Growing up as a teenager in Jamaica in the late 1970’s taught me a valuable lesson. I was a student at the then called West Indies College and having come from England saw things different. Having grown up in a society where I was spoilt for choice as to what I could eat, access to technology and a very good transportation system lets say I was not ready for life in the Caribbean or as the Western world called it the 3rd world. Jamaica was going through a painful time both politically and economically but what grabbed me most was the resourcefulness and ingenuity of Jamaicans, led by the popular phase “Tun your hand mek fashion” So you may be saying Eric get to the point, ok the point is in today’s terrible economic downturn more and more Americans are discovering the inner resourcefulness within. It’s called the Do It Yourself (DIY) economy; cars are kept longer and not being replaced in fact the car parts industry has been reporting record sales as more and more owners now repair their own cars. Michelle Obama has started “the grow your own food” trend, and we hear of countless other stories as we face the harsh realties of this recession. One area Jamaica needs to look at is Honey production, with entire bee colonies being wiped out in America and around the world this has never been a better time to become in the industry. The US FDA dumped 200 million tons of tainted honey from China into the pacific ocean so you can see the potential for the honey export market.

With the gains in the financial sector being lost due to Bank of America’s $25 billion dollar provision for bad debt we need to understand just how fragile the banks are. The IMF just reported in its Global Financial Stability report that banks globally have lost in excess of $4,100billion dollars they are urging governments to take “bolder steps” to shore up institutions – including nationalizing them where necessary. This could be a problem for President Obama who has come under a bit of pressure lately for the bailout policy he is overseeing. Business journalism is a tough area but we should do more to understand the financial markets and trends.

One sector in denial is the banking sector; yes Bank of America made a provision for $25billion but why? Well unemployment is still rising and people will default on mortgages, car loans and credit cards. What they won’t admit is that the whole sector is being held together by TARP and tax payers’ money the banks in reality are insolvent we won’t be seeing any major recovery for years. They need trillions of dollars of Recapitalization money and are still sitting on trillions of dollars of “Toxic assets” however if Tim Geithner gets his way soon the banks will be dumping them on the poor tax payer in return for more government and private money. The only loser is the tax payer hoping that these bad assets will one day make some kind of profit.

The UK has its budget tomorrow April 22nd and already Chancellor Darling has a provision for £50 billion pounds due to government involvement in 5 failed banking institutions. The worry is that this will rise to £200 billion by 2011 a staggering 13.7% of UK GDP it just goes to show how heavily leveraged the UK is with debt. The debt covers consumer, company and government debt; sorry my friends’ things seem to be getting worse.

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