They say we shouldn’t shoot the messenger.
However, there’s nothing wrong with finding out who the messenger is and what his agenda might be. So who is S and P, as in Standard and Poor’s, credit rating agency extraordinaire?
This is not my area of expertise. I depend on Monday NATION’s Wild Harry Coot to fill us in on matters financial. And while his Latin and French quotations titillated the memories, I was looking for a Dirty Harry with no regard for rules who would get us out of this mess. Instead, I got a shamefaced Harry caught red-handed in the piggery. Or rather, it’s us in the piggery with Harry gloating how he told us so.
To hell with that defeatism, Coot! We’re “going down spitting blood”, as Jeff Garvey used to say. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our Bajan dead. When the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger: stiffen the sinews, set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide. If they roast us today, they can’t roast us tomorrow.
So who is Standard and Poor’s? Apparently, a top credit rating agency paid by usurers, that is, money lenders like banks and such, to rate the credit-worthiness of countries or other obligors. You hear that word “obligor”? To S and P, we are an obligor, understand?
In short, Standard and Poor’s is God. They can make or break a country. There is no appeal against their rating. They have made $2 trillion errors. They “helped cause”, according to the Washington Post, the 2008 financial collapse.
But they are God. And we obligors are at their mercy.
Okay, how about another purgeorative word, “junk”, as in junk bonds? Don’t you get the impression this word is used deliberately to make us feel worthless, helpless paros, devoid of self-esteem, hooked on a lifestyle we can’t afford?
Even Wild Coot fell for this. Says he: “Junk bonds are junk bonds. If you were to go into a shop and see a big sign marked “junk”, would you patronise that area of the shop? Perhaps if you were a hobo.”
But is this really so? Junk bonds, from my reading, are also known as “high-yield bonds”, which “have a higher risk of default, but typically pay higher yields than better quality bonds”.
In other words, it isn’t Coot’s hobo, it’s the big-money people apparently who go in for “junk” bonds.
But let’s not beat around the bush. Barbados is in serious financial trouble. We have fallen right into the white man’s trap. “Don’t wait until you can afford a material lifestyle,” he told us, “borrow from me, any amount, and you can become ‘developed’ overnight.”
Instead, we have overnight become what my former colleague Dr Morgan Job calls a “failed socialist state”. Bloated politicians vying to give away more and more to stay in power with no thought of the payback time.
“Ineptocracy” is the word for it nowadays: “a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.” Synonym – socialism.
And even now both parties shun the word “cut” like the plague. They want to “divest”, as in sell what little we have left to get a lump sum to splurge until we become a wholly owned subsidiary of Trinidad and Tobago.
That is no solution. We want to hear about trimming the fat. Have done with the Caribbean Court of Justice. We are as good as any country which handles its own final appeals. We want details on the lunches MPs and senators get, including records of their individual weights before and after meals. Who travels first class on Government trips? How much are per diems? Cut oil imports. Put idle lands back into food. We want action.
This little country is crying out for leadership. So hit the first pan, Coot, I blowing tenor sax and Ridley rolling the banjo. We’re going to bring forth an Alexander. Or die trying. Say, how about “get down and dirty” Jeff Broomes for Prime Minister? Saving half million on that useless Alexandra inquiry would be a good start.
• Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator.
