The X - Factor

The Government is patting itself on its back for the self-declared success of its debt swap initiative, termed the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX).

It is being trumpeted that there has been a 95-99% "voluntary compliance". In any language "voluntary compliance" must be of one's own free will induced neither by threat or treat. 

The JDX was done in circumstances where the Government unilaterally set the rates and the degrees of the extension of maturity dates for the swapped bonds. Bond holders were threatened with illiquidity, taxation compliance oversight, termed greedy and characterized as unpatriotic - in short "rapacious capitalists" of the present.

There was no comprehensive analysis of the probable consequences for the Government itself.  It has been said that state agencies hold approximately 50% of the local debt stock. They were told to accept it - argument done.

Poor pensioners and holders of pension funds who had patriotically invested in Jamaica and indeed invested in a government which had earlier pronounced that it would not allow "constitutional technalities" to get in the way of its hold on power.  Now it is the turn of "contractual technicalities".  This regime will not shackled by contractual obligations either to its employees or its creditors. 

The attitude is vulgar: we cannot pay at the time stipulated or the rate of interest we had agreed. So this is it, take it or else.

Everything is now being contextualized as a pre-condition for an IMF agreement.  Hence, the indecent haste, opaqueness (as opposed to transparency) and prolific edicts (as opposed to consensus). 

Somehow the X in JDX does not mean exchange, but rather extortion. The miniaturization of the economy continues and revenues decline unabated. The Government has got it wrong (X), in what can be described as an X-rated intervention.

X marks the spot: not only on the ballot.