the Queen's English.
Someone else mentioned that maybe we can train some programmers and export software. Again, the education system is horribly deficient in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Our high school graduates cannot do the math that fifth graders do in North America. Grade 11 students participating in non-general courses (university bound) in Canadian schools are doing advanced Integral Calculus. A techie among argued that we couldn't even begin to explain computer science concepts to these kids like polymorphic inheritance, and recursion. You just can't take functional math illiterates and English illiterates and get them to perform knowledge jobs that require a range of varied advanced thinking skills.
Then someone else suggested light assembly type jobs, which would be a perfect fit, except that the power to run the facilities is too expensive, and the labour here is unionized and Asians work for a lower wage. So that idea was out.
The BAMSI idea of making farmers won't work. The failure of various farming ventures throughout our recent history (egg and chicken production etc) won't work because of the high cost of fertilizers. The only thing that will work is the Lucaya greenhouses that require minimal labor and huge investment. So that is out.
The bottom line, is that there is probably no answer to the huge numbers of unemployed. We couldn't think of a single thing that would employ anything like the numbers that Atlantis puts up. And it is doubtful that if Baha Mar gets built, it will not be sustainable because of airlift and Cuba.
So there are no real answers and unfortunately the country is on the road to wrack and ruin.
banker says...
To be perfectly honest, Baha Mar has me stumped. I am a proponent of the Darwinian school of business. I don't believe in government intervention in business. The government knows nothing about business. For the life of me, I cannot figure out the hold that that senile Baltron Bethel has on Perry Christie. When he ran the Hotel Corporation, it bled red ink all over the place. The reason that I bring it up, is that the government should not be meddling in this Baha Mar soap opera. Nor should the Chinese government be given a free hand at running Baha Mar. The correct actions of the government should be to try and oust the Chinese who are the evil perpetrators of this mess.
If Izmirlian can't make it happen with his Delaware move, than it should fail. But for the life of me, it is counter to every business philosophy for a government to oust a private investor. It sends a real bad message for a country who is addicted to Direct Foreign Investment.
Here is what I do know. There is an economics Law of Diminishing Returns. Stated succinctly, it refers to a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested. This typically happens at EOL or End Of Life of a project, venture, business or economic activity.
In early stage, if you threw a million dollars at a tourism venture in the Bahamas in the 1960's, you got ten million dollars back in profits. With the state of tourism now, a million dollars is not enough to even start a tourism venture in Nassau. What does that tell you? Law of Diminishing returns kicks in.
Will Baha Mar fail? Probably. Better minds than mine who are devoid of localised hope and localised economic participation in Baha Mar say it will totally fail (the learned reporter who actually figured out the true situation before anyone else knew and made it public comes to mind).
What I do know, is that what the government is doing now, is dead wrong. The government has no answers. The Chinese have no answers. They have a boatload of their own domestic economic problems now with the stock market.
The most logical, sanest thing to do, is to let Sarkis Izmirlian have his head to try to save it. He is the only one in the whole playing field with any business sense. The government should hands off and tools down. If he fails, than Baha Mar wasn't a good idea. If he pulls off a miracle, we will all benefit. There are no miracles in Perry Christie's bag. There is only money that his kleptocrats have stolen from you and I and the country.
As I have recently learned, the Bahamas is rich in natural resources in the bio-tech field. I mean really rich. Local sponges have cancer fighting chemicals in them, and local plants are incredibly valuable as pharmaceutical precursors. Unfortunately, we don't have the minds, the vision, the capital, and the correct government to make this a much needed pillar of our economy.
On Government delegation heads to China for Baha Mar talks
Posted 13 July 2015, 11:19 a.m. Suggest removal
banker says...
Still not sure of what? Of pulling off Baha Mar?
Let me give you some history. I was the first that broke the news on social media that the Izmirlians made their money by being the peanut kings of West Africa. I researched it back in the day, when they announced that they had found a buyer/developer for the trouble Cable Beach properties. I opined back then, that they didn't have the money to pull it off.
However, it all seemed hunkey dorey when they got the Chinese involved, and everyone knows that the Chinese are trying to increase their sphere of influence on America's doorstep. However, I don't think any of us thought the that Chinese would treat the sovereignty and the reputation of the Bahamas in such a cavalier manner as to destroy what is left our tourism reputation and make us look like rubes in the business world. And that is what happened. They deliberately missed the deadlines, giving us a black eye to the world -- and they are equity partners in the project. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
The Chinese are villains here, and it pisses me off that the Izmirlians are being vilified for trying to be another Sol Kerzner.
Whether Baha Mar fails or not, or whether the Izmirlians have the royal jelly to make Baha Mar work is a mute point now. They proved their intentions by putting their own money into the game. They were blindsided by the evil Chinese, and like sheeple, the Bahamians are lining up behind the faeces-for-brains PLP have a big Chinese hotel party in the Bahamaland.
As to the future of Baha Mar, whether the Izmirlians retain it or not, I have the following observations. Sometimes a location just doesn't work in business. You see it often. At a particular corner, a business building will keep on going through tenants and no business prospers at that location, yet just a hundred yards down the road, another like business thrives. The extremely picturesque gas station on Kemp Road comes to mind. Well, the Cable Beach properties just don't seem to work. Atlantis works. The British Colonial Hilton works. Cable Beach -- not so much.
If the Izmirlians fail, it doesn't mean that they should be demonized for trying. I am still amazed that you do not have the mental machinery to recognise what the PLP are and what they have been these past forty two years, and it truly baffles me. It is almost as if PLP supporters have been micro-chipped to negate their moral compass and suspend their patriotism and belief in what their rationale minds are telling them -- unless of course TalRussell, you are being paid to promulgate lies on their behalf at the expense of the sovereignty of these islands in the sun.
On Government delegation heads to China for Baha Mar talks
Posted 12 July 2015, 1:03 p.m. Suggest removal
banker says...
Delaware was there right from the start as the holding company on top of the chain. The reason is because of the backwards business laws of the Bahamas. Phil Ruffin was incorporated in Delaware, and the monies that Phil Ruffin owed the government is still owing, despite the fact that Perry Christie accepted plane rides in Phil Ruffin's private jet.
If you examine my statements (on Bahamas Issues before Delroy Meadows closed it down) and here on this site, I was skeptical of Baha Mar pulling it off. I still am. Not enough market differentiators.
However, what really bothers me, is the vilification of Izmirlian in trying to save his project. He is putting his skin in the game with his money. The real trainwreck is that gender-dysphoric, brain-damaged Perry Gladstone Christie and his corrupt tiefs and bumblers in the cabinet who are raping the Bahamas in the worst way possible. The idiot retard prime minister said in his independence message that he hoped that the rule of law still applied in another 42 years, and it made me choke on my souse, because his merry band of PLP sub-humans in the House of Assembly do not respect the rule of law now. Especially the corrupt scum called Allyson. The way that she lied about legal opinion to circumvent the Auditor General examining how Urban Renewal gave away taxpayer money to cronies is criminal, as well as squelching Gray's judicial interference. We are a total banana republic.
And if you are worried about Bahamian land of Baha Mar, you are a day late and a dollar short. Bahamians own neither hilltop nor waterfront anywhere in the Bahamas. We are like Indians on a reservation, because our entire economic model involves selling the country to the highest bidder, which in this case, seems to be the Chinese now. Put that in your pipe and smoke it and perhaps gain some real insight into the state of this country.
On Government delegation heads to China for Baha Mar talks
Posted 12 July 2015, 3 a.m. Suggest removal
banker says...
And yet the PLP kool-aid drinkers are cheering the Chinese on. If the China-lovers been following the news, they will have noticed the Chinese stock market crash in the past few days. And Crisco Butt and Mayonnaise-Gibson are peddling Bahamian sovereignty for chopsticks.
http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2015…
On Government delegation heads to China for Baha Mar talks
Posted 11 July 2015, 9:17 p.m. Suggest removal
banker says...
Oh please! Your true colours are showing. He carried the project when it was dead and no one else wanted to carry it. I guess you don't mind being indentured to the Chinese and Bahamian sovereignty means nothing to you. Get your silk dress ready and start cooking da rice without da peas.
http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2015…
On Government delegation heads to China for Baha Mar talks
Posted 11 July 2015, 9:14 p.m. Suggest removal
banker says...
What blows me away is how these people blithely pontificate as if there was a level playing field in the Bahamas, and of course there is not. As you point out, the Attorney General (whom you call churlish and I call corrupt) has influence over the outcome of the court system and the truth-be-damned, and that makes for a fixed playing field, and everyone knows about. For that reason, we will never be a world class business center.
I had some clients come in to look at investing some money here. Apparently the Bahamas has incredibly rich botanical and biological resources to extract precursors of a very very valuable pharmaceutical product. The stuff just grows wild here and in great quantities and this biological creates anti-epidemic drugs.
These clients spent a week here. After reading the papers, visiting a lawyers office (who wanted to skin them alive -- fresh meat through the door) and examining the business licencing, work permits and FDI approval process, decided to take their money elsewhere.
We could have had 100 harvesting jobs at twice the pay of service jobs, 50 processing jobs, 20 high end lab technician jobs, 10 business and sales jobs and 10 management positions. After a week of just looking around, they decided that it would be horrible to do business here.
They thought that business licencing based on pro forma revenues was ludicrous. Where they came from a business licence cost $400 whether it was for a small business or a multi-million dollar business.
On Creditor protections to make Bahamas ‘more favourable’ to investors
Posted 11 July 2015, 8:50 a.m. Suggest removal
banker says...
>We might have to sink first.
Not, might. We will have to sink first, and clear the dead wood first.
On 11,000 youth jobless on New Providence
Posted 11 July 2015, 8:21 a.m. Suggest removal
banker says...
Yes, I see the resemblance.
http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2015…
http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2015…
On Govt paid Baha Mar staff from money it owed to resort
Posted 9 July 2015, 11:38 p.m. Suggest removal
banker says...
Concur with the assessment of much higher number than 11,000.
A bunch of us were sitting around the other day, discussing the huge amount of school leavers, and no where to employ them, and their lack of literacy and basic skills. One economist opined that all major problems present a money-making solution. Ergo, there must be a way to tap this unexploited human capital of unemployed youth in some way.
Quite frankly, we came to the conclusion that the problem is unsolvable. Someone mentioned getting foreign investment for setting up a call center. One can easily see why that won't fly by watching tourists buy stuff at the Burger King by Sandals or the fast food places on Paradise Island. In many cases the tourists cannot understand Bahamianese spoken by the young people. Here is a direct quote from Facebook about the Swindling statue: "It ain't da fact of hearin da truth we dan know all of dis y bring it back up come on man an een no one under no one spell but can we go a day with out pointin fingers". So call centers are out because of fluency skills in the Queen's English.
Someone else mentioned that maybe we can train some programmers and export software. Again, the education system is horribly deficient in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Our high school graduates cannot do the math that fifth graders do in North America. Grade 11 students participating in non-general courses (university bound) in Canadian schools are doing advanced Integral Calculus. A techie among argued that we couldn't even begin to explain computer science concepts to these kids like polymorphic inheritance, and recursion. You just can't take functional math illiterates and English illiterates and get them to perform knowledge jobs that require a range of varied advanced thinking skills.
Then someone else suggested light assembly type jobs, which would be a perfect fit, except that the power to run the facilities is too expensive, and the labour here is unionized and Asians work for a lower wage. So that idea was out.
The BAMSI idea of making farmers won't work. The failure of various farming ventures throughout our recent history (egg and chicken production etc) won't work because of the high cost of fertilizers. The only thing that will work is the Lucaya greenhouses that require minimal labor and huge investment. So that is out.
The bottom line, is that there is probably no answer to the huge numbers of unemployed. We couldn't think of a single thing that would employ anything like the numbers that Atlantis puts up. And it is doubtful that if Baha Mar gets built, it will not be sustainable because of airlift and Cuba.
So there are no real answers and unfortunately the country is on the road to wrack and ruin.
On 11,000 youth jobless on New Providence
Posted 9 July 2015, 5:11 p.m. Suggest removal
banker says...
Here is who the Tribune should really be interviewing.
:
http://tribune242.com/users/photos/2015…
On Bishop backs salary payment
Posted 9 July 2015, 3:05 p.m. Suggest removal