Warning Of Racist Attack On Region
BARBADOS BEWARE: your offshore financial service sector is being targeted by lawmakers and under serious attack.
This warning has come from a top conservative American economist, Dr Dan Mitchell, as a United States Senate panel takes up three bills designed to limit the presence of United States firms in Barbados, The Bahamas, Cayman Islands and a host of other Caribbean states with offshore financial services sectors.
Citing race, political ideology and economic philosophy as factors driving the attack on the region’s presence in international finance, Dr Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a leading conservative think tank, urged Barbados and other Caribbean nations to take on what he sees as a “pernicious and racist” attempt by some lawmakers in Washington to drive small predominantly black countries out of the international financial services business… (continued at The Nation News)
What Did Our Barbados Government Report To US Senate Say?
Who Wrote It?
We all know by now that Barbados has submitted a report to U.S. Senate supposedly arguing that it is not a tax haven and should be exempt from the three anti-tax haven bills being submitted to the Senate by Barack Obama.
Now we have reports that a ‘top U.S. economist… Dan Mitchell’ (who?) has urged Barbados to fend off this “pernicious and racist” attack.
BFP has been unable to obtain a copy of Barbados’s report. We have looked for it on line, we have asked reporters (who predictably communicated with us on the
basis that their names not be used) and they have never seen or nor do they know anyone who might have.
Our financial services sector is a main source of international income here and yet the people of Barbados have no idea what our report to the U.S. Senate says.
We don’t know who drafted it, who researched it, or whether it fairly represents the interests of all of us in Barbados.
After recently watching our elected officials and bureaucrats bungle the CWC opportunity to enhance our number one industry, tourism, should we be leaving the health of our second industry, financial services, in their hands?
Definitely not!
This is far too important a matter to be left to the secret machinations of a selected few who, as we have recently been reminded, are not astute business people and likely more interested in their own private interests than the financial welfare of the country.
We have some questions including whether the report is accurate, whether it favors some Bajan business interests over others, and whether its flavor actually submarines our interests. Does it draw us into the race issue? Did it initiate the race issue?
Is Opposition Leader David Thompson Sleeping?
Mr. Arthur, where is the transparency this matter deserves? Mr. Thompson, where is our esteemed leader of the opposition doing his job and howling in protest at the hiding of this document and championing our right to know? We get to see Mr. Obama’s draft bills but not Barbados’ response? Stupid, stupid, stupid. This has all the makings of another national crisis that we find out about too late. Do you realize how many local businesses might be ruined if this goes wrong? How many jobs might be lost? What is our policy? Are you taking this seriously? Please post the report on line and let’s talk about it in the open.
Barbados Free Press 