These two have about 40 years of legislative experience between them and this is what we get? Should we presume they have checked the CNMI’s current bond rating with Standard & Poor for a revenue bond?
My economic experience is very limited but I know these ratings are made on the basis of sustained fiscal and operational performance. Well, perhaps they might factor in our not having had a “coup d’etat.” And the PSS bond for school building was paid off recently and on time.
The revenue bond market, however, doesn’t do kind little things for the lendees as the federal government has recently done for the Freddie Mac, Fanny Mae, the major banks or the GM/Chyrsler loans bailout. When the potential market lenders are told it is to pay off the Retirement Fund’s arrears and then review the fiscal status of the government and its tax generating operations of the recent past and its future, they will give a simple “No” answer.
The next step, perhaps, if it must be another legislative fix: try the junk bond market.
And I do admire Bill Stewart who has continued to be polite to a fault with his advice to these self-styled experts and, of course, he continues to be dismissed as some old Trust Territory coot still wandering around the Capital Hill offices at night without a flashlight.
I remember what a very wise, old Paluan women from the TT days once told me about our formative island government: “You must not throw the jewels in front of the pigs when it is feeding time.” Her studied opinion, of course, but we did go through more than a decade of “jewels” and we ate them all without knowing and preserving any of their real value.
GEORGE HABERMAN
Upper Sadog Tasi, Saipan
