Wasn’t two years’ warning enough?

Is the Commonwealth really claiming–with a straight face, no less–that it was somehow blind- sided by industrial Asia’s fall from grace? Are we merely victims of some economic voodoo, just helpless casualties of a commercial curse?

Sure, we’ve felt the pinch, which to some degree was unavoidable. Most, however was avoidable. And don’t lose sight of this fact: The government, as of this week, has had two years of warning that economic events in Japan and Korea were turning sour for us. Two years. Who gave the warning? I did, in a written report to a government agency that was a client.

So it wasn’t a surprise to anyone who bothered to listen.

A few months later, in April, I issued a stronger warning to a gathering of the Marianas Visitors Authority membership. Most folks were gratefully attentive, but I remember one dull lummox throwing my business card across his table, in a juvenile sign of ire that some economist would dare predict rough times ahead for our tourism industry.

Well, that lumbering oaf isn’t laughing now. As for me…yeah, I’ve got to chuckle a little bit when I reflect on how the tourism industry has been bumbled and fumbled away. If a two year wake up call isn’t enough, I don’t know what is enough. As I review stuff I’ve done here, and stuff that the Commonwealth has done, I have to admit that the story that’s shaping up–and there is indeed a story behind this that yours truly is writing–is going to look pretty comical.

The CNMI could have saved tourism, at least to some meaningful degree, by simply concentrating marketing resources on our prime market, and not wasting resources on all the rest of the stuff. And, yes, I did give advice along those lines. Economists call this “constrained optimization,” which is a pretty involved science for a pretty simple concept. But the concept of constrained optimization doesn’t fly here, where there’s been so much free and easy money that the word “constraint” is regarded with confusion. The consequences were easy to predict–drastic loss in market share, a reduction in airline service, and a downward spiral as the demand side and supply side pull each other down. I predicted that, too, as the pitfall of ignoring reality. Nobody who can read could possibly be surprised. So what’s the big deal?

If things continue on the current path, the Commonwealth may lose almost a decade’s worth of growth in tourism, as we fall back to levels not seen since 1990.

The business community here has long since passed being merely “worried” or “concerned”. The issue now is whether the CNMI is even remotely viable as a business venue

And so we see the business community–what’s left of it–sitting on the sidelines, largely voiceless, powerless, toothless, watching the house burn down and pretty much unable to get what needs changing changed. Some have left, more are getting ready to, and yet more will look at their financial statements in the following months and say “outta’ here, dude, it just ain’t worth it!”