I so wanted to come to Bermuda with my family by cruise ship for vacationing purposes, but now by listening to how your own government is keeping a “boot” on Bermudians middle income and below necks, …I’m truly thinking twice now.

So sad to see what unbridled greed is doing to …everywhere, it seems.

My question: Once the rich have no one left to leech from, will they turn on themselves or commit suicide?

You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. You can however drown the horse. I am afaid a few horses in our stable need drowning because they do not understand that they need to drink or at least sip the water.

Forced austerity because their governments had borrowed more than can be repaid.

By ‘deficit ratio of 28%’, you mean you think it’s fine for Bda to spend 28% more than it earns. In the short term, a year or two, it wouldn’t be a problem. But if you do it year in and year out, as we have, with no thought in mind to repay, it will come to a bad end. Particularly in an economy like Bermuda, reliant mostly on one thing, and where any expansion of that sole successful industry is met with racist placards.

REAL ~ ESTATE is the ultimate dream of millions.

Never heard of REAL ~ CARS! have you?

Bermuda’s net value is our Physical Plant: eg Roads bridges airport, seaport , your Home and much more.

Don’t you know that you are living in a fantastic country ?

The People of Bermuda stop the REAL ~ DREAMING .

Bermuda needs to re ~ establish its REAL ~ ESTATE values

*** NOW ***

back to that of JANUARY 1 ST 2008.

YOUR LAND TAX VALUATION DID NOT CHANGE DOWNWARD, NEITHER DID YOUR LAND TAX PAYMENT GO DOWN , DID IT ?

INSURANCE COMPANIES DID NOT REDUCE INSURABLE VALUES . DID THEY ?

Just because other countries built their “house of straw” does not concern us, they make their bed in which they sleep.

We are the island in the sun and we should never forget that .
Because that is our “OIL WELL”.

Do not let some foreign owned bank’s inexperienced lending officer
who never built anything, control our REAL~ ESTATE, that which we built with our tears, sweat and bloody hands, or some green REAL ~ ESTATE agent who wants a quick sale,SKUNK ON US.

There was a fantastic waterfront move in ready Dwelling advertised for $750,000 which is absolutely way under valued. Who let this happen?

This Global Recession is not our fault.

This is not the first recession that has hit our island, it is the first recession which THE BANKS did not support their customers.

So you want to carry signs , Paint them over with your
HOME DOLLAR VALUE $*****.

Stick the sign in the ground for all to see.

I DARE YOU.

There was a perfect display of those people carrying the placards outside & then inside a meeting held for those who wanted to learn.

Can you imagine what this lot would have been called if they were OBA supporters heckling a PLP hosted meeting? LYNCH MOB comes to mind.

Can you please answer my questions I posed to you below?

That ONLY makes sense in countries where the tax structure is based on a certain % of GDP. Bermuda’s GDP is primarily earned by IB, and BY LAW cannot be subject to tax until 2035. Therefore, the ratio is MEANINGLESS to Bermuda.The important consideration (and one which all analysts will use when evaluating our rating, is whether the debt is SUSTAINABLE, i.e. can we continue to repay the interest on our debt without refinancing OR harming economic growth. THAT is our problem – we cannot repay the amounts we owe without limiting either or both of: (1) the size of our civil service or (2) reducing the services our government can provide.

You are a voter. Which would you prefer?

Unfortunately with in reason some did not appear to comprehend the presentation.

” We BUY food , we SELL service.”

In order for Bermuda to recover we need to enhance three simple RED CARPET projects .

1) Improve the efficiency of Government.

2) Improve our tourism product.

3) Encourage additional International Business.

Why do you hate Bermuda so much? Go live elsewhere, you are part of the problem, not the fix.

What’s your explanation for that?

And your cut and paste analysis doesn’t take into account Bermudas economic structure. We don’t print money, we don’t produce/manufacture/export anything as a means to bring in foreign currency, we don’t have millions of people to tax etc.

But I do agree with the diversification but however.

We need money coming into the island, not going out of the country. It is as simple as that. Borrowing that money as a source for spending is unsustainable.

Rates will rise and our credit rating will decline upon refinancing. Double whammy on interest costs in the future. What happened when there is no appetitie to lend?

We need to redce our cost burden and increase the number of opportunities on the island from outside investnent.

Spend spend borrow spend when we don’t have encough to cover the current cost won’t work in Bermuda.

Lets be fair the current size of the civil service is your concept of keep spending, but that ain’t working out so well.

Austerity is a myth … the simpleist example is the US after the great depression The New Deal and then later the war effort led to massive spending from the Government that then lead to the greatest time of prosperity in the US the Middle Class was Born not from Austerity in the great Depression but spending.

Austerity is a myth … the simpleist example is the US after the great depression The New Deal and then later the war effort led to massive spending from the Government that then lead to the greatest time of prosperity in the US the Middle Class was Born not from Austerity in the great Depression but spending.

$800m and the interest on that is? The interest would not be recouped. The US tax bill. Is this a US operation or a Bermuda operation.

What is the annual fruit and veg revenue in Bermuda (wholesale)

Competing with US farmers (their export) on their soil has a massive number of consequences.

Interesting idea, but fraught with problems.

If it would work, it would have been done.

It is also funny that all these people are angry at that OBA, when the party they support is responsible
for more than half of their problems they complained about.

Props to Mr. Richards

When there is no money, they won’t get paid. End of.

That is the reality. Do they want a shot at preventing that by being part of the changes or do they just want to turn up one day and the doors be closed.

“Growth in a Time of Debt”, also known by its authors’ names as Reinhart–Rogoff, is an economics paper by American economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff published in a non peer-reviewed issue of the American Economic Review in 2010. Politicians, commentators, and activists widely cited the paper in political debates over the effectiveness of austerity in fiscal policy for debt-burdened economies.The paper argues that when “gross external debt reaches 60 percent of GDP”, a country’s annual growth declined by two percent, and “for levels of external debt in excess of 90 percent” GDP growth was “roughly cut in half.” Appearing in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, it provided support for pro-austerity policies.

The paper was published in an annual “Papers and Proceedings” edition of The American Economic Review that was not subject to the same peer-review standards that other editions use before publication. Reinhart and Rogoff did not publish the data sample upon which they based their conclusions, but they made it available upon request to Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin, who then closely examined the data used in the study.
When properly calculated, the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public-debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not −0.1 percent as published in Reinhart and Rogoff. That is, contrary to RR, average GDP growth at public debt/GDP ratios over 90 percent is not dramatically different than when debt/GDP ratios are lower.

Ash concluded that the “combination of the collapse of the empirical result that high public debt is inevitably associated with greatly reduced GDP growth and the weakness of the theoretical mechanism under current conditions, … render the Reinhart and Rogoff point close to irrelevant for current public policy debate

” austerity has been sold on false pretenses. For three years, the turn to austerity has been presented not as a choice but as a necessity. Economic research, austerity advocates insisted, showed that terrible things happen once debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P. But “economic research” showed no such thing; a couple of economists made that assertion, while many others disagreed. Policy makers abandoned the unemployed and turned to austerity because they wanted to, not because they had to. ” – Paul Krugman
Nobel Prize-winning Princeton economist on the Methodological flaws found in their 2010 paper ( Growth In The Time of Debt)

This same debunked paper deemed Irrelevent by Economists which British Conservative Party MP & Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne relied on paper to portray excess debt as the universal cause of financial crises: “As Rogoff and Reinhart demonstrate convincingly, all financial crises ultimately have their origins in one thing.”

GREAT JOB BERNEWS, THANKS !!