Recession

I guess first off I should start by saying that I feel blessed to actually have a job.

Why do I say that you ask?

Well its not like I was/am facing imminent unemployment at any time recently but I just get this feeling that despite the big names and institutions and politicians telling us that the recession is over that we are still in its midst.

Either that or the world has just gone all pear shaped.

Looking around downtown Toronto, and even in the suburbs I see way too many for lease signs on commercial property. Seems like every other week or month I pass some plaza, some previously occupied storefront and see it currently empty. Doesn't matter if its a main street or a side street our small businesses seem to be getting decimated. And not only are existing small businesses being knocked out but where are their replacements. Where are the burgeoning hosts of entrepreneurs who are dying to replace them.

Synergy

Synergy, in general, may be defined as two or more agents working together to produce a result not obtainable by any of the agents independently.

Link

“It is now official Government policy to spread the entrepreneurial culture to a wider cross section of Barbadians in an effort to create wealth and employment.

“We cannot achieve this goal if the vast majority of Barbadians continue to acquire more and more free education to find a job, and forever thereafter focus on consumption rather than wealth creation.”

Ok, I might be mis-interpreting these comments by the new Bajan Prime Minister or maybe because of the way its written not getting the full story here but this is kind of a strange comment to make in my opinion.

It would suggest (to me) that advanced education and entrepreneurship somehow cannot coexist and to be successful at one we have to leave off the other and to be honest it sounds like something usually said by those prevalent anti-intellectual American types who favor brawn and pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps over brains. You know the types who favor Palin over Obama. Yea dem sorta people.

I mean in my opinion everyone cannot be an entrepreneur, neither can everyone be an academic or go to university Society needs both and there has to be some balance although quite a lot of overlap occurs too.

At the same time lets not sell the pie in the sky dream that anyone with an idea and an entrepreneurial spirit will be successful just like that. Besides hard work, many of these guys can benefit from some training or advanced classes to help them run a successful business. Its not like an idea is all you need to be a successful small business. You might be able to start up with just an idea but without a plan you aren't going to get very far. And included in that plan you have to know how to market yourself and your product, how to deal with the public, how to find staff, how to handle money etc etc. And while you can learn some of this on the job and don't need schooling its not like having a little extra class time here and there would go for naught.

Look in my opinion one of the biggest challenge to entrepreneurship taking off in Barbados is the traditional bajan mindset. Most bajan parents still stress growing up and finding a good job over growing up and starting your own business. We want letters to our names, go and learn accounting or medicine or law or something so. We're not really business orientated or hustlers at heart like some of our Caribbean comrades so to increase entrepreneurship in Barbados you really have to change how kids are taught from early.

Another challenge is start up capital. Is alright to talk about promoting entrepreneurship but help them to get access to start up capital. Its not cheap or easy to do business in Barbados.

The other thing I wonder here is if this is an attempt by government to subliminally change people's mindset to get them to not go to Cave Hill in such numbers. I understand that free education for the numbers that go to UWI must put an enormous burden on the government's coffers but I don't think the way to lessen this is to discourage higher education which is what these comments seem to be doing.

If its too much of a burden or you think some folks are abusing the system or the benefits are not worth the outlay of funds do like other countries and make people pay for the education but don't lament its freeness as a deterrent to an entrepreneurial spirit since comments like the above by our head would suggest we done away with the book learning nonsense and all go open a little beach side stall.

Sorry, that last comment was extremely facetious and knocks the valuable and vast range of services and products that entrepreneurs could produce in our society but my point is that the statements made would make it seem as if entrepreneurship is anti-university study and university study is anti-entrepreneurial. Why must the two concepts be at odds with one another?

Like I said to someone earlier today being an entrepreneur is not like on tv where a light bulb goes off in your head, you sketch a few notes or designs on a napkin, go in the bank show them the napkin and the manager comes out with a big grin on his face an a suitcase full of money for you. Then you go out and build up something and the cash comes flowing in. No in the real world besides idea, you also need a plan and I fail to see how having some additional education under your belt would harm that plan.

Yes I do understand the point that most bajan university grads are looking for ready made jobs but implying in that statement that not going on to higher education will increase entrepreneurship is silly. The change has to be made by changing the way people think while they continue to study.

If not we'll end up in the same predicament as black America with everyone wanting to hustle but no one wanting to learn and society will be still unbalanced.

There has to be a way to encourage both ideas here and acknowledge that there can be overlap without sacrificing one for the other. They aren't mutually exclusive ideals in my opinion, you just have to work to bring out their synergy.

Budget

The Barbados budget just came down and its pretty brutal. VAT going up, fees, bus fares all sorts of other taxes going up, taxes added. Lashes galore! Going to be a tight Christmas.

Well people, sadly things tight all over the world not just in Bim and with tourism our main money earner not doing that great these days, belts got to be tightened cause ya can only borrow for so long before ya got to pay back right? Unfortunately some of these belt tightening measures will disproportionally hit the most needy in our society like the poor and the pensioners but well star, I don't know what ya can really do about that besides hope that some of these measures temporary.

What I do always find interesting come budget time is how the party in opposition always finds a way to blame the current party when such belt tightening measures are necessary as indeed they do seem to be in this circumstance with the globe still deeply mired in recession. I guess that's the meaning of opposition but in particular today I find some of the comments about waste by the opposition BLP commentators to be rather disingenuous.

The numerous projects at Ilaro Court; the opening of the housing estate at Marchfield, St Philip; the three reshuffles, which necessitated change in stationery, labels and the like; the more than $10 million in summer camps between 2008 and 2009; the launch of the constituency councils; the subsidy to JetBlue and the recent female boxing championship were among the things on the list of “cardinal errors” Forde said the Government made.

Eh eh but allya really believe Bajans have short memories nuh? And maybe they do but umm we can't talk waste in Barbados without referring to the colossal waste of funds used for World Cup 2007.

And yes I tell wunnah from evasince (back when people used to read this blog) that hosting the world cup was going to hurt we financially. Ya doan believe me looka this post from 2006. And that was even before I hear that about half billion dollars spend in Barbados on world cup. And what did we benefit from that massive outlay of funds? And how much a those funds are still owed back to the people we borrowed from?

And who was running government then? Exactly!

So doan get tie up that the new government spend a few dollars for children summer camps to keep the youts off the road, occupied and out of the road this past year when the previous regime spent bigger dollars that haven't really benefited the country.

Folk get tied up in thinking that these financial predicaments that we find ourselves in usually occur rather quickly but if one really studies it, these things occur by a series of mistakes or bad fiscal moves over a longer period of time. How long the whole American mortgage drama was happening before the whole US housing market implode? Same thing here with Barbados, its not like things were great yesterday or last year and we woke up this morning struggling cause of one spending spree. Barbados was borrowing and spending for a long time beyond its means and its just now that it catching up to us.

Hail to the Chief

What can I say. I jumped off the Obama bandwagon after the election. Why not? I mean I supported him as the best man for the job and he won but there are two months between winning the election and becoming POTUS (President of the United States) so why not. Its not like anything was happening in those months really and I'm waiting for results when he finally is President.

Plus I get this feeling that many of the Obama supporters think he's going to click his heels three times (his mother was from Kansas after all) and suddenly recession over and war in Gaza over and we find a cure for Cancer, AIDS and the common cold and the world links hands and sings Kumbaya.

And ya know what! They might actually be right!

Didn't expect that did ya?

I'm being facetious mind you but still, no one can say that Obama and his election victory have not been good for the US economy and he's not even been sworn in yet. Unbelievable!

Think about it. Do you realize how much Obama merchandise has been sold in the last couple of months? From comic books (and since it was the only Obama merchandise I'd probably buy I'm mad I didn't get one last Wednesday) to sex toys, I kid you not on that one, and everything in between the visage of Obama has adorned more product than one would possibly believe. Mugs, t-shirts, key chains, trinkets of all descriptions, Obama has been moving some serious product. I mean Reagan and Clinton and those guys were good for a few t-shirts and Halloween masks but damn Obama's image is on everything. Too bad they didn't copyright that and start up a corporation cause if they had that might be the only stock in the stock market that was going up right now.

I mean its pretty incredible and I'd love to see someone release some figures on how much money the Obama image has created for the US economy in the past few months.

Then you have this inauguration thing. Everybody gong to this thing! People who faid to fly, who don't leave their house to go to the corner store, recluses, people that normally frighten for a lil crowd of two and three people, black people that you don't see at all from October to April and that duz hibernate when the first leaves start falling off the trees and only peep their heads out come spring, all running down to DC for Tuesday and they are coming from everywhere: out of city, out of state, out of country. Its bananas! I mean people flying down and driving down from Toronto, people flying in from the Caribbean. Everyone wants to glimpse the man and get a touch of the hem of his garment. You know how happy the airlines must be with the amount of travellers they getting for this event? And the car people and oil people and the hotel people must be just as thrilled too.

And its pretty amazing that these people are leaving their homes in other countries and going to cold DC to take part in this event and be a part of history given how unbelievably cold it has been in the North East in the past couple of weeks.

Imagine if they had had the swearing in in the summer?

Boy that Obama fella single handedly keeping this economy going! And he ain't even got no real power yet so yea imagine what going happen when he finally sworn in.

Me I'm sarcastic and jdid so I'm just waiting for actual results now. All hail the POTUS.

Things Brown

I hope allya didn't spend off big money at Christmas thinking this recession thing was just a slight blip and 2009 would be back to normal. Well if ya did and you thought things weren't that bad and this recession was just a passing fancy I have news for you.

Its real!

How I know its real? Well I always thought it was but just for further confirmation I open yesterday's paper and see a headline saying that a German Billionaire commit suicide cause his global empire ran into trouble with this economic downturn. Imagine that! The recession got billionaires killing themselves. What a ting! Tell me that don't mek ya realize how serious this thing is?

I mean we not talking about no I cant pay the light bill and my house get repossessed and I homeless suicide we talking about a cat that was a billionaire, lifestyles of the rich and shameless, caviar dreams and champagne wishes, private jet having, money wid nuff zeroes at the end falling off the page type of fellow.

So if things so dread that a guy like him say look I cant deal with this thing I want out, I dun, I gone, see ya, wha bout we dat cross hayso eating bully beef and chicken backs, with cheese cutter dreams and mauby wishes and trying to shuffle 10 cents from the light bill to the water bill? Lawd ave mercy!

And ya know a fellow like that with big money got access to nuff resources. So unlike we dat have to rely on the lies in the mainstream media where they try hard to convince us that everything gine be alright and not to panic and that we should go out and buy that new Buick and that enormous flat screen TV cause we really need them and it going help the economy, he is rich enough to afford to pay people to bring him the real news. So he must have had a few legit forecasts of the future showing him just how bad things going to get cause this thing only just start ya know.

So if he a fellow with the money and the info couldn't tek the strain and decide he couldn't tek it nuh more wha chance we pockets on E type people got?

Cuhdear!