Go Lean Commentary
To fix the economy, we have to fix the pandemic – President-Elect Joe Biden, as a candidate in September 2020.
See VIDEO in the Appendix below.
Unfortunately, the solution is not so simple … for the Caribbean communities. For the 30 member-states that constitute the political Caribbean, we have to do more than this 1 thing of fixing the pandemic in order to fix our economy. Our solution is more complicated. Plus even that 1 thing will not be so simple. (Many of our citizens refuse capitulation).
The Caribbean is different …
… than the American economy referred in the foregoing quotation. For one, we have a mono-industrial economy: Tourism. Yes, we have to mitigate the threats of Coronavirus, and then we also need to diversify from that mono-industrial reality. The defect of a touristic industrial footprint is characterized by the actuality of being nothing more than parasites to some host economy. Who is the host?
The same United States of America that now President-Elect Joe Biden was seeking to preside over. So at this juncture, we cannot recover our Caribbean economy until America recovers theirs.
That will not be so simple, even after remediating the contagious disease threat of the pandemic, communities will have to deal with the economic fallout from the pandemic for a long time, maybe even decades. See this assertion from the globally praised Business news magazine The Economist in an October 23, 2020 story here:
VIDEO – Covid-19: how to fix the economy | The Economist – https://youtu.be/p0tCPwyJ6JI
The Economist
Posted October 23, 2020 – Governments will have to deal with the economic fallout from the pandemic for decades to come. If they get their response wrong, countries risk economic stagnation and political division. Read more here: https://econ.st/3ojORKYFind The Economist’s most recent coverage of covid-19 here: https://econ.st/3m212Kj
Read our special report on the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: https://econ.st/37mGlos
How the pandemic is reshaping banking: https://econ.st/3kj1qnq
Why America’s economy is beating forecasts: https://econ.st/3kdzDEK
How the covid-19 pandemic is forcing a rethink in economic policy-making: https://econ.st/2IIhX69
How recessions create long-term psychological and economic scars: https://econ.st/3o55XvH
What past pandemics can teach us about the economic effects of pandemics: https://econ.st/37mzwmy
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Related: https://youtu.be/KJhlo6DtJIk
This foregoing VIDEO identified the threats against the orthodox American economy as being the following:
- Digital Economy,
- Actuality of trade with China, and
- Repercussions from the recent 2008 Financial Crisis; preponderance for austerities.
Before the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, the Caribbean was also mired deep in chaos from these three factors. Once the pandemic challenges are remediated we still have to re-focus and address these issues. So we had chaos before, and now we have new chaos. We so badly need to reboot our economy to be chaos-free once and for all.
This was the quest of the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. It identified the same 3 threats as (and more like Climate Change); see here:
- Technology – falling behind with the adoption of Internet Communications Technologies.
- Globalization – we only consume, not produce, so we are shifted hither-and-thither by bigger economies.
- 2008 Consequences – access to foreign capital (think: US Dollars) make or break our local economies
So in retrospect, the Go Lean book, serving as a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), identified solutions for fixing the Caribbean economy as of 2003, like a more diversified economy. Had the CU been introduced and implemented then, the chaos that we had just before the pandemic would have been remediated by now.
The Go Lean book says in its opening foreword:
Many people love their homelands and yet still begrudgingly leave; this is due mainly to the lack of economic opportunities. The Caribbean has tried, strenuously, over the decades, to diversify their economy away from the mono-industrial trappings of tourism, and yet tourism is still the primary driver of the economy. Prudence dictates that the Caribbean nations expand and optimize their tourism products, but also look for other opportunities for economic expansion. The requisite investment of the resources (time, talent, treasuries) for this goal may be too big for any one Caribbean member-state. Rather, shifting the responsibility to a region-wide, professionally-managed, deputized technocracy will result in greater production and greater accountability. This deputized agency is the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This book advocates that all Caribbean member-states (independent & dependent) lean-in to this plan for confederacy, collaboration and convention.
The chaos of today’s pandemic would have been lessened too, under a CU regime, as the Go Lean roadmap calls for the appropriate strategies, tactics and implementations to assuage the threats of epidemics and pandemics. This was related in a previous blog-commentary from March 24, 2015; see this excerpt here:
A Lesson in History – SARS in Hong Kong
The CU is not designed to just be in some advisory role when it comes to pandemic crises, but rather to possess the authority to act as a Security Apparatus for the region’s Greater Good. This is the mandate as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11) related to climate change, but it applies equally to pandemics, to …“protect the entire region it is necessary to prepare to insure the safety and security of life, property and systems of commerce in our geographical region. As nature recognizes no borders in the target of its destruction, we also must set aside border considerations in the preparation and response to these … challenges”.
Legally, each Caribbean member-state would ratify a Status of Forces Agreement that would authorize this role for the CU agencies (Emergency Management and Disease Control & Management) to serve as a proxy and deputy of the Public Health administrations for each member-state. This would thusly empower these CU agencies to quarantine and detain citizens with probable cause of an infectious disease. The transparency, accountability and chain-of-command would be intact with the appropriate checks-and-balances of the CU’s legislative and judicial oversight. This is a lesson learned from Hong Kong 2003 with China’s belligerence.
This is how we could have fixed the Caribbean economy for this 2020’s decade. It is not just a simple one or two tasks; no, it is a long list of heavy-duty tactics and tasks; (in fact the Go Lean book identifies 144 different advocacies). This theme, rebooting the economic engines of the Caribbean member-states, aligns with many previous commentaries from the Go Lean movement; see a sample list here:
| https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=20571 | Banking on the Inter-American Development Bank for crisis funding |
| https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19741 | Keep the Change: Mono-Industrial Economy Exhaustion |
| https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19572 | MasterClass: Economics and Society |
| https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19568 | Big Hairy Audacious Goal – Need ‘Big Brother’ for Pandemics |
| https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19452 | BHAG – Regional Currency – ‘In God We Trust’ |
| https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18566 | Reviewing How an Impactful Bank Can Change an Economy |
| https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18524 | One Step Closer to transforming local economies: e-Money Solutions |
| https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17337 | Industrial Reboots – A 18-part Series on diversification |
| https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=360 | Central Banks Can Create Money from ‘Thin Air’ – Here’s How |
How to fix the COVID economy for the Caribbean member-states?
We still need to reboot or change the industrial landscape!
We always did! Now we are at the precipice; we have no choice but to change.
The pandemic will pass. There are vaccines available now. As depicted in this excerpt from a previous blog-commentary from August 29, 2020:
Pandemic Playbook – COVID Vaccine: To Be or Not To Be
The world is enduring the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic crisis; it is wreaking havoc on the world’s economic engines – $250 Billion a day in losses – and Public Health deliveries. The only hope is a vaccine, of which there are a number of them in development [distribution]. …
Don’t get it twisted! The Caribbean member-states boast a Service industrial economy – tourism. To participate in this industry space will require compliance. Tourists – by air for resort-based stay-overs or cruise line passengers – will not want to expose themselves to possible infections.
Lastly, individuals can simply chose to exit societal functioning – a self-imposed quarantine; think: Leper Colony. These ones will have to take a seat – with a view – and watch life pass them by.
Do we then need to embrace some austerity measures so as to transform our Red Ink into Black”? Please God, No!
As depicted in this excerpt from a previous blog-commentary from July 7, 2016:
A Lesson in Economic Fallacies – Austerity: Dangerous Idea?
Those who advocate to remediate Caribbean economics needs to avoid a series of Economic Fallacies. …
One common remediation for economic crisis has been Austerity. What is Austerity? And is this a good thing or bad thing? First, the dictionary definition is: “reduced availability of luxuries and consumer goods, as brought about by government policy”. …
“Austerity is a very dangerous idea. First of all, it doesn’t work. As the past four years and countless historical examples from the last 100 years show, while it makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all we do is shrink the economy. In the worst case, austerity policies worsened the Great Depression and created the conditions for seizures of power by the forces responsible for the Second World War: the Nazis and the Japanese military establishment.” …
What exactly is the Go Lean plan to counter the economic fallacy of austerity?
Economic growth …
… as in creating jobs through industrial and entrepreneurial endeavors – for a grand total of 2.2 million new jobs.
So how will we fix the economy for the Caribbean member-states after this COVID crisis?
We must now do the things that we should have been doing all the while. Consider:
- We must reboot the economic engines;
- Confederate the regional economy into a Single Market;
- Diversify the industrial landscape;
- Create new jobs in new industries;
- Lean-in to the strategies, tactics and implementations of the Go Lean roadmap.
Are we Ready? Are you Ready?
It is past time that we do the heavy-lifting to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. Let’s get busy! We have planned the work; now we need to work the plan. 🙂
About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:
- Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
- Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
- Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.
The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.
Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!
Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):
xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.
xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.
xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.
Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.
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Appendix VIDEO – Can’t fix the economy until you fix the pandemic – https://fb.watch/2WWGfEn_Bs/
CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell
LIVE: https://cbsn.ws/33c1tv4
Brexit is hereby ratified as of today; the new “rules of the road” go into effect tomorrow – January 1, 2021. (Brexit = British Exit from the European Union).
Despite how much advances we have made in the millennia since King Hammurabi of Babylon reigned, this concept seems to be void in so many societies; this concept …
In addition, the issue of disunity remains; the Brexit vote showed that some elements in the United Kingdom are not so “united”. Just two years earlier, a referendum in Scotland to secede from the United Kingdom – and join the EU as a full member including the Eurozone Monetary Union – was narrowly defeated. There may still be a 
The Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has taught the Caribbean the important lesson that we are not prepared for the threats that come from one aspect of Globalization, the free and frequent movement of people across borders and continents. This pandemic started as a flare-up of a contagious respiratory disease in Wuhan, China; then in short order, the infections traversed the planet: to Europe and North America, then onto our Caribbean communities. We were not prepared and suffered accordingly, both medically and economically.
The events related to UK, EU and Brexit are important for us in the Caribbean to consider … and learn from. In fact, we are in competition with the European world in terms of trade, 
Face it Puerto Rico, you have not been handling the heat!
The Washington meeting — which was attended by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and members of Rosselló’s government — was requested after reports that Trump was considering halting further disaster relief to the beleaguered U.S. territory.
This consideration brings to mind, an overall discussion of the Way Forward for this country – Puerto Rico – and all Caribbean countries. Our current disposition is dire, a crisis, near-Failed-State status. Yet, the movement behind the Go Lean book posits that a “crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. Here for April 2019, we present a full series of commentaries related to the Way Forward for these 30 Caribbean member-states. The full series is presented as follows:
The Puerto Rico Admission Act of 2019, which is sponsored by Rep. Darren Soto, D-Florida, and Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón, would give the island statehood within 90 days of passage.
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“They never told us it was dangerous,” Ambroise Bertin says. “So people were working, because they wanted the money. We didn’t have any instructions about what was, and wasn’t, good. That’s why a lot of people are poisoned.” He’s talking about chlordecone, a chemical in the form of a white powder that plantation workers were told to put under banana trees, to protect them from insects.
“They used to tell us: don’t eat or drink anything while you’re putting it down,” Ambroise, now 70, remembers. But that’s the only clue he and other workers in Martinique’s banana plantations in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s had about the possible danger. Few if any were told to wear gloves or masks. Now, many have suffered cancer and other illnesses.
“Those are still the same group of people who have uncontested domination of the land,” says Guilaine Sabine, activist in a grassroots organisation called Zero Chlordecone Zero Poison. As well as campaigning for free blood tests for everyone on the island, members of the group have taken part in a new wave of protests over the last year aiming to draw attention to businesses that activists say have profited from the production and use of toxic pesticides. The demonstrations have been small, and some protesters have been convicted of violence against the police. But they reflect wider anger over the slow pace of France’s response to the chlordecone catastrophe.
Jamaica Cares, a joint collaboration between the Global Tourism Resilience & Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC), the Global Travel and Tourism Resilience Council, and Global Rescue, is being hailed as a first-of-its kind traveller protection and emergency services program designed to protect both visitors and the people of Jamaica.
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In 1993, Dinkins lost to 
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Featured article quotation: 
What’s next for Cuba … and Venezuela?
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… We can get close but never quite catch up. One realizes that this is the same with immigrating to the United States. Despite being a Nation of Immigrants (NOI), new ones can never catch up with the Settlers. Consider the historicity of this distinction in the Appendix article 
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Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)
The IDB prioritizes social inclusion and equality; productivity and innovation; and regional economic integration in its development work across Latin America and the Caribbean. In doing so, it addresses the cross-cutting issues of gender equality and diversity; climate change and environmental sustainability; and institutional capacity and the rule of law. Learn more about the 
