By Raffique Shah
Sunday, September 28th 2008
OVER the six decades I’ve been on this here Earth, more so during the latter four, I have learned to be wary of the very wealthy. Not all, mark you, but most. Some decent people earned their millions through sheer hard work and wise choices. Others educated themselves and used their professions to become rich. Among the aforementioned, you usually encounter nice men and women who just happen to be rich, and who see their wealth as a means to live comfortably, even to help the less fortunate in their communities and countries.
Continue reading Collapse of ‘Reaganomics’ and ‘Thatcherism’
It’s the kind of story that would get a cat vex or make a donkey want to commit murder. Imagine a young, imaginative entrepreneur, someone who does not possess a “gimme-gimme” mentality, comes into town and tells the world that he will build an empire that would make anything Sat Maharaj ever dreamed of doing look like a doll’s house. He starts a credit union and offers interest rates unlike anything the nation has ever heard; at least, not since the days of International Trust when my mother got burned because of her greed. People began to invest in this credit union and before you could say Pan-Dey it was the hottest thing in town.
EDITOR: The dismantling of the fuel subsidy has begun, as was predicted by the Food and Fuel Forum, which for the past couple of weeks has been distributing a bulletin linking the dismantling to the upcoming signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).
Reasonable citizens and commentators are fast coming to the conclusion that PM Manning has pre-empted the yet-to-determined verdict of the people of T&T. He has now taken T&T, at enormous public expense, diplomatic hype and great bravado beyond the political point of no return on his proposed union with at least three other Caricom States. He justifies this cart-before-the -horse modus operandi on the basis that a private club of which he is the jefe, that is to say the PNM, some fifty two years ago invoked political integration as one of its bye-laws.
Im sorry to say that I think that John McCain is going to be the next president of the United States. After the long night of Bush horror any Democrat should easily win, but the Dems are screwing it up and McCain has been running more-or-less even with Barack Obama in the polls. The Democrats should run on the slogan “If you liked Bush, you’ll love McCain”, but that would be too outspoken, too direct for the spineless Nancy Pelosi and her spineless party. Or, “If you liked Iraq, you’ll love Iran.” But the Democrat leadership is not on record as categorically opposing either conflict.
In the face of the unforgivable, non-public disclosure of the text of the August 14 MOU as well as the disrespectful-to-the- people silence on the obligation to outline the compelling economic, political and trade considerations that underpin and drive the urgency of PM Manning’s proposed political union with three OECS countries there has arisen, quite understandably a range of informed speculation on what really motivates the mind of Manning. Many believe that personal (hubris) and subjective (legacy) considerations dominate, determine and drive his political union initiative.
EDITOR: I sometimes wonder if my information sources of media, internet etc. are defective. My information suggests that most of the developed economies in the world are in deep crisis, major US corporations e.g. Bears and Sterns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Bros. etc had to be bailed out by the Federal Authorities. (They are baulking at bailing out Lehman Bros.). The housing market is at its lowest point in decades and unemployment is at its highest in many years. The UK and Canada are awaiting statistical confirmation that their economies are in recession but their populations know full well.