December 2017 – Go Lean…Caribbean

Month: December 2017

2017 Review – Mr. Trump shows the ‘Wrong Way’

Posted on December 21, 2017 in Government, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The year 2017 is coming to a close. This was the first year of the federal administration of the 45th President of the United States, the non-politician, billionaire real estate developer Donald J. Trump. In retrospect, it has been a “year of Biblical proportions”, one to lament. While we thought 2016 was bad, and it was, its “wow oh wow” for 2017 …

… if the summary of 2017 was named after one of the 66 books of the Bible, it would not be Revelations, nor Exodus. No, it would be:

Lamentations
The Bible book of Lamentations reveals how God viewed the ancient City of Jerusalem and the land of Judah after their enemy, the Kingdom of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar, burned the city and laid the land desolate in the year 607 BC. The expressions of acknowledgment of sin recorded therein make it clear that from God’s standpoint, the reason for the calamity was the error of the people. – Source.

We can now look back and lament the happenings of 2017.

While this year 2017 has been a cliffhanger, it has been perfect for the stewards of a new Caribbean. The new President – Donald Trump – proved the “perfect example of what NOT to do” to elevate society – economics, security and governing engines. Yet, this is the country that so many Caribbean people have fled to. We can learn a lot from America’s accomplishments, and even more from their failures. See the satirical recaps in these VIDEO’s, here and the Appendix. 🙂

We can now look back, lament and laugh at the happenings of 2017, see here:

VIDEO – Stephen’s Greetings: 2017 Late Show Year In Review – https://youtu.be/E9VkweYGTwU

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Published on Dec 4, 2017 – 2017 was rough for a lot of people, but here’s proof that it wasn’t a total wash. See some of Stephen Colbert’s best moments from The Late Show this year.

Subscribe To “The Late Show” Channel HERE: http://bit.ly/ColbertYouTube

For more content from “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, click HERE: http://bit.ly/1AKISnR

Category: Entertainment

License: Standard YouTube License

This commentary is presented by the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The movement – book and accompanying blog-commentaries – relates that the United States of America should be lamented and not considered a refuge for the people of the Caribbean – the “grass is not greener on the other side”. The book laments the fact that despite residing in the best address on the planet, many of our people “beat down their doors” to get out (Page 3), and emigrate to the US and other countries.

Why do people leave such an idyllic place? The book identifies a series of reasons, classified as “push and pull” factors:

“Pull”, on the one hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating for economics solely.

“Push” refers to people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged – for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Surely, fleeing to the US must be likened to “jumping out of the frying pan into the fire”. Remember, this country was not built for the Caribbean’s Black-and-Brown. They continue to experience racial discriminations, despite a recent Black President.

Here are some snippets from this 2017 Caribbean Yearbook against the backdrop of Trump’s exhortations; (this is just a sample in chronological order – from January 2017 to today):

Religious Intolerance – Trump banned travel from 6 Muslim countries

Fostering Discord – California wants out! They have started a petition to secede from Tump’s America

Collaboration Flaws – Disinterest in Others (Non-Americans) – Trumps yawns at the Caribbean’s priorities

Disparaging Messaging to Tourists/Visitors – Arrivals and Revenues down from some countries

Rejection of Evidence – Climate Change Denial – Paris Accords Withdrawal

Climate of Hate fostered by Trump – White Supremacists / Disdain of Immigrants

America First – Prioritization as World Leader downplayed – Other countries lose respect

Supply-side Economics Failures manifested in Kansas

Selective Law-and-Order Enforcement – Under Trump, Civil Rights cases downplayed

Claim to Ignorance on Natural Disasters – Who Knew?

Disdain of Female Empowerment – Female dissidents “diss-ed” by Trump; think Hillary, Pocahontas, etc.

Hurricane Response and Competence – Puerto Rico versus Texas – Black-and-Brown gets less

Societal Defects of Gun Culture – Trumps calls Black-and-Brown Shooters Terrorist, but silent on Whites

Aversion to Trade Agreements – Trump undermined TPP, NAFTA and others

Trump’s Compassion Exhaustion – Ending ‘Temporary Protection Status’ to Haitian Refugees

Sexual Harassment Complicity – Trump’s accusers re-emerged

Take from the Poor; Give to the Rich – Trump’s Tax Reform law

Surely, it is the conclusion of most people that 2017 has proven that America is not working for Caribbean priorities …

… they are not even working for their own priorities, as the country under Trump seems more and more divided with the President only supported by 33 percent of the people, the other 67% are outraged – see VIDEO in the Appendix below – i.e. the majority of the population are middle class, yet yesterday’s passage of the Tax Reform bill only benefits the rich.

Proudly, we say that for our societal elevation efforts, the quest of the Go Lean … Caribbean movement: we do not want to be America, we want to be better.

The Go Lean book – available for free download – does not only complain or lament America, but also prescribes a Way Forward for the Caribbean:

Way Forward – an action, plan etc. that seems a good idea because it is likely to lead to success; i.e.:

A way forward lies in developing more economic links.

This treatment may be the way forward for many inherited disorders.

Source: Retrieved December 22, 2016 from: http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/a-the-way-forward

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of 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.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

This Go Lean movement (book and accompanying blogs) does not look to President Donald Trump to lead for the Caribbean; we look to lead ourselves. To our chagrin, so many of our citizens have previously fled the homeland for American shores. But now …

… we want them back!

The Go Lean book does not ignore these “push and pull” factors that cause our Caribbean people to leave in the first place. No, the book stresses (early at Page 13) the need to be on-guard for “push” factors in these Declaration of Interdependence statements:

xix. Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora back to our shores. This repatriation should be effected with the appropriate guards so as not to imperil the lives and securities of the repatriated citizens or the communities they inhabit. The right of repatriation is to be extended to any natural born citizens despite any previous naturalization to foreign sovereignties.

xxi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, prefabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

For the Caribbean, we must succeed in our Way Forward / Go Lean roadmap, so as to dissuade our own people from giving up and abandoning their native homelands. While no society is perfect nor fully-optimized, some countries have been better than others; notwithstanding the US under Donald Trump. Many countries in North America and Western Europe have become lands of refuge for our Caribbean Diaspora.

Surely, we can do better in lowering the Push and Pull factors now. We should be able to dissuade Caribbean people from the lamentable decision of going to Trump’s America.

Yes, we can …

… if we do the heavy-lifting to convince all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap, then truly we can make our region better places to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix VIDEO – The Politics of Branding, Meeting Obama & Trump’s First Year: The Daily Show – https://youtu.be/bjKr2ltVKII

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah

Published on Dec 18, 2017

Trevor Noah explains why Republicans are better than Democrats at political branding, talks about meeting Barack Obama and reflects on the first year of the Trump administration.

Watch full episodes of The Daily Show for free: http://www.cc.com/shows/the-daily-sho…

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central.

Category: Comedy
License: Standard YouTube License

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Diaspora, History, Model, Power

Taking from the Poor to Give to the Rich – ENCORE

Posted on December 20, 2017 in Economics, Government, Social

The US Congress and White House have done it, they have successfully passed their Tax Reform bill that effectively “takes from the poor and gives to the rich”. See full story here:

Washington (CNN) – Republican lawmakers joined President Donald Trump [today] on Wednesday afternoon to celebrate their largest legislative achievement of 2017, in a public ceremony spotlighting the most sweeping overhaul of the US tax system in more than 30 years.

“It’s always a lot of fun when you win,” Trump said at the ceremony on the White House lawn, after thanking congressional leaders including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Hailing passage of the GOP’s tax plan and surrounded by dozens of prominent Republicans in Congress, Trump said the package would fulfill his core campaign promise. …
Source: CNN retrieved December 20, 2017 from: http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/20/politics/house-senate-trump-tax-bill/index.html

This is Payback!

The Tax Reform strategy here double-downs on the concept of Supply-side economics. The hope is that corporate entities and wealthy people will receive tax breaks and then use the “wind fall” to re-invest in the community, thereafter creating jobs and economic growth. The Republicans in Washington (Congress and the White House) are betting on the success of this strategy even though there has been utter failures with this approach; for example just recently in the US State of Kansas.

Whether that re-investment occurs or not is the unknown. What is known is that the Rich will undoubtedly get the tax breaks. The Rich will win, at the expense of the Poor. This is why that foregoing article also relates:

While Republicans [leaders] cheer the bill’s passage, however, 55% of Americans oppose the plan, according to a new CNN poll. Just 33% say they favor the GOP’s proposals to reform the nation’s tax code.

This is a great opportunity to Encore a previous blog-commentary from December 16, 2014 when the same group – Washington Republicans – maneuvered to pass a law to repeal many post-2008 restrictions to guarantee higher profits for the nation’s banks. While this is an American drama, this is an opportunity for the Caribbean to learn lessons on managing governance for the Greater Good; which this foregoing law violates. See that Encore here:

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Go Lean Commentary – A Christmas Present for the Banks from the Omnibus Bill

What do you get for $5.3 Billion? There must be some return on that investment.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that the US Federal Election-Campaign system is not the model that the Caribbean should want to emulate. This book relates that $5.3 Billion was spent for the 2008 Federal Elections (Page 116), a lot of it contributed by corporations, resulting in a lot of influence peddling. This drama was vividly demonstrated this Saturday evening when the “lame-duck” Congress (the Senate in particular), delayed the required Omnibus Spending Bill – just in time – to extort favorable legislation that would roll back some of the federal regulations enacted after the Great Recession of 2008 to protect against banking systemic risks.

The Shadow Influences spearheading these changes are known to adhere to the principle that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” – a quotation credited to famed American Economist Paul Romer. While others will think that this drama was just politics as usual, the following article depicts the more strategic nature of the new legislation, to foster the environment and industry for financial derivative trading – this is too specific for any life-long politician (the US Senate) to advocate on the sly. No, this has the fingerprints of Wall Street Shadow Influences all over it. (See Appendix below for encyclopedic references on derivatives and swaps). See the news article here:

Title: A Christmas Present For The Banks From The Omnibus Bill
Forbes Magazine Investing Online Blog (Posted 12/13/2014; retrieved 12/15/2014) –
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2014/12/13/wall-street-reverses-ban-on-trading-derivatives-backed-by-uncle-sam/
By: Robert Lenzner, Contributor

Wall Street banks like Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase have flexed the power of their influence to pressure Congress and the White House into a key change in the law that will allow the trading of risky financial derivatives in bank operations that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. This means the nation’s largest banks used the deadline for passing the Omnibus spending bill as pressure to reverse a key section of the Dodd-Frank bill of 2010 that was meant to prohibit a federal government bailout of swaps entities.

It was the existence of over $500 billion of Credit Default Swaps on the balance sheet of AIG in 2008 that threatened to bankrupt the largest insurance company in the world. So, in effect, six years later, the same Wall Street banks that were bailed out by federal largesse, are being given a legislative gift that will enable them to freely trade the securities that brought Lehman Bros down in 2008 — and obtain access to the benefit of insurance and loans from the federal government.

Behind the scenes, unbenownst to the media or the public, the nation’s Too Big To Fail banks used the Omnibus spending bill that is necessary to finance federal spending in 2015 to undo this little-known Dodd Frank provision that might have restricted the volume of trading in financial derivatives that have been a major source of profits as well as controversy since the 2008 financial crisis. Most financial derivatives will be able to be traded in entities holding deposits guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and subject to borrowing at the Federal Reserve’s discount window. This is a key advantage for the banks that will enable them to increase their activity in these securities.

Former Rep. Barney Frank, who was a key sponsor of the Wall Street reform legislation, attacked the change in Dodd-Frank as “a road map for further attacks on our protection against financial instability.” Frank was incensed that the last-minute procedure was “inserted with no hearings, no chance for further modification, and no chance for debate into a mammoth bill in the last days of a lame-duck Congress.”

If President Obama signs the Omnibus spending bill, he will have effectively rewarded Wall Street by reversing a provision that prohibits any federal assistance from being provided to “swaps entities,” including registered swaps dealers, security-based swap dealers, major swap participants and major security-based swap participants, according to information obtained by Forbes. This measure required banks to remove their swaps dealing from the bank itself and do its trading in non-bank affiliates not eligible for deposit insurance. Access to the Fed’s discount window would also be denied in case of a financial crisis in the markets.

The net effect of the changes in the Omnibus spending bill would be to expand permissible swaps activities within a bank and to only exclude swaps based on asset-backed securities that are unregulated and not of a credit quality.

All very technical, but the net result is to allow Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and others to use the Fed’s discount window to borrow money in case of a crisis that roiled the derivative market for credit swaps again as took place in September 2008. In effect, it means the major banks need not limit their trading of financial derivatives to non-bank operations that the market will never be fooled into thinking some future risk of danger has just been avoided. It is a complex holiday present for Wall Street. And it is a warning sign that other sections of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform may also be vulnerable to political rollback.

An additionally relevant blog by Robert Lenzer: http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2014/12/08/the-ten-reasons-why-there-will-be-another-systemic-financial-crisis/

The crisis of the 2008 Great Recession was the lynchpin for the Go Lean movement, (book and blogs). This book, serving as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), posits that the effects of the 2008 Great Recession continue to linger in the Caribbean. Therefore the book advocates learning lessons from 2008 and to turn-around, reform, and reboot the region’s economic, security and governing engines to ensure that “never again” will our society be so vulnerable to the financial misgivings of our American neighbors; or the “plutocratic” elements there-in.

The field of economics is not always solutions-oriented; sometimes, they have been responsible for the problem. Consider this VIDEO snippet here:

Documentary Film “Inside Job” – http://youtu.be/CaXNqGgIc-g

Published on Apr 19, 2012 – Since the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, the total notional value of derivatives has grown by over 700% for holdings companies and 674% for commercial banks. Even more alarming, since the third quarter of 2008 when the cracks in the financial system were clearly evident, derivatives at the commercial banks have grown from $175 TRILLION to $234 TRILLION ” a $59 TRILLION increase. To put this in perspective, the cumulative Gross Domestic Product in the United States over that same time frame (Q3 2008 through Q3 2010) was approximately $32 TRILLION.

Despite our region’s small size (42 million people in 30 member-states), we do have some control over our own destiny. We want to be a protégé, not a parasite.

The CU’s prime directives, elevating the Caribbean’s economic-security-governing engines, recognize that the changes the region needs must start first with the adoption of new community ethos and controls. Early in the book, the need for this shift is pronounced (Declaration of Interdependence – Page 13) with these statements:

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.

xxv. Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and of the member-states.

The Go Lean book, and previous blog/commentaries, stressed the key community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies necessary to effect change in the region ourselves, to improve the stewardship over the economy. They are detailed as follows:

Who We Are – 2008 Internal Experiences	Page 8
Community Ethos – Economic Principles	Page 21
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Private Interest –vs- Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – “Light Up Dark Place”	Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Impact Research and Development	Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Negotiations	Page 32
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-around – 2008 Crisis	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Fortify the Stability of the Securities Markets	Page 47
Strategy – CU Stakeholders to Protect – Banks & Depositors	Page 47
Tactical – Growing the Economy – Minimizing Bubbles	Page 69
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – Depository Insurance & Regulatory Agency	Page 73
Anecdote – Turning Around CARICOM – Effects of 2008 Financial Crisis	Page 92
Implementation – Assemble Caribbean Central Bank as Cooperative	Page 96
Implementation – Assemble Constitutional Convention	Page 97
Implementation – Ways to Better Manage Debt – Optimizing Wall Street Role	Page 114
Implementation – Ways to Impact Elections	Page 116
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Single Market / Currency Union	Page 127
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008	Page 136
Planning – Ways to Measure Progress	Page 147
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy – Case Study of $5.3 Billion Influence	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Credit Ratings – 2008 Lessons	Page 155
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Housing – 2008 Mortgage Crisis Lessons	Page 161
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Labor Unions – 2008 Effects on Main Street Jobs	Page 164
Anecdote – Caribbean Industrialist – Growing without Shadow Influence	Page 189
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations	Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Wall Street	Page 200
Appendix – Whitepaper: The 2008 Financial Crisis and Its Aftermath	Page 276
Appendix – Currency Capital Controls	Page 325

The points of effective, technocratic regional stewardship, especially in response to the 2008 Great Recession / Financial Crisis, were further elaborated upon in these previous blog/commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3311	Detroit to exit historic bankruptcy – Finally recovering from 2008
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3164	Michigan Unemployment – Then (2008/2009) and Now
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3090	Lessons Learned – Europe Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2009
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3028	Why India is doing better than most emerging markets since the crisis
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2930	‘Too Big To Fail’ – Caribbean Version
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2448	‘Consumer Reports’ Survey Finds the American Consumer is Back
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2435	Korea’s Protégé Model – A Dream for Latin America / Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2338	Lesson Learned – How Best to Welcome the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2259	The Criminalization of American Business – Big Banks Let Loose
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2105	Recessions and Public Health – Lessons from the 2008 Crisis
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2090	The Depth & Breadth of Remediating 2008
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1896	The Crisis in Black Homeownership since 2008
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1309	5 Steps of a Bubble
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=841	Post 2008 – Having Less Babies is Bad for the Economy?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=782	Open/Review the Time Capsule: The Great Recession of 2008
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=709	Post 2008 – Student debt holds back home buyers
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=522	Financial Crisis Jokes – Reflecting the cultural impact on society
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=518	Post 2008 – What Banks learn about financial risks
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=378	Fed Releases Transcripts from 2008 Meetings
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=242	Post 2008 – The Erosion of the Middle Class

The 2008 Great Recession brought major upheaval to American and Caribbean societies, plus the rest of the world. Much of the world is interconnected; this is even more acute in our region. Our economy is structured as parasites on the US economy. According to the foregoing news article, our parasitic host is not worthy of our devotion. What qualifies the Go Lean promoters to make these assessments? Principals of this publishing foundation were also there in 2008, engaged with major stakeholders of the Global Financial crisis: Lehman Brothers, JPMorganChase, Citigroup, etc. They were on the inside looking out, not the outside looking in. They were equipped to discern the Shadow Influence.

The Go Lean movement advocates the role of protégé, not parasite. We must diversify our economy and additionally cater to other markets, other countries and other industries. This is the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap, to provide a turn-by-turn direction to accomplish this diversification.

If we want to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play then we cannot depend on the stewards of the US economy to shepherd the Caribbean. Look! Despite the cruel and harsh lessons from 2008, it appears – from the foregoing article and the Appendix below – that the Wall Street Shadow Influence wants to repeat the “Bubble” that lead up to 2008. When they succeed, they profit; but when they fail, the “low man” on Main Street – and parasite economies like the Caribbean – has to endure the pain, not Wall Street.

The Go Lean roadmap does not seek to change America, (though we lobby against these arbitrary “Derivative” rule changes in the Omnibus Budget Bill); only teach the lessons to the Caribbean. We can do so much better.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Appendix – Derivatives:
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance) )

In finance, a derivative is a contract that derives its value from the performance of an underlying entity. This underlying entity can be an asset, index, or interest rate, and is often called the “underlying”.^[1][2] Derivatives can be used for a number of purposes – including insuring against price movements (hedging), increasing exposure to price movements for speculation or getting access to otherwise hard to trade assets or markets.^[3]

Some of the more common derivatives include forwards, futures, options, swaps, and variations of these such as collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and mortgage backed securities. Most derivatives are traded over-the-counter (off-exchange) or on an exchange such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, while most insurance contracts have developed into a separate industry. Derivatives are one of the three main categories of financial instruments, the other two being equities (i.e. stocks or shares) and debt (i.e. bonds and mortgages).

Speculation
Derivatives can be used to acquire risk, rather than to hedge against risk. Thus, some individuals and institutions will enter into a derivative contract to speculate on the value of the underlying asset, betting that the party seeking insurance will be wrong about the future value of the underlying asset. Speculators look to buy an asset in the future at a low price according to a derivative contract when the future market price is high, or to sell an asset in the future at a high price according to a derivative contract when the future market price is less.

Risks
The use of derivatives can result in large losses because of the use of leverage, or borrowing; (see VIDEO below). Derivatives allow investors to earn large returns from small movements in the underlying asset’s price. However, investors could lose large amounts if the price of the underlying moves against them significantly. There have been several instances of massive losses in derivative markets, such as the following:

American International Group (AIG) lost more than US$18 billion through a subsidiary over the preceding three quarters on credit default swaps (CDSs).^[42] The United States Federal Reserve Bank announced the creation of a secured credit facility of up to US$85 billion, to prevent the company’s collapse by enabling AIG to meet its obligations to deliver additional collateral to its credit default swap trading partners.^[43]
The loss of US$7.2 Billion by Société Générale in January 2008 through mis-use of futures contracts.
The loss of US$6.4 billion in the failed fund Amaranth Advisors, which was long natural gas in September 2006 when the price plummeted.
The loss of US$4.6 billion in the failed fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998.
The loss of US$1.3 billion equivalent in oil derivatives in 1993 and 1994 by Metallgesellschaft AG.^[44]
The loss of US$1.2 billion equivalent in equity derivatives in 1995 by Barings Bank.^[45]
UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank, suffered a $2 billion loss through unauthorized trading discovered in September 2011.^[46]

This comes to a staggering $39.5 billion; the majority in the last decade after the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 was passed.

Financial Reform and Government Regulation
Under US law and the laws of most other developed countries, derivatives have special legal exemptions that make them a particularly attractive legal form to extend credit.^[47] The strong creditor protections afforded to derivatives counterparties, in combination with their complexity and lack of transparency however, can cause capital markets to underprice credit risk. This can contribute to credit booms, and increase systemic risks.^[47] Indeed, the use of derivatives to conceal credit risk from third parties while protecting derivative counterparties contributed to the financial crisis of 2008 in the United States.^[47][48]

In November 2012, the SEC and regulators from Australia, Brazil, the European Union, Hong Kong, Japan, Ontario, Quebec, Singapore, and Switzerland met to discuss reforming the OTC derivatives market, as had been agreed by leaders at the 2009 G-20 Pittsburgh summit (see Photo) in September 2009.^[54] In December 2012, they released a joint statement to the effect that they recognized that the market is a global one and “firmly support the adoption and enforcement of robust and consistent standards in and across jurisdictions”, with the goals of mitigating risk, improving transparency, protecting against market abuse, preventing regulatory gaps, reducing the potential for arbitrage opportunities, and fostering a level playing field for market participants.^[54] They also agreed on the need to reduce regulatory uncertainty and provide market participants with sufficient clarity on laws and regulations by avoiding, to the extent possible, the application of conflicting rules to the same entities and transactions, and minimizing the application of inconsistent and duplicative rules.^[54] At the same time, they noted that “complete harmonization – perfect alignment of rules across jurisdictions” would be difficult, because of jurisdictions’ differences in law, policy, markets, implementation timing, and legislative and regulatory processes.^[54]

VIDEO: Leverage Explained – http://youtu.be/6YEnkkznGTg
When things turn out good, big risk means big return; but if it turns out bad, you lose everything and left with a debt.

Source References:
1.       Derivatives (Report). Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, U.S. Department of Treasury. http://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/trading/derivatives/index-derivatives.html. Retrieved February 2013. “A derivative is a financial contract whose value is derived from the performance of some underlying market factors, such as interest rates, currency exchange rates, and commodity, credit, or equity prices. Derivative transactions include an assortment of financial contracts, including structured debt obligations and deposits, swaps, futures, options, caps, floors, collars, forwards, and various combinations thereof.”
2.       Derivative Definition Investopedia
3.       Koehler, Christian. “The Relationship between the Complexity of Financial Derivatives and Systemic Risk”. Working Paper: 10–11.
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42.   Kelleher, James B. (September 18, 2008). “”Buffett’s Time Bomb Goes Off on Wall Street” by James B. Kelleher of Reuters”. Reuters.com. Retrieved August 29, 2010.
43.   “Fed’s $85 billion Loan Rescues Insurer”
44.   Edwards, Franklin (1995). “Derivatives Can Be Hazardous To Your Health: The Case of Metallgesellschaft”. Derivatives Quarterly (Spring 1995): 8–17
45.   Whaley, Robert (2006). Derivatives: markets, valuation, and risk management. John Wiley and Sons. p. 506. ISBN 0-471-78632-2.
46.   “UBS Loss Shows Banks Fail to Learn From Kerviel, Leeson”. Businessweek. September 15, 2011. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
47.   “Michael Simkovic, Secret Liens and the Financial Crisis of 2008.”. American Bankruptcy Law Journal, Vol. 83, p. 253. 2009. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
48.   Michael Simkovic (January 11, 2011). “Bankruptcy Immunities, Transparency, and Capital Structure, Presentation at the World Bank”. Ssrn.com. doi:10.2139/ssrn.1738539. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
——
54.   “Joint Press Statement of Leaders on Operating Principles and Areas of Exploration in the Regulation of the Cross-Border OTC Derivatives Market; 2012-251”. Sec.gov. December 4, 2012. Retrieved March 5, 2013.

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A Lesson from Star Wars Movie: ‘We Need Heroes’ – ENCORE

Posted on December 19, 2017 in Ethos, Planning, Social

This is the BIG news for the weekend of December 15, 2017:

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” was a box office force this weekend.

“The Last Jedi,” the eighth installment in the “Star Wars” saga, premiered this [past] weekend to the second-biggest opening ever in North America. It brought in an estimated $220 million, according to Disney. – CNN posted December 18, 2017 from: http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/17/media/star-wars-last-jedi-opening-weekend-box-office/index.html

The lure of Star Wars was also embraced by the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean. In a previous blog-commentary from December 22, 2015 when the movie Star Wars Episode 7 “The Force Awakens” was released, a parallel was shown between the standard Hero’s Journey dramatic path and what the Caribbean region needs:

Our heroes to return … to the homeland.

Here is an ENCORE of that previous Episode 7 blog-commentary on this occasion of Episode 8.

————-

Go Lean Commentary – The Caribbean is Looking For Heroes … to Return

In the Caribbean, we need a hero, we need lots of heroes …

… need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life
(Song by Bonnie Tyler 1984; see VIDEO & Lyrics at https://youtu.be/OBwS66EBUcY; see Appendix)

We must reform and transform our Caribbean society. We know that one person – a hero – can make a difference, and we need to encourage those contributions.

Heroes are not born, they are forged. According to noted Mythologist Joseph Campbell, hero candidates go through a consistent pattern of a journey to become bona-fide heroes.

Who is Joseph Campbell and why does his opinion matter? He is the inspiration behind the big hit movie franchise Star Wars. All things Star Wars are en vogue right now. According to IMDB.com, this movie which opened just days ago – Star Wars Episode 7 “The Force Awakens”; (see Appendix) – had the biggest US box office opening of any movie … ever. See the box office results here in the photo, retrieved December 22, 2015.

This is an amazing feat, considering that Joseph Campbell has been dead since 1987. But Star Wars creator, George Lucas drew his story-line from Joseph Campbell’s inspirations in the cataloging of the “Hero’s Journey” in his writings. See article here:

Title: Role Model Joseph Campbell
In 1949 Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) made a big splash in the field of mythology with his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. This book built on the pioneering work of German anthropologist Adolph Bastian (1826-1905), who first proposed the idea that myths from all over the world seem to be built from the same “elementary ideas.” Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) named these elementary ideas “archetypes,” which he believed to be the building blocks not only of the unconscious mind, but of a collective unconscious. In other words, Jung believed that everyone in the world is born with the same basic subconscious model of what a “hero” is, or a “mentor” or a “quest,” and that’s why people who don’t even speak the same language can enjoy the same stories.

Jung developed his idea of archetypes mostly as a way of finding meaning within the dreams and visions of the mentally ill: if a person believes they are being followed by a giant apple pie, it’s difficult to make sense of how to help them. But if the giant apple pie can be understood to represent that person’s shadow, the embodiment of all their fears, then the psychotherapist can help guide them through that fear, just as Yoda guided Luke on Dagoba. If you think of a person as a computer and our bodies as “hardware,” language and culture seem to be the “software.” Deeper still, and apparently common to all homo sapians, is a sort of built-in “operating system” which interprets the world by sorting people, places, things and experiences into archetypes.

Campbell’s contribution was to take this idea of archetypes and use it to map out the common underlying structure behind religion and myth. He proposed this idea in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, which provides examples from cultures throughout history and all over the world. Campbell eloquently demonstrates that all stories are expressions of the same story-pattern, which he named the “Hero’s Journey,” or the “monomyth.” This sounds like a simple idea, but it suggests an incredible ramification, which Campbell summed up with his adage “All religions are true, but none are literal.” That is, he concluded that all religions are really containers for the same essential truth, and the trick is to avoid mistaking the wrappings for the diamond.

[Star Wars Creator George] Lucas had already written two drafts of Star Wars when he rediscovered Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces in 1975 (having read it years before in college). This blueprint for “The Hero’s Journey” gave Lucas the focus he needed to draw his sprawling imaginary universe into a single story.

Note that the Wachowski Brothers’ wonderful film The Matrix is carefully built on the same blueprint:

Campbell

Star Wars

The Matrix

I: Departure

The call to adventure Princess Leia’s message “Follow the white rabbit”

Refusal of the call Must help with the harvest Neo won’t climb out window

Supernatural aid Obi-wan rescues Luke from sandpeople Trinity extracts the “bug” from Neo

Crossing the first threshold Escaping Tatooine Neo is taken out of the Matrix for the first time

The belly of the whale Trash compactor Torture room

II: Initiation

The road of trials Lightsaber practice Sparring with Morpheus

The meeting with the goddess Princess Leia (wears white, in earlier scripts was a “sister” of a mystic order) The Oracle

Temptation away from the true path¹ Luke is tempted by the Dark Side Cypher (the failed messiah) is tempted by the world of comfortable illusions

Atonement with the Father Darth and Luke reconcile Neo rescues and comes to agree (that he’s The One) with his father-figure, Morpheus

Apotheosis (becoming god-like) Luke becomes a Jedi Neo becomes The One

The ultimate boon Death Star destroyed Humanity’s salvation now within reach

III: Return

Refusal of the return “Luke, come on!” Luke wants to stay to avenge Obi-Wan Neo fights agent instead of running

The magic flight Millennium Falcon “Jacking in”

Rescue from without Han saves Luke from Darth Trinity saves Neo from agents

Crossing the return threshold Millennium Falcon destroys pursuing TIE fighters Neo fights Agent Smith

Master of the two worlds Victory ceremony Neo’s declares victory over machines in final phone call

Freedom to live Rebellion is victorious over Empire Humans are victorious over machines

Source: Fan Site for Obscure Star Wars Inspirations; retrieved December 20, 2015 from: http://www.moongadget.com/origins/myth.html

But one can argue, these are just movies, “make believe”; these are not real people nor real life. That would be a true statement of facts (there is no “Luke Skywalker” nor “Neo” as historical characters), but the principles of a “Hero’s Journey” is real, and present in real life. This is just another example of “life imitating art”. In a previous blog-commentary regarding Caribbean Diaspora member and Hollywood great, Sidney Poitier, it was declared that …

“Movies are an amazing business model. People give money to spend a couple of hours watching someone else’s creation and then leave the theater with nothing to show for the investment; except perhaps a different perspective”.

These movies do bring a different perspective. According to the foregoing, there are Three Acts to the “Hero’s Journey”:

I. Departure
II. Initiation
III. Return

The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean recognize the one person can make positive, heroic contributions to his community; and that this role must be forged in society. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU seeks to foster the genius qualifiers in Caribbean citizens. Not everyone can be heroes, but society must be structured to allow heroes to soar. Because …

… one man (or woman) can make a difference! Such a person can impact their community, country … and the whole world.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke; 1729 – 1797; an Irish statesman, member of British Parliament and supporter of the American Revolution.

The Caribbean has fostered the hero process, but according to the Three Acts established by Joseph Campbell, our heroes stopped at Act II, they do not “Return”.

They make their heroic contributions to other communities and not their homeland. The Caribbean, thusly “fattens frogs for snakes”. Consider the bad consequences of this reality, as in our brain drain among the college-educated population, which is up to a 70% rate within the entire region.

A quest of the Go Lean/CU roadmap is to lower the “Push and Pull” factors that causes so many Caribbean citizens to flee their beloved homeland. In addition, another quest is to incentivize the far-flung Diaspora to return to the Caribbean. Success in these quests will take a “Hero’s Journey”.

The villain in this real-life story is the poor performing Caribbean economy. So the prime directive of the Go Lean book is to elevate Caribbean society, and its societal engines … defined in these declarative statements, as follows:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant societal engines again foreign and domestic threats.
Improvement Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean book posits that one person, despite their field of endeavor, can make a difference in the Caribbean, and its impact on the world; that there are many opportunities where one advocate, one champion, one “hero” can elevate society. In this light, the book features 144 different advocacies, so there is inspiration for the “next hero” to emerge and excel right here at home in the Caribbean.

The roadmap specifically encourages the region to lean-in, to foster heroes and champions with these specific community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies:

Community Ethos – Forging Change	Page 20
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Whistleblower Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Dissuade Societal Abandonment	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Incentivize Repatriation	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Protect Repatriates with heightened Public Safety	Page 45
Anatomy of Advocacies – Examples of Individuals Who Made Impact	Page 122
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Leadership	Page 171
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood – Global Box Office – Imitating Life	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230

The Caribbean region wants a more optimized society.

This book posits that “bad actors” – even villains: the “Dark Side of the Force” – will emerge to exploit inefficient economic, security and governing models. Early in the book, the pressing need to streamline protections – for citizens and institutions – was pronounced in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12), with these opening statements:

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign.

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.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

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, including … forms of terrorism, 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.

The Go Lean book explicitly acknowledges that optimizing society is not easy; it requires strenuous, heroic efforts; heavy-lifting. That is the quest of the CU/Go Lean roadmap. Other subjects related to heroic efforts of role models have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5964	Movie Review: ‘Tomorrowland’ – ‘Feed the right wolf’ in Society
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5648	Music Role Model Taylor Swift withholds Album from Apple Music
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5506	Role Model: Edward Snowden – One Person Making a Difference
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3490	How One Entrepreneur Can Rally a Whole Community
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2726	Caribbean Role Model – Oscar De La Renta – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1731	Role Model Warren Buffet – An Ode to Omaha
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1596	Book Review: ‘Prosper Where You Are Planted’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Role Model Bob Marley: The Legend Lives On!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=209	Role Model: Advocate Kevin Connolly

The Go Lean roadmap posits that the CU should foster the genius potential in Caribbean citizens and incubate their potential to maximum production. We should let “heroes be heroes” in their fields of endeavor here at home, no matter how diverse. Many Caribbean Diaspora has done this exactly, abroad in benefiting other communities, while their homelands languish.

They have departed – Act I.
They have initiated as heroes – Act II.
But, they have NOT returned – no Act III.

Enough already!

The roadmap pronounces that we need the participation of many advocates on many different paths for progress. By facilitating, fostering and furthering these initiative, we can have our heroes return to be heroic at home. Only then, will the Caribbean truly become a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for the roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

————

Appendix VIDEO – Bonnie Tyler – I Need a Hero (Lyrics) – https://youtu.be/OBwS66EBUcY

————

Appendix VIDEO – Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer (Official) – https://youtu.be/sGbxmsDFVnE

Published on Oct 19, 2015 – Watch the official trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, [opened] in theaters December 18, 2015.

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Failure to Launch – Governance: Assembling the Region’s Organizations

Posted on December 17, 2017 in Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

“Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” – Theodore Roosevelt, 26^th US President

This is such illustrative language: Imagining a “stick”. It denotes the idea of negotiating peacefully, simultaneously threatening with the “big stick”, or the strength of the military. Now there is another imagery of building material and governing efficiency:

Iron, or “Big Iron” to be exact. Iron is also used to refer to something sturdy, strong and tough. But since the ancient Western Days – see Appendix VIDEO below – the term is said to be a slang, referring to a handgun. This Big Iron term has now come into fashion to apply to very large, expensive and extremely fast computers, or more so effective computer server farms that have resilient steel stands. – Technopedia. See full reference in Appendix below.

There is the need to transform the societal engines – economics, security and governance – of the Caribbean. The approach of “speaking softly and carrying a Big Stick” would be effective in forcing compliance among the regional stakeholders. The President Roosevelt application – in the foregoing photo – was clearly addressing security dynamics, but the same approach can apply to the other societal engines:

Economics – Imagine a big corporate entity with the need for a large work force, the decision-making of where to locate a plant would cause a lot of bidding among different communities. That company would be wielding a Big Stick.
Governance – There is also an application in governance; having a Big Stick or Big Iron can force compliance among the governing entities. Imagine large computer systems for e-Government applications …

This consideration is in harmony with the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for change in the region, affecting the economics, security and governing engines. It presents new measures and new empowerments as it introduces the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) for the 30 Caribbean member-states to benefit from a super-national federal government with a lot of integrated solutions. This commentary is 4th of 4 parts, completing the series on the Caribbean’s Failure to Launch integrated solutions to elevate the societal engines in the region. The full series is catalogued as follows:

Failure to Launch – Past Failures for Integration
Failure to Launch – Economics: The Quest for a Single Currency
Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
Failure to Launch – Governance: Assembling the Regional Alphabet Organizations

There are many Alphabet Organizations – listed here and from Page 256 of the Go Lean book – that transcend services to one Caribbean country after another. The Go Lean roadmap (book and accompanying blog-commentaries) calls for assembling them under the same government umbrella – the Trade Federation – and process their operations on the CU e-government systems, the CU‘s Big Iron.

Page 96: This roadmap constitutes the assessment required to forge change in the region. Upon understanding the needs of the Caribbean people and the current organization structures available, this roadmap pursues an assembly of these different institutions and then to supplement them with the creation of new super-national organizations. This approach allows the CU to “stand on the shoulders” of previous efforts and then reach greater heights.

This initial phase entails incorporating all the existing regional organizations (ACS and CariCom) into the umbrella organizations of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. These organizations include, (but are not limited to) the identified Alphabet Organization this this photo here:

The foregoing disclosed the quest to “stand on the shoulders” of previous efforts; this includes efforts to integrate. This is what the Go Lean book presents, a workable roadmap to integrate efforts from the region and leverage the economies-of-scale of the 30 member-states so as to effect change in all societal engines, and to do so using as much technology as possible. In fact, the roadmap features Launching integrated solutions following these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & 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 CU seeks to “speak softly and carry a Big Iron” by providing the e-Government processing for all of these Alphabet Organizations. There are some basics to this plan to elevate Caribbean society:

Leverage …
Economies-of-scale …
Integration …

These are important consideration for efficient and effective governance; and since in each Caribbean member-state, the government there is the largest employer, better efficiencies – as in computer systems – can improve Caribbean governance and bring real change to society.

With Internet and Communications Technologies, it is easy to link governmental systems from one country to another. (Big companies – i.e. airlines reservation systems – do this all the time).

Why have we fail to even consider this type of integration for our governmental entities in the past?
Too expensive?
So why have we Failed to Launch shared computer systems?

This Failure to Launch integrated e-Government systems across a shared network is now inexcusable!

The subject of e-Government has been a consistent subject for this movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free. In a previous commentary, the role and functionality of this Big Iron (unstated) was related:

Among the strategies, tactics and implementations in the Go Lean roadmap, is the deployment of e-Government services, systems and solutions. The Go Lean book explains how this implementation can streamline operations – lean, no heavy bureaucracy – for every level of government: municipal, state and the CU federal level. A type of computing implementation can leverage productivity against a very small level of staffing.

See how a lean structure is portrayed in the book (Page 51):

A lot of office automation and data processing can be provided in-house for member-state governments by [the CU] simply installing / supporting computer mainframe/midrange systems, servers, and client workstations; plus supplementing infrastructural needs like power and mobile communications. The CU’s delivery of ICT [(Internet & Communications Technologies)] systems, e-Government, contact center and in-source services (i.e. property tax systems [and “www.myCaribbean.gov”]) can put the burden on systems continuity at the federal level and not the member-states. (This is the model of Canada with the federal delivery of provincial systems and services – some Provincial / Territorial presence / governance is completely “virtual”).

The Go Lean book presents the plan to deploy many e-Government provisions. There must therefore be an advanced structure of computer systems for Data Processing. This means Data Centers, our Big Iron for the Caribbean. 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. One advocacy is optimizing the deployment of 6 strategically-located Data Centers. Consider some specific details, excerpts and headlines from the book on Page 106 entitled:

10 Trends in Implementing Data Centers

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market The CU treaty unifies the Caribbean region into one single market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, thereby empowering the economic engines in and on behalf of the region. The CU embraces the cutting, “bleeding” edge concepts, systems and methodologies for data centers and computer server farms, as in high density computing, facilitating the maximum computing power with the least amount of space and power. The prerequisite for any serious data center deployment is power…stable, reliable electricity, with primary, secondary and tertiary solutions. The CU roadmap calls for deployment of a regional power grid, with above ground, underground & underwater cabling. Though data centers must launch now, power costs will be expected to decline with the grid. …
2	Fiber-Optics / Pipeline Optical fibers are widely used in fiber-optic communications, which permits transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data rates) than other forms of communication. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss and are also immune to electromagnetic interference. The transparent fiber are made of high quality extruded glass, silica or plastic. The CU as a new Federation can apply a leap-frog approach to implement communication networks without having to contend with older methods or investments. Further the CU will embrace the strategy of installing elaborate pipelines thru out the region, enabling fiber-optics to traverse the network.
3	IP Convergence Internet Protocol (IP) is now ubiquitous for data, voice, and video communications – they all operate on the same type of fiber. This indicates that data centers also function as telecom hubs – central switching offices are now bygones.
4	Cloud Computing The CU will embrace cloud computing for many operational systems, thereby requiring optimal continuous processing. The roadmap calls for citizens to interact with their federal government via web portals, kiosks or phone contact centers.
5	High Availability (HA)
6	Colocation Data Centers A colocation center (colo, or coloc) is a type of data center where equipment space and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers. Colocation facilities provide space, power, cooling, and physical security for the server, storage, and networking equipment of other firms—and connect them to a variety of telecommunications and network service providers—with a minimum of cost and complexity. Colocation has become a popular option for companies as it allows the company to focus its IT staff on the actual work being done, instead of the logistical. Significant benefits of scale (large power and mechanical systems) result in large colocation facilities, typically 50,000 to 100,000 square feet. The CU will assume a role of coloc landlord for member-states, municipalities and NGO’s for their data center needs.
7	[Limestone] Caves as Data Centers
8	Storage Solutions – No need for humans
9	Security Issues Modern data centers require minimal human interaction, therefore physical security tend to be very restrictive. In some firms, even the CEO is not allowed access. The CU will implement biometric systems like fingerprints and iris scanning.
10	Unified Command & Control The data center may be void of humans, but there is still the need for many professional analysis, programmers and engineers. These are normally stationed in command centers to facilitate monitoring and cyber-security functions.

The technology to leverage the governmental administrations of the Caribbean will be available Step One / Day One of the Go Lean roadmap. Though there would be some need for customization and specialty programming. This development effort can be leveraged across the entire region.

Under the Go Lean plan, the expressions of the Caribbean Big Iron would be manifested by systems in government offices, self-serve kiosks, various websites (i.e. www.myCaribbean.gov), Social Media channels and smart phone applications.

These types of e-Government manifestations have been discussed in previous blog-commentaries; consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13524	The Future Focus of e-Government Portals
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13466	The Future Focus of e-Learning in the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11453	Location Matters, Even in a Virtual World
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8823	Lessons from China – WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7991	Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6341	e-Commerce Strategies for Tourism Stewardship
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5435	China Internet Policing – Model for Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=888	How to Re-invent Government in a Digital Image – Book Review
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=459	Plan to Integrate CXC into the CU Trade Federation for e-Learning

Let’s do this Big Iron – deploying advanced computer systems – to facilitate the e-Governmental transformation of our CU Federal government agencies – the Alphabet Orgaanizations, member-state agencies and even Non-Government Organizations!

We can no longer Fail to Launch …

We can “speak softly and carry a Big Iron“.

Our governing efficiencies depend on it.

Also, our economic and security engines can also benefit.

These efficiencies can help to reform and transform Caribbean governments and society in general. We urge all stakeholders to lean-in to this CU/Go Lean roadmap to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

———–

Appendix – Big Iron

Definition – What does Big Iron mean?

Big iron is a slang word commonly used to describe a very large, expensive and extremely fast computer. It is often used to refer to oversized computers such as Cray’s supercomputer or IBM’s mainframe.

The term big iron originated in the 1970s, when smaller computers known as minicomputers were introduced. To describe larger computers compared to the small minicomputers, the term big iron was coined by users and the industry.

Big iron computers are primarily used by large companies to process massive amounts of data such as bank transactions. They are designed with considerable internal memory, a high aptitude for external storage, top-quality internal engineering, superior technical support, fast throughput input/output and reliability.

Techopedia explains Big Iron

The term is said to be a derivative of the term “iron”; when used as slang, this term refers to a handgun. Iron is also used to refer to something sturdy, strong and tough. The term big iron is frequently applied to highly effective computer ranches and servers that have resilient steel stands.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the market for mainframes, or big iron, was mainly through IBM and companies like General Electric, RCA Corp., Honeywell International Inc., Burroughs Corporation, Control Data Corp., NCR Corp. and UNIVAC. Later servers based on the microcomputer design, or “dumb terminals”, were developed to cut costs and create greater availability for users. The dumb terminal was eventually replaced by the personal computer (PC). Subsequently, big iron was restricted to mostly government and financial institutions.

Source: Retrieved December 17, 2017 from Technopedia: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/2157/big-iron

———–

VIDEO – Big Iron- Marty Robbins – https://youtu.be/999RqGZatPs

Published on Mar 28, 2011

All rights belong to their respective owners

Lyrics:

To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day
Hardly spoke to folks around him, didn’t have too much to say,
No one dared to ask his business, no one dared to make a slip
The stranger there among them had a big iron on his hip,
Big iron on his hip …

Lyrics retrieved December 17, 2017 from: https://genius.com/Marty-robbins-big-iron-lyrics

Category: Music
License: Standard YouTube License
Music: “Big Iron” by Marty Robbins Listen ad-free with YouTube Red

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Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams

Posted on December 15, 2017 in Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

There is a vision of a shield protecting the people and property of the Caribbean region. Is that a vision of something real, or is it a mirage?

The Caribbean region has an eclectic history when it comes to security, think the bad actors of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Yet, those Pirates have since all been extinguished, thanks to a multilateral effort among European (and now American) imperial powers. Credit goes to the British, French and the Dutch military/naval powers of the past.

That was a BIG accomplishment in terms of regional security. Can we get that again? Can these championing national powers – and their descendants – come together and provide a modern day shield so as to project Caribbean homeland security anew?

This has been a goal for Caribbean stewards for a long time, but to no avail, there has been a Failure to Launch.

The historicity of military conflicts (think: World War I and World War II) in the 20^th Century has resulted in the emergence of just one Super Power, the United States of America, providing security assurances for the Western Hemisphere. The foregoing vision therefore is one of an American shield; this country boasts that they are keeping us safe in the Caribbean.

The perception of security – much like the perception of beauty – is in the eye of the beholder.

My job is to keep the ‘pink elephants‘ away.

Do you see any pink elephants? Well then, I am doing my job!

This seems to describe the efforts of the American hegemony with their formal efforts for Caribbean Basin security – see ‘Pax Americana’ in Appendix A below. Their job is just to keep the pink elephants away:

Weapons of Mass Destruction – WMD’s – i.e. nuclear, chemical, biological, etc.
Terrorism

Truthfully, we do not have the manifestation of these threats in the Caribbean region. But do we feel safe?

No!

The American-sponsored Caribbean Basin Security pact is only a Dream for us in the Caribbean; there is no feeling of security in this basin! Despite all the promise of a strong defense, we have serious deficiencies in our peace-and-security offerings … due to:

Narco-Terrorism
Organized Crime / Gang Activity
Human Trafficking
Border Intrusions
Environmental Protection
Disaster Response

This theme was also posited in a previous blog-commentary from 2015 regarding American homeland security solutions for the Caribbean region. While they use the term Caribbean Basin as a political catalogue, for us this is more than politics, this is home for 42 million people! That blog stated:

The United States of America is proud of its security commitment to their Caribbean neighbors, but the amount they devote is such a piddling – they prioritize 0.1968% of the total security budget towards the region – that the Caribbean should not be lulled into complacency. We need our own security solutions!

The start of the Troop Surge in 2007; to quell the insurgency.

The US is the only remaining super power; it devotes massive amounts of finances to its [Department of Defense ($526.6 billion for 2014) and Homeland Security ($59.9 billion)], far exceeding all other countries. The US also asserts that it will provide frontline protection for its neighboring countries, in this case the Caribbean Basin. Just how do we quantify that commitment? Budget percentage.

The US has committed $263 million in funding since 2010; … that’s 5 years combined. For easy arithmetic, divide that figure by 5 to yield $52.6 million a year in commitment. $52.6 million [over $526.6 billion plus $59.9 billion] … is just a “drop in the bucket”; [less that 2/10 of 1 percent].

Unfortunately, Caribbean people do not feel as if their homeland is secured. Among the “push and pull” reasons why people have fled away from the region, personal security has been listed as a high rationale. As communicated, our concern for homeland security is not WMD’s or terrorism – as is the case for our American neighbors – but rather it is the risks and threats of crime and the dread of emergencies.

Our societal abandonment rate is atrocious – one report stated that the professional classes have fled at a 70 percent rate, and recent hurricanes have resulted in more Failed-States and Ghost Towns. Remediation and mitigation for these concerns should be the primary focus of any security initiative for the Caribbean homeland.

This consideration is in harmony with the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for change in the region, affecting the economics, security and governing engines. It presents new measures and new empowerments as it introduces the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and an aligning Status of Forces Agreement for the 30 Caribbean member-states to benefit from an integrated security pact. This commentary is the 3rd of 4 parts in a series on the Caribbean’s Failure to Launch integrated solutions to elevate the region’s societal engines. The full series is catalogued as follows:

Failure to Launch – Past Failures for Integration
Failure to Launch – Economics: Caribbean Central Bank and the Quest for a Single Currency
Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
Failure to Launch – Governance: Assembling the Regional Alphabet Organizations

Where are the European Masters – British, French and the Dutch – now for contributing to the security of the Caribbean region?

British

Could the solution for Caribbean security needs be fulfilled by the British, who is a stakeholder in this region with 6 Overseas Territories and 12 members of the British Commonwealth?

Frankly, security needs are glaring for current and former UK Territories. Under this Commonwealth scheme, the UK is supposed to be “front and center” in a “mutual defence” for the Anglophone Caribbean’s security threats. But alas, the UK is not doing enough for the security of their Caribbean responsibilities – this is the assessment of British stakeholders themselves. In fact, the UK itself now depends on interdependence with others – North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO – to fulfill their own security needs.

Britain itself is now just one part of the NATO military alliance in which the Commonwealth had no role apart from Canada. The ANZUS treaty of 1955 linked Australia, New Zealand, and the United States in a defensive alliance, with Britain and the Commonwealth left out. – Wikipedia

This is all that remains of the once-great British military in the Caribbean region, notwithstanding visiting naval vessels:

Location	Details
Belize	British Army Training and Support Unit Belize: Used primarily for jungle warfare training, with access to 5,000 sq mi of jungle terrain. Although British facilities were mothballed in the 2010 SDSR, BATSUB is still seeing increased usage.
Bermuda	The Royal Bermuda Regiment : Formed in 1965. Official website: www.bermudaregiment.bm
Montserrat	Royal Montserrat Defence Force: Raised in 1899.

French

Could the solution for the Caribbean security needs be fulfilled by France, who is a stakeholder in this region with 2 Departments (governmental sub-sets like provinces) – Guadeloupe and Martinique – and 2 Overseas Territories – St Barthélemy and half of St. Martin? They do possess a military presence in the region, with these bases:

Territory	Garrison	No. of personnel
French Guiana	Les forces armées en Guyane (FAG)	2,100
Martinique	Les forces armées aux Antilles (FAA)	1,000

Dutch

Could the solution for the Caribbean security needs be fulfilled by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, who is a stakeholder in this region with 3 Constituent nations within the Kingdom – Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten – and 3 Overseas Territories – Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius? They too possess a military presence in the region:

The Netherlands is responsible for the implementation of the Defence tasks of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Caribbean.

Military tasks in the Caribbean

Over 500 armed forces personnel in the Caribbean are tasked with:

protecting the borders of the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands;
supporting civil authorities;
maintaining the (inter)national rule of law in the context of, for example:
1. the international drug trade. Because of the location of its islands, the Caribbean is vulnerable to drug trafficking by sea. The navy is part of Joint Inter Agency Task Force South, an international organisation that conducts operations to counter drug trafficking.
2. military assistance. The navy’s military units provide humanitarian assistance or maintain public order following disasters or accidents caused by the passage of hurricanes, for example. Each year, the navy is on standby from 1 June to 1 December to perform these tasks.
3. illegal fishing and environmental offences. The navy supports the Dutch Caribbean Coastguard in conducting surveillance and taking action against illegal fishing and environmental offences. The navy also assists in search and rescue missions in Caribbean

Source: Retrieved December 13, 2017 from: https://english.defensie.nl/topics/caribbean/defence-tasks

The Dutch security solution for the Caribbean is organized under the Royal Marechaussee, a military Police with broad homeland security functionalities. See more of this perfect role model – this is our dream – for Caribbean success in this VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Marechaussee in the Caribbean – https://youtu.be/m7ea2ZmV4oE

Published on Dec 14, 2017 – This VIDEO is the property of the Defense Ministry of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; all Rights Reserved to this property owner. Retrieved from https://english.defensie.nl/topics/caribbean/defence-tasks

Category: Nonprofits & Activism

License: Standard YouTube License

American

Could the solution for the Caribbean security needs be fulfilled entirely by American defense apparatus? Yes, indeed; if this was their priority.

It is not!

They should have a motivation; they are a stakeholder in this region with 2 sovereign territories (Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands). Plus, they have signed treaties with neighboring countries, as in the Caribbean Basin treaty and NATO accords identified earlier. This is demonstrative of the militaristic society the US has become. They are the largest operators of military bases abroad, with 38 “named bases” having active-duty, national guard, reserve, or civilian personnel (as of September 30, 2014). According to sources, the American military Caribbean footprint include:

Bahamas: Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Detachment AUTEC

Cuba: Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

Puerto Rico: There are only two remaining military installations in Puerto Rico: the U.S. Army’s small Ft. Buchanan (supporting local veterans and reserve units) and the PRANG (Puerto Rico Air National Guard) Muñiz Air Base (the C-130 Fleet).

The American security efforts are coordinated with laser-focused precision by professionals in their Southern Command, based in Greater Miami; see reference in Appendix B below.

The Americans “talk the talk, but do not walk the walk”. So the vision of an American shield protecting the Caribbean region is just a dream. We need a realistic solution.

Way Forward

American, British, French, Dutch … not enough! Let’s try a reboot, something different: all of these efforts … together.

As related in a previous Go Lean commentary …

… the book Go Lean…Caribbean prescribes a detailed, complex plan for effecting change in our society. The goal is to confederate under a unified entity made up of the region’s stakeholders to empower the economics and optimize Homeland Security. But Homeland Security for the Caribbean has a different meaning than for our North American or European counterparts. Though we too must be on defense against military intrusions like terrorism & piracy, we mostly have to contend with threats that may imperil the region’s economic engines, like our tourism products. This includes concerns like narco-terrorism and enterprise corruption, plus natural and man-made disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, oil/chemical spills, etc..

So the Go Lean security goal is mostly for public safety!

We do not have the public safety assurances that would be expected of an advanced democracy. The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that the region must therefore prepare its own security apparatus for its own security needs. So the request is that all Caribbean member-states confederate to execute a limited scope on their sovereign territories. This ideal solution is for an integrated, unified regional entity – a confederation. This solution is conceivable, believable and achievable for the Caribbean. What we need is a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to be embedded in the treaty for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation among the 30 member-states. Under international law, this approach allows for a military presence in a homeland without the view of an occupation force – SOFA allows for mutual consent between both the host and engaging powers. There after allowing us to:

Deploy our own Caribbean Navy / Coast Guard.
Deploy our own Marine Expeditionary (Ground) Forces.
Establish Military / Federal Police / Justice agencies
Launch our own Intelligence Gathering and Analysis
Foster a Prison Industrial Complex
Provide a better Disaster Planning and Response agency – to mitigate hurricanes, earthquakes, oil/chemical spills, etc.

This security goal is detailed in the Go Lean book as it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic CU Trade Federation. The roadmap ensures that security dynamics of the region are inextricably linked with the economics and governing engines of the region. Therefore the Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The book contends that bad actors will always emerge just as a result of economic successes in the region. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.

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, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, 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.

The Caribbean appointing “new guards”, or a security pact to ensure public safety is not so new an endeavor. Different strategies have been deployed in the past, but have Failed to Launch a successful solution. Consider these:

West Indies Regiment within the West Indies Federation
In the previous submission of this blog series – Part 1 of 4 – the history of the failed West Indies Federation (1958 to 1962) was detailed. This effort only related to the Anglophone countries (United Kingdom) and among its many initiatives was the West Indies Regiment. The Go Lean book provided more details (Page 302):This infantry unit of the British Army recruited from and normally stationed in the British colonies of the Caribbean between 1795 and 1927. Throughout its history, the regiment was involved in a number of campaigns in the West Indies and Africa, and also took part in the First World War, where it served in the Middle East and East Africa. In 1958 the regiment was revived with the West Indies Federation with the establishment of three battalions; however it was disbanded in 1962 when its personnel were used to establish other units in Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago.Though the West Indies Federation was aborted, the need for security among the overseas territories of the United Kingdom remains.

Regional Security System (RSS)
There is currently a security pact; shared by 5 Eastern Caribbean member-states that was first consummated in 1982 – this was discussed in full depth in a previous commentary regarding the Regional Security System:This RSS is an international agreement for the defence and security of the eastern Caribbean region; [it] was created in 1982 to counter threats to the stability of the region in the late 1970s and early 1980s. On 29 October four members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States—namely, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines—signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Barbados to provide for “mutual assistance on request”. The signatories agreed to prepare contingency plans and assist one another, on request, in national emergencies, prevention of smuggling, search and rescue, immigration control, fishery protection, customs and excise control, maritime policing duties, protection of off-shore installations, pollution control, national and other disasters and threats to national security.^[1] Saint Kitts and Nevis joined following independence in 1983, and Grenada followed two years later.

Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA)
The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency was established in 1991 as CDERA (Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency) with primary responsibility for the coordination of emergency response and relief efforts to Participating States that require such assistance. It transitioned to CDEMA in 2009 to fully embrace the principles and practice of Comprehensive Disaster Management (CDM).(CDM) is an integrated and proactive approach to disaster management and seeks to reduce the risk and loss associated with natural and technological hazards and the effects of climate change to enhance regional sustainable development.This CDEMA agency was detailed in a previous commentary lamenting the fact that the region is often faced with a “Clear and Present Danger”. Though there is a regional agency to attempt to prepare and respond, it is far inadequate. For example, the accompanying Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility associated with CDEMA – also detailed in a previous blog – only pays out “pennies on the dollar” that the member-states need to re-pair-recover-rebuild after a natural disaster in the region.

All of these prior instances of regional integration have been deficient to meeting the needs of Caribbean stakeholders. Though they have made a good faith effort, they have Failed to Launch adequate solutions to satisfy any Social Contract – the implication that citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights.

The Go Lean roadmap however calls for a permanent professional security forces that complements and supplement existing Police and Defense Forces; there will be opportunity for Defense Force assimilation later in the Go Lean roadmap. The CU Trade Federation will lead, fund and facilitate the security forces, encapsulating (full-time or part-time) all the existing armed forces in the region. This CU Homeland Security Force would get its legal authorization from the Status of Forces Agreement vested with the ascension of the CU treaty.

This SOFA is “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap. The Go Lean book provides a full 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-security engines of Caribbean society. There is a lot of consideration in the book for optimizing the currency and monetary eco-systems.

Other subjects related to security and governing empowerments for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentary, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13476	Plan for ‘Policing the Police’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12466	State of the Union: Unstable ‘Volcano States’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12400	Accede the Caribbean Arrest Treaty
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11905	Want Better Security? ’Must Love Dogs’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10566	Funding the Caribbean Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7345	ISIS reaches the Caribbean Region
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7119	Security Role Model for the Caribbean: African Standby Force
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6247	Tragic images show refugee crisis at a tipping point in Europe
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1531	A Lesson in History: 100 Years Ago – World War I
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1487	Here come the Drones … and the Concerns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1076	Trinidad Muslims travel to Venezuela for jihadist training
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=789	America’s War on the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=535	Remembering and learning from Boston
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392	Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341	US slams Caribbean human rights practices
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273	10 Things We Want from the US and 10 Things We Don’t Want – Pax Americana

Underlying to the prime directive of elevating the economics, security and governing engines of the Caribbean, is the desire to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work and play.

There will always be “bad actors” to disrupt the peace of society. We need to be ready for them.
There will always be natural disasters. We must be ready for them too.
Bad things will happen to good people!

We must no longer Fail to Launch … workable security solutions. We know exactly what we want to be and do in the Caribbean; we want to deploy a regional-federal security force to ensure homeland protections, much like the Dutch Marechaussee – see the above VIDEO – we only want it for the full region. All Caribbean stakeholders are therefore urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. 🙂

Download the free e-book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

———-

Appendix A – The Bottom Line on Pax Americana

Pax Americana refers to the historical concept of the relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later the Western world resulting from the preponderance of power of the military establishment of the USA. The term is primarily used in its modern connotations to refer to the peace established after the end of World War II in 1945. Since then, it has come to indicate the military and economic position of the United States in relation to other nations. The USA is the only remaining super power and as such they exert a vigorous defense for their version of capitalistic democracy in the region. The focus on the Western Hemisphere is still guided by the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North/South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, requiring US intervention. Pax Americana is the underlying policy that led to escalations (with Russia) during the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis. – Go Lean book Page 180.

———-

Appendix B – United States Southern Command
The United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), located in Doral, Florida in Greater Miami, is one of nine Unified Combatant Commands (CCMDs) in the United States Department of Defense. It is responsible for providing contingency planning, operations, and security cooperation for Central and South America, the Caribbean (except US commonwealths, territories, and possessions), their territorial waters, and for the force protection of US military resources at these locations. USSOUTHCOM is also responsible for ensuring the defense of the Panama Canal and the canal area. As explained below, USSOUTHCOM has been under scrutiny due to several human rights and rule of law controversies in which it has been embroiled for nearly a decade.

Under the leadership of a four-star Commander, USSOUTHCOM is organized into a headquarters with six main directorates, component commands and military groups that represent SOUTHCOM in the region. The current commander is Admiral Kurt W. Tidd, USN.

USSOUTHCOM is a joint command^[1] of more than 1,201 military and civilian personnel representing the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and several other federal agencies. Civilians working at USSOUTHCOM are, for the most part, civilian employees of the Army, as the Army is USSOUTHCOM’s Combatant Command Support Agent. The Services provide USSOUTHCOM with component commands which, along with their Joint Special Operations component, two Joint Task Forces, one Joint Interagency Task Force, and Security Cooperation Offices, perform USSOUTHCOM missions and security cooperation activities. USSOUTHCOM exercises its authority through the commanders of its components, Joint Task Forces/Joint Interagency Task Force, and Security Cooperation Organizations.

Source: Retrieved December 14, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Southern_Command

———-

Appendix C – The U.S. Military’s Presence in the Greater Caribbean Basin: More a Matter of Trade Strategy and Ideology than Drugs

Washington’s initiative to have access to at least seven Colombian military facilities …

… would [help the] fulfillment of U.S. policy goals in the region. Two of the facilities soon to be available to the U.S. are located in the Caribbean region – the military port in Cartagena and the air base in Malambo – and will serve the needs of the U.S. Navy.

The new Caribbean coast facilities will join an array of existing U.S. military establishments in the region dating back to 1903. Up to now, the official raison d’etre for a U.S. presence in the Caribbean was to combat drug trafficking. However, the proliferation of security threats, in particular developments possibly against the interests of Chávez’s Venezuela, has led some to argue that no matter how much Washington’s officials deny it, an unspoken reason for the U.S. deployment to Colombia is to keep Chavez under check. With the Washington-Bogotá decision, it is necessary to discuss the relationship between masking antinarcotics efforts as a cover for a variety of U.S. security concerns and aspirations throughout Latin America, especially in the coming trade war over commodities.

Read the full story … posted September 23, 2009; retrieved December 14, 2017 from: http://www.coha.org/the-u-s-militarys-presence-in-the-greater-caribbean-basin-more-a-matter-of-trade-strategy-and-ideology-than-drugs/

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Failure to Launch – Economics: The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’

Posted on December 11, 2017 in Economics, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Money is more important in society than people are willing to accept. Though some critics say that love, family, faith, country and other principles are more important. But an obscure Murphy’s Law states (and is quoted in the book Go Lean…Caribbean at Page 32) this ironic truth:

“When people claim that it’s the principle, and not the money, chances are, it’s the money”.

There are indeed more important things in life than money, but somehow all these things can be bought/sold … for money. The strategy in this Go Lean book is to optimize money issues: consolidate monetary reserves for the region into a Single Currency, the Caribbean Dollar (C$), managed by the technocratic Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). The C$ will be based on a mixed-basket of foreign reserves (US dollars, Euros, British pounds & Yens).

This is a simple but effective plan – a best practice: introduce the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) and Caribbean Dollar as a Single Currency for the region’s 30 member-states.

Huge benefits abound! And so this economic initiative is important for Caribbean elevation. The rationale is that this strategy “enables economies to be more resilient to exogenous shocks”.

exogenous shocks – In economics, a shock is an unexpected or unpredictable event that affects an economy, either positively or negatively. Technically, it refers to an unpredictable change in exogenous factors — that is, factors unexplained by economics — which may influence endogenous economic variables. – Wikipedia.

This benefit is so obvious that others have thought of this before …

Yet there has consistently been a Failure to Launch this economic initiative; or to do so successfully. Consider the historicity of the CariCom Multilateral Clearing Facility (CMCF) in Appendix A below – a normal functionality of regional Central Banks.

Currently, the Caribbean has no regional Central Bank, so safety-net, no shock absorption, and no integration. This is the quest of the book Go Lean…Caribbean; it urges the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). The book serves as a roadmap for this goal, with turn-by-turn directions to integrate the 30 member-states of the region and forge an $800 Billion economy.

We have the great models of the United States and Europe to consider how a Single Currency can positively impact a consolidated regional economy; see VIDEOs in the Appendices below. We do not have to invent innovative solutions on our own; we can simply model the best-practices of these other communities. This is the familiar advocacy for the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. In a previous blog-commentary from May 10, 2014 the merits of Single Market and Single Currency economic integrations were related as follows:

Europe has the safety net of the economies-of-scale of 508 million people and a GDP of $15 Trillion in 28 member-states in the EU; (the Eurozone subset is 18 states, 333 million people and $13.1 Trillion GDP). The US has 50 states and 320 million people. Shocks and dips can therefore be absorbed and leveraged across the entire region .The EU is still the #1 economy in the world; the US is #2. – [See related VIDEO here: https://youtu.be/vRzFAvgBhU0.]

The Go Lean roadmap signals change for the region. It introduces new measures, new opportunities and new recoveries. Exogenous shocks are a reality. Economies will rise and fall; the recovery is key. Prices will inflate and deflate; there are very effective measures – at the regional level – for managing all these indices. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the establishment of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), and the allied Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) to manage the monetary-currency affairs of this region. The book describes the breath-and-width of the CCB and the Caribbean Dollar Single Currency.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean also detailed previous (inadequate) attempts to integrate Caribbean currencies …

… this commentary is the 2nd of 4 parts in a series on the Caribbean’s Failure to Launch solutions to elevate the region’s societal engines. The full series is catalogued as follows:

Failure to Launch – Past Failures for Integration
Failure to Launch – Economics: Caribbean Central Banks and the Quest for a Single Currency
Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
Failure to Launch – Governance: Assembling the Regional Alphabet Organizations

In the previous submission – Part 1 of 4 – the history of the failed West Indies Federation was detailed. This effort only related to the Anglophone countries but among its many initiatives was the plan to introduce a consolidated currency. This excerpt is derived from the Go Lean book’s Anecdote on Caribbean currencies relating English-speaking and other language groups:

Anecdote # 16 – Caribbean Currencies (Page 149)

Anglophone

…

In 1946, a West Indian Currency Conference saw Barbados, British Guiana, the Leeward Islands, Trinidad & Tobago and the Windward Islands agree to establish a unified decimal currency system based on a new West Indian dollar to replace the current arrangement of having three different Boards of Commissioners of Currency (for Barbados, British Guiana and Trinidad) manage monetary issues in the Eastern Caribbean. In 1949, the British government formalized the dollar system of accounts in British Guiana and the Eastern Caribbean territories by introducing the British West Indies dollar (BWI$) at the already existing conversion rate of $4.80 per pound sterling (or $1 = 4 shillings 2 pence). It was one of the many experimental political and economic ventures tested by the British government to form a uniform system within their British West Indies territories. The symbol “BWI$” was frequently used and the currency was known verbally as the “Beewee” (slang for British West Indies) dollar. Shortly thereafter in 1950, the British Caribbean Currency Board (BCCB) was set up in Trinidad with the sole right to issue notes and coins of the new unified currency and given the mandate of keeping full foreign exchange cover to ensure convertibility at $4.80 per pound sterling. In 1951, the British Virgin Islands joined the arrangement, but this led to discontent because that territory was more naturally drawn to the currency of the neighboring US Virgin Islands. In 1961, the British Virgin Islands withdrew from the arrangement and adopted the US dollar.

Until 1955, the BWI$ existed only as banknotes in conjunction with sterling fractional coinage. Decimal coins replaced the sterling coins in 1955. These decimal coins were denominated in cents, with each cent being worth one halfpenny in sterling.

In 1958, the West Indies Federation was established and the BWI$ was its currency. However, although Jamaica (including the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands) was part of the West Indies Federation, it retained the Jamaican pound, despite adopting the BWI$ as legal tender from 1954. Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands were already long established users of the sterling accounts system of pounds, shillings, and pence.

In 1964 Jamaica ended their legal tender status of the BWI$ and Trinidad & Tobago withdrew from the currency union (adopting “dollars” representing their national currency: Jamaican and T&T Dollar – see Appendix ZB [on Page 316]). This forced the movement of the headquarters of the BCCB to Barbados and soon the “BWI$” dollar lost its regional support.

In 1965, the BWI dollar of the now defunct West Indies Federation was replaced at par by the East Caribbean dollar and the BCCB was replaced by the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority or ECCA. Guyana withdrew from the currency union in 1966. Grenada rejoined the common currency arrangement in 1968 having utilized the Trinidad & Tobago dollar from 1964. Barbados withdrew from the currency union in 1972, following which the ECCA headquarters were moved to St. Kitts.

Between 1965 and 1983, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Authority issued the EC$, with banknotes from 1965 and coins from 1981. The EC$ is now issued by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, (Basseterre, Saint Kitts), established July 1983.

The exchange rate of $4.80 = £1 sterling (equivalent to the old $1 = 4s 2d) continued right into up until July 7, 1976 for the new Eastern Caribbean dollar, until it was pegged to the US dollar, at the exchange rate of US$1 = EC$2.70.

Today, the East Caribbean dollar (EC$) is the currency for eight of nine members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the one exception being the British Virgin Islands, which uses the United States dollar exclusively; so too does non-OECS member-state Turks and Caicos Islands.

Francophone

The French franc was the former currency of France until the Euro was adopted in 1999 (by law, 2002 de facto). The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription francorum rex (“King of the Franks”) on early French coins, or from the French franc, meaning “free” (and “frank”). The franc was also used within the French Empire’s colonies, including the French West Indies or French Antilles, referring to the territories currently under French sovereignty in the Antilles islands of the Caribbean:

Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy; plus in islands of strong French heritage such as Dominica & Saint Lucia. Haiti, though, because of its early independence (1793) employs the Gourde currency, initially pegged to the Franc.

Dutch / Netherlands

The Dutch guilder was the national currency of the Netherlands until it was replaced by the Euro on 1 January 2002. The Netherlands Antillean guilder is currently the only guilder in use, which after the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles remained the currency of the new countries Curaçao and Sint Maarten and (until 1 January 2011) the Caribbean Netherlands.

The Caribbean guilder is the proposed currency of the Caribbean islands of Curaçao and Sint Maarten, which formed after the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in October 2010. The Netherlands Antillean guilder (NAg) is expected to continue to circulate until 2013 as the currency was not finalized in time for the islands’ separate autonomous status. The currency will be abbreviated CMg (for Curacao, Sint Maarten guilder) and will be pegged to the US dollar at the same exchange rate as the Netherlands Antillean Guilder (1 USD = 1.79 NAg = 1.79 CMg). Since, the islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba adopted the US dollar directly on 1 January 2011, the introduction of the CMg will mean the end of the circulation of NAg.

The diverse colonial Caribbean also had Spanish (Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) islands and Danish territories, as in today’s US Virgin Islands.

There would be many benefits if multiple countries come together and finally form a Single Market-Single Currency economy. This is the quest for the CU/Go Lean roadmap: to form a Single Market-Single Currency of the Caribbean Dollar (C$).

This CU/CCB/C$/Go Lean roadmap therefore urges this Single Market / Single Currency effort with these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic-banking engines in order to grow the regional economy and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Central Banks are required to …

facilitate monetary and currency policies,
oversee bank regulations, and
execute inter-bank financial transactions (like payment settlements described in the Appendix A below regarding the previous CMCF).

Presently, the Caribbean region has no integrated Central Bank, nor have we ever had one in the past. There has always been a Failure to Launch this needed solution. Even the Anglo-Caribbean’s previous offering of the CMCF only addressed one of these 3 central banking functionalities: payments. Unfortunately, we need them all! We need to launch a fitting solution to assuage all Caribbean’s monetary-currency deficiencies.

(Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands monetary needs are managed as a subset of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; 2600 miles away from their territorial markets).

A Single Currency in the Caribbean – for the Caribbean – is a BIG idea for reforming and transforming the economic engines of the 42 million people among the 30 member-states (including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands). The Go Lean book stresses that our effort must be a regional pursuit, and it must also optimize our currency landscape. 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.

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.

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. There is a lot of consideration in the book for establishing the CCB and the Single Currency in the region. The Caribbean’s Failure to Launch this in the past is … inexcusable.

There have been a number of previous blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that have highlighted the eco-system of monetary, central banking and currency best practices. See a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13365	Case Study from West Africa: Single Currency for 8 Diverse Countries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10513	Case Study from India: Transforming Money Countrywide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8381	Case Study on Central Banking for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7140	Case Study from Azerbaijan: Setting its currency on free float
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6800	Case Study from Venezuela: Suing Black Market currency website
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4166	Case Study from Panama: History of the Balboa Currency
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3858	Case Study from ECB: Unveiling 1 trillion Euro stimulus program
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3814	Case Study from Switzerland: Unpegging the franc
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=360	Case Study on Central Banks: Creating Money from ‘Thin Air’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=833	Case Study from the Euro: One Currency, Diverse Economies

In summary, shepherding the economy is no simple task; the regional economy, even harder still – described as heavy-lifting. It requires the best practices of skilled technocrats. But the benefits of the heavy-lifting are too alluring to ignore: growing the monetary supply, expanding the availability of investment capital and leveraging across a larger base to absorb the shocks naturally associated with a Free Market Economy.

We are past the time of needing this Caribbean Dollar Single Currency reform. We needed it 60 years ago, and even more now. We must not fail to launch …

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – government officials, bankers and ordinary citizens – to lean-in for the innovations and empowerments detailed in this CU/CCB/Go Lean roadmap. It is so obvious; these are among the best practices of America and Europe! The successful delivery of this banking-economic-currency solution can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

————

Appendix A – Caricom Multilateral Clearing Facility: A Brief Note

Payments clearing and settlement in the Caribbean has historically been a battleground of discontent. There have been many attempts since the Colonial period to structure the payments landscape but none of these efforts have been successful. This blog will briefly outline one such effort — the Caricom Multilateral Clearing Facility.

…

The Caricom [Caribbean Community]Multilateral Clearing Facility (1977–1983) introduced a centralized accounting system for all eligible payments institutions within the region. The original agreement establishing the CMCF was signed by the Central Bank of Barbados, the Monetary Authority of Belize, the East Caribbean Currency Authority, the Bank of Guyana, the Bank of Jamaica, and the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago.

The Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (CBTT) acted as the agent bank for the CMCF. That is, the CBTT carried out the secretariat functions as well as being responsible for the accounting records and distribution of cash settlements.

The main objectives of the CMCF were to:

facilitate settlement on a multilateral basis of eligible transactions between participating countries;
promote the use of currencies of members in settling eligible transactions between the individual countries, thereby economizing on the use of foreign exchange; and,
promote monetary co-operation among the participants, thereby contributing to the expansion of trade and economic activity within Caricom.

Advantages of multilateral clearing to regional banks:

reduction of correspondent deposits in foreign exchange
longer time for investment of deposits where drawn cheques are in circulation within the region

Disadvantages of multilateral clearing to regional banks:

legal implications arising from fact that the CMCF was not established as a separate legal entity
lack of formal enforcement mechanism in the event of debtor default
need for an independent regulatory body
technical and administrative complexities

The failure of the CMCF was caused by its abusive usage by some member countries. Instead of being used for its primary purpose of simply minimizing the foreign exchange requirement for intra-regional trade, some members saw it as a balance of payments support facility to allow them to continue purchasing goods which they otherwise would not have been able to. Thus the closing of the CMCF was only inevitable because of the overuse of its informal credit facility.

After the closing of the CMCF the region regressed to a costly nexus of bilateral agreements which offer far less efficiency than multilateral systems.

The demise of the CMCF was unfortunate because it was a clever device for effecting small but significant economies in the use of foreign exchange. In fact, the CMCF might have formed an institutional base for a federal system of Caricom central banks.

Source: CMCF and Caricom Trade. Ginne Lea Miller, 1993

Source: Retrieved December 11, 2017 from https://medium.com/@RJGriffith/caricom-multilateral-clearing-facility-a-brief-note-ab5085a9c8d1

————

Appendix B VIDEO – The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank – How it Works, and What it Does – Money, Dollars, & Currency – https://youtu.be/y1OJlJ9COg0

Bright Enlightenment

Published on Dec 25, 2012 – The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank – How it Works & What it Does – Money, Currency, & the Dollar
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– TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/BrightEnlight
– WEBSITE: http://www.BrightEnlightenment.com/

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License: Standard YouTube License

————

Appendix C VIDEO – ECB and the Eurosystem explained in 3 min. – https://youtu.be/TAlcFwGIQBg

European Central Bank

Published on Sep 26, 2013 – Who takes care of the “euro”? What is inflation ? Why is price stability important for you? Find the answers to these questions and more in this three-minute introduction to the ECB and the Eurosystem’s role and tasks. To discover more about the ECB, please visit http://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb

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Banks, History

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Failure to Launch: Past Failures for Integration

Posted on December 9, 2017 in Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

“3 Generations of imbeciles are enough” – Justice of US Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes (1927)

“3 Generations of imbecilic governance is enough” – Summary from 2013 Go Lean…Caribbean Book (Page 3)

It has been that long!

According to Dictionary.com, a generation is “the term of years, roughly 30 among human beings, accepted as the average period between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring”. Integration is so important, yet there have been 3 generations of failure for integration-optimization efforts – explored herewith – in the Caribbean region:

West Indies Federation / Netherlands Antilles – 1950’s – Failed
CariCom – 1970’s – Failing
Caribbean Single Market & Economy – 2000’s – Failed

Enough failing already! Though no efforts have been made to integrate the Spanish-speaking nor French-speaking territories; historically these lands were governed as “overseas” territories with foreign masters (for planning and control).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for a Single Market, the introduction and implementation of a technocratic inter-government agency to shepherd the elevation of the region’s societal engines: economics, security and governance. This agency is the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), and is designed to benefit all 30 member-states for all 4 language groups. This Go Lean/CU roadmap is intended to be a deviation from the past record of failures. The book states (Page 3):

There have been some efforts at regional integration, but only for [2] individual language groups.

The Caribbean Union is the next evolution from the structured economic integration that became the Caribbean Community [(CariCom)], but now for all neighbors. The globally accepted 7 degrees of economic integration, which spurned CariCom, are defined as:

Preferential trading area

Free trade area, Monetary union

Customs union, Common market

Economic union, Customs and monetary union

Economic and monetary union

Fiscal union

Complete economic integration

CariCom was enacted in 1973 as Stage 3; but Stage 4 was ratified in 2001 and branded the Caribbean Single Market & Economy. This effort sputtered – see Anecdote # 1 [on Page 15]. The CU is a new manifestation of Stage 4; a graduation for CariCom.

This Go Lean/CU roadmap seeks to end the pattern of failure from these integration mis-steps of the past. This commentary opens a series on the Caribbean’s Failure to Launch workable solutions for the defects and deficiencies in our regional society; this is Part 1 of 4 on this subject. The full series is catalogued as follows:

Failure to Launch – Past Failures for Integration
Failure to Launch – Economics: Caribbean Central Bank and the Quest for a Single Currency
Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
Failure to Launch – Governance: Assembling the Regional Alphabet Organizations

The Go Lean book defines failure in many different dimensions of relativity. It identifies the extreme of Failing-States, all the way down to the simple assessment: “All is not well”. But in general, there is the consensus that the Caribbean region is in crisis (Page 8) and declares that this “crisis would be a terrible thing to waste”.

The roadmap therefore has these 3 prime directives to assuage this crisis status:

Optimization of the economic engines – including a Single Currency – 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 against domestic and foreign threats.
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 forge a better future by learning lessons from past failures in regional integration movements. One advocacy embedded in the book is the specific lessons-learned from the previous Anglophone West Indies Federation. Consider the Appendix VIDEO below and these excerpts-headlines from Page 135 with this title, (which gleans analysis based on the history in the Appendix S and Appendix S1, starting on Page 301):

10 Lessons Learned from the West Indies Federation

1	WI Federation Quest for Independence replaced with CU Quest for Interdependence After 50 years of reflection (see Appendix S1 #1 thru #10), it is conclusive that the West Indies (WI) Federation strived more for independence than for governmental efficiency. It is also obvious that the instincts of the British Federation planners were right, that the common territories needed to integrate to deploy common solutions (Appendix S). As such, the CU advocates for “interdependence” for the Caribbean countries – the challenges of the region transcends any alignment to the European legacies, so the CU advocates that the former British colonies need to confederate with Dutch, French and Spanish former colonies and current American Territories. The CU will represent a population base of 42 million, with the largest population centers concentrated in the Spanish and French states, not Jamaica and Trinidad. However, the CU aggregation of $800 Billion in GDP (based on 2010 figures) represents a larger contribution (GDP per capita) from the English speaking countries.
2	Federal Government versus Provincial Governments The CU advocates a separation of powers between Federal Departments and the member-states administrations. The CU will avail itself of the “economies of scale” by deploying systems across the entire region designed for efficient and effective governance. Consider for example, implementing revenue systems for property assessments/collections. The CU will in-source the costs for the systems & people, while maximizing the return to State treasuries – Appendix S1 #2. The CU will also generate its own revenue streams, from regional-wide deployments (broadcast rights, lotteries, etc).
3	Jamaican Dynamic Among the Caribbean nations, Haiti is highest on the 2012 Failed State Index (#7), Jamaica is among the next set of Caribbean countries at #119, just slightly behind South Africa (#115) and Albania (#118). Obviously, the nation-building needs of Jamaica has been truncated, plus the country’s brain drain is worst in the region with almost a matching population living abroad in a Diaspora as opposed to residing in and contributing to the local economy. The CU will ensure better representation of larger populated states by employing a bicameral legislative branch: while the Senate is “one-man-one-vote” (2 Senators per state), the lower house has balanced representation based on population. Geographically, Jamaica is not the furthest west (Belize), nor south (Aruba) in the region. The Capitol for the CU is slated for a Federal District on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic – See Appendix S1 # 3.
4	Trinidad Dynamic Trinidad and Tobago has thrived, somewhat, as an independent nation, they have one of the highest per-capita GDP in the region and have just recently been upgraded from “developing” status. (They are the only oil-producing country in the region; but their oil reserves are due to be depleted in the next decade). Yet, the country has a huge gulf between the “haves-and-have-nots”, to the point that emigration continues to be a major deterrent to their nation-building efforts. Trinidad is #122 on the Failed State Index – See Appendix S1 # 4.
5	Lack of Local Popular Support (See Parallel at Appendix S1 #5) The CU empowers the economic engines, societal institutions and cultural provisions of the region to promote growth and development in the member-states. These efforts will be complemented with the invitation to repatriate for the Caribbean Diaspora. So the local markets will be the target of promotional campaigns and public media outreach.
6	Smaller Countries The smaller countries get the greatest benefit of the CU initiative as they get to leverage the size of the Caribbean Single Market to their advantage. They will enjoy the strength of the currency union, access to capital markets and the deployment of economic engines in the local market. The CU will assimilate the Eastern Caribbean Federation and Monetary Union into the governmental delivery structure – See Appendix S1 # 6.
7	Location of the Capitol Even though the CU will embrace e-Government delivery methods (data centers, call centers and web sites), the Trade Federation will still institute physical edifices (Post Offices, Administrative Centers, Libraries, Museums). There will be an actual Capitol. The CU capital is slated for a Federal District on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. This is a center-“ish” site considering north: Bermuda & Bahamas; west: Belize & Cuba; south: Guyana & Suriname).
8	University of the West Indies
9	West Indies Regiment The CU is also a security pact that will empower a Homeland Security Department. The State Militia and Naval Operations, derivatives of the West Indies Regiment, will enter a new phase of existence with the facilitation of an ultra-modern defense unit with drones, attack helicopters, underwater submersibles and intelligence gathering and analysis.
10	Relationship with Canada

The West Indies Federation was an Anglophone effort only! Though it sought the goal of “Step 7 – Complete Economic Integration“, as specified in the foregoing introduction, it failed miserably here. (This is the disposition of the United States of America, but unfortunately, due to societal defects of territorial status, this is not the disposition of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.)

So these developments refer to the English and American territories; this is not the full Caribbean. There are other legacies …

The Go Lean book also details effort in the Dutch Caribbean, or the Netherland Antilles. This excerpt – on Integration and Secessions – is derived from Page 16 of the book:

Anecdote # 2: Dutch Caribbean – Integration & Secessions

This Dutch Caribbean has had a varied history of integration and secession events. The Netherlands Antilles also referred to informally as the Dutch Antilles, was an autonomous Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Although the country has now been dissolved, all of its constituent islands remain part of the kingdom under a different legal status and the term is still used to refer to these Dutch Caribbean islands ^[a].

The Netherlands Antilles consisted of two island groups. The ABC Islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao are located just off the Venezuelan coast. The SSS islands of Sint Maarten, Saba, and Sint Eustatius are in the Leeward Islands southeast of the Virgin Islands near the northern end of the Lesser Antilles. The Dutch colonized these islands in the 17th century, (at one point, Anguilla, Tobago, the British Virgin Islands, and St. Croix of the US Virgin Islands had also been Dutch), and united them in the new constituent state of the Netherlands Antilles in December 1954. Wanting to shed the appearance of any colonial shackles, the Netherlands Antilles, Suriname, and the Netherlands acceded as equal member-countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. With this move, the United Nations deemed decolonization of the Dutch Caribbean territory complete and removed it from the UN’s official List of Non-Self-Governing Territories.

Suriname sought and was granted independence in 1975, but continued their quest for regional integration. Today, they are a member of CariCom and are considered a Caribbean country with their trade and cultural links with the Caribbean nations.

The arrangement of the integrated Netherlands Antilles proved to be an unhappy one. The idea never enjoyed the full support of all islands, and political relations between islands were often strained. Geographically, the ABC Islands and the Leeward (SSS) Islands lie almost 1,000 kilometers apart. Culturally, the ABC Islands have deep connections with the South American mainland, especially Venezuela, and its population speaks a Portuguese-Dutch Creole language called Papiamento; the Leeward SSS islands, on the other hand, are part of the English-speaking Caribbean.

When the new constitutional relationship between the Netherlands and its Caribbean colonies was enshrined in the Kingdom Charter of 1954, the colonial administrative division of the Netherlands Antilles grouped all six Caribbean islands together under one administration. Despite the fact that Aruba calls for secession from the Netherlands Antilles originated as far back as the 1930s [b], the governments of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles did everything in their power to keep the six islands together.

First, Aruba became a separate state within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1986. Then between June 2000 and April 2005, each remaining island of the Netherlands Antilles had a new referendum on its future status. The four options that could be voted on were the following:

• closer ties with the Netherlands

• remaining within the Netherlands Antilles

• autonomy as a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands (status aparte)

• independence

Of the five islands, Sint Maarten and Curaçao voted for status aparte, Saba and Bonaire voted for closer ties to the Netherlands, and Sint Eustatius voted to stay within the Netherlands Antilles.

In November 2005, a negotiation began between the governments of the Netherlands, Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles, and each island in the Netherlands Antilles. The end results were autonomy status for Curaçao and Sint Maarten, as previously enacted by Aruba, plus a new status for Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba (BES) making these islands special municipalities.

In November 2006, Curaçao and Sint Maarten were granted an agreement for the autonomy they sought. After some political maneuvering and a subsequent referendum, the acts of parliament integrating the “BES” islands into the Kingdom of the Netherlands were given royal assent in May 2010. After ratification by the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles, and Aruba, this Kingdom act amending the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands with regard to the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles was signed off by the three countries (Netherlands, Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles) in September 2010.

The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit for interdependence, not autonomy – some problems are just too big for any one member-state to tackle alone. 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.

xxiii. Whereas many countries in our region are dependent Overseas Territory of imperial powers, the systems of governance can be instituted on a regional and local basis, rather than requiring oversight or accountability from distant masters far removed from their subjects of administration. The Federation must facilitate success in autonomous rule by sharing tools, systems and teamwork within the geographical region.

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.

In the past, the optimization of regional integration has been so elusive for Caribbean people. Our Failure to Launch has been a sad reality, despite the accepted wisdom that …

… only when a people come together to address issues that affect them collectively can they ever hope to resolve their problems. – Go Lean book Page 135.

Too bad … all our past efforts – despite limited to just one language – have failed. Integration is still a good idea, a Big Idea!

The CU is a big idea for the Caribbean … allowing for the unification of the region into one [a Single] Market of 42 million people [from all 30 countries & territories]. This creates the world’s 29th largest economy, based on 2010 figures. … After 10 years the CU’s GDP should double and rank among the Top 20 or G20 nations. – Page 127.

Let’s do this! The benefits from this Go Lean roadmap are too alluring to ignore. We can learn from failure; we can forge success. We can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

————-

Appendix VIDEO – West Indies Federation – https://youtu.be/wfoWBqUMAls

Audiopedia
Published on Jan 6, 2016 – The West Indies Federation, also known as the Federation of the West Indies, was a short-lived political union that existed from 3 January 1958 to 31 May 1962. Various islands in the Caribbean that were colonies of the United Kingdom, including Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Jamaica, and those on the Leeward and Windward Islands, came together to form the Federation, with its capital in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The expressed intention of the Federation was to create a political unit that would become independent from Britain as a single state—possibly similar to the Canadian Confederation, Australian Commonwealth, or Central African Federation; however, before that could happen, the Federation collapsed due to internal political conflicts.

The territories of the federation eventually became the nine contemporary sovereign states of Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago; with Anguilla, Montserrat, the Cayman Islands, and Turks and Caicos Islands becoming British overseas territories. British Guiana and British Honduras held observer status within the West Indies Federation.

This video is targeted to blind users.

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CariCom, History

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Miami’s Caribbean Marketplace Revisited – ENCORE

Posted on December 8, 2017 in Locations, Social

It’s time to celebrate all things Miami – during Miami Art Week 2017 – so that includes all the Caribbean Diaspora that adds to the fabric of this international metropolis and makes it a Magic City.

Spanish, Haitian, Indian Jamaican, Black/White Cuban or Asian … – Lyrics from song “Welcome to Miami” by Rapper Will Smith; featured in the VIDEO below.

Just look at this place now; in all of its glory!

This is the perfect time to encore this following – original blog-commentary – from July 20, 2014 when the Miami Caribbean Marketplace was re-opened in Little Haiti:

—————

Go Lean Commentary – Miami’s Caribbean Marketplace Re-opens

Make no mistake: having a warm welcome in a City of Refuge is not as good as being safe and secure at home. Yet, when conditions mandate that one take flight, a warm welcome is greatly appreciated.

According to the foregoing article, the City of Miami now extends a warm welcome … to the Caribbean Diaspora. While Miami profits from this embrace, the benefits for the Caribbean are not so great.

This is the American Immigrant experience, one of eventual celebration, but only after a “long train of abuses”: rejection, anger, protest, bargaining, toleration and eventual acceptance. The experience in Miami today is one of celebration.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean champions the cause of retaining Caribbean citizens in the Caribbean, even inviting the Diaspora back to their homelands. So the idea of celebrating a cultural contribution at a center in a foreign land is a paradox. Yes, we want the positive image, but no, we do not want to encourage more assimilation in the foreign land.

However, the book declares: It is what it is!

The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic federal government to administer and optimize the economic/security/ governing engines in the homeland of the region’s 30 member-states. The CU strives to elevate Caribbean image at home and abroad. There are many empowerments in the roadmap for the far-flung Diaspora to improve the interaction with the Caribbean community. So the cultural center in the foregoing article is germane to the Go Lean discussion.

The entire article is listed as follows:

Sub-title: The Caribbean Marketplace has become a cultural icon in the Little Haiti community and re-opens with much fanfare….

By: Fabiola Fleuranvil | Noire Miami

The long awaited re-opening of the Caribbean Marketplace (CMP) is back as a cultural marker in the vibrant Little Haiti community. For years, the venue has been a strong figure along Little Haiti’s main corridor and has been easily identified by its bright colors and vibrant activity of vendors as well as Haitian and Caribbean culture. After undergoing a lengthy renovation to transform this cultural gem into a community staple for unique arts and crafts, Caribbean culture, special events, and community events, the highly anticipated reopening positions the Caribbean Marketplace as a vibrant addition to the Little Haiti Cultural Center next door and the burgeoning arts and culture spirit in Little Haiti.

The re-establishment of this Marketplace is a collaborative effort of the City of Miami in partnership with the Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs, the Little Haiti Cultural Complex (LHCC), the Northeast Second Avenue Partnership (NE2P) and District 5 Commissioner Keon Hardemon.

The 9,500-square-foot space includes a refreshment and concession area, gift shops, arts and crafts, retail vendors and space available for private events. The renovations reflect the beautiful diversity of the Caribbean. Low rates, technical and marketing assistance will be provided to all vendors. It is anticipated that new businesses will be created in this cultural hub, resulting in employment opportunities for the local community.

Physical Address for the Caribbean Marketplace: 5925 NE 2nd Ave, Miami (Besides the Little Haiti Cultural Center) Hours: Thursday – Sunday, 11AM – 11PM
Miami Herald Daily Newspaper (Retrieved 07-16-2014) –
http://www.miami.com/little-haiti039s-caribbean-marketplace-reopens-article

The Miami community is doing even more to embrace the exile populations in its metropolis, (including jurisdictions up to West Palm Beach). They have declared an entire month (June) for celebrating Caribbean communities; the term “month” is a loose definition, it starts in the Spring and forwards deep into the Summer. The following is a sample of events planned for this year (2014).

Caribbean-American Heritage “Month” events around South Florida:

3rd Annual Colors of the Caribbean

Saturday, June 14, 4PM – 11PM – Hollywood Arts Park – Hollywood Blvd & US1

What do you get when you blend the diverse, authentic ingredients of the Caribbean? You get a Caribbean inspired day of food, arts and culture, entertainment and irie vibes. Colors of the Caribbean features: Junkanoo procession, Moko Jumbies (Stilt walkers), Steelpan music, and live performances by Wayne Wonder (Jamaica), Midnite (Virgin Islands), Kevin Lyttle (St Vincent), Harmoniq (Haiti), music by DJ Majestic (DC/Trinidad & Tobago), and more.

AllSpice: Flavors of the Caribbean

Friday, June 20, 6PM – 10PM – Borland Center, 4885PGABlvd,Palm BeachGardens

The Caribbean Democratic Club of Palm Beach County presents a Taste of the Caribbean in celebration of Caribbean American Month.

Caribbean Style Week

June 23-29 – Westfield Mall Broward, 8000 West Broward Blvd, Plantation

The Caribbean American Heritage Foundation hosts a week-long showcase featuring both popular and upcoming Caribbean fashion designers and brands. Fashion pieces will be available for purchase during the fashion expo.

Caribbean Heritage Month Travel Experience/Travel Expo

June 28-29 – Westfield Mall Broward, 8000 West Broward Blvd, Plantation

The Caribbean Travel Expo celebrates and promotes each individual as a destination for your next vacation. The expo experience will also showcase live music, cultural performances, and special surprise giveaways over the weekend.

Caribbean: Crossroads of the World Exhibit

April 18 – Aug 17 – PerezArt MuseumMiami (PAMM), 1103 Biscayne Blvd, Miami

Highlighting over two centuries of rarely seen works — from paintings and sculptures to prints, photographs, installations, films, and videos — dating from the Haitian Revolution to the present, this exhibition advances our understanding of the Caribbean and its artistic heritage and contemporary practices.
http://www.miami.com/caribbean-american-heritage-month-events-around-south-florida-article)

The Go Lean…Caribbean clearly recognizes the historicity of Cuban and Afro-Caribbean (Haitian, Jamaican, Dominican, Bahamian, etc) exiles in Miami. They went through the “long train of abuses”. But today, their communities dominate the culture of South Florida, resulting in a distinctive character that has made Miami unique as a travel/tourist destination; see VIDEO below. The expression “take my talents to South Beach” now resonates in American society.

This commentary previously featured subjects related to the Caribbean Diaspora in South Florida. The following here is a sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433	Caribbean loses more than 70 percent of tertiary educated to brain drain
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1148	Sports Bubble – Franchise values in basketball
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=689	eMerge conference aims to jump-start Miami tech hub
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=235	Tourism’s changing profile

At the outset, the Go Lean roadmap recognizes the value and significance of Cuban and Haitian exile communities in the pantheon of Caribbean life. Any serious push for Caribbean integration must consider Diaspora communities, like the Cuban/Haitian exiles in Miami. This intent was pronounced early in the book with these statements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 & 13):

xiii.      Whereas the legacy of dissensions in many member-states (for example: Haiti and Cuba) will require a concerted effort to integrate the exile community’s repatriation, the Federation must arrange for Reconciliation Commissions to satiate a demand for justice.

xix.      Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora back to our shores. This repatriation should be effected with the appropriate guards so as not to imperil the lives and securities of the repatriated citizens or the communities they inhabit. The right of repatriation is to be extended to any natural born citizens despite any previous naturalization to foreign sovereignties.

xx.      Whereas the results of our decades of migration created a vibrant Diaspora in foreign lands, the Federation must organize interactions with this population into structured markets. Thus allowing foreign consumption of domestic products, services and media, which is a positive trade impact. These economic activities must not be exploited by others’ profiteering but rather harnessed by Federation resources for efficient repatriations.

It was commonly accepted that Cuban exiles and other Caribbean Diaspora were sitting, waiting in Miami for change in their homelands; then they would return to claim their earned positions of respect. Along the way, the Survive-then-Thrive strategy was supplanted with a new Thrive-in-America strategy – credited to the next generation’s assimilation of the American Dream and the long duration of Caribbean dysfunctions, i.e. the Castros still reign after 55 years. Miami subsequently emerged as the trading post for the Caribbean and all of Latin America. The Caribbean is now hereby urged to lean-in to the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to finally re-boot Caribbean society; as detailed in the book Go Lean … Caribbean sampled here:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices & Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth	Page 21
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization	Page 24
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations	Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategic – Vision – Integrating Region in to a Single Market	Page 45
Strategic – Agents of Change – Globalization	Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocrary	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – State Department – Culture Administration	Page 81
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Federal Courts – Truth & Reconciliation Commissions	Page 90
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up	Page 102
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Trade Mission Objectives	Page 117
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization	Page 119
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Cuba/Haiti	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora	Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Cuba	Page 236
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Haiti	Page 238

The foregoing article addresses the story of the Caribbean Marketplace facility to promote Caribbean culture in the South Florida market, and even provide some economic benefits (trade, job, import/export options). The Go Lean book focuses on these economic issues to the N^th degree, and also addresses the important issues regarding Caribbean societal elevation: music, sports, art, education, repatriation and heritage. This cultural center in the foregoing article aligns with the Go Lean roadmap.

Just like Miami grew, and prospered so much over the last 50 years, with help from our people, the Caribbean can also be a better place to live, work and play. This is a new day for the Caribbean!

It’s time now for change; not just change for change sake, but the elevations that were identified, qualified and proposed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. It’s time to lean-in. Then we can move from celebrating the Diaspora in a foreign land to celebrating their return to the Caribbean, the best address in the world.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Increasing Tourism Market Share

Posted on December 7, 2017 in Economics, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

It’s December … this is peak winter travel season.

It’s time to take inventory of Caribbean tourism:

It has been weighed in the balance; it has been measured …
It has been found wanting!

Our peaks … are not enough. There is the need to Increase Caribbean Tourism Market Share. See this magazine article here with this title:

Title: Increasing Tourism Market Share
By Tony Fraser

For the Caribbean tourism industry to take a larger chunk out of world tourism arrivals (a necessity for continued survival and growth), there are a few innovative options lapping at the shores of tourism economies in the Caribbean.

To achieve the objective in an industry which provides hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Caribbean and US$30bn in revenue in 2014, wide-ranging options were presented to governments, hoteliers, tour operators and others in the business at the State of the Industry Conference (SOTIC) of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation in Curacao.

Eastern focus

Among the options, officials looked at the following:

how to attract more visitors from the fast-growing Chinese market;

how to cast aside traditional and moral restrictions that could pose barriers to the US$100bn US market of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals (LGBT);

how to engage the Millennial generation (those born between 1980-1998) in exciting weekend package tours around the Caribbean;

how to tackle the issue of damaging high tax rates on the airline industry while looking to expand the Open Skies policy;

and the need to sweep away the layers of travel restrictions on passengers (including Caribbean nationals) wanting to move around and into the region with one-stop visa and security checks.

Increasing but…
An examination of the figures on visitor arrivals shows that the number of tourists coming to the Caribbean in the first six months of 2015 increased by 5.8% compared with the same period in 2014.

That percentage increase was larger than the 4.1% average increase in global tourism arrivals.

Significantly too, the Caribbean region (which encompasses the English, Dutch, French and Spanish-speaking areas of the Caribbean) in 2014 earned US$30bn, a 10% increase over the previous year.

However, Caribbean tourism’s share of the international market, as calculated by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, was a mere 2.8% of the 1.1 billion people who travelled to destinations all over the globe.

“The Caribbean has a relatively low global market share compared to the importance it places on its tourism economy,” the UN World Tourism Council’s director/executive secretary of member relations, Carlos Vogeler, told the SOTIC in Curacao.

Asia focus
But while the Caribbean’s share of the international tourism market is quite small, South East Asia (SEA) has experienced the largest growth as a region.

The reason is not too difficult to assess.

“Those countries have access to a nearby source market, China, whose outbound travel market grew by 30% last year, and by 48% during the first six months of this year,” Mr Vogeler told Caribbean Intelligence©.

At the same time that the SEA countries have the emerging Chinese market from which to source tourists, Mr Vogeler says the source markets of the Caribbean for tourists are mature.

He said that the Caribbean tourism industry had to take up the challenge of attracting tourists from the Far East.

Cut taxes
Another challenge is for governments and airports in the Caribbean to reduce taxes on airline tickets.

It is a call that has been made for many years.

It was made even while the Caribbean tourism industry was petitioning the United Kingdom to reduce the Air Passenger Duty for passengers flying to Caribbean destinations.

In the Caribbean, airlines and tourism experts have continuously pointed to the negative impact that continued high taxes on airline tickets and airport taxes have had on travel into and around the region.

However, governments have contended with equal vigour that since they have a narrow tax base to raise revenue for development, and with airline travel being a captive source of revenue, reducing taxes on airline travel and airport duties is a difficult proposition.

The Premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands, Dr Rufus Ewing, told the CTO conference that “If you want governments to remove and or reduce those taxes, then we have to know how we are going to get alternative revenues; how do we take care of our security responsibility when there is one visa system and security check at airports. And those are real concerns for us in these countries.”

The proof of the pudding is in the eating for Robin Hayes, JetBlue’s president and chief executive.

“Where we have been able to reduce fares by 30%, we have doubled the travel market,” he says.

And Mr Hayes commended the government of Barbados, which has “one of the lowest tax rates in the region”.

“The idea is that we can collectively look at ministers of finance and ask them to relook the tax argument; but we do need government revenue to run countries,” Barbados Tourism and International Transport Minister Richard Sealey told Caribbean Intelligence©.

New ways of working
JetBlue sealed a deal with Barbados at the conference announcing an additional daily roundtrip flight between Fort Lauderdale in the US and Grantley Adams Airport in Barbados.

What’s more, the JetBlue boss is encouraging the Caribbean tourism industry to tap into JetBlue Getaways, which packages hotels, tours, restaurants and other experiences into the flight package, an arrangement that he says has done wonders for Grenada.

“Thanks to strong bookings through Getaways and greats friendships with local properties like Sandals and Spice Island, we were able to add a third weekly service in September, after only three months in the market,” Mr Hayes said.

Another option for attracting more tourists to Caribbean shores and into hotel rooms is to give seat guarantees to airlines.

Under such agreements, the host government pays for seats not occupied by passengers when they fly into those destinations.

Barbados’s Mr Sealey, who is also CTO chairman, told Caribbean Intelligence©: “It is a fact that we do subsidise airlines to the region, but we prefer to have a commercial relationship with the airlines, ones like that with we have with JetBlue, which works with us to market the destination.”

Potential earners
On the intra-Caribbean travel routes there was 5.5% growth, with 400,000 travellers moving around the region during the first six months of 2015.

Liat’s chief executive, David Evans, told Caribbean Intelligence© “It’s a market with quite an amount of potential.”

He said that Liat had upgraded its fleet over the last two years. But as he explained, taxes can cost the traveller up to 40% to 50% of the airline ticket.

Partnerships with other regionally-based airlines to achieve greater efficiency and coverage of the Caribbean are coming, Mr Evans told Caribbean Intelligence©.

“While we cannot talk about those alliances right now, they are coming soon,” he said.

He said that, at the moment, Liat has strategic alliances with international carriers such as British Airways and Virgin and others to move passengers around the region from their international arrivals but the internal partnerships are long overdue.

The LGBT market
Facilitating travel into the region by members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) community is an option for the Caribbean to increase its international market share.

However, it is an option that poses challenges to the church-going, Bible-believing Caribbean community.

The market is a lucrative one, says David Paisley, senior research director of the San Francisco-based travel agency Community Marketing Insights.

“The Caribbean is a perfect fit for LBGT travel; but our clients must be assured of safety and not be discriminated against, and not only by laws but by social practices,” Mr Paisley said.

His research shows that the LGBT community travels more than the general population; they spend more on hotels, restaurants and shopping than other tourists.

“We have heard of homophobic societies in the Caribbean and I don’t want to call names, but where we see those tendencies and feel threatened, our travellers will not be coming,” Paisley told Caribbean Intelligence©.

There have been a few incidents in the past with members of the LGBT community that have caused a measure of concern in one or two Caribbean countries.

CTO Secretary General Hugh Riley told Caribbean Intelligence© that “no business can afford to ignore a significant market segment”.

He added: “Our [the CTO’s] responsibility is always to source the expertise, present the facts and provide enough information on which our members can make an informed decision.”

Weekend packages
Short breaks packed with entertainment, aimed at the generation born between 1980 and 1998, are seen by Leah Marville of My Destination Arrivals as yet another option to land more tourists around the region.

The weekends consist of a blur of entertainment and experiences which can be captured on camera and become talking points for the travellers, who travel at weekends and head back to their jobs on Monday.

“There is something absolutely captivating about us… My Destination Weekends seeks to capture and immortalise experiences for those who take the trip,” says Ms Marville, a model and businesswoman.

But increasing numbers of arrivals is not the be all and end all.

Mr Sealey says the benefits of tourism must be counted in jobs, in the development of communities, the protection of the environment and the retention of a large chunk of what the tourists spend in getting to the Caribbean and having memorable vacations in the region.
Source: Caribbean Intelligence Magazine – Posted November 2015; retrieved December 6, 2017 from: http://www.caribbeanintelligence.com/content/increasing-tourism-market-share

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean seeks to reboot the economic engines of the Caribbean member-states. Tourism is the region’s primary economic driver, but it is inadequate for providing the needs of the people in the region. We must do better. This foregoing magazine article about the Caribbean Tourist Organization (CTO) identified some defects … and solutions in 2015. It is now 2017; unfortunately, the identified defects are still defective; the hoped-for solutions, never materialized. See the introductory VIDEO about the CTO State of the Industry Conference in the Appendix below.

These same issues have also been addressed in other Go Lean commentaries:

Outreach to the Asian market – consider China and India;
Mitigating religious orthodoxy regarding the LGBT market;
Outreach to the Millennials market;
Deficient Business Climate with Airport/Arline High Tax Rates;
Intra-regional travel.

Can the CTO be counted on to provide the need empowerments to elevate the Caribbean economic engines?

No! It is the assessment in the Go Lean book that the current stewards for regional tourism is inadequate. The book quotes (Page 3):

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).

The CTO represents for-profit hotels and resorts. The needed solutions for the Caribbean cannot be profit-driven. It must pursue features like collective bargaining and the Greater Good – “the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong” (by philosopher Jeremy Bentham; 1748 – 1832). So the Go Lean book presents an alternative; it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to be a technocratic intergovernmental entity that shepherds economic growth for the Caribbean region; in other words, Increase Tourism Market Share. The goal is to reboot and optimize the region’s economic, security and governing engines. There are ways for individual member-states to improve their tourism product, but there needs to be a regional focus to accomplish this goal.

The Go Lean motivation is the Greater Good (Page 37).

In total, the Go Lean/CU roadmap will employ strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies, as in Self-Governing Entities.

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. One advocacy in optimizing the tourism landscape is to foster infrastructure that is too big for any one member-state alone; consider some specific plans, excerpts and headlines from the book on Page 190 entitled:

10 Ways to Enhance Tourism in the Caribbean Region

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market The economic engine associated with the CU will provide the infrastructural needs to improve the tourism product for all member-states. The plan is to expand trade treaties with other countries and regional blocs to target markets and languages outside of North America. One goal is to expand “snowbirds” traffic, as these have been a consistent revenue source. The CU will provide the support services like translations, medical and transport (ferries for RV’s) to augment this special market.
2	Special Festival Events Promote multi-day events in the style of Sturgis (see Appendix J on Page 288), Coachella, and Milwaukee’s Summer-Fest. The CU will liberalize the loitering laws, allow for camping & car/van sleeping, public showers, food trucks, open canister for alcohol, etc. (Jamaica’s SunFest is a start). To facilitate traffic, jurisdictional governments should grant temporary motorcycle licenses and arranged for optimal shipping logistics.
3	Fairgrounds/Amusement Parks Empowerment Zones Encourage the establishment and promotion of Fairgrounds/Amusement Parks (Disney, Sea World, Busch Gardens-like attractions) that can bring in vast number of visitors. The empowerment zones get special tax incentives and building code variances, or managed as Self Governing Entities (SGE) in which they are beholden only to the CU jurisdiction. Many US and European theme parks are only open during the warm seasons, the opposite can be advocated in the Caribbean region, where theme parks may only be open during the “high season”, or only when cruise ships are in port.
4	Dynamic Sea-lifts / Air lifts Grant temporary licenses to shipping (ferries) and air charters to facilitate the transport of Festival participants. The goal is to move huge number of guests in and out readily. The US Passport Card (used for travel to Mexico and Canada) should suffice the travel documents for these events. These logistics can be modeled after Ramadan travel to Mecca.
5	Excess Inventory Auction The CU buys from the Hotels (with warrants) and sells the Excess Inventory of Hotels rooms to the highest Bidder to combine with Air, Sea, Car and Tour Packages. (Much like Priceline.com). The CU uses e-commerce strategies and tactics (web, phone and text messaging) in their campaigns. The hospitality sources should drill down, beyond hotels, to also include bed-and-breakfast and other certified (CU ranked & rated) home-sharing arrangements.
6	Medical Tourism Hospitals and medical clinics will be installed on SGE campuses, designed for alternative and experimental treatments. These will attract medical tourists to come for extended stays, many outfitted with monitoring and medical alert devices to engage designated medical personnel in case of emergencies; thus minimizing stress on domestic facilities.
7	Eco-Tourism Promotions Board
8	Sports Tourism
9	Cruise Line Passenger Smart Card Currency The CU will collectively bargain with the cruise lines to deploy electronic “purses” and allow the Caribbean Central Bank to settle the transactions. This incites more spending at the ports-of-call. Smart cards feature more functionality like physical access, locator service & photo ID. The cards can also offer contactless transactions, like “tap and go”.
10	Tourist Hate Crime Sentence Extender

The Go Lean book details that the Caribbean can create …

30,000 direct jobs from opening new markets, creating new opportunities and new traffic; starting new sharing options
9,000 direct jobs from Event staff and Festivals at CU Fairgrounds
1,000 direct jobs from managing, promoting UNESCO World Heritage Sites

These are direct jobs; there is also the reality of indirect jobs – unrelated service and attendant functions – at a 3.75 multiplier rate would add another 150,000 jobs. That makes a total of 190,000 jobs.

This is how the roadmap works: it identifies industries, dissects the inherent deficiencies, and proposes solution to reboot and optimize it, then it harvests the multiples of jobs resulting from the plan. Tourism is the current dominant industry; the goal is to “stand on the shoulders” of previous accomplishments, add infrastructure not possible by just one member-state alone and then reap the benefits. Imagine this manifestation in just this one new strategy: inter-island ferries that connect all islands for people, cars and goods.

There have been a number of blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that highlighted economic opportunities embedded in regional tourism initiatives. See a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13126	“Must Love Dogs” – Providing K9 Solutions for Better Tourism Security
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12668	Lessons from Colorado – Common Sense of Eco-Tourism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11287	Sports Tourism and Pro-Surfing
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11033	Medical Tourism and Plastic Surgeries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9897	Art Tourism and Community-sanctioned Murals
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9179	Snowbird Tourism and RV Ferries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4425	Deploying regional currency and e-Payment solutions
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4145	Eco-Tourism and World Heritage Sites

In summary, the Caribbean need jobs; our job creation dysfunction is so acute that our people are fleeing the homeland to find job opportunities abroad. Tourism-related jobs, while not the highest paying, could be stable, reliable and providential. More options and deliveries would help us to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play.

This is a Big Deal; this is how to grow the economy: create jobs; create businesses; retain people; foster new opportunities; learn from past mistakes and accomplishments. Tourism is just one industry in the Go Lean roadmap. While this one can result in 190,000 new jobs, the other industries (16) show even more promise: shipbuilding, pipelines, frozen foods, etc. The net result: 2.2 million new jobs.

Let’s do this … for the Greater Good.

All Caribbean stakeholders – residents and visitors – are urged to lean-in to this roadmap for change … and empowerment. This plan is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

Appendix VIDEO – CTO STATE OF THE INDUSTRY CONFERENCE – https://youtu.be/8AraGc3VGpI

Curacao Tourist Board

Published on Jul 7, 2015 – State of the Industry Conference 2015 Curaçao will host SOTIC from 21- 23 October 2015 at the World Trade Center in Willemstad. CTO Business meetings will be held October 20 -21, 2015.

Category: Travel & Events
License: Standard YouTube License

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Economics of ‘South Beach’

Posted on December 6, 2017 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Industries, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

The US has an economy; the 30 Caribbean member-states have economies. The US does it better!

For example, the entire Caribbean region enjoys 80 million visitors a year; (though this figure includes 12 million cruise passengers visiting multiple Caribbean destinations on one cruise); just the US city of Orlando has one destination – Walt Disney World – that enjoys 57 million visitors-a-year alone. Further down the list of high traffic resort cities is the destination of Miami Beach, Florida; each year Miami Beach hotels host over 35% of the ten (10) million tourists who visit Greater Miami.

Yes, the US cities do tourism better than our Caribbean counterparts; and their economies are more diversified.

If only we, in the Caribbean, could be more like … the American city of Miami (Beach).

It is a fitting comparison:

Global City in the tropical zone – a snowbird haven-refuge from cold northern cities.
Home away from home for many Caribbean people.
Primary economic engine of tourism (leisure and medical), travel (air and cruises), financial services and trade. See Miami’s largest employers in the Appendix below.

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean seeks to reboot the economic engines of the Caribbean member-states – so we can perform better. The book studies models and lessons from other communities (cities and countries): i.e. New York City (Page 137), Detroit (Page 140) and Omaha (Page 138). In fact, this movement had previously detailed how the Greater Miami metropolitan area has become so successful a community mainly because of the failures of Caribbean communities. Rather than the entire metropolitan area of Greater Miami, we are hereby exploring just the economic landscape of Miami Beach, and more exactly the neighborhood of South Beach. This commentary, however, relates that there are lessons from ‘South Beach’ and all of Greater Miami that we can apply in the Caribbean.

Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County…. It was incorporated on March 26, 1915.^[7] The municipality is located on natural and man-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the latter of which separates “the Beach” from the City of Miami. The neighborhood of South Beach, comprising the southernmost 2.5 square miles of Miami Beach, along with downtown Miami and the Port of Miami, collectively form the commercial center of South Florida^[8] [(Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan statistical area)]. As of the [latest] 2010 census, Miami Beach had a total population of 87,779.^[9] It has been one of America’s pre-eminent beach resorts since the early 20th century. – Wikipedia.

South Beach is a classic beach resort town – see the Wikipedia definition here – except that there are two de facto seasons: good (Summer and Early Autumn) and great (Late Autumn, Winter and Spring):

A resort town, often called a resort city or resort destination, is an urban area where tourism or vacationing is the primary component of the local culture and economy. A typical resort town has one or more actual resorts in the surrounding area. Sometimes the term resort town is used simply for a locale popular among tourists. The term can also refer to either an incorporated or unincorporated contiguous area where the ratio of transient rooms, measured in bed units, is greater than 60% of the permanent population.^[1]

Generally, tourism is the main export in a resort town economy, with most residents of the area working in the tourism or resort industry. Shops and luxury boutiques selling locally themed souvenirs, motels, and unique restaurants often proliferate the downtown areas of a resort town.

Resort Town Economy
If the resorts or tourist attractions are seasonal in nature, resort towns typically experience an on-season where the town is bustling with tourists and workers, and an off-season where the town is populated only by a small amount of local year-round residents.

In addition, resort towns are often popular with wealthy retirees and people wishing to purchase vacation homes, which typically drives up property values and the cost of living in the region. Sometimes, resort towns can become boomtowns due to the quick development of retirement and vacation-based residences.^[3]

However, most of the employment available in resort towns is typically low paying and it can be difficult for workers to afford to live the area in which they are employed.^[4] Many resort towns have spawned nearby bedroom communities where the majority of the resort workforce lives.

Resorts towns sometimes struggle with problems regarding sustainable growth, due to the seasonal nature of the economy, the dependence on a single industry, and the difficulties in retaining a stable workforce.^[5] …

Economic impact of tourism
Local residents are generally receptive of the economic impacts of tourism. Resort towns tend to enjoy lower unemployment rates, improved infrastructure, more advanced telecommunication and transportation capabilities, and higher standards of living and greater income in relation to those who live outside this area.^[6] Increased economic activity in resort towns can also have positive effects on the country’s overall economic growth and development. In addition, business generated by resort towns have been credited with supporting the local economy through times of national market failure and depression, as in the case of San Marcos, California during the cotton market bust in the early 1920s and Great Depression of 1929.^[2]

Click Photo to Expand – Lots of communities charge supplemental taxes for community revenues

Tourism, more exactly Resort Tourism, is the Number One economic driver in the Caribbean. Yet, our region has so many societal defects. We must do a better job at our primary job. What can we learn from Greater Miami, Miami Beach and South Beach?

This small peninsula of South Beach is Hot, Hot, Hot … as a party and tourist destination, thereby creating a scarcity of real estate. The dining, night-clubbing, shopping and entertainment options in this District are in high demand, all year long. Not all patrons to this District stay at area hotels, as many are locals in addition to the constant flow of visitors. Most night clubs, and even some restaurant-bars, apply a Cover Charge, typically $20 per person. These patrons should also expect to pay $40 just for valet parking, and similarly above-average prices for self-parking. Hotel rates are consistently above average, even during the off-season (consider $300 per night). During the peak-season, rates are traditionally in excess of $500. Hotel guests with rental cars face the same $40 per night parking charges.

The party continues every night until 5am; (one of the latest alcohol-serving policies in the nation). Just like any other community, Miami Beach has to contend with Agents of Change. There is a conservative movement to dampen the hot nightlife in South Beach. These proponents raised the issue as a public referendum on November 7, 2017 with a measure, to limit liquor sales to 2am. This direct democratic action failed at a 64% to 35% ratio. The economic forces of South Beach won again!

These economic realities transcend many dimensions of Miami Beach life; consider governance. The City collects an add-on to the state’s usual Sales Tax revenues. What add-ons?

Transient Lodging Rental Taxes for Short Term Rentals Summary Chart

3% Convention Development Tax 2% Tourist Development Tax 1% Sports Franchise Tax

Food & Beverage Tax Summary Chart

2% Tourist Development Surtax 1% Homeless and Spouse Abuse Tax

Source: Retrieved December 5, 2017 from: http://www.miamidade.gov/taxcollector/tourist-taxes.asp

See this sample/example here of a typical night out at a local South Beach restaurant recently:

This movement, behind the Go Lean book, seeks to reform and transform the economic engines of Caribbean society by being technocratic in applying best practices from the field of Economics. South Beach and Miami Beach offers a lot of lessons: good, bad and ugly.

One bad lesson is the practice of guaranteed gratuity. In a previous blog-commentary, this policy was ridiculed as unbecoming as a community ethos; it fosters a spirit of entitlement. In fact, the practice is well-chronicled in the field of Economics as “rent-seeking”; consider this sample:

This is distinguished in economic theory as separate from profit-seeking, in which entities seek to extract value by engaging in mutually beneficial transactions.^[6] While profit-seeking fosters the creation of wealth, rent-seeking is the use of social institutions such as the power of government to redistribute wealth among different groups without creating any new wealth.^[7]

Note: For the restaurant receipt in the above-photo, the credit card bill, still contained a line item for additional tip, even though 20-percent was already added as a gratuity-service charge.

There it is: rent-seeking.

(Rent-seeking practices are quite common in the Caribbean; even codified as law in some places).

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to be a technocratic intergovernmental entity that shepherds economic growth for the Caribbean region. The goal is to reboot and optimize the region’s economic, security and governing engines. The Go Lean/CU roadmap employs wise strategies, like the “Separation-of-Powers between CU federal agencies and Caribbean member-state governments”; so the limitations of national laws in a member-state would not override the CU. The CU‘s technocratic practices would directly apply to the installation of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) and Self-Governing Entities (SGE); these operate in controlled bordered territories like campuses, industrial parks, research labs, industrial plants and Entertainment Zones.

Notice the presence here of one such zone, already existing in Jamaica.

Title: Jamaica’s first entertainment zone named

Jamaica’s Entertainment Minister Olivia “Babsy” Grange, has named Fort Rocky in Port Royal as Jamaica’s first entertainment zone.

The minister made the announcement at the recent launch of Carnival in Jamaica 2018.

Drives cultural and economic value
Minister Grange said the new entertainment zone has been endorsed by the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), along with the Town and Country Planning Authority.

“We are working with (NEPA) and the Ministry’s agencies, including the National Heritage Trust, to ensure that our cultural sites are preserved and utilized in a manner that drives cultural and economic value to us as a nation,” she noted.

Historical value
Entertainment zones like Fort Rocky are areas in which any legal entertainment and sports activity can be staged any time of day or night unhindered, as long as the organizers are mindful of the historical value of such sites.

While fueling the entertainment industry, these entertainment zones are expected to neutralize the problem of noise nuisance.

The Entertainment and Culture Minister has also called on private business operators to take advantage of the opportunity to use these zones. She provided information that two other entertainment zones will be declared outside of the Corporate Area in the near future.

Source: Retrieved December 6, 2017 from: https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/news/caribbean-news/jamaica-entertainment-zone/

The Go Lean/CU roadmap will optimize this strategy for deployment of Self-Governing Entities throughout the region.

Imagine restaurant-bars-nightclubs open until 5am.

This is the Economics of ‘South Beach’ … and a good learned-lesson.

Miami’s South Beach is a hot night-spot right now. What emboldens its success is the embrace of Caribbean culture. Think:

The concept of Miami Sound … is Caribbean musical fusion.

The name Miami Sound Machine also refers to the Grammy Award winning musical group led by Cuban-Americans Gloria and Emelio Estefan. They are also proprietors of one of the biggest night clubs on South Beach: Mango’s. See the VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Mangos Tropical Cafe in South Beach, Miami [4K] – https://youtu.be/D1TcBkaRyL4

Published on Nov 30, 2016 – A glimpse inside Mango’s Tropical Café in South Beach, Miami. Watch in 4K resolution.

Category:

EntertainmentLicense: Standard YouTube License

Miami is Hot, Hot, Hot ordinarily.

Then in the winter peak-season, it is Hotter still …

… and then for Art Basel – the annual Arts in Miami pageant peaking this year December 6 to 11 – it is the Hottest destination in the country. See more here:

Title: It’s not only rich people who should care about Art Basel. Here’s why.

When flocks of serious — and seriously loaded — art gatherers descend on South Florida for the annual Art Basel in Miami Beach pageant, they’re coming to snag some of the best contemporary work money can buy from the 268 galleries from across the globe conveniently gathered at the city’s convention center.

But that’s not the sole reason they make their way to Miami Beach and Miami.

Many also come to see art they cannot buy — the increasingly rich side feast served up by the cities’ expanding range of museums and private art collections that are open to all.

Yes, there’s the warm weather, the nice hotels and restaurants (staffed by local workers) — not to mention the two dozen satellite fairs and myriad events that make up the annual December frenzy known as Miami Art Week. …

See the full story here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article187161868.html

Source: Miami Herald posted December 2, 2017; retrieved December 6, 2017.

Caribbean people have done it in Miami; we can also do it in the Caribbean. This is the vision of a new Caribbean; a better place to live, work and play right here at home, without having to flee the region.

In total, the Go Lean/CU roadmap will employ strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety assurances and protect the region’s economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean book presents a 370-page roadmap on how to optimize the economic engines … and how to avoid bad practices, like rent-seeking. The book stresses key community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to transform and turn-around the eco-systems of Caribbean society. These points are detailed in the book as follows:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 member-states/ 4 languages into a Single Market	Page 45
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – CU Federal Government versus Member-State Governance	Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change – Award exploratory rights in exclusive territories	Page 101
Implementation – Start-up Benefits from the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)	Page 104
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities (SGE)	Page 105
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – #3: Proactive Anti-crime Measures	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Improve Trade	Page 128
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy – Protect Property Rights	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism	Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Events	Page 191
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Fairgrounds	Page 192
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street	Page 201

To accomplish this goal of elevating Caribbean society, we must learn lessons from far-away places and nearby lands (like Miami), foster good economic habits … and abandon bad ones. This is how to grow the economy: create jobs; create businesses; retain people; foster new opportunities, learn from past mistakes and accomplishments.

All Caribbean stakeholders – residents, Diaspora and visitors – are urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap for change … and empowerment. This plan, though a Big Idea, is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————–

Appendix – Miami Top Employers

According to Miami’s Beacon Council – the local Economic Development agency – the top private employers in 2014 in Miami-Dade were:^[64]

#	Employer	# of employees
1	University of Miami and Health System	12,818
2	Baptist Health South Florida	11,353
3	American Airlines	11,031
4	Carnival Cruise Lines	3,500
5	Miami Children’s Hospital	3,500
6	Mount Sinai Medical Center	3,321
7	Florida Power and Light Co.	3,011
8	Royal Caribbean International	2,989
9	Wells Fargo	2,050
10	Bank of America	2,000

According to Miami’s Beacon Council, the top Government employers in 2014 in Miami-Dade were:^[64]

#	Employer	# of employees
1	Miami-Dade County Public Schools	33,477
2	Miami-Dade County	25,502
3	Federal Government	19,200
4	Florida State Government	17,100
5	Jackson Health System	9,800

Source: Retrieved December 5, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami-Dade_County,_Florida#Economy

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