FOREIGN INVESTORS VS SIR ARTHUR LEWIS ECONOMICS
So you got a $10,000 donation for education from Cabot?
How generous. How charitable. How thoughtful. How foolish.
What did they get from you?
A $30 million dollar loan from the National Insurance Corporation also known as your pension funds. Perhaps you think that a country ought to be able to bet on its own development. Perhaps you never read Sir Arthur Lewis - you know, the guy who won the Nobel Prize for Economics and wrote the theories that helped transform South East Asian Third World economies into Asian tigers. Perhaps you are just another partisan who plays politics in black and white.
Or maybe you're just Minerva Ward, social media advocate for just about any pappyshow that is labelled UWP.
If you fall into one of these categories, it all makes sense. But...
Only if you accept that the Allen Chastanet government is selling you out piece by piece until there is nothing left of you but your labour. Hmm...what is it called when you are worth nothing but your labor? I forget what it is called, but I think it has something to do with SLAVERY.
On it's face, the exchange of $10,000 for $30 million is an accurate, though tragic metaphor for the the perverse brand of sick-onomics that rules the land that gave us the only Black Nobel Prize Winner in any scientific discipline.
Allen Chastanet and his minions (picture of Dominic Fedee as a minion) have repeated sold pieces of St Lucia for less than a song. He gives away valuable lands which form the basis of almost all capital investment. He wipes away all responsibility to pay taxes and be a good corporate citizen for all foreign investors. He guarantees their loans and greases the way for them to access local money to implement their dodgy schemes.
If you or Minerva Ward knew anything at all about Sir Arthur Lewis, about the growth of small island states or about economics in general, you would be able to recognize a simple fact about Chastanet's sick-onomics:
The basic function of foreign investors is to bring new capital into the country with their investments.
If foreign investors have no access to capital from outside your country, they are not investors at all - they are just foreigners. If foreign investors need you to give them land to complete a proposed project, they are not investors, they are speculators. If foreign investors need you to lend them money to invest in your country, they are not investors, they are economic vampires.
In what messed up version of reality does a $10,000 donation assuage concerns about a $30 million loan to a foreign investor? What kind of foreign investor even asks for a Third World country to loan them money?
And finally, what kind of fool participates in a public relations exercise that paints a $10,000 donation as fair exchange for a controversial $30 million loan.
I'll tell you what kind.
The kind that current runs the finance ministry and the tourism ministry of St Lucia.
What did we really expect from a tourism minister whose job experience consists of being a mediocre reporter who ended up in the public relations department of a hotel - where all mediocre reporters belong?
What did we really expect from a Prime Minister who stole the idea of a the Jazz Festival from a woman who made the proposal to him in good faith?
What did we really expect from a Prime Minister whose father is the richest man in St Lucia, but would never give him a job in any of his businesses?
