Bahama Pundit

Good News and Bad News About Oil Prices

by Larry Smith

There's good news and bad news on the energy front these days. The bad news? Prices are up. The good news? Prices are up. Analysts are forecasting $200-a-barrel oil, which could put a gallon of gas close to $10 for Bahamians.

Goldman Sachs, the New York investment bank, says a barrel of oil will "spike” at $200 next year, with prices remaining above $100 for the medium term. The underlying assumption is that, unlike the oil shocks of the 1970’s, today's prices are demand driven by the huge emerging economies of China and India, with supplies threatened by geopolitical instability in producing countries.

Skeptics say that Goldman Sachs is part of a speculative frenzy that is driving prices up, but the Paris-based International Energy Agency, which advises 27 rich countries on energy policy, has a more fundamentalist view. Here is what the IEA's chief economist had to say this month:

"I expect that for the next years to come, we will have a high price trajectory. There may be zigzags, but I would be very surprised if prices go down to the levels we saw three or four years ago, in the long term."

So what's to like about high oil prices? Well, here are six of the best reasons.

A Bahamian Ministry of the Environment

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com

During the recent budget presentation Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham indicated that he would create an environmental ministry as of July 1. Former prime minister Perry Christie had created a Ministry of Energy and the Environment during his term in office.

Both leaders recognize the need for a designated cabinet post that would coordinate both the nation’s response to environmental challenges and our participation in a greening revolution that will transform individual behaviour and social practices.

Security Minister's Spin Will Do Nothing To Tackle Crime in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

There were some interesting reactions to the shocking things that former police prosecutor Keith Bell had to say about crime last week.

In case you missed it, Bell told a public forum that I attended last Monday that our criminal justice system was "on the brink of collapse", and we could look forward to kidnappings and terrorism unless it was fixed. He then reeled off a string of horror stories and statistics to support his argument.

"There are 100,000 matters before the courts, including 11,000 criminal cases and 48,000 traffic cases," he said."That's about a third of the total population before the courts. It's going to get a lot worse unless we take the bull by the horns and make some very tough decisions."

Bell said the only way to address the problem was for the political class as a priority to agree on a common agenda for crime reduction and comprehensive legal reform. He also called for an independent national ombudsman to combat corruption, which he said had become institutionalised in business and government.

His considered opinion - as the man in charge of police prosecutions until just a few weeks ago - was that although we have the capacity to act, we lack the tenacity.

Strong stuff. But we were dismayed at the official response. When the Guardian questioned National Security Minister Tommy Turnquest about Bell's comments, he admonished the media not to report such matters because it could affect tourism.

The Promise of Youth

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com

If we added up the ages of the last four murdered teen males, the combined total would be that of a middle age man.

At this rate we are producing a homicidal equation in which we can increasingly divide the number of men over 40, by the number of boys under 20, preternaturally preceding their mommies and daddies to the grave.

The numbers are especially bad when you compare them with the average life span for Bahamian males: approximately 68 years.

Planning for a Sustainable Future in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

"Anchor projects are so out of favour today that if the government sees those words in a proposal their first inclination is to throw the document away." -- anonymous source.

"To plan is one thing, to grow (or not grow) according to plan is quite another." -- Dr Xavier Briggs

Dr Xavier de Souza Briggs is our latest planning guru. He follows Canadian Malcolm Martini, (planning consultant to former prime minister Perry Christie), who followed EDAW (a California-based design firm that came up with the Nassau redevelopment plan now gathering dust on official shelves).

Briggs has strong Bahamian ties. A former Clinton administration official in the Department of Housing, his mother is the daughter of Bill Aranha, Nassau's crown lands officer during the 1940s, and his father was an out island doctor. His uncle is Paul Aranha, the retired airline pilot.

"'I was raised in Nassau and Miami, and my family's public service ties to the development of the Bahamas go back five generations," Briggs told Tough Call recently. "I have worked on quite a range of the issues facing the Bahamas, mainly in the US but also in Brazil, India, South Africa, and Central America."

These assignments combined complex issues, multiple stakeholders, uncertainty about the future, and the need to act - in other words, they were just the right kind of rehearsals for his new Bahamas partnership. But how did this project come about?

Former Police Prosecutor Warns of Judicial Collapse in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

Former police prosecutor Keith Bell told a public forum Monday that the Bahamian criminal justice system was "on the brink of collapse" and we could look forward to kidnappings and terrorism unless it was fixed.

Bell, a lawyer who spent 23 years on the police force, headed the prosecutions department before his retirement last month with the rank of chief superintendent. He also worked in the police intelligence branch.

"Now is the time to stop all the talk," he declared in a panel discussion at the College of the Bahamas on the Sanctity of Life: Socio-Legal Responses to Misadventures and Unlawful Killings in The Bahamas.

"From 1990 to the present we have had about a thousand murders, and that doesn't include attempted killings or causing grievous harm. Our murder rate is higher than the US and three times higher than Canada.

"We have intercepted arms shipments for the Bahamas that included assault weapons, grenades and explosives, and we could soon see the spread of kidnappings here like they have in Trinidad or terrorist actions like they have in Jamaica."

Adults Behaving Badly

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com

The moral grandstanding turned media crush turned political football engulfing an alleged sexual incident involving two high school students is more of a moral kaleidoscope than many initially realized.

On cue, some moralizing jockeys, with blinders on, rode their high horses towards predetermined moralistic or political conclusions which tended to obscure broader ethical issues at stake.

The greater morality tale in this matter has more to do with the alternatively irresponsible, sensationalistic, intemperate, poorly reasoned and, at times, vicious actions and mindsets of many in our supposedly adult community.

Converting State-Run ZNS into a Public Service Broadcaster

by Larry Smith

"Any administration faced with the responsibility to deal with the future of broadcasting has two choices: one is to continue to use BCB as a state-run facility for government and party propaganda purposes, leaving (it) to languish in an ever-expanding market of competition; the other is to create, in the national interest, a new public service broadcasting culture." -- Senator Kay Forbes-Smith, writing in Commonwealth Broadcaster magazine.

Sorry, but I have to say the good senator is wrong. There are more than two choices for ZNS.

A third choice - in my view, the best option - would be to dismantle the corporation and sell its parts to the highest bidder, with current employees finding new homes in the real world with the help of a typically generous government severance package.

Two years ago this column had the following to say on the subject: "We should consider whether we need ZNS at all. Even if it could be detached from direct government control, it would likely turn into a broadcasting version of Bahamas Information Services, another pointless agency whose employees trot behind government ministers to produce 'official' news of dubious value."

The Bahamian Business of Selling Hope

by Simon
•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com

A prominent Bahamian religious leader liked to say that he was in the business of selling hope. Apparently, hope is a marketable service and bankable commodity.

Quite often, hope is promoted as a gift dispensed by time-bound reverends; rather than as a gift grounded in an eternal source.

To ensure that your slickly packaged brand of hope doesn’t lose market share, your product constantly needs to be hyped as new and improved. Or at least better than the hope-charmers’ next door.

Like food and energy prices, the cost of hope continues to escalate. It seems that markets can be manipulated in both the material and the non-material realms.