Saving Barbados From Recession (Part 1)

No representative of the Peoples Empowerment Party(PEP) has ever been invited to attend, much less participate, in any of the Government or Private Sector sponsored economic ‘powwows’ that have been periodically held in Barbados!

It is as if the people charged with piloting the economic affairs of our country only want to hear from people who share and subscribe to their own ideas. It would appear that they fear having their ideas challenged by persons or organizations outside of their little incestuous in-group.

Now-a-days, these self-proclaimed economic gurus are fond of declaring that no-one could have predicted or anticipated the international economic recession that has so affected Barbados. But this is simply not true! There was at least one Barbadian thinker who went on the public record as long ago as the year 2001, and predicted, with precision, the calamitous economic events that unfolded in 2007. And that ‘thinker’ was the current president of the PEP, Mr. David Comissiong.

In his May 2001 Facing Reality column in the Nation Newspaper, Mr.Comissiong wrote as follows, under the headline – ‘A Word to the Wise”:-

“The world has become enmeshed in a global monetary and financial quagmire, the tentacles of which reach into Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and indeed as far as the allegedly all-powerful New York Stock Exchange …One result of this unfortunate trend is that it is now estimated that the sum total value of purely financial instruments known as ‘derivatives’ in the world today is over US$140 trillion - a figure far in excess of the total real Gross National Products of all the nations of the world combined.

In other words, the financial tycoons of the world have built a global financial bubble that will eventually explode violently … And the bubble will burst – there can be no doubt about that. Indeed, you can only escape reality for so long.

When the financial bubble explodes and deep recession hits the North American and European tourist and financial service markets that Barbados depends so heavily upon, what will become of us? … The global crisis is coming to us here in Barbados. Let us ensure that we are prepared to face it.”

Mr. David Comissiong wrote those prophetic words in May 2001, and publicly repeated his warnings several times thereafter! But Barbados’ supposed economic gurus probably never heard - they would have been too busy indulging in their usual facile in-group intellectual self-congratulations.

Well, with an intransigent economic recession threatening to suffocate our Barbadian economy, our Party now proposes to lay out a practical, people-centred blue print for ‘Saving Barbados from Recession”.

The PEP’s blue print for ‘Saving Barbados from Recession” will be based on a foundation of policies and measures to:-

(i) Re-establish the soundness of the finances and credit of the Barbados Government;

(ii) Restore the purchasing power of the masses of Barbadian people;

(iii) Secure and shore up welfare services and programmes that prevent or alleviate human distress;

(iv) Provide employment through essential environmental public works programmes;

(v) Re-energise production in Barbados’ Agriculture, Construction, Manufacturing and Tourism sectors; and

(vi) Engineer a new social contract based on a greater degree of equality and sharing of resources in Barbados.

Stay tuned for a series of submissions from the PEP on this critical issue over the coming weeks!