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Economists told stay positive
by Gercine Carter
Posted: Nov 27, 2008 13:01 UTC
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BRIDGETOWN - Barbados has been encouraged to take advantage of opportunities presented by the current world financial crisis.
It needs to focus on the real advantages of being a small society, and capitalise on peculiar areas of strength, developing them to make the island the very best in the world.
This is the direction recommended, recognising that smaller countries "have nothing to gain from following in the footsteps of the larger countries", caught in the current financial dilemna.
The advice came from Canadian award-winning essayist and novelist John Ralston Saul, as he delivered the 33rd Sir Winston Scott Memorial Lecture, "Small Societies in a Big World", at the Frank Collymore Hall on Monday night.
Saul suggested, "this is the moment to choose two or three areas and make yourself the absolute best in the world". He cited the education and energy sectors as specific areas where the island
could excel.
The man who has been listed among the world's 100 leading thinkers and visionaries, was severely critical of the architects of the current world financial crisis, which he described as "just a boil bursting after a decade of warnings of various kinds of infections."
In contradiction of the globalisation message being widely spread, Saul declared, "the globalist era is over", adding that almost a decade had been wasted before action had been taken on the chaotic economic situation.
Saul told a packed Frank Collymore Hall that while Reserve Governors were warning their governments that there was a major problem since 1999 and that something had to be done, there was "the belief that globalisation was so strong, that nothing was done".
But the man who has impacted on political and economic thought in many countries, observed the disparity in the relationship between real activity and the value of the currency started to be evident over the last 30 years. "People began to believe that money stood on its own, that it could be cut loose from its role as oil or its role as servant to reality to international trade."
He added that so much "imaginary money was being poured into propping up an illusion, that when the moment comes to do something real, we won't have anything left. What is a very important thing for smaller societies is that if that happens, the west will be really stuck whereas China and India and many other places will not be stuck."
Saul predicted a period of "more regulation at the national and international levels, more nationalism, but more international disorder".
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