An old girlfriend called me from Trinidad (the Wild Coot has old girlfriends in all of the islands). She said to me, and I quote, “You can’t hold back the hands of time or turn around the flow of the river.
We shall take you over by the year 2050, same time as other people take over Germany. Your boss once said that you are satellites of none but you will be a satellite of ‘Tricidad’. You see that we are already exercising our muscle in your banking sector.
“Buying Barbados National Bank was yet another slap. See how we acquired Butterfield, and now have pretty advertisements?
“The next thing will be to do away with the two per cent minimum interest rate and let it float like the Trinidad dollar. We called for its abandonment some time ago. We are calling for it again.
“We cannot embrace the notion that the Barbados Mortgage Finance Corporation was meant for lower and middle-income people. Wild Coot, you being a self-proclaimed scholar, knew that the chiefs in Africa were the main ones who sold their captives to the slave traders. We in ‘Tricidad’ are negotiating with the chiefs making you Barbadians drawers and hewers.”
I could not say a word. Previous pleasant dealings with this Trinidad lady forbade me from formulating a suitable reply. However, thinking back I realize that Trinidad is using our own assets to trip us up.
The Wild Coot can’t compare himself with Noah, but he finds himself appealing to seemingly hard-ears people – except Mr Kellman, whose experience with the fishing industry gave him insight; and, of course, Mr Arthur, who is said to have told a past parliamentarian in the Trinidad government a piece of his mind.
While it may be true that we in Barbados are elephantine in doing things because we believe in freedom of whosoever-will-may-come from over and away – at what cost I do not know – we need to put our foot down somewhere. What better time to fight back?
Government should facilitate the efforts of its citizens to seek alternative sources of power. Can’t we trust ourselves to start a new bank? Get out of the present stifling mindset? We have sufficient assets and liabilities to decorate any balance sheet. What we lack is will.
We talk about facilitating the small entrepreneur but do nothing to free up the savings of Barbadians that are the lifeblood of the nation. These savings are lying in the banks, not in the Treasury.
Deeper and deeper, we seek to accommodate the outsider in the name of an open economy. Not really a bad idea, but we should make it profitable. Thus the point being made by the doctors and dentists that getting a hospital that brings people here, treat them and be paid in foreign exchange, which exchange is to be deported or exported, makes little sense.
If we must bend over it must be worthwhile.
As elections near, our rulers, instead of heeding the polls, so as not to create history, alienate more and more sectors of the society. Two years on and a group comprising 35 000 people cannot get a simple facility as a reverse mortgage.
And this does not only affect the mentioned people but a substantial number of our population over the age of 60. Indeed, reverse mortgages could be given right now.
A banker has the option of deferring payment of instalments until whatever time. However, the committee of the Barbados Association of Retired Persons prefers to have legal safeguards that protect both lender and borrower. They say that opportunity makes the thief, so I wonder why our leaders are not taking advantage of this worthy opportunity, but find time to accelerate the entry of new applicants to Barbados.
• Harry Russell is a banker. Email quijote70@gmail.com