Further to what Stapedius says, one of the things that most Bahamians do not see, is their incredibly poor work ethic and productivity. It is interesting to watch the work dynamic in my office between the Bahamians and foreigner work permit holders.

The foreigners come in at 8:30AM, go to their desks, turn on the Bloomberg screens, start typing emails and set up their days. The Bahamians come in at 9:15AM, go and put their lunch in the fridge in the lunch room, visit and sip sip with each other and then go and make coffee and they don't hit their desk for work until 10:15. At 11:30, they dash out to get bottled water to go with their lunch and at the stroke of noon, they are eating lunch until about 1:30PM. The foreigners are out from 12:00 to 1:00PM after having done four solid hours of work, and they are back at until 5:30PM. The Bahamians run off around 3:15PM to go and pick up the chirren and are never seen again, even though they are supposed to work until 5:00PM, The 20% permit holders in our office handle 80% of the business, because of slackness of the Bahamian worker.

As as for Mitchell, you know when he is lying is when you see his lips moving. I swear that man would rather tell you a lie or shade the truth than be perfectly honest with you. There is something wrong with him in the way that he was socialised or something. He is totally incapable of giving you the straight goods, one hundred percent of the time.

I am of two minds of this. First of all, $210 a week is not enough to live off of, and buy healthy food and have a fulfilled life. When you couple it to the fact that young mothers are trying to feed babies on this without a male partner contributing financially, you are creating a generation of what we have now -- functional illiterates who are poorly socialised and have been nutritionally disadvantaged all of their lives.

However, the economy is not a welfare state, especially with the amount of kleptocracy and corruption in the successive PLP governments. The education system is worthless, and the monolithic economy is poorly performing. Raising the minimum wage would be just another payroll tax on business, because quite frankly, with the productivity of the average Bahamian worker, they are simply not worth more than the minimum wage to an operating business who remains to be viable. Buying gas is a good example. Bahamian gas stations and super markets employ up to ten times the people that North American gas stations and supermarkets do. As a matter of fact, I have used unattended gas stations (debit/credit card only) in big cities everywhere, and have purchased groceries in a megastore at 1:00AM, using a self-service checkout kiosk with only three or four visible employees, and one of them is a security guard at the door. The kiosks take all forms of payment including cash.

So, to me the question is unsolvable. We sell tourism, and we already have the highest-priced, lowest value tourism product in the region, and this will exacerbate that aspect.

The only true solution is to diversify the economy, and the retarded, corrupt, non-patriotic, sub-human members of the government won't do it, because of greed and stupidity.

And if that happens, the Bahamian financial services industry will be dead, and there will be massive unemployment. The Bank of Montreal saw the writing on the wall years ago, and they divested and it became Bank of Bahamas. Now if CIBC got it idea to divest, there goes First Caribbean. Royal Bank is already looking to ditch its wealth management book of business in the Caribbean. Scotiabank is under stress and moved jobs to Jamaica. The Swiss bank come under new automatic EU information exchange in 2017-2018 time frame, so they will have no reason to be here. We really don't have a bargaining leg to stand on, AND the future looks grim.

We are on the slippery slope to a total loss of democracy. Once the AG finds that she can circumvent the law with a fictitious legal opinion, and that there are no consequences for running roughshod over democracy, then the violations of our democratic rights will become more and more egregious, until every act becomes criminal, including fixing the next general election.

Yes I agree that we have morons negotiating for us. But how can you negotiate when they say you have two options: Take it or Leave It. And leave it at your peril.

It didn't help that they found Al Tawqa terrorist money here, or the Banco Ambrosiano scandal money years later. It doesn't help when we hide the Pirate of Prague, Victor Kozeny here. It doesn't help that we have guys like Julian Brown and Warren Davis laundering money and beyond the reach of the SEC, while doing it with securities under the purview of the SEC.

Our corruption, lack of adequate white collar crime legislation, and our Foreign Minister who actively dislikes and antagonizes the US will never sit well, and we don't have a real negotiating leg to stand on until we clean up our act.

For God's sakes, a virtually bankrupt entity is still listed in BISX. What a joke!!

Actually the big man (Kenyatta) has his azz whupped and handed to him on a plate by Keod Smith, who is a dwarf, but a dwarf that knows karate. It was the famous fight in the Cabinet cabinet room.
( Kenyatta's woman is one fine looking woman too! )

It's the Golden Rule -- he who has the gold, makes the rule.

Unfortunately, the times have changed, and the tax haven is a dying thing. Within 10 years, the current operating model of closed information silos will be dead (and more than likely criminalised).

The trend is going to be creative tax avoidance (like the idea floated by the Swiss of an anonymous account tax paid to the EU Central Bank) rather than total tax avoidance.

I have seen two exits from The Bahamas of billionaires who have elected to repatriate their money to tax-friendlier jurisdictions and actually pay income tax on the earnings from their holdings rather than living behind the gates of Ocean Club Estates and Lifeless Cay.

They cited reasons (other than the primitive infrastructure) are being tired of being looked at in askance with their Bahamian passports that they got when they domiciled here. They didn't like the idea of getting a Schengen Visa and yet when presenting their own national passport, were subject to all sorts of taxations checks. (An ex-client of mine who's home country is Holland, drove to Belgium to fly out here, because even if you are an expat from Holland, you still owe health care tax, and they check as you exit the country). Their wives want to live in more exciting places with more shopping and culture. The kids need better schools. There is literally no shortage of reasons why high net worth individuals do not want to live here anymore, nor do they want their money here.

The bottom line, is that there is an exodus of capital under management, and it is a hemorrhage. We have to come up with something better and not those stupid SMART funds on BISX. We need innovation or the second pillar of our economy will crumble faster than the first.

Bucking the trend against the G20 will further degrade whatever business we have left.

The FNM cannot afford to have any old baggage, for the simple reason that untainted candidates can take the gloves off. Too many FNM's were coloured from the Pindling years and had skeletons in their closets. With a new slate of "clean" candidates, they can hold the PLP feet to fire about things such as Shame Gibson's Rolex, Anna Nicole Smith, the money he tiefed from the Ministry of Housing. They can bring forward how Bradley Roberts hushed up the felony rape charges. They can bring out Brave Davis' dalliances with Jamaican hookers. They can expose Obie Wilchcombe's vote buying and his sub-rosa deals with advertising agencies. They can expose the true nature of the Harl Taylor and Thad Johnson killings and the PLP connections. They can expose the true story behind the Attorney General and the behaviour of our ambassador in China with the complicity of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In other words, it is time to clean Augean Stables and have a comeuppance of the PLP like FIFA finally had.

And like Obama, the FNM must articulate a workable plan to rescue the Bahamas. The rebranding must come with a solid, understandable message, a resolve of steel, and everyday courage not to take the easy route. It is a tough job, and the odds are better it not succeeding than it succeeding.

I didn't say anything about Connally -- it was Economist. The only thing that I know about Connally was that he was injured in the Kennedy assassination.

Speaking of immaculate dresser, y'all seen Kenyatta Gibson lately?