The End of the World’s Economic System: Emergency Collapse Protocols – Are We Preparing For A Time Of Trouble Like No Other Time Since The World Began?

Submitted by Terence Blackett

 

“Give us food, for why should we die in your presence? For our money is gone.” Gen: 47:15

 

This is a doomsday scenario. This is the financial morning the whole world has been dreading. In one swoop, the money is all gone. The monetary system as we know it that has existed since 1792 is obliterated. That predicted, prophesied time is here. World Stock Markets has been in flux for weeks. The US has had its credit rating downgraded to a C minus. Other key EU countries have also had their ratings stripped back to complete negative territory. The DOW has fallen below 3000 points for several consecutive days. The FTSE, DAX and other markets slide ominously into fiscal meltdown. Global traders watch precariously as world markets landslide and implode. The images and the inescapable reality have come home to roust as the turmoil exacerbates. All the while, most of the world’s citizens go about their daily business numb to the impending travesties that are about to unfold and will unleash a chain of events unprecedented upon the planet in all of human history.

It is 9AM on a cloudy Monday morning over Capitol Hill in Washington. The President of the United States is about to issue an emergency state of the nation address where he is about to enact Executive Privilege based on The Gold Confiscation Act of April 5^th, 1933 issued by the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the United States Congress as – Presidential Executive Order 6102. The Act states:

“This Order is “Forbidding the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates by virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, entitled that the Act is to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking, and for other purposes’ in which amendatory Act Congress declared that a serious emergency exists.”

An Election-Oriented Budget: WATCH OUT!

George C. Brathwaite

Next week bears an awful foreboding for Barbadians from all walks of life and all sectors contributing to the national economy. There is further predictable gloom on the economic horizon; this fact is based upon two significant things. For starters, the global economy remains as volatile and uncertain as it has been since 2007; the UK, USA, and Europe as whole are fighting stubbornly to bring about some stability in the context that their economies are still courting a double-dip recession, unable to kick-start employment, and are battling a series of corruption and other forms infelicitous charges regarding the public purse.

The second factor speaks to the lack or insufficiency of innovative economic mechanisms by government to deal with the shocks and turbulence impacting on Barbados given its peculiarities of a very low manufacturing base, a weak export climate, a restricted services economy, a fixed exchange rate regime, and an ever increasing import bill that far surpasses the capacity of the country’s production and consumption. Together these things make the job of Minister of Finance a perplexing one especially considering his ‘greenness’ to the profession notwithstanding his enthusiasm and/or other attributes.

From recent memory, perhaps the only Barbadian that I may say who would cherish and not envy the current Minister’s position is the Leader of the Opposition despite his acknowledgement of the tremendous task and acumen that is necessarily required for a return of Barbados to relative economic success. In my opinion, even with Mr. Arthur the difficulties would not disappear despite he may offer some confidence in the economy and inspire the local private sector based upon his track record. This is likely to be the case since in all fairness to potential leaders and economists, very few if any public statements made in the past year have suggested new economic paths for the country. Yet there is little dispute about the country’s economic accomplishments under his leadership.

Read full article

Barbados Police Force Getting A Bum Rap

Submitted by RUSERIOUS

An article was posted on that ignorant site called BFP about the and I quote “Inability of the Police Force to stem the violence“. I respond as a law abiding citizen who has a clue.

You say “inability of the Police force to stem the violence?” You are being sarcastic right? Let’s check some facts. There are 80,000 persons since Barbados became independent who have been charged with a crime. That is a significant portion of the population.

Time after time and all the time and every time the judiciary hands down monkey sentences, and recycles criminals through the prison system, violent repeat offenders who no longer serve a purpose in society are sentenced to miniscule prison sentences, come out, kill/rob/rape again multiple times,  are caught by police and the process repeats itself. Nearly ALL of the persons committing violent crime have multiple conviction records on average of 7 or more convictions. Some have as much as thirty for burglary/robbery/serious bodily harm/possession of weapons.

Remembering How To Clap

There was a time, not too long ago, when the only worry a couple wishing to be ‘amorous’ thought about was contracting the Clap. Of the STDs feared, gonorrhoea and syphilis  were at the top of the list. Then the big H and A came along and STDs were not that big a deal.

If one is to  to judge based on a recent report, STDs is on the march in the USA forcing the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) to describe “the millions of new cases annually as a hidden epidemic”. Coincidentally our own Dame Billie Miller recently publicised her concern about STDs affecting Barbados and the region: “Gonorrhoea, syphilis and many other sexually transmitted diseases have been at epidemic status in our region for generations. We like to pretend it is not so. It still upsets me that sexually transmitted diseases in Barbados are not notifiable diseases”.

If HIV and AIDS do not get you there is always The Clap.

• Related Article: The Clap Came Back: Multidrug-Resistant Gonorrhea

Owen’s Economic Team

Submitted by Douglas Leopold Phillips

 

Leader of the Opposition, Owen Arthur

Its official, the Owen’s Economic Team [OET] headed by the economic guru Owen Arthur has been dispatched on a world tour to meet with the leaders of the global economy to hammer out solutions to the financial crisis. This sudden trip was prompted by the unprecedented events that unfolded over the last week which the OET believes are as a result of poor economic leadership. They believe that their analysis of the economic outlook is bang on and so they want to share it with the struggling and sagging economies in China, US, UK and Europe.

We have been told that the on the fourth anniversary of the global financial crisis the after effects are still pounding the shorelines of small open economies with little or no clear vision of when recovery will come. One thing for sure is that no right thinking person, no matter how little their understanding of economic matters believe that it is business as usual for the global economy. This is why, we as Barbadians, under a Barbados Labour Party model would be the direct beneficiaries and sole recipients of the formula that would place our economy on a sustainable path of growth. They alone can do what the largest economy in the world has been unable to deflect.

The US Bureau of Statistics indicated in early August 2011 the Government payrolls dropped 37 000 in the month of July, citing nine straight months of job losses. This came as a result of government’s shut down in Minnesota. Of course, in Barbados the OET of the day has not given the Democratic Labour Party any credit for ensuring that we maintain jobs in the public sector. We acknowledge that our unemployment is at 10 percent but it’s nowhere near the 20 percent as predicted by the Opposition at the outset of the crises. As a matter of fact, Senator Darcy Boyce recently made the point “that a 10 per cent rate of unemployment after such a severe economic and financial crisis is significant. He stated that over the last two quarters the rate had fallen from 10.7 per cent which, according to him, was the maximum level the figures had reached.”….. Comparing this rate with the immediate period before and after 9/11 which had an effect on Barbados, Senator Boyce said that in 1998 the rate of unemployment rate was 12.2 per cent. According to him, the rate has not reached 12 per cent since the onset of this crisis.”

CARIBBEAN STOCK REPORT 2 August to 5 August 2011

Compiled by the Department of Management Studies, UWI Cave Hill - Click image to read in PDF

Next Tuesday’s DLP Budget: An Instant Sugar Rush Of Feel-Good

Former Chairman of the NAB and BLP Supporter

Barbados is fortunate to have had some giants as Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. Persons like: Tom Adams; Owen Arthur and Errol Barrow easily come to mind. By all accounts, these men were not ‘bluffers,’ neither did they ‘beat around the bush!’ The entire country could rely on them because there was a feeling that they knew exactly what to do and when! Oh, how have things changed!!!

Barbados has been under DLP rule for almost four years now and yet, the DLP’s check-list of achievements is so un-flattering that it does not convey that the Government knows what it is doing or what to do, to get the country out of the mess it manufactured in large part. In fact, you could say that: “the DLP is an “upside-down Government in reverse” – those things that should be up are down and those that should be down are up. As an example, unemployment, the cost of living, crime and inflation – should all be down but they are not. The foreign exchange earning sectors should be producing but they are not. Real incomes; consumer and investor confidence should be up but they are not. Little wonder that, (despite access to the fatted calf) even die-hard Dems, also feeling the pressure in their pockets, are asking whether the DLP is fit to run the economy because it just does not seem to be: “up to the job!”

Let’s be as fair to the DLP, as we can. The recent Moody’s downgrade is evidence that the policies contained in its Medium Term Fiscal Strategy (MTFS) are simply not working. Yet, that strategy is the DLP’s best idea but it is clearly not good enough. The deficit was supposed to come down, but it went it significantly. The national debt is increasing and not for capital works projects or to build productive capacity – as would be expected. The simple reality is that the DLP is borrowing to pay day-to-day bills. Given the DLP’ dangerous economic mismanagement of the Barbados economy, the brutal reality is that there is no painless way out of the mess it has manufactured.

When Talent, Ability, Content Of Character Matters More Than Skin Colour

Submitted by Charles Knighton

As I have now been labeled, among other slurs, a “pathological racist” for questioning the inclusion of Egypt in the study of Black History in my July 20^th Editorial letter, I had decided to let discretion be the better part of valor and refrain from further comment on this issue. This tendency to impute racist motivations to anyone having the temerity to question Black orthodox thought is reminiscent of the mid-twentieth century tactic of labeling as anti-Semitic any who questioned the orthodoxy emanating from the Jewish state of Israel. Any group practicing such ad hominem responses over dispassionate discussion is generally protecting a fragile orthodoxy. With maturity, Jews eventually became more circumspect as they came to see that claiming anti-Semitism at every turn cost them their credibility. Perhaps others might benefit from their experience.

Having said all that, I find it necessary to again walk into the minefield of race to reply to Mr. Anthony L. Reid’s Guest Column of August 3^rd, “The Peopling of Ancient Egypt”. My reference to Egypt as a historically non-Black civilization lead Mr. Reid to read between lines of his own fashioning to assert that non-Black must translate into a Euro-centric or “White Egypt”. This binary predisposition to view things as either “Black” or “White” tends to make invisible the majority of Earth’s people, who might cry “racism” themselves at such treatment. I was very careful in my choice of the adjective non-Black.

From the beginning Egypt was a genuine crossroads of people and their cultures, and its people were multiethnic and multiracial, coming from as far away as Southwest Asia and Nubia in the upper Nile Valley. Fragmentary evidence from as early as the Naqada Culture (c. 3500-c.3000 BCE) and more complete evidence from all dynastic works of art plainly indicate Egypt’s racial heterogeneity from Pharaoh to peasant.

Barbados Today Publishes Story Of Local Businessman ‘Conned’!

Local businessman beatened and stabbed post video of incident online - click image

After being stabbed and beaten two weeks ago, a Christ Church businessman is today trying to “flush out” the perpetrators by going public with his ordeal. Not only has the victim started his own website, he has made a video with the footage taken from the security cameras stationed in a particular area in his massage parlour.

Read full article in the Barbados Today

The Blitz: An Inferno On The Streets Of Britain – Why Modern Politicians Do Not Address The Structural Problems Of Poverty, Marginalization, Disenfranchisement & Crime

Submitted by Terence Blackett

London has experienced three nights of rioting and unrest

In 1940/1, the German Luftwaffe bombed in the first of the big air raids on London the industrial areas and docklands mainly, in the East End of London. The city went up in smoke. Since Saturday night, August 5^th rioting, looting and arson across many boroughs of London has brought the city to brink of another blitz. For [3] nights in a row, London has been burning as arsonists, anarchists and agitators loot, ransack and destroy homes and property in a systematic wave of violence and provocation.

Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his Tuscany holiday to return to Britain this morning to chair in the war room the COBRA* Emergency Committee meeting to devise a strategy to deal with what the news media are calling another BLITZ.

But is it little too late to curb the subterrrean social seismology which is affecting British High Streets as roving pacts of youths and vigilantes battle in an effort to wreak mayhem, havoc, social discord and to bring about environmental dilapidation?

What are the real systemic issues which has now shocked a country into asking why?