We had a credit crunch. Barbados , being heavily dependent on exports, in particular tourism, was suffering.The International Monetary Fund went to Barbados and sat down with the leadership and said, we think that you need to devalue your currency.
Let's make that number up. Barbados said no. We don't want to do that.There's a reason why our exchange rate is fixed.
That's clarity. That's clarity of purpose and understanding what discipline meant in that context. Barbados , yes, it's a small country, but the problems in Barbados are very similar to the problems that Europe outside of Germany faces today.Wages have risen too fast, relative to productivity.
And then what? You, your brothers, your sisters-- your whole family going to start carrying guns now? It's in Barbados . That's where my family is from.
It takes place Sierra Leone. It takes place in Barbados , in England. So the research we did was quite extensive.
those who had jobs would have maintained their higher wages, but at the cost of greater unemployment to a larger and in the case Barbados , you had higher wages over time by tying wage increases to productivity-- so how do you not only get people to have higher wages,
Why was it so different? Even when we went to Barbados to write a movie, we still write 10:00 to 1:00, have lunch, 2:00 till 5:00.
Barbados , being heavily dependent on exports, in particular tourism, was suffering.The International Monetary Fund went to Barbados and sat down with the leadership and said, we think that you need to devalue your currency. You need to change the parity from, let's say, 1.7 Barbadian dollars to 1 US dollar to, let's just call it 2.
What do I mean by that? Generalize now from Chile and Barbados to the larger emerging market countries, the so-called BRICs-- the Brazils, the Indias, the South Africas of the world. The BRIC nations account for roughly 21% of global GDP.
But a lot of it was occupied by estates, by the Loyalist families who had settled plantations in the West Indies, and in Barbados , Jamaica, Antigua, and the rest, and found the climate unsupportable for raising families, began to establish second homes in Rhode Island, and on the Mystic River in Massachusetts, and on the Charles River around the 1750s.
Well, I think there's a lot we can learn from a small island. In 1992, Barbados was on the brink of financial ruin. They were running out of foreign exchange reserves.
the future. So let me stop there and take any questions. Given the example of the prime minister in Barbados , are politicians deincentivized to make long-term choices or maybe incapable, given the election cycles? And when it comes to public sector unions dealing with elected officials, are they essentially negotiating with themselves?
those who had jobs would have maintained their higher wages, but at the cost of greater unemployment to a larger I had a question about when you talked about the Barbados and how the corporations opened up.
those who had jobs would have maintained their higher wages, but at the cost of greater unemployment to a larger Sure. So in Barbados , in particular, the hotel industry was a critical industry, given tourism.
those who had jobs would have maintained their higher wages, but at the cost of greater unemployment to a larger And the reason why I like to use the Barbados example is it shows that social cohesion, social compact, social compromise, is possible.
And I stayed in there, and the first thing I did is I just turned the lights out. My parents are Bajan, from Barbados .
interesting which isn't wasn't intuitive to me at all is that entrepreneurs are the same person everywhere in the world so whether you are in you know Boston or Bombay or Baghdad or Barbados they're the same person they are a bridge class of people they understand
Yet somehow, he was undeterred, and over the next four years, he continued to borrow money, using every cent to ship ice to new markets, like Cuba, Jamaica, Barbados , and Antigua. But, business remained difficult.
He wrote, "To Andrew, Victory is assured, Stanley Crouch." I remember being confused, like why is this guy signing my poster? We got up, and I think we sang "Confirmation," either "Confirmation," or "Barbados ," because we were always writing lyrics to all these tunes.
Clarity-- and the example of clarity I want to use comes from the small, tiny island of Barbados , an even smaller country than where I come from, Jamaica. And trust is also critical to turnaround.
How are you going to be competitive? So rather than just saying they weren't going to devalue, the leadership in Barbados said, OK, we've got a serious problem on our hands.
The public sector unions took a strong opposition to this. And 30,000 people took to the streets of Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados in protest. And just to put it in context, there are only 250,000 people in Barbados .
And 30,000 people took to the streets of Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados in protest. And just to put it in context, there are only 250,000 people in Barbados . So this is roughly an eighth of the population.
When asked, in retrospect, would you do it again? The former prime minister said, the price I paid was a small price to save Barbados . That's clarity. That's clarity of purpose and understanding what discipline meant in that context.
But it's a question of benefits for an inside group versus an outside group. So if I could just generalize the question a little bit, in the case of Barbados , had they not given into the wage cut, those who had jobs would have maintained their higher wages, but at the cost of greater unemployment to a larger
And that was also a very dangerous undertaking. There were a number of well-known people who raced there, including Ned Chandler, who was an immigrant from Barbados . Came up in 1910, raced at the track, and then went international for a while over in Europe, before he came back and did
They're like constantly living hashtag best life ever. And you're like, god, I'm always at my school and you're always at like Barbados . How is this possible?
It means running counter cyclical fiscal policy, saving for a rainy day. Second point, clarity-- I mentioned that I want to tell you a story from the tiny island of Barbados . So you may say, what can you learn from a small island?
I have a whole sort of manifesto on "You're not a billboard." And that, and that, you know, we, we shouldn't be advertising other people's, you know, mostly it's those horrible slogans or those, you know, those t-shirts that you pick up on vacation that say, "Barbados ," you know? And it's like, what is this really telling the world, you know? But anyway, to answer your question, I think, I think all of the parts, the, the stories about, about my friends
One of my favorite examples of really kind of long term meaningful marketing is what the Mount Gay Rum brand has done with its red hats. I'm not sure if there's any sailors out there but this is a premium rum brand that's actually been around for three hundred years from Barbados and several years ago they started sponsoring regattas and if you actually participate, if you're sailing in this regatta, you get a commemorative hat from Mount Gay Rum with the name of the regatta across the top sewn