THE PROBLEMS WITH THE BELIZE 2012 BUDGET.

Yasmin Andrews interviewed by Channel 5 on the new budget, kept harping over and over, on the need to EITHER, cut government spending and quit borrowing, in order to pay our debts.  She harped there was NO OTHER CHOICE!

  I say BOLLOCKS TO THAT - IMF - ARGUMENT. The IMF IS SOLELY ABOUT PROTECTING COMMERCIAL LENDERS TO GOVERNMENTS.  THEY ARE NOT FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS.  The IMF is a predatory, economic sucking interest rate earning farming operation. You don't rescue an economy, by driving it into a death recession spiral. The THIRD CHOICE and there is a THIRD CHOICE, is to DEFAULT ON predatory FOREIGN bank debts. Commercial banks must be held accountable for predatory lending practices. They must have consequences.  In the private sector we call that BANKRUPTCY and there is a legal procedure for it.  With governments there is no legal international procedure.  But recently ICELAND, ECUADOR AND ARGENTINA have shown the way, and the euphinisms that lenders have used.  IT IS CALLED DEFAULT.
  You don't have to DEFAULT COMPLETELY. You can offer the 5% on their bond money.  You can borrow that money and clear the debt.  TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT.  But the predatory lending game is over.

  In Belize, all governments over the past 40 years, have been practicing a PONZI scheme.  They borrow more money, shuffle it around the budget with different names, like Capital 2, Capital 1, running operational expenses, so that the citizen is fooled into thinking, by mixing up borrowed money, interest money and principal, under another name, it is different.  It may even have been earned from taxes.  When in truth, this is a PONZI scheme and has been practiced by every political party, for the past forty years in Belize.

  PM Barrow has the economy reasonably tuned to work.  Taxation is a fine line, to keep GDP or growth going to match population growth.  We need a GDP of 3.2 to stay even with population growth.  Anything less than that is a recession, or depression through austerity.  You cannot borrow your way out of a debt hole.  You can only GROW through manufacturing and exporting, your way out of debt. You cannot increase your GDP by austerity, or more borrowing, to pay previous borrowing, even when you disguise that, by shuffling the money around the budget.

  The JONES FAMILY on local TV, have just shown you can produce TILAPIA and food vegetables profitably in a small house lot back yard.  Guatemala 12 million population is our MARKET for fish.  Many of us on Caye Caulker took sailboats full of fish to Puerto Barrios in Guatemala to sell for Easter. Salted and sun dried fillet in past decades.  THERE IS A MARKET FOR FISH FROM BELIZE in Guatemala.  The Jones family have shown small families can produce that fish.  They had 2 to 5 lb fish in those small tanks. There is a market for 30,000 family run acquaponics operations this small size in Belize.

  Iceland was selective about which bank loans were defaulted on.  Domestic debt was exempted.  Foreign banks only were defaulted.  In Belize we would not want to hurt our local regional lending banks, in the Caribbean or
Central America, but everybody else can be defaulted, or bought out for 5% on the dollar.  IT IS TIME TO BITE THE BULLET.  There is no other way out of a PONZI SCHEME for the Belize government perpetrators. Not and succeed.

  This is PM Barrow's last term anyway.  He has courage, I hope he has the courage to DEFAULT.

70% of our GDP is earned by circulating money from the government into our economy.  Only 30% is from exports. That ratio has to be changed.  Without which we are doomed to failure.  We can GROW our percentage of GDP.  It is time to do it.  Unfortunately, our civil service are not credible most of them.  They are not self starters, innovators, but are traditional 9 to 5, lunch break and coffee break  government factory workers.  We need a revolving door for civil servants, until you get self starters and innovators in our bureaucracy.  BELTRAIDE and BTB  is a national shame.  IN MANY WAYS the lack of innovation out of University of Belize is a shame.  It's the staff.  You need to rotate dead wood, get them out of there.  Produce or get out of the civil service.  There should be a 5 or 10 year probationary period for performance for civil servants.

  We can fix our problems, but it needs a better stronger CABINET leadership at the political level than we have now.  Photo of Prime Minister, of Belize, Dean Barrow and wife Kim, in better times.