Latest / Corie Sheppard Podcast / Episode 201 | Money's Worth

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Episode 201 | Money's Worth · Corie Sheppard Podcast

• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Hey, what's going on?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Calypso History Month is finished.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: When I say it's finished, I am the seed of my father, he is the seed of my grandfather, who is the seed of my whole nature.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: He came from Calcutta a stick and a bark on his shoulder.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: He took on and he captured us.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: So I am a seed of India.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: India, the Indian ship and the slavery Bind together to resist in unity.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Our child don't stay.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: There was no more Mother Africa, no more Mother India, just Mother Trini, john and Mommy, my mahouta ja planted sugar cane Down in the car on the plane Ramlog and Bastel Prakash and I we charge it by Brotherhood on the boat.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 201 of the Corey Shepard Podcast 201,.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: We're into the 200s finally.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Listen, I tell you they surprised me with Big Fett and thing.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I salute this.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: They tell me how to big them up on the show, right.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: So big up to my mother, Big up to my wife.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Wait, I'm going to rephrase Big up to my wife, Big up to my mother.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I don't want no problems with nobody.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: But big Diwali, big Diwali.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Hold me up, people on the line and invite people over and so on.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: You know, make up to Father Gregory, to the Thompsons, to Granny Moy, everybody come over.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: And I tell them they say they're having a little Diwali lime, and you know, but people are having a Christmas theme Diwali lime.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I don't understand it.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Happy Diwali to everybody, belatedly, but I had a Christmas theme Diwali lime.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: So I just line up some.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I will talk about something in this episode.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Right, there are plenty to talk about and I have an episode to make up for you from last week, because the foreign exchanges you alone might take my whole episode and I know people want me to talk about that but it's complicated.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: But we can simplify it right here.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: We can simplify it right here in one episode and then we can talk about the rest of the thing.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: How's that song, How's that song, that song, like it could work.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: But before I get into that, I really just lined up some tunes to beg for curry, you know, because I ain't getting no curry for the Wally Whee.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: This is jam, this is a soka tata jam.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Man, play it in, Come on.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: Uh-huh, that's it.
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: That's it, asoka.
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: And Savannah, red hot with fever Indian buzzer, and they charm me, asoka, charm me, asoka.
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: I love you.
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: If you hear how people fall Pizza-sa, don't stop my doll.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: Roll up the dancer, roll up the dancer.
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: Pizza-sa, oh, beta, roll up the dancer.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: Roll up the dancer.
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: Pizza-sa, rip up the dancer.
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: Pizza-sa, rip up the dancer.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Pizza-sa, oh beta.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I leave Chagona's and come in town you know me, you know which part to buy curry, sell for the people.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: They make ham and pastel A full Christmas line.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: But in the midst of the Christmas line they bring out cake and things to celebrate 200 episodes, something I appreciate.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I am not good, right, I'm not good at stopping and smelling the roses.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I'll admit that as a man I just get bored fast when me and Pursue are nothing as well.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I was like, all right, I've got to do something.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: And I just get very, very caught up in the doing of things.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: When I have something to do, I do it.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: So when I'm watching 200 episodes and I do that, when I finish Press that record button and I done that, that done, I looking forward to episode 300.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: So thanks, thanks, thanks.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Thanks to all involved my moms, my wife, my in-laws, everybody who was involved in making it, in making it happen.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean A little celebration, but, as I say, I'll let you know what I've done until I pronounce it done.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: I'm sure plenty people don't know.
• 6:10
  Speaker 6: The holidays for Trinidad and Tobago.
• 6:13
  Speaker 6: I'm sure that plenty people don't know the holidays for Trinidad and Tobago.
• 6:20
  Speaker 6: We are all cosmopolitan.
• 6:22
  Speaker 6: If a man asks a favor, you can say wrong.
• 6:25
  Speaker 6: Maybe have some people try and get through.
• 6:27
  Speaker 6: Well, I decide to do the same thing too.
• 6:31
  Speaker 6: Yeah, what happened?
• 6:32
  Speaker 6: The Hindus got a holiday for the Wali, but the men passed that already.
• 6:37
  Speaker 6: The Muslims also get one for Eid and Saifah.
• 6:42
  Speaker 6: Glad they succeeded.
• 6:43
  Speaker 6: The Chinese already have Eid.
• 6:46
  Speaker 6: Well, hear what I have to say.
• 6:49
  Speaker 6: I'm begging government to see what they can do.
• 6:53
  Speaker 6: Well, if you win, what's up April 2nd?
• 6:55
  Speaker 6: Hi, hi, hi.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Pramara TV.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Pramara TV, saifah.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Well, you know it's VJ Day.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Ever hear about VJ Day?
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Ask your mother and your parents on Sypha.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Look at it right.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Long weekends tend to be cause a little strife in my life, but I see a long list of long weekends line up and that is one of the nicest places in the world.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: If you could, if you could get us, you know we're gonna talk about why they have a us shortage.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about what is going to lead to the end of the us shortage or if we're gonna have a end to it, and we're gonna talk about some solutions we could implement in the meantime.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: But one man come out and give you a solution early Great Randall Mitchell.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Randall Mitchell said get out.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Randall Mitchell said it's better you go somewhere else.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Mitchell tells citizens travel abroad to see how sweet it is in TNT.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Hey, listen, sometimes you just wonder how ministers and things, if they have a vetting process, if they have a vetting process for the things they say and the way they think.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I don't think this next one say as a matter of fact, I need help In telling you what Randall Mitchell is trying to say.
• 8:23
  Speaker 7: I need help in telling you what Randall Mitchell is trying to say Now, this one dedicated to our foreigner, all y'all.
• 8:26
  Speaker 7: They won't be getting out of this.
• 8:28
  Speaker 7: I need help.
• 8:28
  Speaker 7: Dedicated to our scout who want to fly out A candle at a rose.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, Anything me say.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: You know what I say?
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: I feel fly out.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Alright, enough of that.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: It's Calypso Estremont, randall Mitchell's health.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Citizens travel abroad to see how sweet it is in TNT.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Bayaka Samaru from the Guardian, speaking in his Senate yesterday that was a long yesterday, right, because it's right on long time.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Randall Mitchell said he took note of the opposition's attempt to peddle the narrative that citizens cannot afford the price of goods and services in this country.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Politicians just talk to the average citizen anyway.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: However, mitchell told the upper house that it's only when citizens leave this country that they can appreciate how good they have it here.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: You have to talk to those people who travel outside of TNT or you have to travel yourself to the Caribbean or to Canada or the US or UK Travel and go and see in those countries what the high cost of living really looks like and feels like Mitchell posited.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: He added you know that they have.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: You know they say you have to feel it.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: It might sound like a young brother song.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I feel like I'm going to make up disc, but Randall Mitchell really said that.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: He said you know when they say you had to feel it, it might sound like a young brother song, but you had to feel it, you had to make you feel it when you go out there and you experience the high cost of fuel, the high cost of utilities, the high cost of transportation, the high cost of accommodation, that is when you know how good we have it here in Trinidad and Tobago.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Mitchell lamented that those who come back often speak in hushed tones after that realization.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: But he said that when they do, they see it.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: They see how sweet TNT life really is, or how sweet sweet TNT really is.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: The minister's comments came after I took home members of the United States of America's lowest inflation rate in the world.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I talked about that last time.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: We recorded and hey, all of a who, I?
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I came and record a 200th episode and I play some tobago.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I say, well, people go appreciate that little break in all this seriousness and all this other talk and thing.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: People tell me I listen, listen, listen me here, say nothing, my dj now, yeah, what's my business?
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Sparrow, say to no, please yourself, because you can't please everybody.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: But a few things to talk about here, a few different issues.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: When you're looking at Randall Mitchell's statement here, I wonder who he's talking to.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Are you talking to the people who never travel abroad?
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Because the people who never travel abroad or who don't have the way of it all to travel abroad.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: They might have more people in this country who never leave the country than the people who leave two, three times a year and that kind of thing, you know.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: I wonder if he's talking to them because I'm wondering what difference he think that could possibly make.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: What?
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: How does that statement help people who never travel or won't travel like?
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: So you're talking to the grassroots.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: It's a hard thing to figure out, like when you're thinking through them thing.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: It's almost like it's a filter.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: You just feel to say something and you say it.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: You say, well, if all you go away, all you see what?
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: It's a moot point to somebody who, not going nowhere, you had a deal with, where you're dealing with underground here.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: When election time come, you don't come and tell me, go and vote for trump and kamala and them.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: You just tell me, come and vote for all them and always have the best among the plan and spend hours and hours and done countless among the red jersey and on platform to tell people about how them other people mash up the country and you could fix everything that is in the country and you could make this better and talk about all the wrong them do and you have all the answers, just like what the opposition, the current opposition in this country, is saying.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: We have all the answers about everything.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: But when you come inside now and pressure take you, it's travel abroad to see how sweet it is, the people complaining about not being able to afford the most basic goods and services coming off an article where they're saying the inflation rate is 0.4%.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: And I remember asking the question here.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I was talking about Stacey and them pointing at this little surprise, the deceitful bad in this house.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: The deceitful bad.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I never had the idea that surprise coming, but she just typically handled the groceries and them kind of thing and and when I hear her who's who's generally, uh well, should I say frugal or shrewd or boy?
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Listen, I can't go any grocery with her because when she go any grocery she has to what you price at this, what you price at that.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: See if and I'm not good at that and she always complaining that, hey, you know what you price the thing, you see how much you pay for this thing and I just judge the whole bill.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I'm a big picture kind of fella, right.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: So when I go in the grocery and I don't make months in groceries.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I don't make groceries in the week.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: I go in the grocery for fig and bread and these kind of things.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I just do the big picture.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: So when I pick up about 10, 20 different things, I have a figure in my mind as to what them things should come up to us.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: All right, I have two 300.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: So when the cashier tell me five something and I have to dip again, or they tell me eight something or a thousand and I have to pay with my card, now that is how I judge it.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: So I might be the best person to judge this.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: But she watching the price of specific items over time in the grocery, she buying this all the time.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Let me give you an example, right, veritizing very well to what we're talking about today.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: She likes to go and buy swiss miss in the indian.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: You know, you know the hot chocolate.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: She likes to go and buy swiss miss hot chocolate.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: It's a one that's coming in the video.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I'll pack to make a cup of cocoa or whatever you call it.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: And they're one with um, like a bottle, a can, where it's called that, and you could, you could scoop out your spoon and make it right.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: So is that is she not conundrum?
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Because if you buy the can, the man in this house who does drink swiss miss, when you buy the bottle of it why you know it's called the container that man making three heaping tablespoon of swiss miss.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: You put any poor house here, you know, heaping spoon after spoon after spoon, the cup barely has space for water, so it finishing fast, or at least with his single self-pack, you know.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: But again, in a trade-off, which one more expensive?
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: And she was telling me recently how much, how much more expensive that is.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: So she now switched to, I want to say, oval team.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: She decides she ain't fighting up with her swiss miss.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Again, I missed her swiss miss, that swiss mister.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: So she going and she going out with the oval teen.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Now right, and you know, basically one percent thing is why it's chaotic with ollie and ollie's gonna make accusations here.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: But as a man who trained in the gym and them kind of thing, I went to a trainer time and he tell me, you know, I had to get sproutless bread, ezekiel bread, it was part of my diet plan and them kind of thing to lose some weight, right, and one loaf of bread when I started doing that.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: I want to say it can't be more than a year or two ago, right, it's just when I come off a surgery and I had to start training and that kind of thing, one full surgery.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: So let me say two years ago and if, and I went on a thing, I said what this is, ezekiel bread is mr ezekiel because the loaf of bread was about 60 something dollars, 60, plenty.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: But again, the results with the trainer, salute my boy, dave, be fit, and I'm following him and I, you know, again there and I see that bread go up from 60 something to 80 something dollars.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: And then it started and last week I went in massey and when I bring the, the only thing I buy was the bread.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: So I know aggregate built a study because the aggregators always beat me.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: And when I pick up that is the kale bread, I pick up two and a thing.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I buy something, I buy some nuts, and I say and the thing come up and they tell me for something I said all right, that's something about right, that bread alone is 80, right, but this time I just had to buy the bread.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: I just went in, pick up the bread, come back, buy the cash and that cash would tell me $115.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: That's 100 plus long time VAT, 100 plus VAT.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Back in the day I say what?
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: It's the first time I well, the second time in life or the first time in Trinidad I ever put back groceries.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: I said no thanks, is that right?
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And I was done paying too much money for it.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Already, right Granted.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: But look at the change in price Almost 100% increase If you want to come, 60 to 120 on average.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Almost 100% increase in the price of one item.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: So when I saw the 0.4%, I don't find it looks strange, because that is not the truth about the.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: The.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: What baskets of goods they using to say that is only a 0.4 increase over a year?
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: But when you, when you, when you're reporting less than single digit inflation, you're looking good as a country, you know.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: So, randall mitchell, reading people complaints, who complaining about the price of groceries, and I think of who complaining about the price of groceries and what then?
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: You're talking about middle class and below anybody outside of middle class, not complaining about the uh, the price of groceries anymore.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: They certainly ain't complaining on a public forum for you to reach, brandel mitchell and them kind of things.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: So I just find it like almost like a useless statement.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: All right, now talk to the people who traveling often, right, talk to, like, the listeners of this podcast, who always on extravagant vacations and going abroad to work and, you know, passing through malls and buying new ones.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: They don't have brand new items already, but they're buying brand new to put on the brand new, you know, I mean, it's a hell of a thing.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: So when you're talking to that group of people now, what is the use of that statement to that group of people to say when I go abroad, you could see how sweet trinidad is.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Most of the people including you, randall mitchell who travel abroad, we, we do see things uh, did I say we, you all do see things that would remind you that Trinidad is a paradise and it is Right.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: This we place, this belongs to us.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: We mustn't forget that, right, we mustn't forget that this is our home and we must love it, regardless of what it is, and we must contribute to making it a better place so that people, people who podcast, in a hundred years from now, must only have glorious things to say about Trinidad and Tobago due to our contribution.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: But tell me something now, if you're listening to this and only traveling thing when you come back you don't feel annoyed like a lot of times when I travel and I see different places or I mean these days for me is seeing the same place over and over I just come back here and get annoyed.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: One of the first things I get annoyed with is the state of the road like, and not so much the road you're driving on.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: You know it's be the pavement.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you something that's bothered me and I'll get more warm now.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: I did.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: When I go miami especially, and we walk and you go places and you see and I don't know it's not, it's not a fair judgment, because when I go miami I stay in dong tong miami.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to the rural areas and them thing, but I want to compare dong tong miami to dong tong port of spain.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: One of the things that really bother me a lot is the pavement.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I I watching something today, uh, on going around the socials where our elderly man in tobago step on a manhole cover.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: When you see the manhole cover, it looked.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: It looked totally corroded and the man foot going down in a rusty spot now and people are trying to pong the man pong and all the man foot there.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: You know, this man is not no good and I said why didn't just take off this old man shoe?
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: It would have been easier to get your foot out if they take off the shoe.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: But the point is, the pavement for us as as as citizens of TNT is such a hazard.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Not just the manhole covers, but high and low and not installed properly, every single drain, not the drain, you know, when people have a driveway and they make it lower so the cars could go in, every single one is at different height and sometimes you step down on this height.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: You have to watch.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: I remember walking from Scotiabank Shogunas to go Unitress Shogunas, this high tier, to watch.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I remember walking from scotiabank to go unitress.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: And is that?
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Is that I mean an old man?
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I still have a little, you know.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: I mean I have two steps in me, but I wonder how old people's work, or the elderly, or somebody who in a wheelchair, how them, is navigating pavement and thing in this country.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Sometimes they rest on a concrete manhole cover on top this space.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: They put it catacomb now, so it's not falling, sinking down in the, in the arm in the space.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: They put it catacomb now, so it's not falling, sinking down in the space so you could trip and fall on that.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: You could fall in a manhole.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: You step down, you step down high the pavement rough.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Even if you do fall.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: It's white man and that's a guy white man.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: And when I again look at the walking through the pavement I always watch like somebody take their time and make this pavement the curve, curve and nice.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: It can't damage Even if you hit your foot on it.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: It can't get damaged.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: It's clean.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I don't understand where I wonder sometimes what it is.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Do we have to be a country full of billionaires like Dubai to just have a pavement that clean?
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: Let me just talk about the road and how bumpy the road is and that kind of thing.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I see this statement and it is this heart like, especially coming from a minister.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Culture, your one of your roles.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I was just talking about the, the renaming of the winnie fred at will uh auditorium from queens hall auditorium and how important it is for us to recognize our could.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: They contribute us to our society and make our spaces nice.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: As a, as a minister of culture, one of the things you just focus on, what it would be like for people to come here.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I know how you're reaching to start to talk to people about, yeah, yeah, they don't only don't know how good all they have it until all they travel that part.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: That's partly true.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Like I said, the first time I put back groceries on a shelf was in jamaica, when I again, you remember, I just watch the basket of goods, right.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: So when I pull the basket and I think I know don't play tennis and I pull a basket and I know when the woman tell me the bill, I say what?
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: I say what in here so expensive that it coming up and it turns out to be some apples, I say listen, put back the apples.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: I can't afford apples.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I could eat something else.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: It's madness when you look at that price, I could do without it.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Substitute products right, we could talk plenty more about that today, but I just found that this statement by Randall Mitchell it's disheartening to hear a minister, culture and, and you know, sometimes I wonder like, if you, if, did you assess the political risk when you make a statement like that?
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: But the truth is also that, um, when it, when it, when it comes, uh, to travel abroad, to look where, and you're still dancing, right, this, this, this song, might have a lot to do with what we come to talk about today, because sometime, you know, travel too far to see how sweet trinidad is.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: You know, before, before you try and encourage people to travel, right here you go and travel.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Encourage people to travel abroad.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Travel abroad how.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: When scotia banks say you only have 2000 us on your credit card and RBC, I always used to say, well, it ain't so bad, I could still send a letter to any bank.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: If I need a little $1,000, I would get.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I asked for $1,000 the other day they said they sent $300.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: So, randall Mitchell, maybe consider this song right.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Once they had a competition.
• 23:41
  Speaker 8: For the most troubled calypsonian.
• 23:42
  Speaker 8: Ha ha.
• 23:43
  Speaker 8: Everyone was shocked to see the finalist was Sparrow and me.
• 23:54
  Speaker 8: Sparrow went to Nigeria, then he went to Spain.
• 23:59
  Speaker 8: He went to Ethiopia, then he went back again.
• 24:03
  Speaker 8: He went to Cincinnati, then he went to Ohio.
• 24:10
  Speaker 8: Thank you, I wasn't entering the show For something fake or real, bro.
• 24:39
  Speaker 8: I know I'm only wasting time, but I only follow in their mind.
• 24:49
  Speaker 8: Well, look my passport.
• 24:54
  Speaker 8: I've even got a visa in it, but something tells me Rio could win it.
• 24:58
  Speaker 8: Them foreign judges, so incompetent, say where you going, man, say where you going.
• 25:03
  Speaker 8: I read your card to China, point.
• 25:04
  Speaker 8: Come on, I'm as early in a can of pen.
• 25:06
  Speaker 8: I'm a bag of rig and mackerel.
• 25:08
  Speaker 8: I'm a river and palatine, I'm a super.
• 25:09
  Speaker 8: Thank you.
• 25:10
  Speaker 8: Now, every time I walk the land they keep a tail travelling man From Caranage to Ithacos.
• 25:43
  Speaker 8: Well, they just call me Columbus.
• 25:45
  Speaker 8: But look, I travel like Tarzan, I travel by mine.
• 25:53
  Speaker 8: I travel almost everything you find, with two exceptions that I could explain, and that is minus boat and aeroplane.
• 26:00
  Speaker 8: I travel down and travel up like Chimborazo, cotopaxi, double bus only bus, mini bus and taxi.
• 26:05
  Speaker 8: Trolley down, no one prices, no donkey, yacht and motorcycle.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I've been everywhere you could wear all them things and paint TT Around the mountains around the hills.
• 26:32
  Speaker 8: From Detroit River to Williamsville, Ah, From every hotel under the sun, From theannah to 101.
• 26:48
  Speaker 8: Well me, and bragging me and boasting me and getting ahead as well, there's two places I didn't go.
• 26:51
  Speaker 8: That is heaven and hell.
• 26:52
  Speaker 8: I traveled to La Playa that you people here could see, so I like me to sing chorus with me.
• 26:57
  Speaker 8: I went to San Fernando, Connery Pro Montero.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Kimono, el Ciccolo Coco and my Arab brothers.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: I came everywhere.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: I can't get anywhere.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: You're traveling man, All them things.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Rio say you could pay for it in Titi.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: You could spend Titi when you reach Jane.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I don't worry about nothing when foreign exchange is concerned.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I want more classic folio, you know, because I was wondering what that minister of culture is supposed to be.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: If you're trying to make the culture and tourism and them kinds of things you're supposed to be, you know what I mean.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: If you're trying to make the culture and tourism and them kinds of things you're supposed to be, trying to get people to come here, You're not supposed to be telling people where to go.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: I do agree with him, however, that Trinidad is one of the sweetest places in the world, One of the nicest places we have in the world.
• 27:56
  Speaker 9: Still, yes, yes, come, let me take you on a musical journey.
• 28:31
  Speaker 9: The beach is Soka and the country is Tianti.
• 28:35
  Speaker 9: It's better known as Trinidad and Tobago.
• 28:39
  Speaker 9: Forget your heartaches and your troubles and there we go.
• 28:43
  Speaker 9: Don't you think twice, don't you change your mind, because in Trinidad you'll have a real good time.
• 28:51
  Speaker 9: Who wants to fuck and go, who wants to stay, can stay In Trinidad.
• 28:57
  Speaker 9: I know we live a better way.
• 29:00
  Speaker 9: We live together as one In a harmony Three nigh islands in the sun.
• 29:05
  Speaker 9: It's love with all of we, no color, green or red.
• 29:40
  Speaker 9: Thank you, beautiful girls.
• 29:41
  Speaker 9: A place so vast and free, no other place in this world could ever be.
• 29:47
  Speaker 9: Who want to go can go, who want to stay can stay.
• 29:52
  Speaker 9: It's really not.
• 29:54
  Speaker 9: I know we live a better way.
• 29:56
  Speaker 9: We live together as one in a harmony Twin islands in the sun.
• 30:02
  Speaker 9: It's love with all of me, my Trinidad and Tobago.
• 30:15
  Speaker 9: I'll never, ever, never, leave home.
• 30:20
  Speaker 9: I'll never, never Leave you.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you is no social barriers, just love, joy want to stay, can say literally that I know we live a better way.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: And I say head out, boy, all right.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: So everybody in our friends, everybody in our friends, it didn't get bad.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: We talked about this here many times and again, from bad to worse, which we, I want to say, predicted, but anybody, anybody, could have seen this coming.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: So scotia bank had a release last week about credit card and not interest credit.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Foreign exchange limits on cards going down.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: So they say if you have a black card which you could imagine how much you had to make to have a black card uh, your limits will be 5,000 us a month is reduced to 5,000 us a month.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know what that was before.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: And if you have a red card or whatever the kind of card it was the other kind of card Scotiabank offering everybody limits across the board.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Scotiabank might have about four or five different types of cards a platinum card, a gold card, a colorful card and so on.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: All of them will be reduced to $2,000.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: And a way to appreciate this, appreciate this right, it does not mean that all black card holders will get five thousand us or all other card holders will have two thousand us.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: It means that is a maximum.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: So if your colorful card, the, the, the, the limit is ten thousand tt, you will not gain no two thousand us to be able to spend on a monthly basis.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: You might get 500 us, like my um my credit card up to up to well, up to the end of november because it's taking effect on the 1st of december.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Right, my credit card us limit now with scotia is about one third of the total card limit, so I have three times as much tt as I could spend versus the us, and I run into problems pretty, pretty often.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: I I saw, I saw journalist asha javid talking about being abroad and the card gain declined up to up to earlier this year when I was abroad.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: I was in orlando and on one of these um theme parks, and when I swipe the card the man says still have money for them.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: I was all grateful, though, because I just use one card until the us limit.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I can't check that all the time and the transaction still has a post on.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much us I have remain on the card.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: I kind of estimating it as I go along, and when I went, let me say the thing had come up to 40 something dollars.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: When I swipe it, you say, okay, it's still a 30 something for my say right, we'll switch to the next card now, which one of these strategies that people use and is to apply for multiple cards.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: If you had a travel or if you had things to do abroad.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Right, let me just talk personal now.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: We don't talk business yet.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: So what some people doing is, rather than have one black card, they go apply for two or three black cards with.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: So one black card you're going to limit for 100 000.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: You do two with 50 000 and you see if they will give 5 000 on each, one and same with the colorful card.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: If you have a credit card limit of 40 000, better you keep one.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Tell them listen, reduce that limit to 20 000 tt, because the tt is not the problem, right?
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Anything that you could pay for in tt, it had to be that you're buying it in trinidad.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Tt not accepted in the Wales.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: You can't use your debit card for US anyway anymore, so it's better to take the credit card, reduce their limit to as close to the $2,000.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Make sure you negotiate with the bank, telling me what the $2,000 limit and apply for two card If you qualify for 40, you could get two card 2020.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Or get it from another bank, right.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: So I have one by RBC, one by Scotia, and that is how I'm managing the traveling and those types of things.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: In addition to that, one of the challenges that you're finding is you're getting the cash.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Now, gratefully, when you go to the US, there are very little things that you need cash for, right, some of them are very important, like ask me, ask me when you see me, but most times you could do most things with with your cards.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: You do feel as though, now more than ever, you feel a little naked if you ain't walk with cash, because you don't know what go happen.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Suppose I abroad and this credit card thing change and that is so.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: So you want to walk with a little cash in your pocket, especially if you're traveling with family and man traveling by the self, you go figure out whatever it is, you know, but when you're traveling with your family, you want to make sure you have enough to cover it now.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: For some time now, because of these limits, I have been spacing out transactions, because it's a little stressful to get these things done, where what I would do is if we had to take a trip and I'll say that traveling.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: For me personally, traveling is the biggest challenge with this reduction in credit card limits on on reduction of us credit card limits and this is the first time I ever faced this in my lifetime at the 80s might well back then it might not know credit card with no us amount to spend at all.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Coming to think about it, but so this is the first time.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: I, for most of us, when we apply for credit cards, the first time if you have 6700 tt is your limit.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: You had a thousand us.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: It was just whatever you wanted to do.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: But these circumstances and trend are changing.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if we we're comfortable discussing how the circumstances change or if we're more comfortable just saying pnm is worse and get rowley out and as if there's some solution to the problem.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: The solution to this problem should have been made in the 70s, if not before that.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: The solution to this problem should have been done early 2000.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: When I was in Lockjack, I went to Lockjack between 2004 and 2006.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Lockjack Graduate School of Business, and all we were talking about was this same situation that we're in now that if we didn't change what we were doing by 2020, we was going to be in for some very rough times.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: This is not new, this is not a surprise to anybody.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: And boy, listen, we're so lucky.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: As the song says, nowhere nice like Trinidad.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: We might have a get-out-of-jail-free card that might come in 2027, 2028, if we're lucky with our Dragon Gas deal and other similar deals.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: But for the most part, we politic as much as we could have and kick the can down the road from 1970 all the way to today, and now we're here and we had to address it.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: But travel for me is one of the more challenging things.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: I'm sure it will be the same for you guys.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: So what I will do is I will book the flights in one month, make sure I'm good there.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Then in next month I'll do the airbnb.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Then in next month I will request some years from the bank, because I understand from a little birdie right, when you're requesting cash to spend, your bank starting to look now at how much cash you spend on your credit, how much, what was your credit card spend on us in that particular month?
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: So when I request in cash, I, when I question us dollars now I'm making sure I'm a month clean.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: I go in early in the month before I buy anything on amazon or I pay for anything in us, and I ask for us and hope for the best.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: These days, again, two, three hundred, it's not, it's not great I just send the letter and hope for the best, kind of thing.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Even now, the banks and it might, might have been the case for some time now might be putting you on a wait list.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: So now when you go, you request it and they tell you they will call you when it's ready.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Today is the 4th of november.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Recording this by the 5th.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: This out, I think I make a request was the only 15th october.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Me here back from the bank yet.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: So the situation is is not great.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: And that's on an individual or what we call a micro level.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Right, each individual other fighter, but it's for each household and it leads to some level of discomfort.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: And the same can be said for all the different things that we pay for on a monthly basis online, like the subscriptions.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Taking it that you're not running a racket, right, I know it's a very racket-filled country, we like a lot of racket.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: But the $20 you're paying for Netflix or whatever it be, how much are you paying for Apple Music or storage space on your phone?
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: How much are you paying for your security camera?
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: How about thing and thing and how about all those things?
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: You gotta watch everything that being charged to your card in us and kind of rationalize it.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: If you you need two, two thousand or more us a month to run your household, you havea issue.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Let's switch to business for a while.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Two thousand us uh, this was personal cards.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: Right, they didn't say this about business cards.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: But I'll tell you business card is not much different.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: You're having a lot of um restrictions on how much you could spend on your business card on a monthly basis as well.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Of course, they're not as publicized as less people in business, and one of the things I want to let you know too right, banking is about perception and confidence.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Right, that's what it what it's about.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: It's about putting your money there and you perceive that you have some physical access to your money whenever you need it and you have the confidence that when that time come and you walk up to ATM, you will get back your money.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: The first day you go to ATM and you have 5,000 Nacons and you go to take out 200 to go and buy some food and all these different food courts that have around the place everybody taking cash.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: You're going to take about 200 to buy that and the atmc?
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Nah, no cash.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: And then you go by the next 80 and then you see several atm.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: If that's sustained for a day or two, worst causes are run on the banking system.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Everybody's lose confidence because now they have the perception that the money is not there for them.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: And what happens is everybody will try, or many, many people will go to the bank and try to withdraw the money.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: There's no point in time which a bank could cover all the deposits that they have.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: They cannot give you back the cash.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Right, if they cannot give you back the cash, you would not want to be in the bank anyway, because what the bank is do is take your money in cash and invest it in pretty secure, uh, instruments like bonds and treasury bills and nothing too too risky, but it tied up in assets.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: So the bank does not have the money to give everybody back the money at a point in time.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Two things going into that the central bank have a kind of mandate that says they must have a certain amount of money on hand in the bank at any given time again.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Nice to just maintain confidence so that they will work it out.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Actuarial scientists will come in and say well, an X percentage of any one society will come for cash on any given day and they must carry that.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: And the bank will have an idea of what it carries based on its customer needs and all those types of things.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: That goes for all the currencies that they have right, including TT.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: They have a certain amount that they will have every single day.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: So the idea that the bank have a certain amount to US every day is not new.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: It really come into the fore now because the demand outweighing the supply.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Let me go in the market now.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: The simplest place to understand this is in Tunapuna market or central market or whatever market only is going on.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Are you going to Shondas market?
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: I hear gondas market complaining.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: They say it's on the air condition.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: We really reach where we're going in the market complaining.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: So have a condition, we can survive, but when?
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: When?
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: In the simplest terms, if you, I remember one of the first economic lessons I learned is in my house in anderson street in st james, when my mother and my grandmother and them go on in the market and buy and take and they're complaining about its price of tomato.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: They used to say tomato's scarce.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: That is one of the first economic lessons I ever learned and I would ask them well, what do you mean it's scarce?
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: They say, well, tomato ain't thing.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: The amount of tomatoes didn't grow.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Wherever farmers didn't get tomato, the crop didn't think it grow.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Wherever farmers didn't get tomato, the crop didn't think it had flooding, whatever.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: And it's scarce.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: It was known then and it's known by all of us.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: This is no economic thing that nobody can figure out or understand.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: It's simple.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Tomato scarce basically mean that it don't have enough tomato to supply the amount of people who want tomato.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Is a simple thing and we all know almost by nature that the price is going to go up once it, once the thing scares, the price will go up.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Cartel was scarce, cartel was scarce for the last.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: How much ever years?
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Scarce like hell.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: You can't get to see cartel.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: Look at the price of cartel tickets for that show on the 31st of december.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Between this us situation and cartel and cartel.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Tickets for that show on the 31st of december between this us situation and cartel and cartel is all the price in us and them thing do it.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: So you know, you know I can't go.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: No matter how I try to twist it, I can't.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: I can't afford to go and see cartel.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: I would love to see my whole.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: If they do a live stream and well, that's the end of december too I will be close to my us limit.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: But if they do a live stream and I still have a little US on my credit card, I'm paying for that and I'm keeping a lime home by me to watch Cartel World.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: Boss right, it's a tape, so when something scales it's normal.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: We know the idea that if something's unavailable and people want it, the price will go up.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: People are actually bidding up the price of the item.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: But I feel like when you talk to people about the US situation, there seems to be a disconnect.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: Like we don't see the dollar as a commodity, like we see tomato as a commodity and the dollar is a commodity just like tomato.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: The price of US or what will cause it to be the price to move, it's that same scarcity.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Right now US is scarce and that's why we know about this thing of allocation on a daily among the US is because the amount that they could put out for the US dollars, the amount of US dollars that the bank physically have to sell anybody is low and the bank had to settle the transactions you make in US or we make in us.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Right, when you pay for things in us dollars, the bank had to settle them things in in us with visa or whoever, whatever financial arrangement that they have, and they only have a certain limit that they could use on a monthly basis.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Add to that we've seen people complaining wholesalers, price smart, the franchise people, everybody complaining because now, hey, wait, no, I had to get us to do business.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: We have a few subscriptions that we had a playlist on it.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: So I I would say it's embarrassing because we have bills piling up on people and we're telling them boy, we can't get us.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: We try any transaction it gain declined.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: We had to tell them all right, well, here, what on the first early in the morning let me do this before anything pulled from the car or any and I guess the most the more people you're supplying or the more customers or clients you have in trinidad as a supplier who are broad, you might know you have an issue by now.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: It might be it, might we probably at the point now where the international companies or people who dealing with trinidadians know that we ain't just trying to scam them or outsmart them.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: It's hard to get.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: I remember the first time I was going to a lecture in Guyana and salute to Dr O'Toole at the School of Nations University in Georgetown.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: He was telling me that when you're well, he had to pay me in US.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Right, I cannot accept Guyanese dollars because I can't spend that.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: That guy needs dollars when I come here.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: He can't get tt over there.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: So us is a kind of global facilitator.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Anywhere in the world that's accepted like visa, right.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: So you had to pay me my little us when I go over there and I remember him talking about boy is really really very difficult to get us.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: So he was trying to figure out other ways and I was like, listen, if you do a wire transfer, I could get it in in TT or whatever it is, it don't matter to me.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: If you get cash US, that's good.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: But them days I didn't.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: If I had taught this through all the way, I would have been getting that US and holding on.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: But back then I can't afford to hold on to that US.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Nothing was rough.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: So I was always converting that US to TT and not getting a chance to hold on or build up a us savings or reserve right, but I always remember taking note of that.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: You know when, when, when I don't know this man from nowhere I had to jump on a plane to go and lecture in this school.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: I never hear about this school and now you're telling me you ain't sure you're going on my us.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: So me, I said.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: I skeptical.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: No, it's like boy, this man trying to set me up, or better, I don't go there at all.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: But it turned out to be good and I always remember when you get the us think of when you buy us over here, your dollars, as people would say, they're cripsy and nice, they're smelling yeah smelling good, you know, I mean, it wasn't the case.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: When I get us from nations, the us and them all, the us dollars and them sweat written down in it.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: It passed through some hands.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: It passed through a lot of hands, largely because they had the same issue there a lot of their us purchases were on the black market look at venezuela several examples of that where they had exchange traders saying, when they go in the bank again, us and x, but nobody in back, nobody in selling the us for that amount to the bank, so the bank never have us and they had to buy us on the black market.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: So we pretty much already there.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Because when I complain about, tells me, well, I have a partner selling US, he's work abroad and come back.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: He's selling it for $8 for one, though, and we had $6.72 or $6.75 or $6.80 something or $6.90 something for US.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: So think of them tomatoes being scarce and the price going up, and then think of US dollars being scarce, but the price is not going up.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: The price is still $6 and some change right Now.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Why is US dollars scarce?
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Let me start there.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Why are we in a situation where US dollars are scarce?
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: There's another thing I think people are not seeing clearly, how does a country get US dollars?
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: It's like any other dollar they get.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: They have to earn that.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: The only money you could print and create more is your local dollar, that your central bank controlling right.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: I always remember a good partner of mine some of my guys Nicholas Billowin, when we were in Fatima.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: In must be Form 4, form 5, when we were now studying economics.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: I believe we might have done economics from earlier than that, but I had an econ lecturer by the name of Mr Ramsing Salute, mr Ramsing, one of the best teachers I ever had.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: He was no small talk man and no sort of frou-frou.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: The man just used to come and teach and explain concepts and that man made me love economics as a subject and I remember talking to Billo at the time and Billo done rasta and seeing the world differently and have a level of enlightenment that I don't think I had at that point in time.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: And he was.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: It was one of the most genuine questions I ever had.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: He was like bleeding for people, whatever the issues he was talking about, and he was talking about poor people and he said Corey, you as a man, like economics, you always come in first in Ramsey class and things, if people are poor, and I was like, well, my understanding economics telling me that that is a horrible.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: You cannot do that, that that is not done.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: But you can't just print more money and just give it out to more people, because the thinker think of money as a promissory note.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: It's just something that the purpose of money is for goods and services.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Money on its own does not have much value unless you could convert it into something that meaningful for human life, whether it's food or luxury items, whatever the thing is, the money must be going somewhere.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: Money of itself has no value.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: So, for instance, if the big earthquake shake, you remember fred sanford used to say elizabeth this big one.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: If the big earthquake come and the world shake down and and what we know as capitalism take a hit, and man don't want to accept paper money because it have no value.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: You ever watch Denzel Washington what is his show name?
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Where he turns out to be blind in the end?
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Or Will Smith when he had a dog and the alien by the dog, dog turning into alien?
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Any movie you see about an apocalypse or end of times will show you that it's not money.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: Again.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: You're going back to our system of barter, which is we exchanging goods and services for goods and services, the money as a medium of exchange fail because of whatever factor that happened.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Let me say it's a earthquake, right, and you play shakedown and think nobody don't want no money.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: Man, what bread?
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: At that point in time, if bread scares, you have to give up more goods to get bread right.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: And if bread in abundance, nobody ain't giving you no set of thing for your bread.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: It will just go to somebody else.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: If you, if you, if I, if, if you alone have flour to make bread in the whole of trinidad and tobago, I willing to give you a cow, two goats, whatever it takes, if I need bread right and you'll give my parcel of bread and we go on.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: But if bread every, every corner, you go by.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Man, I have bread, my bread, give it away.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, bread is scarce.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: You see, just go back to your old household.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: You know you learn all the economic they say bread gain way.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Then I tell you here what going on, I have a cow there, I'll get one bottle of milk, I'll get that.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: You'll give me six bread.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: It's the same thing in battle, whatever scares.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: You got to give up more to get this scarce thing right.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: So when you're putting money in between, it might be confusing people.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: This is the same thing.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: When you put the money in between the money is is about the product that it going towards.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: So if you just print and give people more and more and more money and you still have the same amount of bread, people could just spend more and more and more money for the same amount of bread and it would just cause the price to rise In economic terms.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: It would cause a severe inflationary problem and it could collapse the economy because then the dollar will have no value, right?
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: So think of it in terms of us dollars.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Now, what?
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: How the whole country gets in us if we can't print it ourselves and we had to get it from somewhere.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: Then I had to get somebody to pay me us for something.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: They could pay me us for the tt dollar.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: They could.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: They could bring our us and say, well, give me six or seven tts.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: Right, I could the us government, it would be a trump.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: Or seven tts.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: So I could the us government, it would be a trump or kamala.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: By the time we listen to this, we go know who it is.
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: I listen, I'm frightened for yankees, no, but let me stay on topic here.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: If a man from the states have 100 us and he sent 100 and you're sending back 700 tt, that is one way of earning us.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: But what is that man going to do with that 700 tt?
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: That tt cannot spend nowhere.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: Monopoly money.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: They call it right.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: They say, oh, it's colorful, it's nice.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe you could sell some for people to frame up and put somewhere.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, look nice on our wall, it could make for nice decor, but it don't have no value unless you're coming here.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: So the truth is, the only way we could get us dollars is if we earn us dollars by making some kind of product that we could sell to US people.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: You could sell US people $30 too.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: But, randall Mitchell, you had to get them to come to Trinidad because they cannot spend it nowhere else.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Don't tell people from Trinidad go there.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: Tell people from there to come here.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: If people from there come here, granted, they can take the US and spend it here.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Right, you could go.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: How do you call the place?
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: You could go by Richards.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: When you go eating, you buy a bacon shark.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: You could go down on the avenue, you could buy doubles with that, you could go in the club, you could go by the bar and pay for that.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: But most times people are going to convert the US into $30.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: So they have titty dollars to spend here.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Because any traveler will understand that if you come here and try to spend us first, you're getting overcharged.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Right, you're getting overcharged for the product, the snow cone man.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: When you come by the locals who's selling snow cone with hennessy, he might charge you.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: If it's 20 dollars for 20 titty for one of them hennessy snow cone he might charge you five us because he's a genius.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: So any, any, any traveler, no boy, better, I convert to the local currency and spend that.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: So when I see the stated price there, I pay the stated price and I'm not worried about getting rub all the time.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: And I can't do this set of conversion and all them kind of thing I can't do.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: We got to the conversion because we need us, so we always gotta divide it by six trend and no, no other times tables, but they know the 6.7 times tables to heart.
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: So if you don't have something that you could sell to people abroad or you don't have some reason to get people to come here to bring their money and convert it, you will end up with a shortage.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: So how you get people to come to our country?
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: It have about a hundred different ways, right that?
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Ecotourism, business tourism, sea, sun and sand tourism, carnival tourism?
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Um, what do you call the next thing now?
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: Well, I went cancun to fix a that never fixed.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: We call that no, medical tourism.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: They have a whole different, different slew of reasons where or ways to try to attract people to our country.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: That is why the tourism argument is such an important one and that is why it's so disappointing where we end up with sandals.
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: Sandals are unique case because it does not necessarily get as much forex in the country as you need to, because what tends to happen is that people go on these all-inclusive resorts and stay on the all-inclusive resorts and they don't really come out and venture into the rest of the country and just spend money like that.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: But uh, even when they have, uh, a need to change, and especially with global chains like like a sandals or rio and them you could pay for eating in the US there, pay in Expedia, do your tours and all those things, and the locals still end up getting the local currency and not the foreign currency.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: But let me use Cannavale as an example.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: You have people who pay in tribe for a product.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: We don't like big business, we despise big business and we see big business people as predators and we see them as price gouging and destroying society and all that kind of thing.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: But it always comes back down to that for me.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: And the whole thing sell out, right?
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: The whole band sell out.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: Whatever percentage of those people were from abroad and do that via the website would be paying for those costumes in US dollars 200,000 US at a time.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: The real tribe going these days you know what I mean Just not be 20 grand for a costume, but by the time you put backpack and front line you're paying in USs dollars, and that coming directly to a trinidadian, a local business owner.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: So that's a product that you could sell where you earn us dollars.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Also.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: It's a nice little product too, because I have a knock-on effect when somebody paid a thousand us to come for carnival.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: So when they pay the thousand us for a costume, they may well pay a couple hundred or thousand more us to go.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Private ryan to go this fair to go, carry people to go, they might pay for all them things.
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: That's something.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: Carry people could collect that money in us as a next business owner now bringing us into the country again.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: All things being equal, the economy is a citrus paribus.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: All things being equal, most people not going to sit there as parabas.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: All things being equal, most people not going to take their US dollars and put it under their mattress these days in Trinidad and Tobago, maybe, maybe put your US under a mattress, right?
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Because there was a time where, when you had a US account, if you had 5,000 US accounts and you call them and tell them I'm coming for 1,500 tomorrow, I'm not fucking going to call them because I remember telling in the beginning they have a percentage that they keep in there right through.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: They know the percentage of people who are going to come in for that.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: So when you have 5,000 in the bank, you need 1,500 to just go.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: I came to a draw 1,500 US.
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: They say, hi, thank you, mr Smith.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: And you now, when you put in 5 000 in the bank, you had to make an appointment with them.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: Talk to them.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: Nice, you know, I mean you had to try and sweep me away into get your own us or anything.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: So now you might be that we definitely in a world where people hoard in us.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Right, we will get back to that.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: So when you create a product that somebody who not in the country want they could, they will pay for that in us us is a globally accepted standard.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: You set the price in us, foreigners will pay that and they, and then you have that and the average person going to put that into the banking system and now the banking system have more us.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: That's one of the ways our countries earn us right, kind of all nice hotel and them thing.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: Nice because I say, when you come here, you go pay for fed tickets, you go rent car, you go think if you could get them, all them things are nice because, as I say, when you come here, you go pay for a ticket, you go rent a car, if you could get all them things paid for in the US, then you're even better as a business person and we're better as a country.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: By extension.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: You know, as the top owner of foreign exchange in this country, historically from since the 70s, whether we're in a slump, we're in a bump, we're in a recession, we're in a depression, we're in a boom, it don't matter what we're in.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: The top owner of foreign exchange in this country is oil and gas, right.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: Energy sector right.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: The energy sector is what's making the money.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: Some other people are going to know the Carnival and all them things.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Good, the tourism.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Carnival will fall under tourism.
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: All that good Light manufacturing and food and beverage might be second to oil and gas in in a lot of years.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: So all the I see associated brands changing the captain now the uh at the lockjack stepping down and nicholas lockjack taking full control as chairman.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Them fellas and them earning they earning a good bit of foreign exchange.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: Right, a good bit, as their products are all up the islands and throughout the Caribbean and throughout North America and Central America and so on.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: Good products, right?
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: So when you look at the things that we make that are exported, that earn US dollars, you're looking at Associated Brands and all their products SM Jalil and all their products, sasha cosmetics and all their products, angus to run, all their products and some, well, caribbean, all their products.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Those might be a biggest, our biggest global brands and our biggest things that are recognizable abroad that somebody taking us to pay for, to get out by them because they wanted they have the demand for it.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: So them fellas and them in in food and beverage and in light manufacturing would be doing, would be doing a good bit to earn foreign exchange with their exports.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Right, but I want to read some statistics.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: I pull for you here.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Right, there's a, there's a we.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: We had episodes like last week.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: We just played music and get kicks all day and we had episodes like this with a whole damn lecture, right.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: So the the quickest search.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: You look for gdp.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Gdp is not always the best measure of, uh, the wealth of a country, but it's standardized and it's good and it's easily available and them kind of thing.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: So they said the oil and gas sector is a major part of trinidad and tobago's economy, accounting for a large part of the country's gdp, exports and government revenue.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: So when they say gdp, what I mean is, just in case somebody, somebody don't know, is a gross domestic product.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: Right, where you try to do is add up all the things that were made in the country or made to sell in the country, add up the total of that and it tells you a story about how wealthy the country is.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: Right, we will cover that in our next lesson?
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: Right, come back, come back to class and we'll get some boys, gdp and gnp and all them things right.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Uh, in 2022, the oil and gas sector accounted for 29.8 let me call that 30 percent now 30 percent of trend on tobago's gdp.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: The energy sector as a whole accounted for about 45 percent of the country's gdp.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: So, in other words, the wealth that the country has, or the earning potential or the earning power of the country, will be cut in half.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: Basically, if we do not have our oil and gas sector, that oil and gas sector accounting for 45 percent of our total gdp right now.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: Again, remember that gdp is everything they make.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: So, no matter what sector it's in you, if you break it up sector by sector, we still have 55 percent of things that we could depend on.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: I just want you to appreciate that.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Knock on wood, right.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: Knock on something.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: An individual let me go back to micro for a while right?
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: As an individual or a family, can you imagine your income being slashed by 45%?
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: If your income slashed by 45%, you have a serious amount of changes to make in the way your household running.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: Now, right, let me not dwell on that for too long, right?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I don't like to put these kind of thing into the air.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: Exports In 2022, the oil and gas sector accounted for 81% of Trinidad and Tobago's export earnings 8-1.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: Ores and mineral fuels account for over 70% of the country's export.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: Let me focus on that 80 figure, right.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: When you're looking at 80 percent of your revenue, it's, in other words, 80 percent of what can earn us dollars.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: So when I tell you hotel and taxi and carnival costume and, and, and frosted flakes and chubby and buttercup, what do you call the thing now?
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: Buttercup or whatever the makeup thing that Sasha does make and I tell you how much bitters we see, all the bitters.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: Anywhere you go, in a bar, anywhere in the world, any hotel, any all-inclusive resort have bitters Might be our most global product.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: All that combined is only 19% of what we earn in the US.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: So you see, put it on a bar chart for me now so you can see how big the difference is 81% coming from oil and gas and the 19% is bitter as cannibal tribe.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: All them is going to set a hotel.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: We are down here, man, everything else adding up to 19%.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: So what's the moral of this story?
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: When they were talking about, in the late 80s having a recession and, I believe, somewhere around 2008,.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: A little bit unrelated, but in the late 80s certainly, when the oil price fall and the thing starts to bottom out, I think about one time $ dollars a barrel from something like 30 something, 40 something dollars a barrel that we were enjoying before.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: Imagine what happens to us at that point in time when so much of our foreign exchange earning potential 80 percent of it, to be exact, 81 comes from this one group of products.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: When the price of that group of products falls, we have a problem.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: Your total amount of us that will come into the country will fall comes from this one group of products.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: When the price of that group of products falls, we have a problem.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Your total amount of US that will come into the country will fall.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: This thing that we have here, which was predicted the price of oil and gas, is very, very, very difficult to predict.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: People will tell you they can predict it right.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: There are people who is watching moon and they watch a thing, and when this growing oil and gas go thing because the moon reflect off thing, people will tell you all that because there are people who doing this for a living, who predicting the price of this so that them can make money right.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: Them trying to see what it's selling for now and what it will sell for tomorrow and getting to all kind of future contracts that could make them money right.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: Predicting markets has come down to two things.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: It's called technical and fundamental analysis, both of them historically wrong.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: Like hell.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: Go and let them finance people tell you, they'll go, tell you they know, and da-da-da, it is extremely difficult to predict the price of oil and gas.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: I want to go as far as to say nearly impossible to predict the price of any commodity.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: Worse again, to predict it.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: In the long run.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: You might be able to predict what come in at the end of the year here.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: So when we're doing our budget, one of the first things that call members, or whoever is the finance minister, will do is tell you what is the price of gas oil.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: Back in the day it used to be oil right.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: Now it's more gas right.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: They will tell you what is the price of oil that they base in.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: So they base in this budget on a 30 dollar a barrel of oil price.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: We have done a good job as governments, all the governments we had nar, uncp, and all of them have done a relatively good job of being conservative about our oil price, right?
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Or the gas price today, where, if the world trade in that 45 dollars a barrel and the experts say by the end of the year it should be about 48, we go, we go, set a price about 42.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Right, we're gonna set a price about 40 because we don't want to over consume, we don't want to eat out, we will money and and and then we set a big, big budget and now the oil price dropped to 20 and we can't recover, right.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: So what they will tell you in the beginning, we're basing this on a 30 dollar barrel oil thing.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: And this is what you could do in the hospital Go buy new uniforms to the police, you go fix the pavement and them kind of thing.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: We could do all the things we could do in this year with the money we earned.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: And remember that most of the money we earn is coming from oil and gas.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: So when oil and gas, when something happens in oil and gas, we have a problem.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: We have a problem.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: We may not be able to do the things we wanted to do in the budget.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: And the budget is for one year.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: So think about the long-term planning now.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: The long-term planning now is a mess.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: When the oil price fluctuates and you can't predict it, don't let nobody tell you the difference, what oil price fluctuate and your car predicted.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: Don't let nobody tell you different what you can predict fairly easily, very easily, right, very easily, much easier.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: Let me put it like that, right before the experts come from it, it is much more easy to predict how much oil and gas you will have, right, which is production.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: You must be able, you have a better shot at predicting where you have any growing ways to come or train coming next.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: You could predict that.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: We did predict that.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: The experts have predicted that since in the early 2000s, maybe even late 90s, the prediction was that we have enough oil and gas to continue our current standard of living up to about 2020.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Living up to about 2020 somewhere around 2020, we're not going to be able to produce enough oil and gas to sustain the standard of living that we have now.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: The 19 who's selling bitters and all them other things, them fellas, growing too, but it's still remaining 20.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: So to sustain the standard of life we have and the country that we like, and all these different things.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: We had to do something about this.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: 81 that going to start to fall off because we do not have no more to sell.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: It don't matter what the price is now I can't predict that, but now we don't have no more to sell.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: They've been saying this for the last 20-something years.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: The fact that the man make a vision, saying 2020 vision, was a direct response to the fact that somewhere around 2020, we're not going to have nothing to sell and we're not going to have nothing to sell that earns us no more foreign exchange.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: So when they hear that term 2020, the year 2020 didn't come out of the sky.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: It wasn't pretty.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: It wasn't pretty, it was random.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: The year 2020 was.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: The 2020 vision was to address the fact that we are going to have an energy sector shortfall.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: And now the biggest part of your earning.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: I want you all to think about all this salary.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: Everybody now had to work, right?
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: Everybody have a little side hustle and that thing A way to think if you have a business, a way to think about your biggest client.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: Let me knock on wood again 80% of your revenue.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: Who was responsible for 80% of your revenues?
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: I didn't even want to tell you.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: It disappeared.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: It just started to look shaky.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: It just started to look shaky A way to tell me what that night's rest is like for you then.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: But again, good governance over the years.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: All of them, all of them.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Now I want to single out no government, because even that 2020 vision was a whole series of technocrats who was working on that, who was on all sides of the political divide, and the point of it was to see what the hell we could do to replace this level of production, or this 80 percent, uh, foreign exchange.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: You know, the biggest export that we have.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: I want to say, boy, don't you look at it.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: It is dwarf so much sometimes, because 80 is where it was in 2022.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: Sometimes is it accounts for even more in some years.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Right, so, the real, only foreign exchange.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: You know that we have going away from the standpoint of of production.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: Hey, are you bored yet?
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: What time you are?
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: This is boring.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: Sometimes.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: Feel like we shouldn't be talking.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: I feel like it'd be so heavy, but we're here, right, we're done in this already.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: So when you had to try to replace that, you had to have some ideas now, because what are we going to create that the rest of the world want steel pan was a discussion if, if, if bitters in the 19 percent steel pan.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: What weight is?
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: 0.002 percent must be what, and salute to mid quite one.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: I.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying these things to diminish any of the work that going into what you call that, when, when you hear people say diversify the economy, diversification just means spreading risk.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: So diversifying the economy means, if you're running an economy or you're running something where 80 percent of your income coming from one place and then 20 percent coming from 20, you'll feel more comfortable if, with that same income let me say, making ten thousand dollars a month, but eight thousand dollars coming from one client and the next two coming from 100 different clients you'll feel more comfortable if you're getting that same $10,000 and you have 200 clients who are contributing to that, because even if you lose one, you lose two.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: You're going to still be close, but if you lose that $8,000, sometimes people got to eat less when money comes right.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: Sometimes people gotta eat less when month and come right.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: You know me.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: So that's the position we were in and that's why the 2020 vision document was worked on by all kind of people the best and brightest in the country and well, we know what happened with that right.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: All kind of thing happened when we didn't really get to where we are.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: So we we in the midst now, 2024 we in the midst now of the time where the production in the energy sector is low and we have some major issues.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: Because now, let me just use the extreme example we're not there yet, right?
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: But imagine that 80% had disappeared and now all the US coming into the country is based on that 9%.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: You can understand where now, using that 10,000 example, instead of bringing in 10,000 US a month.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: Or let me use billion, right?
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: Instead of bringing in 10 billion US a month, now you're bringing in 2 billion.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: So the idea of US rationing it comes down to the same thing.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: My grandmother and them will say US scarce, it's scarce, and until we do something that earns more us, it could be scarce the.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: Something that will earn more us is that dragon deal.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: We do it where we make a little thing and we say but here we see, we like we know no more, like something like we borrow your gas, we bring that into little thing and we say, but here, what you see, we like we don't know more oil and gas, something like we borrow your gas, we bring that into our thing and then, you see, you could use that.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, and then the foreign multinational companies might stay here.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: But once that comes and the prediction for that is somewhere around 2026, 27 kind of time, even 28 maybe.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: So we have about four more years of this to go through until, um, until the, the, the, the, the gray, what is called the gray line behind the silver cloud, mean the way it's called it now.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: But before we could go back to some kind of happy days where this is.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: This is now a non-issue, because the 80 at least replace, if not grow, right, the prediction is that we should.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: We should grow overall.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: But I just want you to appreciate something.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: I ain't getting into this now.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: Right, when we listen to episode about 600, I hope we ain't talking about this, but one of the risks we have is if we actually grow it and we get more in oil and gas, and let's assume that that percentage get even more skewed and it's 95% oil and gas and then we get a real nice dubai level standard of living.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: Uh, I just want you to appreciate that we we still in a very risky state and if we don't diversify and that is the case anything happening oil and gas, whether it is the price or the supply or whatever it is happening, we go have a problem that we have to just kick the can further down the road, right?
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: Uh, I also want you to appreciate that when you, when, when, when 2024 come, and sorry, when 2026, 27 come if it was to come, knock on wood again, right, because this could be bad, right, and what we expect to come true then for whatever reason, be it force majeure you know what I mean.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: They say the works of the Lord be it we, along with this one, a new party, come in power and them not do.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: Or Trump come and say I don't want no part of that, like the dragon deal can't stop that.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: We don't like Venezuela, we want Maduro out.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: Or Kamala say the same thing.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: Did I just say Kamala like Kamala say the same thing?
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: Did I just say Kamala like Kamala?
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: If that was to happen, all the multinational companies who are operating here now BP and BG and Shell, and who else is there they will all be gone.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: Right, they will all be gone.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: I talk about exploration, instrumentation, refination, whatever it is they're're doing.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: They are going to shut down and they are going to leave.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: This is not the first time, trent and to be.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: Who has been through this?
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: Uh, actually, parents, they could tell you about that before, right, so that we, we trust that that's not going to happen.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: Right, men, again, good governance over the years, all parties, men, men, make good deals.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: One more thing I want to get to before I go forward with this right, one of the things that has happened here, which is and none of the governments in terms of parties in power has changed it as well when we budget for the thing at $30, and the oil actually average out $40 for the year, we take that $10 and we put a percentage in our stabilization fund and we put a percentage in our heritage fund to ensure that we can manage these.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: We could kind of stabilize our otherwise unstable thing because we're not in control of the oil price.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: I just want to give the government collectively a round of applause for that, because that saving, we know right, and it's been saving us because we we save enough money over the years on our conservative estimates and we didn't just spend it on more things right and and we have more things to spend it on, more things right and we have more things to spend it on because manhole cover want fixing right hospital want bed, but we take a portion of that money and we put it in thing to say that, listen, this is this.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: This stabilization thing is to manage the fluctuation on oil price, to make sure that we have what we need to do and so on.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: And this heritage fund that is to look at the long-term well-being of the country and to invest in innovative ideas or whatsoever it might be right.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: So that is where we are.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: So the amount of us that come in is one major factor and the truth is that not fixing between now and 2027 you see all them people, the facebook commenters and things going wild and wild and so on.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: I mean that not fixing.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: You know long it take.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: I see they're saying.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: They're building a Hyatt in Tobago, I believe they said, and another Hyatt in South and that will earn a little foreign exchange.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: Most of that we ain't keeping.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: We only keeping a percentage of that because Hyatt is not a local brand, right, but that will take long to build.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: That would take a year to build before a thing and then a year or two before.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: Are you listening and seeing that money today, or any big innovative thing that we do, that all of a sudden Yankees in demand for that ain't happening now and we only have two or three Cannavale again.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, two don't come.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: This one, this one done.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: We had two Cannavale again before 2027.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: So we attracting this big amount of tourists and they will come in and they will spend loud us and I don't know them.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: Now I'm thinking fixing, just so.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: So what else we could do to fix it?
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: What else we could do to fix it?
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: What, what, what is going to happen?
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: What we're going to?
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: We just go and suffer between now and then, and and and you know the, the, the going back to my grandmother and that thing about scarce.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: If the first lesson in today's lesson is that when things scarce, the prices go up.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: How come US scarce and the price remain the same?
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: It's because of the policy we have for US dollars.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: So a country could have three different policies when it comes to how they manage foreign exchange.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: Right, they could have we call a fixed exchange rate policy or a floating exchange rate policy, or a managed float right.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: So the fixed mean I say it's two to one, so it's two to one.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: Nobody can tell me nothing else.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: If you want, if you want to sell us dollars by law in this country, you sell it for $2.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: If you sell it for any other price, you make a jail.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: You understand, like black market.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: I could do that.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: I could also say, on the floating exchange rate side, I could say that the price of US dollars will be determined by the availability of US dollars.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: And we done, covering the first list, that the availability of US dollars is only due to what you could export, right.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: So put it this way.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: Let me skip the US dollar.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: The price of US dollars will be based on the demand for local products and services by people abroad.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: If people abroad demand a lot of TT dollars because they're buying, costume're buying thing, they're buying oil and gas, they're sending their money down here in us and we could.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: If that is the case, then the us dollar could be cheap.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: But if you're not selling these people nothing and you're doing nothing to earn foreign exchange, then the us dollar could be expensive.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: So we have the us dollar now set out and we we have what they call a managed float right where they typically set a lower limit and an upper limit.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: So they have a lower limit.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: They say can I go below six?
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: I don't care what is the lower limit in this country.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: It will never go nowhere close to the lower limit again.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: We ain't seeing that in this life again.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: So the upper limit is the question.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: It might be an upper limit.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: Now there's somewhere wrong.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: Nobody don't want to touch seven dollars because seven dollars is a loss election.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: Seven dollars a loss, election a month, right, because I show, some only remember when it was two dollars, right?
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: Some of you, if you don't know, you're properly old if you remember two dollars, but most of us I remember five dollars, right?
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: Uh, and most of us will remember like 625, 625 was a standard thing and we're going all the way to 670 something, 680 something, 690 something, and people don't really fuss so much in them, little 10 cents and 20 cents but, boy, when they hit seven dollars, mass in the streets.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, every union coming out is iron beating and and a Negro spiritual singing and so on, and people want Rowley out.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: Whoever ever, whoever passed that $7 figure in for a ride.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: I want to see, I really want to see, if they do it Now.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: I want to tell you that I have an article by covering Mariano Brung here once.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: Boy, mariano Brung is a a man.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: When he started talking, really it is a lot.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: He does say no, but he making a lot of sense on the issue and he's been making a lot of sense on the issue.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: To be fair, he's been talking about this issue for a long, long time.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: It's one of his um, we're gonna say pet peeves or something like that, but he's been talking about, uh, he's been talking about this for a long time.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: So one of the one of the options that we have as our country is if we, if we want to maintain this idea that us should be six dollars and you know the thing about it again, that there's no classroom thing.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: Now you know, because you yourself fully know what that demand and supply for us looks like.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: You know somebody now who's know what that demand and supply for us looks like.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: You know somebody now who's selling us for 750 and eight dollars.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: And you know people who coming in for carnival and they have the thousand us they paid up on instagram.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: They say I have a thousand to sell, I take in nine.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: So the black market, this black market, I know, regulator, you know the black market.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: By nice thing about the black market the black market is the closest you will come to a perfect economy where the buyer will pay exactly what it should be for the for the product and the seller will sell it and they'll be happy because nobody ain't coming from that now and happily selling us for six dollars and seventy.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: They know it have more value than that because the demand for us high, us scarce, so they go pay more.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: So one of the things we could do is control our demand for us dollars.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: So if what we pay for us could be based on, or if our availability of us is based on, what products and services we could sell abroad or export and earn money from it, right, we think is going to control that demand for US dollars.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: The demand for US dollars is not because we find the money pretty.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: Demand for US dollars is because we want goods and services that can only be paid for in US dollars.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: We want Yankee goods and services.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: We want things from foreign.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: We don't like things here.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: We don't like things from here and I feel like if this could be more than more than the oil and gas which it's so hard to control, it's so hard to predict we have, we have a little, we have a little silver lining coming that we hoping, we hoping it come, and if it don't come we in problems, right.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: If it don't come here, we ain't problems, right.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: If it don't come, we have serious adjustments to make, right.
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: So one of the options we have now and you're starting to see it slowly but surely right, we have a preference for foreign goods and services.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: We have a penchant.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: We have a penchant.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: We want not penchant like we're just drinking our penchant.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: We want goods and services from abroad.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: We do not watch local TV.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe I should be talking about myself.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: We don't consume local TV and local entertainment like that.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: We're done with that.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: We do Gael.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: Look at that one good, good program they have on our morning.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: We don't consume it.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: We, we, we more interested in cable television and and and netflix television and hulu and what were the next one name again amazon prime and apple plus.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: And where can it have peacock?
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: We don't watch local football.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: Salute to dwight yoke.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: I hope I still have time to talk about dwight yoke at some point in this episode.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: Probably not this episode.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: A whole Foreign Exchange episode.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: I've done nearly a year and a half.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: We do watch local football.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: We want to watch Tottenham and Chelsea and Barcelona and Barcelona and Real Madrid and Barcelona.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: We're supposed to drink Barcelona meat.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: We're going to get 41.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: We don't want that.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: We don't want that.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: We don't want no parts of it, right, we don't want no fresh fish from from from.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: We, good, good, fresh fish, catching every day in blanchie shares fresh fish and guile fresh fish up in las cuevas.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: We want sushi, we want we, we want, we want, we think wrap with rice and wrap them on the day.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: We don't want that.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: You understand.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: Big, big diwali here, big diwali here.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: Look how much roti and ticket are selling.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: People in wonder.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: They want pickled hams.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: Pickled hams, you know, I mean.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: People want fanciness here.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: We don't want to drink Sorel, we want rum and coca cola and we don't want a local rum night.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: You know we're looking for Sakapo.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: We're looking for the best of the best.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: We don't want a local rum.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: We don't want a white hoe, all this, a cheap rum that's beneath me.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: I'm looking for Johnny Walker blue, johnny Walker gold.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: When I open my cabinet, if all I have is Punching White oak, single barrel, black light shame, a shame.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: When I open my thing, I want to see double dog.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: Big ones too.
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Maggie, maggie, maggie.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: Double dog is what I want to see.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: We don't want to see.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: We don't want to go on the drag and buy no leather slippers.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: We want leather made by Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen and Prada and Gucci and Ferragamo.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: We want fine letters.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: We want fine things.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to take a look for me now, right, because I don't want to make it about the people who buy any fancy things alone.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: I want you to look, wherever you are now, at all the clothes you have on, check every item of clothes you have on for me now and tell me how much I make here.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: None.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: Not a piece of clothes you have on is made in this country.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: None of it.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: We have a taste for foreign goods and services.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: That's what we want.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: So we have a high demand for US dollars and US scarce, so weird things are supposed to happen to the price of US.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: One of the pressures on the government now is somebody has to come out and say we cannot keep this price at $6.70 something cents.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: Let me explain something.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: Right, when you maintain a US dollar exchange rate that is below the natural price of US, which is based on demand and supply.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: Right, which is based on the fact that Trini like foreign things and foreign people don't like Trini things, that's where it comes down to.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: When you make that price and you hold that price at $6 and some change, you are subsidizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: Don't tell them, I say swill.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: You are subsidizing the lifestyles of people who could fly on a local airline and go to Jamaica, but they want to pass through Miami to go in Brickell City Center and buy Apple products and so on.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: You are subsidizing the lives of the rich and famous because the people who jump in on a plane every minute and go and see an all-inclusive hotel abroad and buy designer products.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: And down to the suitcase, they wouldn't get a grip.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: Making they.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: And go and see an all-inclusive hotel abroad and buy designer products Down to the suitcase, they wouldn't get a grip.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: Making trotting tongue, they ain't making no grip, no more.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: They're buying Samsonite and Louis Vuitton and Gucci bags.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: Down to the bag, they're carrying the thing in it's imported.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: Down to the socks.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: Biggie Smalls say when they are allowed to pay $7 to get a US dollar, when they should in fact be paying $20 to get a US dollar, that $14 shortfall has to be covered somehow or some way.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: You see that $14 shortfall.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: Now the taxpayer paying that $14 shortfall, because the knock-on effect is that you will end up in a situation where you are short pressure on the price and now you cannot get us dollars to buy.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: When you cannot as a business forget people know, when I cannot get us to buy and I cannot buy thing to bring into the country, now the goods that I was bringing into selling my place gets scarce who you think paying that extra price for the product?
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: So when you see price pressure in the grocery and you're going in the grocery and an item that was $60 today is $70 next month, and especially our imported item.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: The issue is that the subsidization of the lifestyles of the rich and famous is causing you to pay $10 more for bread and now I had to go and eat.
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: Um, I say I'm gonna buy miss m's.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say nothing bad about miss m's and I like miss m's bread, right?
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know if other people know miss m's.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: I try to talk about it in class and, like people don't know the brand, they make cassava bread and sweet potato bread and tech and for some reason, my perception is that cassava it must be healthier, you know, I mean cassava flour must be healthier.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: And I like, on my little weight loss journey, salute to my boy, chana, my trainer, and prayers for Chana too.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: Right, listen, remember how I asked for goodwill and prayers for somebody the other day.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: I want to listen to all of your goodwill and prayers and good wishes and things for my trainer, chana, right now going through a difficult time, right weight, as I started training with chanel and I eaten my zkl bread and thing my pocket losing weight, but losing weight around the belly too.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: I say you know what?
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: I ain't buying that at 100 and something I'm gonna buy miss m's.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: Miss m's ain't cheap, but it good, it tastes good and thing.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, when I check the miss m's bread it's about 200 calories.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: A slice of bread when I eat a sandwich is more than a plate of food with the calories I eat.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: I didn't lose a pong for the last two weeks beating this damn Miss M's bread.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: But you get where I'm coming from that price of goods and services locally here will be affected.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: It is going to continue to.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: There's going to be upward pressure on the price for as long as that exchange rate stays where it is Now.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: Who's going to touch that exchange rate?
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: Come down to belly, because whether it be pnm or unc or gary or philip, whenever you interfere with that you're losing the next election.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: You can't because listen the, the opposition, who fully well know that somebody had to do it.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: They go waste it down.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: They go make sure they look like you, because we go feel it, we will feel it.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: Forget me.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: Who like to buy thing on amazon all the time?
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: I forget.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: You like to jump on a plane all the time and buy this and that and like you.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: Who like nice, I mean.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: And then we have just to add another issue to this we don't make enough thing here, right, because we I mean I'm not anybody close and think, but we don't really make car, we don't make it have a series of things that we have to import.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: So when you look at all the people who have to go and continue to buy and pay for these things, right, forget them for a minute.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: Who like?
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: Who like.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: They don't like um, sunshine snacks conflict.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: They said that melting in the milk.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: They were tony the tiger, you know what I mean they were.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: They were.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: We are good, we like foreign goods and so this is bad in this country.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: But forget them for a minute.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: Think about the person who child in university abroad and then year one, and it's 50,000 US a year that they had to pay tuition, and 50,000 US.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: Let me do simple math right.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: Let me say it's 6 to 1 for US now, which means this year I spent 300,000 paying for this boy to go to school in whatever tech, whatever they call Georgia Tech.
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: Right, he out there, he doing good.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: And then next year somebody floats the dollar and the dollar land at 20 to 1 because it could be higher.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: We like goods and services probably could be high again.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: 15 to 20 is where it go land, right, let me assume it land at 20.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: Do some quick math for me and multiply 20 by, because it's the same 50,000 you had to pay.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: This unaffected georgia tech don't want to hear your woes, you know.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: You don't want to hear no little near woes and no such a small talk.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: First ofst of January, 50th or the 1st of September, 50 grand.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: And now, instead of paying 300,000 for that 50 grand, you're going to go and spend a million.
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: Don't laugh.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: It's funny, don't laugh, it's a rough life.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: It's a rough life.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: So this is the thing Everybody kicking the can further and further down the road.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: So they go kick the can till we kick the bucket.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: Because it's one out of the two things the pressure, the pressure starting to build up, because I was, I tell, only one of the best lines I see in narcos was the man saying the external pressure is bad but the internal pressure is getting.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: You see, when you're in politics and it's trying to get pressure from inside, I want you to think about what sector of society is the ones that have children studying abroad?
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: It's not the poorest people in the country, right, it's a certain portion of the middle class who's sacrificing and putting pennies together to send their child abroad.
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: Right, them mortgaging house and borrowing money and them kind of thing to send their child abroad.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: That is going to be a huge hit to the middle class when that happens.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: And I ain't started talking about Tony, the Tiger and them thing yet, I just talk about the things that you have to do because your child abroad.
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: You understand a child abroad, you understand that's an issue.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: Think about the other people who have the trend studying abroad, who you like to call in this podcast the one percent, right, you have, that's one percent that you have.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: That's that abroad and that that here.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: And the trend abroad, the trend studying all over, and you know the turn is the gap here's just go greece.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: Just go greece and be an instagram body for a year.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, there's a different lifestyle they live in.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: Think about what affords them that lifestyle if they are the owners of those same businesses that export anything.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: Is them earning, earning the us?
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: So when I have this other us, no, that because of the last maybe 20 years, I hold in the well, not holding, but I'm not converting my us into tt, right, because I expect the value of us to go up.
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: Imagine what happened when them I have a, I have a hundred dollars home that was just worth 600.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: And now, when you, when you change the exchange rate from 6, or it goes from 6 to 20, now that $100 bill is worth $2,000.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: So when the middle class take that huge hit and then the wealthiest classes actually end up better off now because their US is worth much, much more.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: When you start to see and you talk about Jamaica with a big gap and a big divide between the rich and the poor, or no middle class or disappearing middle class, is something that you, you could see why it would happen.
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: Right, you could see how we just end up there without a middle class or without the middle class, taking such a big hit because now some people will have to not go to school at all, which such a big hit because now some people will have to not go to school at all, which affects the future of your lineage, your generations.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: Right, some people go buy the bullet and mortgage their house or do, which again affects the future lineage, where you could have hand down and you could give us you know and leave, leave when you're gone, and all those things affected.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: But one thing I want to talk about here is that appetite for foreign goods and services again plenty thing we don't make here, so we always going to be a net importer most of the things in this country.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: We're not an industrial nation, so anything to do with industry, machinery, uh, anything to do with civil engineering to build all them thing, most of the inputs for those things going to have to come into the country.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: Same thing with car you want motor car, you have to bring that.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we in a state to say, well, motor car, you just start a bell, car and thing and I ain't so make sure if I trust no car, we're building cedras.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: No, I ain't so sure driving that.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: So we'll in a situation where we're going to continue to import and one of the things we could do is shift from this sort of us goods and make better deals with countries like china and so on.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: I've seen that happening already because it's at a point in time where, yeah, like the man say, vj, the victory over java's china, victory over japan there, right, but when you look around at cars in the country, you would, you would have seen mostly japanese cars and mostly european cars.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: Now you start to see more and more mostly Japanese cars and mostly European cars.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: Now you're starting to see more and more Korean cars and these days you're seeing more and more Chinese cars and partners.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: The BYD is a real solid vehicle.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was Chinese.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: Well, I assume Chinese made wrongfully.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, chinese is cheap.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: It's not the case.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: Probably wasn't the case, but it's not the case anymore for sure.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: And they're competing by seeing more and more like Chinese-made vehicles, more Chinese brands coming into the country.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: So if there's a favorable sort of agreement between Trinidad and China in terms of either exchanging goods and services for goods and services, so we do.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: How to convert currency?
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: It's an option, there's a.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: There's also the option of currency substitution.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: People say you should just adopt the us dollar and move on with your life, forget having a us, a trinidadian dollar.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: It's been done before, but it is tricky to do.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: It is is not politically welcome because you're going to lose some of your sovereignty.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: You're no longer, you're no longer in control of your dollar.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: We would never set with it, I mean.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: I mean I guess you will still have a central bank, but it's on purpose, really, because they can dictate what happened with the us dollar.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: And then, well, the other than just affecting your sovereignty, it brings into question are you an independent republic if you just adopt the us standard or get just use us dollars and abandon your own currency?
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: Uh, and then beyond that, you can't print money, you know.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: I mean now if you have a little deficit that we know again, the government could just print money and infuse money, so it affects your monetary policy.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: Is is is tough to do, but I saw karen rose make a video right and he was talking about, I see, people.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: It has some people who don't like him.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: It has some political people defending the party in power and finance and he's taking on the country and encouraging people to evade tax.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's what you're doing.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: I think you're providing a solution.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: I talk about here many.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: I think you're right.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: One of the things we had to do at an individual level is find ways to earn more US If we want to maintain the standard that we have.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: Find ways to earn more US.
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: Get jobs abroad, get your money in US, try not to convert it, pay your taxes and do all the legal things right, but find ways to hold on to US dollars that you earn and that way, when you need to spend money abroad, you have money to spend already.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: You don't have to do any conversion and then you'll be unaffected by, or less affected by, a floating exchange rate, or you might even earn so much us that you become one of the people who benefit greatly from converting us at 20 rather than having to convert it at six right.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: But one of the things that I find me not talking about enough and where I feel like the government, the current government, the current party in power should really start focusing on more, is to try to talk to people about that taste they have for foreign goods and services, because they have some things you're not going to have a choice to get from abroad.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: But the truth is also that, hey, they have plenty things we could get down here.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: Our partner, who's always he, ever, he, have a tendency, you know, we playing football, he boots burst.
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: His first thing is who that I carry this by?
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: The um, what the hell is called them?
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: Seamstress, taylor, the hell is called the man who's fixing boots, leather people, he, what he say.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: But I carried our man did a stitch boot.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: So I have a bad habit when I see my boots and, as I said, get a mark on it.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: I said but I had to buy a boot.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: But I go on amazon and buy a boots right in us dollars, of course.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: So one of the things we had to look at is the things that we have to buy from abroad.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: We don't have a choice, right?
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: We don't make football boots here.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: I don't make football boots and you drag and them thing.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: I must check that but we don't make it here.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: So if you're bringing it in, we had to find ways to have to buy those things less, to keep your car for longer, keep your boots for longer, carry the boots by the seamstress limb, stitch it back up, nice, and put a good hem on your boots.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, some man boots want him in, and so if, if we could do that, that is good, and then we could also look at how we what we consume, because your grocery bill is one of them bills that, um, I, I don't like it neither as well as we, as we gotta spend so much money in the grocery every month we'll be eating so much, and when we go out to a restaurant we want to go to the, the fanciest, we want to go buzo or tgi friday is on, and I mean a house or you know, nice, texas, to Brazil and people.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: You know why we can't just eat curry for Diwali, just go buy a patrach, why we can't just get curry Diwali day and eat more local food, like, if you look at your grocery bill, the clothes I mean, you like designer things.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: They have local designers you could buy from local.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: You had to pay them in tt and I don't know.
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: Even that is such a tricky argument to make with people.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: So let me use prindellas as an example.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: Right, uh, good, local business.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: Carriga mandela you know carriga mandela and his wife.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: They have prindellas fashion and so on.
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: You know I mean a nice place and the, the who's who in trinidad.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: You're seeing them stepping out in the prindellas fashion and so on.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean Nice place and who's who in Trinidad.
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: You're seeing them stepping out in the Prindellas.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: But the truth is that even Prindellas, most of the things are imported.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: So she now had to spend US to buy the goods and bring them in and pay for them in Titi.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: But again, it still alleviates some of the money that's being spent in US, because think that being spent in us, because, think of it, prindella will bring in her thing in us and then you're still gonna buy your thing in us somewhere else.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: So at least there's a reduction in the amount of us that is in demand, making it a little less scarce.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: A little bit, and a big part of it is our food bill.
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: I was talking, friends and family over tuesday had a great day diwali and just just just catching up.
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: Let me tell you something.
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: You talk to father gregory for long enough.
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: You're gonna enjoy it.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: He's a man you want to talk to.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: He's a kind of person you want to be around, always have something good to add.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: Same thing with mommy stacy.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: This is granny moy, my partner edmund and his wife.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: You know we had good conversation and one of the conversations he was having is the idea of local foods.
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean eating things from here, because, uh, partner edmund just moved back to trinidad after some time and, you know, adjusting or readjusting to trinidad society, one of the things and you might see it as a child, right, I was telling them I can't tell you the last time I see sapadilla or piwa or tipi tambo, and and I want to say that a part of it is because I am a part of the problem, right, where I have a preference for the foreign things.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: I go in the grocery are you looking for planters, nuts, you know, I mean I look, I want to hear it.
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: I in almost, almost to say that the planters not superior to the um, to the saint antonys, that that one.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: Them saint antony's are, like them, bad, and nobody's can't find them all the time.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: Them are the best nuts, but pause, pause, but you can't find it all the time, you know.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: So when we're talking about the, the, when I look in my fridge and I look at fruits now the banana and they may come from here, all them banana and them imported.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: They see she bring um them, got them plum, not the plum, small plum, like what we know, the big, big plum, you know the big plum is on a bite.
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: I see she bring home plum mix with a pre-cut, two sets of us going out same time.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: Plum mix with um.
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the next thing where they say peach and plum mix, a hybrid, two sets of us going over that, about 25 to one.
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: So and even the ezekiel bread, all them kind of things.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: It's like there's so many different options for buying, like looking at your monthly spend.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: If we all collectively could do this, look at our monthly spend and try to determine what are the items we buy in, that coming from abroad or that, that, that calling for us dollars to be in demand, right, and just scratch them off the list and find substitutes, find replacements for those products.
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: So when you look at, when you look at where is the, the basmati rice or the thing you just check it, I see a whole thing going on this week about um ibis flower have and everybody done ready to promote the people from flour mill say we take that out long time.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: We have a sustainability drive, that chemical nothing.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: We think if you watch the expiry date on the flower die since 2018, we change it.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: I wonder if we really look, because they're saying that about ibis flower but your monks are imported flower on the shelf in the grocery now.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: Who nobody ain't checking to see if it have that and that and making that go viral and they're making we eat this like if somebody force you to eat it.
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: But again, I hope you get my point.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: If we shift our appetites and I feel like I want to I want to make a cup out here.
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: Right, for children who born in the 70s, all the mids.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: If you're born in the mid 70s all the way to about the early 90s, you might have a little bit of an inferiority complex with local goods and services.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: Right, because we born in a time where it had a negative list where you couldn't get in.
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: And for Christmas we used to get apples and grapes and danish butter cookies and planters planters cheese.
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: But when I see a dinner planters cheese balls pause, I used to get so excited I waited to eat that and then thing and lick the car and everybody.
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: But then I wanted a nacho thing with a little spice in it.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: And you get cheese sticks.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: When you see them, things come in a barrel.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: What you love, that and Danish butter cookie.
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: You're eating a little piece but because you want it to last the whole year until next year.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: Christmas, when you see them, kind of niceness, and those things are associated so much with Christmas.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: Where I remember driving with my mother driving down Charlotte Street like at Christmas time.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: I, where I remember driving with my mother driving on Charlotte Street like a Christmas time, I had to be a little little child, young, single-digit child, and seeing the stands with apples and grapes and things and being so fascinated because at that time we have a little bit of exposure to the foreign TV through at least a little bit of CNN showing every now and again, and I remember being fascinated.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: We went to get apples and grapes and thing and so, in other words, the foreign goods in them.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: Time salute to a and r, not napoleon raymond robinson, who are forgetting a couple episodes.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know how I could have forgotten ruby, but at that time would it be.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: I mean rough when they, when they had the idea the negative list and some goods can't come in and all them kind of things, and robbie making structural adjustments to the economy to make sure that we could be here today talking about this at all.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: But that was a fascinating thing for me to see the apples and grapes on this plain tongue and people coming to buy them.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: So it become a kind of psychological thing for me.
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: Where is a reward?
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: You know, just to have apples and grapes in the house, I feel like a successful.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: I feel like I'm doing well when I have danish butter cookies, right.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: But again, that mentality had to change for us to rally all these two, three years and more so for us to prepare our palates for what is to come.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: If that 2017, 2027, 2028 don't look like what we expect it or we hope it to look like, we could prepare and adjust our tastes and preferences.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: Now you know what I mean when I look around me.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: Everything I have around me come from Amazon.
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: Everything I have around me call for US to be able to buy it, and the truth is that some of the things I wouldn't be able to buy here at all, but most of the things I could get made here, I could get done here.
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: The old version was good enough where I could keep it and not have to buy a new one.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: So a big part of the issue is is is our taste and preferences, and I have a tune to play about taste and preferences.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: No, that take a long time to explain.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: I hope somebody's still listening.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: I hope somebody's still listening.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: Usually I back out on topics like explain.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: I hope somebody's still listening.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: I hope somebody's still listening.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: Usually I back out on topics like these.
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: I hope somebody's still listening, please.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: I hope all is still listening.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: But I had debts to pay.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: I had debts to pay and there's nobody better than to your local uncle crazy to give you the solution to our problem with us, because we are switching to us, that's switching to the us standard angle work.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: None of them, fellas, ain't going and float the dollar just so, just so.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: So it's.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: It's up to us.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: It's up to us as a society.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: As karen rose say, we had to find ways to earn some us something.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, but that and all is difficult.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, you're just fine, you're gonna just come up with a skill.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: And you say, come up with more digital skills.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: That's true, but that and all is take time but you know what we could do immediately, george.
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 7: I have to do like you, boy.
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 7: I only eat local fruits.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 7: I gone local.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 7: Yeah, we say we are true trainees, but do we know our history?
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 7: For Christmas we get caught up buying foreign fruits non-stop.
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 7: I myself was yet so blanking fruits dream they go.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 7: It's back to roots.
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 7: We stray too much.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 7: Yes, no more.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 7: Grapes, apples and pears, tonka bean I'm tangerine, five finger and balata.
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 7: Mango and palm seed, kamu, padu and cashew are going back to Merut.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 7: So we eat the local fruits.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 7: When I was young, growing up, I used to eat fruits non-stop.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 7: When people see me coming the fruit trees, they start watching.
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 7: I felt fruits in same dance In me bottom shop pants.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 7: I felt the big chance and the quarry.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 7: Those days I could say lavendee, sour tambourine, tambourine, desi, grubrub and chene, kylenito, mabolo, three green berries.
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 7: Aki and Siris Are going back to Meruta only eating local fruits.
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 7: The fruits grown in Trenbego Is natural fruits.
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 7: We all know we own fruits we ignoring and foreign ones we buying is.
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 7: There are some that don't have seeds Sapodilla, banana, sugar apple, mommy apple, katima and piwa.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 7: Just look at me.
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 7: No more big belly, I've taken to my roots.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 7: I only eat the local fruits Jackfruit, penny peas, kukori, pineapple, bariba, ambara.
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: I'm out.
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: We are square yet, but I started to pay off my debt right?
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: People say I ain't playing no Calypso and so on.
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: I ain't playing no kind of Christmas music in October.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: You see 100 gay people bad habit.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: This episode is about keeping things local, spending your money domestically.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: If we could cut down that import bill we're onto something.
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 5: I'm a local.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 5: After carnaval, hey, no, no, no, no, aye, aye, aye, aye, bloop, bloop, aye, aye.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 5: Bring my shadow, bring my sparrow, play my kitchen arm, play my arrow, bring my shadow, thank you.
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 5: We'll be right back, yes, kitchener, and play more arrow from point of the bagel when you would say I don't know from John Johnson man that I use them worshiping Satan.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 5: It's uncle D man, nephew D man, battle and popcorn.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 5: What's really going on?
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 5: Wake up in the morning.
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 5: Turn on the radio.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 5: Ram up to pump out.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 5: They want to jam up to pump out.
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 5: Wake up in the morning, thank you.
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 5: Oh, no, if you want another road, yeah, how are you whining at it?
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 5: Wine, wine, wine, wine, wine, wine, wine.
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 5: What?
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 5: Wine, wine, wine, wine, wine.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 5: Catch, catch, catch, catch, catch my trap.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 5: What?
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 5: Bring back Shadow, bring back Sparrow, play more, kitchener, play more arrow.
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 5: Bring back Shadow, bring back Sparrow, thank you.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 5: What's really going on the morning?
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 5: Turn on my radio, jam up.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 5: She got to be down.
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 5: Wake up in the morning.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 5: Turn on my radio, jam up, she got to be down, she got to be down.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: Voice of the one.
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: Mr Female, you cannot beat that.
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: I tell you Calypso History Month is finished.
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: When I say Calypso History Month finished, no man tell me Big Calypso History Month.
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I is controlling Calypso History Month and that's the voice of the great Mr Famous, right?
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: And if Mr Famous say play more Arrow, we go out and play more Arrow.
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: The episode done it.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: The Forex thing, take up the whole thing.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 2: Celebration all around Party people rocking the town.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: Long, long time we ain't felt like this, so much fun and action.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: We miss Longing to shake it up.
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 2: Time to make it up.
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: Come on, enjoy yourself.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 2: Hey, hey, hey, come on, enjoy yourself, hey, hey.
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: Well, last on, enjoy yourself.
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: Hey, hey, when last you went to party and the music gripped you, oh, oh, long drive.
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: When last you in a party and the heights trip you, oh, oh, long drive.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: We go jam, jam on the megalom Ha Now, shaggy party, party, party, party, rockin' party.
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a special morning.
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, oh, long time.
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a party party.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: And one more party.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, oh, long time.
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: Y-g-o-o Locked on.
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: Keep the momentum, the music groove, yeah, yeah, party people.
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 2: Let your body move, yeah, yeah, party to the max.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: Mind the session tight, non-stop music party for daylight.
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: Blow your music mind, have a rockin' time.
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: Come on, enjoy yourself, hey, hey, hey, come on, enjoy yourself.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: Hey, hey, when last you went to party and the music gripped you, oh, oh, Long time.
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: When last you went to party and the heights tripped you, oh, oh.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: Long time.
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: Listen.
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: Too much.
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: I talk about foreign exchange and them kind of thing.
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: I hope.
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: I hope it was of some kind of value I hope it's of some kind of value to somebody.
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: I hope it make a little more sense now and, most importantly, right.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: Well, most importantly is that the there's very little value in politicizing the issue for anybody else except people who want to be in power.
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: Whoever not in power will have the same critique of the person who in power.
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: The US shortage is created by us.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: It was very, very predictable that we would be here and we end up here.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: If you want to say that we didn't do enough to diversify the economy, that is true, but it's hard to do.
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: It's easy to do, but one of the biggest issues we really have is that taste, that kind of taste and preference for foreign goods and services.
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: We, we love it bad, we love it bad.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: And we, we, we, we tend not to want to address or make adjustments where that is concerned, because we almost perceive that as a drop in the standard of living.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: We, we feel like buying our sandals in the drag would be a little worse than getting our gucci sandals.
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, and we see it as inferior.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's our inferiority complex, we see ourselves as inferior.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: But if we address that, there's a major benefit.
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: And also also just what what rio was saying in the beginning of the episode, where, rather than running to Miami every minute and running up the islands and running here and there, you could go to San Fernando Palos and go everywhere.
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: A little more staycations, a little more hanging around Trinidad and tobago and spending your money in the local economy will carry us a long way.
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: I am the worst proponent, as I feel like this is two hours of talking to myself for sure, because I might be the worst at some of these things I'm talking about.
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: So, having said all that and I'm out full of things I'll get an episode with only music.
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: And now this week I'll get an episode with only music.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: And now this week I'll get an episode with only talking, but I will leave it only with this one.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: I'm wishing everybody a productive week.
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: And you know it has some foreigners listening to this Anytime.
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: Only our US seller wants it.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: It has some people in England listening to this.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: Anytime you have Pongs, anytime you have a little sterling or a little Euros, I will take it.
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: You have a little sterling or a little euros, I will take it.
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: Or just want to be known.
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: There's some people in canada anytime.
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: Only have a way for canadian money.
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: Canadian, I will buy it.
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: Only just let me know if I'll come in for carnival, do convert in the bank, check quarry first.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: You know I mean think of me, but hey, listen, take care of them.
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: Children, enjoy a little week, stay productive, stay good.
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: Mr famous.
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: I forget how good that mr Famous.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: I forget how good that Mr Famous song was.
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: I forget how much I enjoyed that Mr Famous song.
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: But the man did say play more arrows.
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 9: So I'm leaving you with this, thank you.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 9: Hot, hot, hot, feeling hot, hot, hot.
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 7: Feeling hot, hot, hot.
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 7: Thank you, we'll be right back All around me feeling hot, hot, hot.
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 7: What to do on a night like this?
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 7: Music's sweet, I can't resist.
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 7: We need a party song.
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 7: I found a metal jam, so we rum-bum-bum-bum, let it rum-bum-bum-bum See you all next week and just roll that bum bum.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: See you all next week.
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe see you all this week.