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Ailing Puerto Rico open to radical economic fixes

Posted on April 18, 2014 in Economics, Government, Locations, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

The Caribbean is in crisis!

Puerto Rico is in crisis! According to this quote, they have lots of issues, all stemming primarily from economic dysfunctions:

Puerto Rico, in dire straits following eight years of recession, has remained receptive as it debates hundreds of ideas: ‘‘We are studying all alternatives and all possibilities.

The publishers of the book Go Lean … Caribbean humbly submit this publication as a complete roadmap to re-boot the island’s economy, security and governing engines. This roadmap differs from all the other 369 suggestions submitted to the territorial government’s committee highlighted in the foregoing news article, in that it presents a regional option, rather than just a territorial solution. The book asserts that the problems of Puerto Rico (by extension, the entire Caribbean) are too big for any one member-state to solve alone. Rather, the focus of the roadmap is the region-wide professionally-managed, deputized technocracy of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

Puerto Rico needs the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies of the CU.

The CU needs Puerto Rico!

The CU requires the full participation of all 30 member-states in the region, including all 4 language group (Dutch, English, French and Spanish). With this approach, the CU benefits from the economies-of-scale of 42 million people.

The CU expects NO MONEY from Puerto Rico. This is good as the island is running a $820 million deficit. To cure a deficit a government needs more revenues and/or fewer expenses. The Go Lean roadmap features both. The roadmap is a complete re-boot: new revenue streams and a separation-of-powers, thereby delegating governing overhead to the CU.

Go Lean … Caribbean introduces the CU to take oversight of’ much of the Caribbean economic, security and governing functionality. In summary, this plan’s execution makes Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean, a better place to live, work and play.

This Go Lean roadmap first assesses the Puerto Rican human flight/brain drain crisis, where more than half of the island’s populations have fled to American shores. This plight makes the task of building a functioning society difficult, as often the brightest and best talents are the ones that leave; plus entitlement programs simply need populace retention.

By DANICA COTO – Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Slash the number of public holidays by two-thirds. Eliminate dozens of government agencies. Legalize marijuana and prostitution.

From the intriguing to the impossible, there is no shortage of ideas for fixing Puerto Rico’s ailing economy as the government tries to dig out from a whopping $70 billion in public debt and bring back economic growth.

The ideas have come from legislators, entrepreneurs and even members of the public, who have submitted ideas via a government-sponsored website. Of the 369 ideas sent in by the public, 156 have been accepted by a government committee for consideration, including the suggestions to legalize marijuana and prostitution, and to limit how long people can live in subsidized housing.

But all the ideas require further government approval, either with a legislative vote, or an administrative nod from the governor, agency or department. More dramatic ideas, such as legalization of marijuana or prostitution, would require public hearings, legislative approval and the governor’s signature.

And prospects for approval of the various suggestions are decidedly mixed.

The governor, for example, is expected to sign a bill approved by lawmakers to release certain elderly prisoners, but not a suggestion floated by a member of the public to charge inmates for their room and board.

Puerto Rico, in dire straits following eight years of recession, has remained receptive as it debates hundreds of ideas: ‘‘We are studying all alternatives and all possibilities,’’ said Sen. Maria Teresa Gonzalez, a member of the governor’s party who has come under fire for submitting a bill that would reduce the number of holidays for public employees to six.

The island currently celebrates 20 holidays a year, double those observed in the U.S. Many people have bristled at the proposal to scrap some of the additional extra days off, some of which commemorate various historic Puerto Rican leaders. But Gonzalez said the excessive number of holidays costs the government about $500 million a year in lost productivity and interruptions in service, among other things.

‘‘Change always brings about inconveniences,’’ she said. ‘‘I’m convinced that before we talk about something as dramatic and disastrous as layoffs, we have to consider other ideas.’’

Many suggestions have come as Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla prepares to submit the first balanced budget in decades, having promised U.S. investors and credit agencies that he will eliminate an $820 million deficit. The governor has not detailed his cutbacks, prompting fears of layoffs, tax increases and cuts to public service.

Opposition legislator Rep. Ricardo Llerandi Cruz has proposed eliminating 41 government agencies, saying it would save $160 million alone in administrative costs. He said the government has many agencies performing the same functions, noting that there’s a Department of Natural Resources, which protects, develops and manages the island’s environmental resources, and an Administration of Natural Resources, a division within the department with responsibilities that include overseeing projects such as cleanup efforts.

‘‘Puerto Rico is facing the worst fiscal crisis in all of its history,’’ Cruz said. ‘‘We need to refocus or revisit governmental priorities to face these problems.’’

A bill in the legislature also would cap the salaries of mayors, but legislators have been debating the issue for a year as mayors continue to give themselves raises. The full-time mayor of the western town of Maricao, for example, oversees the island’s second-least populated municipality with some 6,200 people and currently earns $78,000 a year, nearly double of what he earned the previous year. If the bill is approved, the mayor would earn a base salary of roughly $54,000 a year.

Manuel Lugo, an attorney who lives in the coastal town of Aguadilla, is among those who submitted the highest number of ideas on the government’s website. But despite having nine of 17 ideas approved, he doesn’t believe the government will take action on any of them.

‘‘It is very difficult to change the inertia of this island,’’ said Lugo, 43, who recently closed his office because of economic problems and is contemplating a move to Texas. ‘‘There has been no economic plan for decades. What they do here is repair and patch holes. That’s not how you run a country.’’

Yanira Hernandez, a governor spokeswoman, said Garcia will detail how he plans to balance the budget in a special televised address in late April. The budget must be approved before June 30.

While many are concerned about what cuts will be made to balance the budget, economist Gustavo Velez said extreme measures won’t be necessary if the government increases revenues and consolidates state agencies. Puerto Rico could generate $300 million more a year if it increases its capture rate on tax revenues from 56 to 75 percent, he said. The government also could suspend salary increases, Velez added.

‘‘Puerto Rico cannot keep operating on recurring deficits,’’ he said, noting it is unconstitutional. ‘‘We have to return to balanced budgets as the norm. Politicians have to embrace that reality.’’

The government also has considered tapping into the island’s underground economy, estimated by some experts at $20 billion a year, representing roughly 40 percent of overall consumption.

Puerto Ricans are increasingly seeking new ways to generate money, with some opening food trucks or hunting caimans to sell the meat as shish kebabs or fried snacks.

But an estimated 450,000 people have moved to the U.S. mainland in search of new jobs and a more affordable cost of living in the past decade.

Brunilda Cintron, 56, left the island in 2001 and now lives in Kissimmee, Florida. But her daughter and mother still live in Puerto Rico, and she worries about their future.

‘‘The government has to make some drastic decisions that will adversely affect people,’’ Cintron said, adding that she thinks her family will soon join her in the U.S. mainland. ‘‘I don’t think they’re going to have a choice.’’

Boston Globe – AP Newswire – Retrieved 04-11 2014 http://www.boston.com/news/world/caribbean/2014/04/10/ailing-puerto-rico-open-radical-economic-fixes/siVW5wfiml78bERu5MuJlM/story.html

The CU will fix Puerto Rico! Look here at the solutions; (sorted by Economic/Security/Governance). The book Go Lean … Caribbean details these specific curative measures (advocacies, strategies, tactics, and implementations):

Economic:

Community Ethos – Money Multiplier	Page 22
Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Impact Turn-Around Strategies/Tactics	Page 33
Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy	Page 67
New Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Start-up Benefits from an EEZ	Page 104
Develop/Expand a Pipeline Industry	Page 107
Improve Energy Usage	Page 113
Better Manage Debt	Page 114
Foster International Aid	Page 115
Improve Trade	Page 128
Improve Interstate Commerce	Page 129
New Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Create Jobs	Page 152
Control Inflation	Page 153
Improve Credit Ratings	Page 155
Mitigate Black Markets	Page 165
Enhance Tourism	Page 190
Impact Wall Street	Page 200

Security:

Separation of Powers – Homeland Security	Page 75
Security Initiatives [stemming from the Start-up]	Page 103
Impact Justice	Page 177
Mitigate & Reduce Crime	Page 178
Improve Intelligence [Gathering & Analysis]	Page 182
Impact the Prison-Industrial Complex	Page 211

Governance:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Improve Negotiations	Page 32
Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Tactics to Foster a Technocracy	Page 64
Implement Self-Governing Entities	Page 105
Improve Mail Service	Page 108
Strong Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Promote Independence	Page 120
Improve Healthcare	Page 156
Impact Entitlements	Page 158
Improve Education	Page 159
New [Governmental] Revenue Sources	Page 172
Impact Public Works	Page 175
Better Manage Natural Resources	Page 183
Improve for Natural Disasters	Page 184
Improve Emergency Management	Page 196
Impact Urban Living	Page 234
Impact US Territories	Page 244

The roadmap alerts the Caribbean stakeholders of the obstacles that this plan will encounter, and then provides guidance, turn-by-turn directions, so as to reach the destination … promptly.

Change has come to the Caribbean. The people, institutions and governance of Puerto Rico are all urged to “lean-in.”

In fact, now is the time for the whole Caribbean region to lean-in for this change, described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits of this roadmap are too alluring to ignore: emergence of an $800 Billion regional economy, 2.2 million new jobs and an end to the dysfunction. This will result in Puerto Ricans repatriating from the US, not fleeing there.

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

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2008, Debt, Diaspora, Image, PR, Transform

Book Review: ‘The Divide’

Posted on April 16, 2014 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

So many Caribbean citizens would love the opportunity to immigrate to the United States. However, the old adage could apply here: “All that glitters is not gold”.

The publishers of the book Go Lean … Caribbean, align with the source book in this review, The Divide by Matt Taibbi. In the Caribbean, we hope to minimize the “push-and-pull” factors that draw our Caribbean youth away. This verse from Matt Taibbi’s book depicts that the US is not the “Promised Land” that many Caribbean expatriates envision:

Violent crime has fallen by 44 percent in America over the past two decades, but during that same period the prison population has more than doubled, skewing heavily black and poor. In essence, poverty itself is being criminalized.

This subject matter aligns with the Go Lean … Caribbean publication, which serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The Go Lean roadmap calls for the optimization of the Caribbean economic, security and governing engines. We want a society based on justice, but not the “American Justice” we see meted out, as described in the source book.

This Go Lean roadmap first assesses that the Caribbean is in crisis, that we are not able to retain our young people. Many member-states (St Vincent, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, etc.) have lost more than half of their populations to foreign shores. This plight of human flight makes the task of building a functioning society difficult for the remainder, as often our brightest and best talents are the ones that leave. We “fatten frogs for snakes”, as the Jamaican expression depicts.

Many times, the destination of choice is the United States. The goal of Go Lean movement is to forge a better society, to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. While the source book in the foregoing article is indicting the American Justice system, we, in the Caribbean, need to ensure that we are doing even better ourselves in our Caribbean homeland.

Book Review: By Timothy Noah; contributing writer New York Times, April 10, 2014

THE DIVIDE (Spiegel & Grau Publishers)

American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap

By Matt Taibbi

“Low-class people do low-class things.” What’s notable in this reflexive dismissal of those with modest means are not the words themselves. Rather, please turn your attention to the person whom Matt Taibbi, in his ambitious new book documenting America’s unequal administration of justice to rich and poor, quotes saying them: a private attorney hired by New York State to defend low-income people in criminal court. We never learn his name, but Taibbi calls him Waldorf because he resembles the grouchy old balcony heckler on “The Muppet Show.”

Waldorf’s casual contempt for his defendants (and tacit approval of the sloppy policing dragnet that puts them at his mercy) is voiced at the conclusion of a grimly comic vignette worthy of Joseph Heller — one of many deeply reported, highly compelling mini-narratives of dysfunction within the criminal justice system that make “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap” as infuriating as it is impossible to put down.

A 35-year-old black man named Andrew Brown is arrested for “obstructing pedestrian traffic” in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Brown, having been similarly harassed by the cops countless times before, refuses to provide ID and accept a summons, and is consequently brought into court. Once there, Brown explains to Waldorf that he was talking to a friend outside his own apartment building after getting off work, and that, given the lateness of the hour (shortly before 1 a.m.), there wouldn’t have been any pedestrian traffic on Myrtle Avenue to obstruct.

None of this seems to register with Waldorf. “What are you arguing?” he asks. He wonders aloud whether Brown was “being a wise guy” with the cops, and expresses surprise that a person such as Brown would have a job. He advises his client to pay the $25 fine.

Brown refuses and explains it all over again to the judge. The judge turns to Waldorf and asks whether Brown will pay the $25 fine. Waldorf explains, for the second time, that Brown won’t pay, his manner suggesting that for the life of him he can’t figure out why not.

Only then does the judge bestir himself to ask the arresting officer whether he saw any other people on the sidewalk that night. No? “O.K., then,” the judge sighs. “Not guilty.” Out in the hallway, Taibbi asks Waldorf why white people never get arrested for obstructing pedestrian traffic. Oblivious to the lesson that has just played out, and puzzled as to why Taibbi would want to include any of this in a book, Waldorf replies, “Low-class people do low-class things.”

Taibbi wrote “The Divide” to demonstrate that unequal wealth is producing grotesquely unequal outcomes in criminal justice. You might say that’s an old story, but Taibbi believes that, just as income disparities are growing ever wider, so, too, are disparities in who attracts the attention of cops and prosecutors and who doesn’t. Violent crime has fallen by 44 percent in America over the past two decades, but during that same period the prison population has more than doubled, skewing heavily black and poor. In essence, poverty itself is being criminalized. Meanwhile, at the other end of the income distribution, an epidemic of white-collar crime has overtaken the financial sector, indicated, for instance, by a proliferation of record-breaking civil settlements. But partly because of an embarrassing succession of botched Justice Department prosecutions, and partly because of a growing worry (first enunciated by Attorney General Eric Holder when he was Bill Clinton’s deputy attorney general) that any aggressive prosecution of big banks could destabilize the economy, Wall Street has come, under President Obama, to enjoy near-total immunity from criminal prosecution. It had more to fear, ironically, when George W. Bush was president.

The argument isn’t laid out in a particularly rigorous or nuanced manner, but it seems plausible enough. Taibbi, a longtime Rolling Stone writer who is currently developing a publication about political and financial corruption for First Look Media, has in the past written in a blustery style that put me off, but here the gonzo affectation is kept largely in check. What I failed to notice previously — or perhaps what Taibbi shows off to especially good effect here — is what a meticulous reporter he can be, with a facility for rendering complex financial skulduggery intelligible. Especially noteworthy are Taibbi’s detailed accounts of self-dealing amid the dismantlement of Lehman Brothers — which involved, among other things, hoodwinking Lehman’s bankruptcy judge — and of a vicious harassment campaign waged by hedge fund managers against the employees of a Canadian insurance company whose stock they’d shorted. In both instances, one is struck that, however tricky the standard of proof may be for the white-collar criminal class, the evidence available nowadays in the form of compromising email communications would make Eliot Ness weep with gratitude. And yet the gangsters got away.

Taibbi is similarly skillful at explaining how bureaucratic imperatives in the criminal justice system can spin scarily out of control. In New York City, you start with a “broken windows” theory that says cracking down on petty crime can prevent little criminals from becoming big criminals. Possibly because that’s right, violent crime goes down. But paradoxically, that makes a cop’s life more difficult rather than less, because criminals are getting harder to find even as new computer systems are enabling the police commissioner to keep track of which precincts are making the most arrests. The solution turns out to be aggressive use of a stop-and-frisk policy that gives cops a blank check to “search virtually anyone at any time.” The police start behaving “like commercial fishermen, throwing nets over whole city blocks.” Some of the fish get prosecuted or ticketed for ever-pettier offenses; 20,000 summonses, for instance, are handed out annually for riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. But most fish aren’t guilty of anything and must grow accustomed to being routinely cuffed and ridden around in a police van before they are tossed back into the water. These fish are, of course, typically black and poor. Anecdotal evidence suggests that throwing a similar fishnet over entire Wall Street firms would produce a criminal yield at least as high as any random ghetto block. But innocent Wall Street fish would have a much bigger megaphone with which to proclaim their constitutional rights, and guilty Wall Street fish would have much better lawyers.

One theme implicit in Taibbi’s reporting is the extent to which the justice system’s newer kinds of inequalities are driven by technology. Computers encourage both the government and the banks to operate on a scale at which consideration of

individual circumstance isn’t really possible. The result is unstoppable error by government (say, the frequent miscalculations that leave welfare recipients at constant risk of being wrongly accused of fraud) and unstoppable fraud by banks (say, robo-signing endlessly repackaged and resold mortgages and credit card debt). For both government and banks, such scaling up inevitably creates injustices for certain individuals, but so long as the victims are powerless there won’t be much of a legal or political reckoning. The person tossed into jail for welfare fraud he didn’t commit or tossed out of his house because he was mistakenly judged not to be paying his mortgage may or may not get it all sorted out in the end, but even if he does the feedback loop won’t impose too much pain.

We may be approaching a day when any kind of personal attention from a large institution that wields substantial control over your life becomes a luxury available only to the few, like a bespoke suit or designer gown.

New York Times Online –Book Review – “The Justice Gap” – Retrieved 04-15-2014 –http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/books/review/the-divide-by-matt-taibbi.html?_r=0http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/books/review/the-divide-by-matt-taibbi.html_r=0

Even though the Go Lean book is presented as a roadmap for economic empowerment, it immediately recognizes that there must be an effort for justice among Caribbean institutions or rather, people will continue to flee. At the outset of the Go Lean book, in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12), this point is pronounced:

xxi. 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.

How should the Caribbean be different than the United States in the pursuit of justice?

The book Go Lean … Caribbean details strategies, tactic, implementations and advocacies to elevate Caribbean society. Some of the specific features include:

Community Ethos – Juvenile Justice	Page 23
10 Ways to Manage Reconciliations	Page 34
10 Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Separation of Powers–Justice Department	Page 77
Separation of Powers–Judicial Branch	Page 90
10 Ways to Better Manage Image	Page 133
10 Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 134
10 Ways to Impact Justice	Page 177
10 Ways to Reduce Crime	Page 178
10 Ways to Improve Intelligence	Page 182
10 Ways to Impact Wall Street	Page 200
10 Ways to Impact Prison-Industrial Complex	Page 211
10 Ways to Protect Human Rights	Page 220
10 Ways to Impact Youth	Page 227

The roadmap also cautions that we do not want to repeat America’s mistakes. If we do not learn from history …

In truth, the Caribbean is still reeling from the effects of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

What is worse, the US has “hardly” marshaled any persecutions against the culprits and perpetrators of the mortgage fraud that de-stabilized the American securities markets and the world economy. Matt Taibbi further reports:

In a speech last year that chilled Wall Street, New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley said he feared that the tax dodging, money laundering, mortgage fraud and trampling on homeowners by America’s big banks might reflect not just a few bad actors but ethical flaws deep in the fabric of Wall Street.

In 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. warned that “mortgage-fraud crimes have reached crisis proportions.” He vowed bravely to fight back, but the Justice Department’s inspector general recently reported that, in fact, Holder’s department has made Wall Street crime its lowest priority and that, since 2009, the FBI has closed 747 mortgage-fraud cases with little or no investigation.

There it is, the United States, where there seems to be a Great Divide in justice, one set of standards for the rich, another set for the poor.

The grass is not greener on that (American) side!

The reasons for emigration are “push-and-pull”. This source book identifies and qualifies a “pull” factor, the issue of justice in America. The book informs the reader that America should not be considered alluring from a justice perspective, especially if the reader/audience is poor and of a minority ethnicity.

This leaves the “push” factors. The Caribbean must address its issues, as to why its population is so inclined to emigrate. This is the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap. It features the assessments, strategies, tactics and implementations to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

Now is the time for the Caribbean region to lean-in for the changes described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits of this roadmap are too alluring to ignore: emergence of our own $800 Billion economy, 2.2 million new jobs, new industries, services and optimized justice institutions.

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

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Book Review, Civil Rights, Crony-Capitalism, Image, Justice, Power

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How Nigeria’s economy grew by 89% overnight

Posted on April 9, 2014 in Economics, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

These words jump off the page in reviewing the foregoing article:

Nigeria has a deserved reputation for corruption, so a skeptic might think the doubling of its economy a result of fiddling the numbers.

The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean are among the skeptics.

The measurement of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a very important function for the governing authorities of any state. This point is strongly advocated in the Go Lean book, serving as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of both the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the independent, yet aligned Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). These institutions depend on (and will ensure) accurate GDP calculations.

What is so wrong with an 89% overnight GDP jump? Isn’t a jump in GDP indicative of successful economic policies for a country’s administration? Yes!

But 89% is beyond common sense and sensibilities! See the full news article, here:

ON SATURDAY, April 5th, South Africa was Africa’s largest economy. The IMF put its GDP at $354 billion last year, well ahead of its closest rival for the crown, Nigeria. By Sunday afternoon that had changed. Nigeria’s statistician-general announced that his country’s GDP for 2013 had been revised from 42.4 trillion naira to 80.2 trillion naira ($509 billion). The estimated income of the average Nigerian went from less than $1,500 a year to $2,688 in a trice. How can an economy grow by almost 90% overnight?

Nigeria has a deserved reputation for corruption, so a skeptic might think the doubling of its economy a result of fiddling the numbers. In fact it is the old numbers that are dodgy. An economy’s real growth rate is typically measured by reference to prices in a base year. In Nigeria the reference year for the old estimate of GDP was 1990. The IMF recommends that base years be updated at least every five years. Nigeria left it far too long; as a result, its old GDP figures were hopelessly inaccurate.

The new figures use 2010 as the base year. Why was the upgrade so big? To come up with an estimate of GDP, statisticians need to add together estimates of output from a sample of businesses in every part of the economy, from farming to service industries. The weight they give to each sector depends on its importance to the economy in the base year. A snapshot of Nigeria’s economy in 1990 gave little or no weight to fast-growing parts of the economy such as mobile telephony or the movie industry. At the time the state-owned telephone company had a few hundred thousand customers. Today the country has 120m mobile-phone subscriptions. On the old 1990 figures, the telecoms sector was less than 1% of GDP; it is now almost 9% of GDP. Motion pictures had not shown up at all in the old figures, but the industry’s size is now put at 1.4% of GDP. Nigeria’s number-crunchers have improved the gathering of statistics in other ways. The old GDP figures were based on an estimate of output. The new figures are cross-checked against separate surveys of spending and income. The sample on which the data are based has increased from around 85,000 establishments to 850,000. Only businesses with a fixed location are included: the traders who weave precariously between the traffic are not captured. Even so, many small businesses are now part of the GDP picture.

Of course, Nigerians are no richer than they were on Saturday night. The majority of the country’s 170m people live on less than a dollar a day. What the revised GDP figures show is that its economy is far more than just an oil enclave, exporting crude to pay for imported goods from richer countries. The oil industry’s share of GDP is now put at just 14%, compared with 33% according to the old figures. Manufacturing is much larger than previously thought. Services are booming. It is still a tough place in which to do business. But any company or investor who wants exposure to Africa’s fast-growing markets cannot afford to pass the continent’s largest economy by.
Source: The Economist Magazine – Retrieved 04/08/2014 from: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/04/economist-explains-2

According to the foregoing article, the current GDP determination may be correct, while the previous GDP figures may be wrong. A better approach may have been to correct and methodically adjust the base year (1990) slowly over a period of some years.

Why is accurate GDP so important? The lessons from Greece (years: 2000-2010) are too vivid! GDP growth measures success in economic engines. From a Central Bank perspective, the measure of GDP contributes to the determination of the money supply (M0 and M1). Too much currency in circulation can result in devaluation. This fate has been the affliction for many Caribbean member-states. The book describes the dilemma of currency/economic mis-management and their impact on Caribbean society; this is one of the “push” factors contributing to human flight; (Anecdote 16 – Caribbean Currencies, Page 149). Assuaging further human flight/brain drain is a prime directive of the Go Lean roadmap for the CU. This point is pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence – Page 13:

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 roadmap calls for confederating all 30 member-states of the Caribbean, despite their language and legacy, into an integrated Single Market, with a unified currency, Caribbean Dollar (C$). The end result after 5 years, not overnight, would be the growth in GDP from $378 Billion (per 2010) to $800 Billion. This growth is based on new jobs, industrial output and lean operational efficiency, not fiddling with the accounting numbers.

The book posits that the adoption of electronic payment systems by the governing entities (e-Government – Page 168), and fostering Electronic Commerce (Page 198) will Mitigate Black Markets (Page 165), thus reducing the guesswork of statistical abstracts. Thus, the CU will be able to better Measure the Progress (Page 147) of the Go Lean roadmap, and make the required course correction; this is a path to indisputable success.

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

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Foreign Policy, Image, Power

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Barbados Central Bank records $3.7m loss in 2013

Posted on April 4, 2014 in Economics, Planning, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

How does a Central Bank lose money? This seems plausibly impossible.

Without detailing the anatomy of the banking system, here are a few facts that make this foregoing news article so inconceivable. A Central Bank compels a reserve requirement from all commercial banks within its jurisdiction. So for every $100 in deposits, a commercial bank would have to leave a secured amount, say $12 on hand at the Central Bank. The commercial bank can thusly only loan the residual $88 in this example. Control (raising/lowering) that reserve requirement percentage rate is how Central Banks control the money supply, interest rates and inflation – the economy.

So with no effort, a Central Bank gets a slice of every deposit in its jurisdiction, a country. This role/responsibility is so important that many view the Chairman of the US Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, as the most powerful man in the country; even more so than the President.

So despite all this power, how can a Central Bank possibly lose money?

A Central Bank also has the ability to create “money from thin air”, by buying and selling treasury bonds on the securities markets. This too is a method for Central Banks to control the money supply. An accounting entry on the ledger creates the liquidity to buy bonds (increase money supply) or sell bonds (contract the money supply).

With this system in place, a Central Bank prints and issues the hard currency for a country. For them to lose money gives the impression that their currency has no/little value.

Imagine, the Governors/Directors of the Central Bank of Barbados are to be considered the stewards of Barbados’s economy…and they posted a loss for fiscal 2013! (The Bible analogy of “the blind leading the blind” comes to mind!)

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Thursday April 3, 2014, CMC – The Central Bank of Barbados (CBB) says it recorded a loss of BDS$3.7 million (One BDS dollar = US$0.50 cents) last year as it focused on restoring macroeconomic stability to the domestic economy.

The CBB in its 2013 annual report submitted to the govern-ment on Monday said that while its operating costs were largely unchanged, “the continuing weak investment climate for the low-risk securities that the Bank is permitted to hold continued to depress income.

“The Bank is reviewing options to contain expenditure over the medium term,” it added.

In its report, the CBB said that it focused on restoring macro-economic stability to the domestic economy as a weak performance of the key export sectors together with significantly lower foreign capital inflows constrained economic growth prospects.

“These developments placed pressure on foreign reserves, triggering a major policy adjustment to contain the erosion of the reserves, sustain the exchange rate anchor, reduce the fiscal deficit and slow the growth of Government debt.”

The CBB said the primary tool of policy was fiscal consolidation, reflected in increased taxation and expenditure-reducing measures.

“At the same time, the Bank continued to encourage the revitalisation of economic activity through growth in the tourism, agro-processing, international business and financial services, and alternative energy industries. “

It said that given the challenges facing the economy, the CBB stepped up its engagement with its stakeholders through a number of initiatives including presentations by internationally renowned speakers.

The CBB said in 2013 it introduced a new interest rate policy framework, designed to rationalise the process for adjustment of domestic interest rates.

“The policy permits virtual liberalisation of the minimum deposit rate, apart from ordinary savings accounts of individuals and non-profit organisations. This allows financial institutions to now set other deposit rates, while continuing to set lending rates.

“The policy also provides for intervention of the Bank in the Treasury Bill market, with the Treasury Bill rate now being used as a basis for determining rates for long term securities, along a notional yield curve which the Central Bank publishes.“

The Central Bank of Barbados said that the financial system remained stable during 2013 with banks profitable and well- capitalised.

It said the Financial Services Commission, which oversees the regulation of non- bank financial institutions, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Central Bank aimed at strengthening the monitoring of the financial system.

The CBB said for the first time in its 40-year history it has completely overhauled the design of the Barbados’ bank notes.

“In the past, only minor modifications had been made to the original series. The new series issued on June 4, 2013 replaced old and worn-out notes and there are enhanced security features that will make the new notes difficult to counterfeit and easier for the public to authenticate.”

The foregoing news article aligns with the prime directive of the book Go Lean … Caribbean to re-boot the economic engines of the Caribbean. The book narrates, thru anecdotes and statistical abstracts, the pain and suffering of previous mis-management of Caribbean currencies. The book then asserts that any regional effort to optimize the economy must be partnered with technocratic management of monetary affairs. As such, the book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of both the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the independent, Caribbean Central Bank (CCB).

Before addressing the technical issues, the CU assumes a sentinel position to cautiously protect and promote image and branding of Caribbean people, culture and systems of commerce. The foregoing headline is a “call to arms” for this mission.

Monetary and currency issues are intertwined with any discussion of elevating the Caribbean’s economy. This issue is explored in full details in the book, commencing with the roadmap focus of the Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing the need for astute management of the money supply with these statements (Page 13 & 14) respectively:

xxi. 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 & fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated … [to] address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and member-states.

xxix. Whereas all Caribbean democracies depend of the free flow of capital for municipal, public and private financing, the institutions of capital markets can be better organized around a regional monetary union. The Federation must institute the controls to insure transparency, accounting integrity and analysis independence of the securities markets, thereby shifting the primary source of capital away from foreign lenders to domestic investors, comprising institutions and individuals.

The roadmap is to confederate all the 30 member-states of the Caribbean, despite their language and legacy, into an integrated “single market”, with a unified currency, Caribbean Dollar (C$). This follows the model of the European Union and the European Central Bank with the world’s strongest currency, the Euro.

The book maintains that the security of the Caribbean is inextricably linked to the economy of the Caribbean; as such there is the need for federal oversight, monitoring and mitigations of threats, risks and casualties for the integrated market and the related systems of commerce.

These above comments address the “coulda-woulda-shoulda” aspects of the foregoing news article. The Go Lean roadmap also brings a sense of reality to the focus of economic empowerment in the Caribbean. This means that “it is what it is”. So why did the Central Bank of Barbados post a $3.7 Million loss for 2013?

This requires a sober assessment; the managers for the bank are duly qualified. Dr. DeLisle Worrell was appointed as Governor of the Central Bank on November 1, 2009. He is an acclaimed Economist, author and professor; he is a subject-matter-expert (SME) for small island economics, having authored a book entitled SMALL ISLAND ECONOMIES; he is a technocrat!

The foregoing article alludes that the loss was due to the volatility of foreign exchange (Fx) management. It is these kinds of issues that the Go Lean roadmap targets for mitigation and better management. The book posits that the problems of Caribbean currencies are too big for any one member-state to resolve, that the best solution is to confederate the 30 member-states, and their Central Banks, into a “single market” Central Bank for the unified C$ currency – a cooperative of banks. Since the Barbados dollar alone cannot garner the volumes for respect and participation in the international Fx markets, this SMALL ISLAND ECONOMY must “fend for its life” as best it can, buying and selling US dollars in the open market to control the amount/value of the Barbadian dollar. This process is “hit-and-miss”. For 2013, it was a “miss”!

The strategies, tactics, implementations for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation & Caribbean Central Bank management of the economy are detailed in the Go Lean roadmap. Here are sample selections from the book:

Separation-of-Powers: Central Bank – Currency Printing/Engraving	Page 73
Separation-of-Powers: Depository Insurance & Regulatory Authority	Page 73
Separation-of-Powers: Securities Exchange Regulatory Agency	Page 74
Separation-of-Powers: Emergency Management	Page 76
10 Ways to Better Manage Debt	Page 114
10 Ways to Promote Independence	Page 120
10 Ways to Model the EU	Page 129
10 Lessons Learned from 2008	Page 135
10 Ways to Control Inflation	Page 153
10 Ways to Better Manage Foreign Exchange	Page 154
10 Ways to Mitigate Black Markets	Page 165
10 Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
10 Reforms for Banking Regulations	Page 199
10 Ways to Impact Wall Street	Page 200

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Cuba Approves New “Law on Foreign Investment”

Posted on April 2, 2014 in Economics, Government

Go Lean Commentary

Cuba sera libre!

This has been the “war chant” for many lovers of Cuban heritage, culture and homeland. It’s a reminder that Cuba currently lacks many of the same freedoms so many of its neighbors enjoy. It is a mission of the book Go Lean … Caribbean, to bring change to the Caribbean in general and Cuba in particular, with the implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). See the relevance in the following news article here:

Title: Cuba Approves New “Law on Foreign Investment”
By: Caribbean Journal Online Magazine

Cuba’s National Assembly has approved a new “Law on Foreign Investment,” the government said Saturday.
In a statement, the government said it would be an “essential instrument in the interest of Cuba to consolidate its economic model and build a prosperous and sustainable socialism.”

The law included a mix of mostly tax incentives, and it could be the latest move in what has been a gradual shift toward liberalizing the country’s economy, although it has come at a decidedly slow pace.

That nominal push kicked off last year, when Raul Castro, announcing plans to retire from politics in 2018, said Cuba needed to update its economic model to achieve a “sustainable and prosperous socialist society, a society less egalitarian, but more fair.”

The vote came at a special meeting convened by Cuba’s state council to discuss regulation; the meeting focused on “the need to attract foreign capital to the sectors of interest to the country,” according to a statement.

Marino Murillo Jorge, vice president of Cuba’s Council of Ministers, said that well-done foreign investment “does not mean giving away the country.”

He said the new model would focus on ensuring not just economic growth but development, with a target growth rate of between five and seven percent.

Retrieved 04/01/2014 from: http://www.caribjournal.com/2014/03/30/cubas-national-assembly-approves-new-law-on-foreign-investment/

The Go Lean roadmap recognizes that Cuba is very significant in the geographic and cultural anatomy of the Caribbean. As of 2010, Cuba possessed 26% of the region’s population (11.2 million out of 42.2 million) and 29% of the gross GDP, with their assumed $111 Billion output. But this is a far cry from where Cuba was 60 years ago, with one study placing Cuba as the #3 economy in Latin America and the Caribbean^[a]. Though the “mighty has fallen”, this book posits that the “sleeping giant”, that is the Cuban economy, will awaken. The Go Loan roadmap is the preparation of Cuba’s re-emergence to the world’s economic consciousness. The realities and possibilities of Cuba’s past and future are identified early in the book, embedded in the Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing a need for reconciliation efforts (Page 11):

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.

The foregoing article confirms that change is on the way! The Cuban Communist regime recognizes that they need foreign investment, a “rightward” shift towards socialism; less egalitarianism and more free market accomplishments. The CU will expedite this process even more for/with Cuba. Where they declare “open arms” for foreign investments, we declare a regional embrace of Caribbean participation (Page 13):

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.

To the population of Cubans living on the island, we embrace you; “Help” is on the way! We entreat you to lean-in to this plan for confederation with your Caribbean neighbors.

To the Cuban Diaspora living abroad, we embrace you. There is a role for your inclusion in the future of Cuba. We entreat you to also lean-in to this roadmap for change and economic optimization for your beloved Cuba.

To the Cuban legacies, those descendants of Cuba’s past, we encourage you to tune-in and observe how the passions of your heritage will succeed in this new world.

Cuba sera libre!

Download the Book- Go Lean…Caribbean Now!!!

———–

Appendix – Reference:

a. United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report, Various issues, 1990, 1992, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, 1993.

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Low-cost Dominican surgeries spark warnings by US

Posted on April 1, 2014 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Strategy, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

To the family of Beverly Brignoni, according to the foregoing news article, the publishers of the book Go Lean … Caribbean, SFE Foundation, extend condolences for the loss of their dearly departed loved one. This article – as follows – shows the down-side of medical tourism, an accidental death from an apparent lax oversight in a cosmetic surgery clinic.

By: Ben Fox and Ezequiel Abiu Lopez
Beverly Brignoni was a young New Yorker seeking a less expensive way to enhance her appearance and she did what many other people are now doing: travel to the Dominican Republic for cosmetic surgery; (see undated “selfie” photo posted to her Instagram account, courtesy of the Brignoni family).

It went horribly wrong. The 28-year-old died Feb. 20 from what the doctor told her family was a massive pulmonary embolism while getting a tummy tuck and liposuction at a clinic in the Dominican capital recommended by friends. Family members want local authorities to investigate.

“We want to know exactly what happened,” said Bernadette Lamboy, Brignoni’s godmother. “We want to know if there was negligence.”

The district attorney’s office for Santo Domingo says it has not yet begun an investigation because it has not received a formal complaint from Brignoni’s relatives. Family members say they plan to make one.

Shortly after Brignoni’s death, the Health Ministry inspected the Vista del Jardin Medical Center where she was treated and ordered the operating room temporarily closed, citing the presence of bacteria and violations of bio-sanitary regulations. The doctor who performed the procedure and the clinic have not responded to requests for comment.

Brignoni’s death is unusual, but it is not isolated. Concerns about the booming cosmetic surgery business in the Dominican Republic are enough of an issue that the State Department has posted a warning on its page for travel to that country, noting that in several cases U.S. citizens have suffered serious complications or died.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued an alert March 7 after health authorities in the United States reported that at least 19 women in five states had developed serious mycobacterial wound infections over the previous 12 months following cosmetic procedures in the Dominican Republic such as liposuction, tummy tucks and breast implants.

There were no reported deaths in those cases, but treatment for these types of infections, which have been caused in the past by contaminated medical equipment, tend to involve long courses of antibiotics and can require new surgery to remove infected tissue and drain fluid, said Dr. Douglas Esposito, a CDC medical officer.

“Some of these patients end up going through one or more surgeries and various travels through the medical system,” Esposito said. “They take a long time typically to get better.”

The Dominican Republic, like countries such as Mexico, Costa Rica and Thailand, has promoted itself as a destination for medical tourism, so-called because people will often tack on a few days at a resort after undergoing surgery. The main allure is much lower costs along with the promise that conditions will be on par with what a patient

would encounter at home.

In 2013, there were more than 1,000 cosmetic procedures performed in the Dominican Republic, 60 percent of them on foreigners, according to the country’s Plastic Surgery Society.

The Internet is flooded with advertisements and testimonials from people who say they have had successful procedures in the Dominican Republic, and an industry of “recovery houses” has sprung up to serve clients, along with promoters who canvass for clients in the United States. The price is often about a third of the cost in the United States.

Dr. Braun Graham, a plastic surgeon in Sarasota, Florida, says he done corrective surgery on people for what he says were inferior procedures abroad. He warns that even if a foreign doctor is talented, nurses and support staff may lack adequate training.

“Clearly, the cost savings is certainly not worth the increased risk of a fatal complication,” said Graham, past president for Florida Society of Plastic Surgeons.

Brignoni was referred to the Vista del Jardin Medical Center by several acquaintances in the New York borough of the Bronx where she lived, said Lamboy and Lenny Ulloa, the father of the 4-year-old daughter she left behind.

“Supposedly, it was a high-end clinic, one of the best in the city,” Ulloa said.

The doctor who performed Brignoni’s procedure, Guillermo Lorenzo, is certified by the Plastic Surgery Society, but there

are at least 300 surgeons performing cosmetic procedures who are not, said Dr. Severo Mercedes, the organization’s director. He said the government knows about the problem but has not taken any action. “We complain but we can’t go after anyone because we’re not law enforcement,” Mercedes said.

The number of people pursuing treatment in the Dominican Republic doesn’t seem to have been affected by negative reports, including a previous CDC warning about a cluster of 12 infections in 2003-04.

In one recent case, the Dominican government in February closed a widely advertised clinic known as “Efecto Brush,” for operating without a license. Prosecutors opened a criminal case after at least six women accused the clinic of fraud and negligence. The director, Franklin Polanco, is free while awaiting trial. He denies wrongdoing.

There was also the case of Dr. Hector Cabral. New York prosecutors accused him of conducting examinations of women in health spas and beauty parlors in that state in 2006-09 without a license, then operating on them in the Dominican Republic, leaving some disfigured. Cabral pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized practice of medicine in October 2011 and returned to the Dominican Republic, where he still practices.

In 2009, Dominican authorities charged Dr. Johan Tapia Bueno with illegally practicing plastic surgery at his apartment after several women, including a local television personality, accused him of malpractice that left them with infections. Awaiting trial, he has pleaded innocent to charges that include fraud.

Juan Linares, a lawyer hired by Brignoni’s boyfriend, said he is still awaiting an autopsy report.

Because she arrived in the country late at night on a delayed flight and was on the operating table early the next morning, a main concern is whether she received an adequate medical evaluation before the procedure. Graham, the Florida surgeon, said sitting on a plane for several hours can cause blood to stagnate in the legs and increase the risk of an embolism.

Brignoni paid the Dominican clinic $6,300 for a combination of liposuction, tummy tuck and breast surgery. Lamboy said she had decided not to have the work done on her breasts and was expecting a partial refund. The woman, who worked as a property manager, had lost about 80 pounds about a year earlier after gastric bypass surgery.

Brignoni was clearly excited about the procedure. Her final post on Facebook was a photo she took of her hands holding her passport and boarding pass for the flight from New York to Santo Domingo.

“She wanted it so bad,” her godmother said. “It felt like she was going to have a better outlook on life, getting this done.”

Associated Press writer Ben Fox reported this story from Miami and Ezequiel Abiu Lopez reported in Santo Domingo.

Source: Associated Press (AP); retrieved 03/31/2014 from: http://news.yahoo.com/low-cost-dominican-surgeries-spark-warnings-us-042418398.html

This is a very important issue for the planning and execution of the new inter-governmental agency: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). First of all, someone died – life is too precious to skim over this issue with indifference. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap to introduce and implement the CU, so as to re-boot the region’s economic engines, including avenues of medical tourism.

There are also peripheral issues associated with this news story, many of which are examined, as missions, in great details in the Go Lean book. The issues/missions are:

Image: Confidence in the competence of service providers is sometimes based on reputation and branding. This is para-mount in medical fields. While the Caribbean is home to many excellent medical schools, facilities and practitioners, there is no regional “sentinel” role-player. The CU mandate is to zealously protect and promote the image and branding for industrial developments. So now when the media portrays “negative” depiction of Caribbean life, culture and people, there is no formal response mechanism. But with the CU’s implementation, there will be an entity to effectuate an anti-defamation response and better manage the region’s image.
Health Administration: The Go Lean roadmap recognizes healthcare as a basic need for the people of the Caribbean. As such, there is the acknowledgement that health delivery systems generate excessive costs and risks for a community. As a planning tool, the roadmap commences with a Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing regional integration (Page 11) as the strategy for optimized benefits:

IX. Whereas the realities of healthcare and an aging population cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans to consolidate premiums of both healthy and sickly people across the wider base of the entire Caribbean population. The mitigation should extend further to disease management, wellness, obesity and smoking cessation programs. The Federation must proactively anticipate the demand and supply of organ transplantation as developing countries are often exploited by richer neighbors for illicit organ trade.

Self-Government Entities: The foregoing news story involves a clinic regulated by a Caribbean member-state, the Dominican Republic. The Go Lean roadmap institutes an arrangement for medical/research campuses as SGE’s (Self-Governing Entities) that are only regulated by the CU federal authorities. Had this tragedy occurred on such a facility, the response would have been immediate and comprehensive, employing best-practices of trauma medicine arts and sciences, thusly requiring a post-mortem lessons-learned process that would be fully transparent and accountable.
Lean Government: The Go Lean roadmap also extends optimizations to the member-states governments, requiring a separation-of-powers dictum to transfer oversight and administration of certain state functions to federal authorities. This includes standards, licensing and administration of healthcare facilities. The application of best-practices would most assuredly minimize the risk of medical negligence.
US Exceptionalism: The Go Lean roadmap maintains that other countries have their own version of the American Dream. The quest for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not exclusively American. Whereas there are millions of negligent deaths in the US hospitals/clinics every year, one American dying in a Caribbean facility does not constitute an exceptional event; bad things do happen to good people … everywhere, in the US, in the Caribbean and in the Dominican Republic. Having a tourism-based regional economy means we always want to extend hospitality to our American guests, but embarking on medical tourism, also means assuming some degree of risks, for the facilities, the doctors and most importantly the patients.

The foregoing article crystalizes the need for the CU Trade Federation, a super-national administration to regulate, protect, promote and foster quality delivery of the most vital public services. The publishers of the Go Lean roadmap will hereby “sit back”, observe-and-report on the manifestations of this case, hoping for the quest for justice and accountability to be fulfilled. And remembering the unconscionable loss of the beautiful 28-year-old woman, Beverly Brignoni; RIP.

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Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight

Posted on March 26, 2014 in Economics, Government, Implementation, Social, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

The publisher of the book Go Lean … Caribbean commends the Government of Jamaica and the Washington DC-based World Bank institution for their diligent effort to forge solutions to some of the crucial challenges of Jamaica. Crime has proceeded to cast such a “dark cloud” on Jamaica that the country is near the assessment of a “Failed-State”. The societal problems in Jamaica are so bad that many different advocacies from the Go Lean book can be applied to bring much needed improvements to the island. The book thusly serves as a roadmap for the implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a regional entity projected to also forge solutions for the Caribbean region as a whole and Jamaica in particular.

WASHINGTON D.C. – The World Bank says more than 80,000 Jamaican citizens will benefit from improved services, basic infrastructure and targeted crime and violence interventions in 18 vulnerable inner-city communities as a result of a US$42 million project for integrated community development.

The Washington-based financial institution said the new project is a continuation of the partnership between the Jamaica government and the World Bank on upgrading some of the country’s most vulnerable and volatile communities.

It said the project builds on the success of the “Inner City Basic Services for the Poor Project” to address accelerating urban decay and declining citizen security.

“The project aims to foster a more inclusive society in Jamaica by improving the quality of life of marginalized city dwellers,” said Sophie Sirtaine, World Bank country director for the Caribbean.

“It also aims to prevent crime and violence by engaging youth in public safety initiatives and providing them with job skills training,” she added.

As a result of the funding, Sirtaine said more than 50,000 people will benefit from improved solid waste management services, street lighting, paved roads and drainage.

She said residents in the 18 communities would “feel safer” and that 1200 families will have their piped water connection repaired and 4,500 residents receiving educational and skills training.

“As we strive to advance the targets of the Vision 2030, where access to reliable services and adequate infrastructure is the norm, enhancing community safety and security is a priority,” said Scarlette Gillings, managing director of the Jamaica Social Investment Fund.

“And these communities are places of choice to live, work, raise families and do business,” she added.

In the Kingston Metropolitan Area, the World Bank said poverty has doubled in two years from seven per cent in 2008 to more than 14 per cent in 2010.

It also said youth unemployment is on the rise, with more than 50 per cent of young people unemployed, adding that homicides and other violent crimes rates are among “the highest in the Latin America and Caribbean region”.

Source: Caribbean360.com – Caribbean Online Magazine (Retrieved 03/20/2014) http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/business/1107320.html#ixzz2wvpxCnMA

While the foregoing article identifies these 3 objectives of the announced project: improved services, basic infrastructure and targeted crime & violence interventions, the Go Lean roadmap depicts 144 missions for the CU to engage, and provides the turn-by-turn directions on how to implement and ensure their success. At the outset of the book (Page 12), public safeguards are identified as prime directives in the Declaration of Interdependence:

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 of criminology and penology 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 … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the antecedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdiction.

In addition to crime, the roadmap targets delivery of government services, identifying best practices in agile methodologies to guarantee fewer defects and more efficiency; (Pages 109 & 147). In fact, the name Go Lean refers to the commitment to lean project management methodologies in the structure of the CU; this is defined in the book’s Preface (Page 4).

Lastly, the book also details investments and the impact of pipelines in the region, recognizing that this field is an “art and a science”. These investments are identified as strategic, tactical and operational in their Caribbean deliveries (Page 43). This synchronizes with the World Bank and Jamaica’s initiatives to help the municipalities to better provide quality services with their Vision 2030 plan.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean is an economic empowerment plan for the Caribbean first and foremost. This means addressing the underlying issues that mitigate poverty: jobs, education and economic growth; (Page 222). The CU projects the creation of 2.2 million new jobs regionally while growing the economy to $800 Billion. This roadmap, once executed, should help Jamaica (and equally all 30 Caribbean member-states) shed this “Failed-State” eventuality.

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Dominica raises EC$20 million on regional securities market

Posted on March 25, 2014 in Economics, Government

Go Lean Commentary

The forgoing news article synchronizes with the book Go Lean … Caribbean in that it advocates the alternative financing scheme for government debt; that of treasury bonds in the region’s security markets. The news article further describes the success using the existing monetary union for the Eastern Caribbean states. The Go Lean roadmap extrapolates that monetary union for all 30 member-states and the stronger currency of the Caribbean Dollar. This approach exceeds the current regime for many Caribbean states, that of foreign debt, which has to be repaid in foreign currency.

This book therefore promotes independence (Page 120), by being less beholden to foreign powers and foreign banks. Yes, independence by means of interdependence.

Roseau, Dominica – Dominica raised EC$20 million (One EC dollar = US$0.37 cents) on the Regional Government Securities Market (RGSM) on Monday with with Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit saying it represents confidence in the policies of his administration.

The money was raised at a record low 1.999 per cent through the first of a series of three 91-day Treasury Bill offerings.

“Many countries in the developed world especially in Europe have had difficulty in raising monies at concessionary rates. The discount rate achieved in Monday’s Treasury bill offering means that government can now raise the financing it needs at a lower cost to the taxpayers of Dominica,” said Skerrit, who is also finance minister.

He said his administration has had to grapple with Dominica’s own challenges “but we have worked actively to build a strong platform for sustained economic growth.

“Our prudent fiscal and economic policies have insulated the country from the more severe effects of the global recession,” Prime Minister Skerrit added.

A government statement said that the rate of 1.999% is 50 basis points below the previous record of 2.49%.

“Investors view the purchase of the 91 day Treasury bill as a low-risk investment opportunity. The low Treasury bill rate demonstrated the ability of the Government of Dominica to raise money at relatively low cost,” the statement said.

It said that as a result, the government will seek to raise an additional EC$65 million on the RGSM through the remaining two, 91 day Treasury bills and one five year, EC$25 million bond.

“This is to finance part of government’s operating budget and refinance existing government debt, the interest rate on which is much higher than the interest rate government obtains on its Treasury bills. Treasury Bills present an avenue to invest outside of the normal banking system,” the statement added.
Source: Caribbean360.com – Caribbean Online Magazine (Retrieved 03/21/2014)http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/business/1107319.html#ixzz2wcE8gxHl

This book serves as a roadmap for the implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) to issue the regional Caribbean Dollar currency. This CCB institution is projected as an independent, yet technocratic federal agency to administer the region’s monetary affairs. Thus ushering a change in funding options available to the 30 member-state governments. At the outset, the roadmap identified this urgent need, stating this clause in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14):

xxix. Whereas all Caribbean democracies depend of the free flow of capital for municipal, public and private financing, the institutions of capital markets can be better organized around a regional monetary union. The Federation must institute the controls to insure transparency, accounting integrity and analysis independence of the securities markets, thereby shifting the primary source of capital away from foreign lenders to domestic investors, comprising institutions and individuals.

The foregoing news article depicts how much cheaper this funding approach is compared to alternatives, as Grenada was able to raise so much short term money at a low rate of 1.999%. This is much cheaper than any bank loan option. But with this alternative financing scheme, come new risks and threats. The Go Lean roadmap anticipates the many consequential impacts on Caribbean society, allowing for best-practice mitigations, such as credit ratings and reporting, investigations and prosecutions at the federal level, monitoring for systemic threats and racketeering crimes that can undermine the entire system.

The book details this oversight in these advocacies and anecdotes, embedding lessons from other jurisdictions like Wall Street in the US:

10 Ways to Impact Wall Street (Page 200)
10 Lessons from 2008 (Page 136)
10 Ways to Improve Credit Reporting (Page 155)
10 Ways to Better Manage Debt (Page 114)
10 Revenue Sources for Caribbean Administration (Page 172)
Appendix GC – Credit Ratings Agencies Role in 2008 Financial Crisis (Page 276)

The CU/CCB solutions are designed to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. This roadmap starts with an economic focus, but it also facilitates optimization of the governance processes. To maintain good governance, there must be a steady stream of revenues. The Go Lean roadmap calls for member-state governments availing more benefits from the capital & securities markets; for example, public sales of property tax liens. This strategy will be a “win-win” for all, elevate the social contract between the governments and the governed: more revenues drive more services; more services drive more opportunities to benefit the citizens (and all other stakeholders: investors, visitor, diaspora, etc.) of the Caribbean.

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Book Review: ‘How Numbers Rule the World: The Use & Abuse of Statistics in Politics’

Posted on March 25, 2014 in Economics, Government

Go Lean Commentary

The below news article is a Review of the above-cited book; it highlights many of the same approaches being used in the publication Go Lean … Caribbean for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This book embraces the concepts of agile or lean methodologies to measure and manage progress in the region. Thus the name Go Lean. The Federation will lean-in to best-practices for capturing, computing, and measuring good economic and consumption data.

The source book by Lorenzo Fioramonti focuses on the use and abuse of statistics in the field of economic measurements, or econometrics. He asserts that the aggregate numbers are so critical that they “rule the world”. Due to this power, there is a basis for abuse, and far too often bad numbers have been used to exploit good intentions. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the 5-year implementation of the CU. This requires exact econometric measurements from the outset, and thusly organizational structures will be embedded with the capabilities to facilitate this mandate. See the review here:

Book: How Numbers Rule the World: The Use and Abuse of Statistics in Global Politics. Lorenzo Fioramonti. Zed Books

Review by: Stuart Astill

GDP drives our economies. Stock market indices flood our media and national debates. Statistical calculations define how we deal with climate change, poverty and sustainability. But what is behind these numbers? In this book, Lorenzo Fioramonti sets out to show how numbers have been used as a means to reinforce the grip of markets on our social and political life, curtailing public participation and rational debate. Stuart Astill finds it to be a well written book, blending together knowledge from different fields into a coherent and readable whole. Of interest to economists, statisticians and especially those studying all aspects of power and politics.

During my time as a government statistician I had literally no idea that I was not, as many people thought, an oxymoron, but rather I was a tautology. I have discovered amongst many other things, thanks to Lorenzo Fioramonti‘s book, that statistics were originally created for the express purpose of governing and reforming the state, hence the ‘stat’ part of the name.

However, the title of the book, “How numbers rule the world”, is much closer to describing the content than is the subtitle, “the use and abuse of statistics in global politics”. Fioramonti’s main concerns are economists and, perhaps even more, the people who ask questions of economists and statisticians. He intelligently explains how he despairs of people who abuse their technical

knowledge or their advantageous position to turn the world to their own ends rather than the common good. This is not surprising: the author holds a Chair in Governance at the University of Pretoria and applies governance thinking through his work on topics around development, alternative economies and social progress measurement.

This book is consequently largely about power, rather than numbers: it illustrates a subset of abuses of power that have numbers at their heart. It is in some ways a psychopath’s guide to bullying the world by numbers – pretending that everything is ‘rational’, ‘independent’ and ‘objective’ and building fortresses of power around these intentional misrepresentations. In a provocative and fascinating first introductory chapter Fioramonti outlines his take on the world of ‘official’ numbers – perhaps best summed up where he says “Experts who use numbers have become the guardians of [this] social trust… citizens, elected representatives and other stakeholders… are held hostage by experts…”

The main chapters are quite specific techno-politico-historical investigations into four areas; ‘New global rulers: the untameable power of credit rating’, ‘Fiddling while the planet burns: the marketization of climate change’,

‘Measuring the unmeasurable: the financialization of nature’ and ‘Numbers for good? The quest for aid effectiveness and social impact’. He concludes with ‘Rethinking numbers, rethinking governance’. The whole is well written, blending together knowledge from different fields into a coherent and readable flow with a good number of ‘light bulb’ moments.

As a slight criticism from a purist, Fioramonti occasionally blurs the undeniable neutrality of mathematics and the more qualitative issues that necessarily sit around it. Economics and, to a slightly lesser extent, applied statistics consist of assumptions first and foremost, plus mathematics. I would have preferred to have seen clearer isolation of elements that are unquestionably objective and true – there is only one way for a statistician to calculate where the 90th percentile lies and only one way for an economist to carry out a simple linear regression. What Fioramonti is discussing is not just mathematics, but numbers in the real political world that sit as the filling in a sandwich. On either side of the pure mathematical filling is the sometimes rotten bread. In statistics we have on one side the definition of the statistics under consideration and the selection of the methodology that will be used – on the other side a slice of presentation and selective highlighting (or subtle downplaying). In economics, even more crucially, the fundamental assumptions that define the model (the most famous of which is the General Equilibrium, or ‘free market’ model) make one slice of the bread, while the presentation and choice of weighting empirical evidence with pure theory form the other.

Mathematics is the neutral servant of the assumptions but the assumptions can and should be stated and debated independently. I have always argued that the crucial step in analysis is to come back to our clearly stated assumptions and test them in view of our results against the real world. We must embrace a qualitative depth even in the most apparently quantitative pursuits. Professor Fioramonti has shown in a passionate and convincing way the global importance of this aspiration. His unarguable clarion call is for clarity, transparency and widespread, gentle and constructive skepticism.

I would add that we must make a great push for wider numeracy and understanding of scientific philosophy. In our world it is possible for a senior public servant to say “I don’t do numbers”, despite ‘analysis and use of evidence’ being one of their core competencies. As long as the public and the politerati do not have the skills to engage with (note, not in) quantitative analysis we cannot escape the traps that are so vividly described by this book.

Another lesson illustrated clearly by Fioramonti in this book is to embrace ambiguity. From a practitioner’s point of view it is crucial to consider how integrity can go hand in hand with progressing the use of numbers in a beneficial way. I was particularly taken by the chapter ‘Numbers for good? The quest for aid effectiveness and social impact’ which illustrates Fioramonti’s theme particularly well, showing how the undeniable power of numbers to reduce the inconceivable reality of the world to manageable proportions can lead to dangers, especially when exercised in the realm of human behaviour. The sharpness of his argument is summed up when he says that “the complexity of social relations is lost through the cracks of mathematical algorithms”.

His dismay at models being ignorantly lifted from the world of business and planted in non-profit development sectors is clear and well evidenced. There is a wonderfully familiar feeling to a quote in the chapter on aid effectiveness where the author is commissioned by his development-sector client to “improve their impact assessment tools”. Fioramonti offers them a coherent and balanced strategy with a methodology that is sensitive to the needs of the client and, hopefully, inclusive and beneficial to those in the developing countries. The CEO of the commissioning organisation listens and then baldly states: “Dr Fioramonti, there must have been a misunderstanding… we want you to develop one number which can tell us if what we do works or doesn’t. As simple as that.”

To have integrity, practitioners must recognise the right of commissioners of work to voice such a demand, whilst to the best of their capability working to a conclusion that, at worst, does no harm. At best the practitioner’s conclusion improves the world, moves forward the client’s understanding and improves the shared body of knowledge. Not easy when there are practitioners out there with less integrity, ready to take money in exchange for work that may do harm.

The author shows us in the historical section of this chapter the devastating scale of the misguidedness (my polite phrase!) that can occur when poorly defined economic growth becomes the key measure of development; natural resources are over-exploited, countries grow, but fail to adequately develop democratically, in human capital terms or in the most basic health, poverty and human rights areas. Even when/if aid makes it to the correct destinations it may well merely be used to prove someone’s (flawed) economic theory. Philanthropic ventures, the author argues, are often backed by the kind of people (technocrats, those from the business world), who like their money to be spent according to simple methodologies with hard numbers that ought to be seen as widely discredited given the events of the last financial crisis.

However deep the numbers can take us they cannot take us to the true problem, which is also the heart of the solution: power. In the end it seems that most of the problems in this book come down to something simple and very human: desperation for certainty combined with a need for simplicity in a confusing world. The challenge then is to move forward constructively and honestly while responding to and understanding that impossible desire.

In the Go Lean book, there is an advocacy “10 Ways to Measure Progress” (Page 147), detailing how the CU will manage the mission to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, and play. The roadmap posits that this effort is a journey, not just one act. Therefore this effort is to be optimized with advanced process management methodologies to ensure CU goals are being accomplished; the stakeholders must therefore measure the progress. The key to this effort will be the federal structure of a Commerce Department with the primary role of harvesting demographic and econometric data. The roadmap adopts a Trade philosophy branded as SHIELD (Strategic, Harvest, Interdiction, Enforcement, Logistics and Delivery). The CU will install Project Management Offices in every Executive Branch Department to ensure a lean culture of quality delivery and accountability. This mission is highlighted at the outset of the Go Lean book, in a Declaration of Interdependence, with the following statement:

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.

There are other numbers that are important in the management of the Caribbean regional economy, numbers that measure the capabilities of the economic engines and the quality of Caribbean life. In particular, these are the numbers that are compiled and evaluated by credit reporting agencies and “failed-state” assessors. The Go Lean roadmap details action plans to improve these metrics: “10 Ways to Improve Credit Ratings” (Page 155) and “10 Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices” (Page 134).

Now is the time for the Caribbean region to lean-in for the changes described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits of this roadmap are very alluring, that with the measured progress, and appropriate course correction, the Caribbean region can emerge to a $800 Billion economy (up from $278 Billion based on 2010 figures). These are just numbers, yes, but as Lorenzo Fioramonti pointed in in the foregoing reviewed book, these ”… Numbers Rule the World …”

Download the book now Go Lean … Caribbean.

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