A number of professionals in the financial services sector in The Bahamas complain bitterly that the industry has lost ground to its competition. They place the blame for these losses squarely on the shoulders of the Central Bank of The Bahamas and other regulatory agencies which have sprung up in the aftermath of the near melt down of the industry three years ago.
After hearing them out and also after making our own determination, we are inclined to agree with the suggestion that the former government went too far in its efforts to appease the Organization For Economic Cooperation and Development and allied agencies such as the Financial Action Task Force and the Financial Stability Forum.
One aspect of this matter which continues to concern us are persistent and increasingly persuasive suggestions that any number of banks and trust companies have opted to take their business to places like the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands where the regulatory environment is not as extreme as it is in the Bahamas. Added to this problem of over-regulation are any other number of bureaucratic complications which work to deter business formation in this country.
Our information is that this is due to a regulatory regime which is unnecessarily cumbersome. The essential point, therefore, is that while the changes brought about in the year 2000 may have made The Bahamas a cleaner jurisdiction, this has been achieved at the expense of efficiency. When the regulators take many weeks to answer correspondence from lawyers, bankers and accountants who search for information or licenses for clients, the Financial Services Sector is jeopardized. When international clients are deterred from doing business in The Bahamas and are welcomed elsewhere, Bahamian householders suffer.
When jobs migrate from The Bahamas to other jurisdictions, reference is often made to the handful of jobs which are directly jeopardised and the immediate fall out. As equally important is the multiplier effect of that lost income. The truth of the matter is that when business is directed from The Bahamas, its effects ramify throughout the economy and society.
While it is late in the day and much has already been lost, there is still time enough left for the government to review the actions taken in the year 2000 and to remove some of the regulatory red tape impeding commerce and legitimate trade in the financial services sector of the economy.
Iraqi Endgame
As the world watches and waits to see how the matter of war ultimately plays out in Iraq, a number of analysts are fearful that a cornered Saddam Hussein will unleash some of the most frightful weapons known to mankind, namely chemical and biological weapons. Some of these analysts are also being perturbed by a premonition that the United States and its allies might – in their endgame – authorise the use of tactical nuclear weapons. No mater how this issue is ultimately resolved, it is clear that civilians in Baghdad will bear the brunt of whatever form the battle for Baghdad ultimately assumes. This battle underscores the reality that war is hell. When wars hit densely populated urban areas, innocent men, women and children will be caught up in the carnage and chaos.
In the specific instance of the battle for Baghdad, the situation is made even worse by the realization that the fight for the city will pit warriors against defenceless citizens. In and of itself, this fact magnifies the sorrow and pity inherent in this struggle for supremacy between the Americans, the British their allies, and Saddam Hussein’s regimes. As one sober analyst puts it: “Iraqi workers have been digging trenches all around Baghdad. Some intelligence sources believe that Saddam will order them filled with oil and set afire. The picture is almost medieval, a “wall of flame” around the besieged citadel. Saddam hopes to dull America’s technological edge: a thick wall of oily smoke would interfere with the laser guidance system used on some American bombs. (Far more bombs, however, are aimed by satellite, which would be unaffected.)
American warplanes and cruise missiles will try to kill Saddam on the first night and every day and night thereafter. Moving from bunker to bunker and using doubles, he may escape. Aiming precision bombs and exotic high-tech weaponry to destroy Saddam’s communications, American air power could cut off the Iraqi leader from his men. But isolated, surrounded only by sycophants, Saddam may not know he has been defeated until American soldiers kick in his door. That could take weeks, and if Saddam can slip out of Baghdad and go underground, the hunt could go on for months.
The most pressing – and disturbing – question is whether and when Saddam will use weapons of mass destruction. Saddam may want to hold off, at least for a while. If he uses bio-chem weapons, he “crosses a very important psychological threshold,” points out Brookings’s Pallack. The Iraqi leader could no longer claim in the court of world, in effect, be justifying the American invasion. U.S. intelligence officials are sharply divided over Saddam’s intentions. In some ways, they say, chem-bio weapons are more of a scary bluff than a true threat. Properly trained and equipped troops, especially those riding in airtight tanks, can slip unscathed through a toxic cloud. Still, Saddam may use the WMD he is said to possess, and poison gas can cause chaos and possibly panic among support troops in rear areas. Even the most gung-ho soldiers could be unnerved by a gas attack as they waited to ford a river or crash through a berm”.
The world will know soon enough whether Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard will stand and fight or whether they will cave in to superior force. The more germane question remains whether they are armed with weapons of mass destruction. This, after all, is what the conflict has been about for some two decades and more. As the old adage puts it so well, ‘the truth will out’.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
