I suggest a Reality check

"2008 was full of challenges and opportunities……(that) tested the resilience, spiritedness and determination of the Seychellois people and was also a year when we showed our courage.
We had to take tough decisions. Like all countries in the world, big and small, we were hit hard, indeed very hard, by the effects of the global financial crisis. There are people in the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries who have lost all their savings,” he said…..(and) gave examples of the many who lost their pensions, houses and jobs but said in spite of our challenges such things did not happen here and we are still faring well"(Extract from the Presidential End-of -Year message, published by the Seychelles Nation of 31.12.08)

I could not help but feel that, once again, the state misinformation machine is working away at lulling our minds and senses, seeking to deprive us of the ability to think things out clearly and see the local and world realities as they really are.

There may not have been any bank collapse in Seychelles and no one has yet lost their homes , as a direct result of the global financial crisis and, what many well-informed circles are already calling, creeping economic recession!

Notwithstanding, local pensions, savings and salaries have all been drastically skimmed off, as a direct result of the economic reforms and escalating prices.

Must we also be reminded that the loss of jobs, houses, savings, etc in US Europe and Japan (and other countries) was the direct result of private financiers’ cupidity and longing for fat profits taking them far beyond the frontiers of reasonable risk management.?

Comfortable within their powerful ivory towers, with their well-heeled lobbyists keeping too-inquisitive, regulatory controls at bay, they knowingly, and over several years, pushed their speculative financial institutions to chase after the illusory sub-prime golden egg that turned out to be thoroughly rotten. In other moments, they were also contributors to the outright criminal activity by the ilk of Madoff, or apparent dissimulation of risks by Kerviel and others, that conned banks, corporations, industry, investors and other fat private accounts into being over-exposed and writing their own individual financial oblivion.

In a private-sector-controlled market economy, this had the snow-ball effect that dropped a chill in nearly everybody’s lap, the world over! The global inter-link of these financial institutions over and across national frontiers, turned the speculative fiasco into the world’s worst financial and confidence crisis since the 1929 crash.

Let it be said clearly: The 2008 Reform Program was not hatched from the current global crisis. It was ‘home grown’, slowly incubating during the last 30 years from 1977, and a direct result from state-engineered, ill conceived investments, unsustainable development programs, and outright clumsy financial management, that have too often, blurred the national economic landscape and stunted economic progress.

The cumulative consequence of the quixotic economic mis-management is what brought Seychelles to its knees. Not the high prices of fuel on the world market. Not the Maddof scam and the other international financial scandals. Not the financial collapse and confidence crisis in western countries.

This said, let there be Respect, Peace, Love and Resolve to find Happiness, for all of you out there during 2009!