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Posted on Dec 11 1998
Continental Airlines
When UMDA sold its Continental Airline stock holdings to buy out Saipan Cable TV and settle the Hillblom estate, the CNMI quickly became a victim. All of the major decisions were suddenly made in the mainland. Ticketing and reservations offices were closed. Flights were cut, which only worsened the terrible tourism crisis. If only we had some control over Continental Airlines, if only we could’ve persuaded them to build their repair facilities here, instead of Guam.
Well, there might still be a way. The CNMI Retirement fund has millions of dollars in assets. Assuming Continental, which has filed for bankruptcy in the past, is a prudent investment, why not have the CNMI Retirement Fund acquire a controlling interest?
Of course, again, it would still have to be a sound, sensible, prudent investment, based on objective factors of fundamental analysis.
The CNMI Retirement Fund
Save money. Build your own retirement office. So went the logic that deprived private sector office space owners of much needed revenues.
The CNMI Retirement Fund already invests more than $100 million abroad, mostly in the US stock market. Ideally, it should re-circulate some of that money back into the local community, by at least renting office space from local owners, part of which would eventually make its way back to the government in the form of taxes.
Federalization
Even if the US Department of Interior gave each CNMI citizen a federal handout of $50,000 a year, what could would it do without nonresident workers? We would have the money, sure. But where would we spend it? Who would staff the stores and provide the services?
Our active indigenous labor force could not be more than 10,000, if that. Would that be enough to service 500,000 tourists?
Labor is one of the crucial factors of production. Without labor, there would be no capital, no investment dollars flowing into the CNMI. There would, in effect, be no business community, as we know it. We would be as backwards and impoverished as the rest of Micronesia.
Is this what Al Stayman wants? Is this what our own Speaker Diego is relentlessly striving toward? Our complete economic destruction?
