This country will never be the Singapore of the Americas until there are structural reforms to make the millions of dollars of Foreign Direct Investment stick to the local economy.

The numerous problems in the Bahamas are unfixable. The country has had zero investment in its people. Education is sub-standard. Poverty is rife. Corruption is at every step of life in the Bahamas (you can pay for anything from a vehicle licence to going to the top of the line at the passport office). The middle class was never really a middle class because they were all unionised service industry jobs with the exception of a small number of financial services jobs. Our economy is like a brick -- tourism with an old product. With old products, you have to spend more and more to get a smaller amount of returns.
What Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore did, was to force the multinationals to participate, reside and re-invest in the local economy. Most of the business profits in the Bahamas get repatriated elsewhere.
The answers are simple. The implementation is hard. Not a single leader since independence believes enough in every Bahamian to invest in them and their future. I can relate to what Dr. David Allen says about kids growing up in the Bahamas. They know that they are getting a sh*tty education. They know that there are no real good jobs out there unless they leave to get educated. They know that they are children of a lesser God. They are the raw material of a future prosperous Bahamas and they are not being prepared for the task.
There is no hope unless we get a benevolent dictator who will do something for the country instead of appeasing the unenlightened status quo masses or lining the pockets of the political elite. The biggest rectum orifices in the Bahamas are those who still support the PLP who have let Bahamians down miserably and are the root cause of our current problems.

Biggety talker, no action. I wish that they would stop using his graduation picture.

Sigh. He said this shiite last year, except he was within weeks of launching ICO's on BISX. Methinks this is his "Look busy, Jesus is coming" pronouncement that he puts out every few months to justify his job of sucking at the trough.

The reasons for the Florida middleman corporations are a lot more complex than cheating customs. I know businessmen who accumulate American dollars outside the Bahamas for a variety of reasons. When Perry Christie regained Parliament for the PLP, there was a flight of capital based on fear and regression to cronyism and a deteriorating economy.

Other reasons include business continuity. If a huge hurricane hits and the banks are closed, and currency outflows are limited, you want access to hard dollars. Other reasons are payment for schooling for children at good schools in the USA. There is still a central bank cap on tuition payments.

And of course, it is easier to invest in the stock market if your money is in Florida and you won't have to get central bank approval for investment funds. Most of the businesses that I know, do have proxy accounts in Florida. It is not due to criminality, but to bypass the closed economy in the Bahamas as well as personal risk mitigation.

It works the other way as well -- fraudulent invoices with jacked up prices. It is a way to convert Bahamian dollars to American dollars and stash it in a safe place in the USA.

A large portion of the businessmen that were on our book of business, had at least some retirement savings domiciled in the USA. It is just being prudent when our government is not prudent with our money. As a matter of fact, the government could use some of these minds to set the financial house in order. We are currently being underserved with a bunch of amateurs.

I can send you a bunch of oogly strippers that were arrested.

Sad.

Perfect timing too. Just when the USA is at economic warfare with China. Making my popcorn already.

The real problem is that we have done nothing for too long. The most sensible Central Bank Governor that we have ever had, once stated that if we had migrated to commercial or merchant/mercantile banks, our financial services industry would have prospered, mainly because we are not American banks. They would not have been exposed to the toxic asset scandal of 2008. Plus if we had done wealth management on the up and up, there is a huge field of international financing. The wealth under management would contribute to the world economy and hence the Bahamian economy instead of just hiding from the taxman.
The reason why we are in this pickle, is that when the wealth management paradigms started showing their face, most Bahamian financial institutions would have had to shed 90% of their business to comply. That would be unpleasant, so they did nothing. The longer that you do nothing, the worse that the problem begins. It was a hard pill to swallow. I guess for their own self interest and preservation, the most logical path was to carry on for as long as possible, and that's what we did. I probably would have done the same thing. But the end of the road is near.
As an independent small country with a Black majority, if we grew a pair of balls and told the world to suck it up, well .... we would have had a regime change the way Grenada did.
The way I see it, is that the decline of financial services was ultimately inevitable. The criminal Prime Minister Swindling had no ambitions for the Bahamian people other than to enrich himself and build the odd school in the Family Islands in case Jesus came early. It is very hard to disrupt oneself when times are good, and not many nations or people can do it. If you do, the prize is prosperity and if you don't, you get mediocrity.

The real showing of Bahamian balls, would have been to see the signs and portents and change before it is too late. That takes true vision, but we are most comfortable with our heads up our azzes and the resultant tunnel vision. Let's face it -- dere een no hope fer us. Eventually I see us swirling into a morass of social disorder as more and more Bahamians cannot live in dignity.

sigh. Why the Bahamas has a dubious, sketchy image in "financial services".