Enjoy the show

While the cancer of nepotism devours the very last scraps of the economy, I’m hearing really distressed comments from some folks in the business community who are getting emotional about the gig. I wish I could share the outrage…but, I don’t. The time to take your chips off the table was years ago, and don’t blame me if you didn’t, because I issued summaries of my warnings in this very column time and time again, for at least five years.

So we’re beating a dead horse here. But let me offer this free advice, just sort of general stuff, to the local government on dealing with Asian business leaders: Trotting out the Village Idiot, and an entourage of bureaucrat flunkies, to represent the Commonwealth is not, repeat, NOT going to build goodwill. It is, in the words of one international business executive, “insulting.”

Ah yes, your tax money at work, insulting the very hands that feed the Commonwealth. Pure genius, eh?

But I say to my pals, enjoy the show.

Don’t get mad. Don’t cuss.

Don’t grind your teeth.

Relax. There’s no need to get all cranky about stuff; how will that help anything? At some point, some fusion between panic and concern will set in (blackouts or payless paydays), and then we’ll see if the community insists on any accountability from…well, shall we say…the accountable parties. And, admit it, that is going to be a hoot! Can we charge admission for that show? I don’t have any precedent to draw on, but my instincts tell me that this show might get mighty vicious and bitter, as the last scraps vanish and somebody finally asks where they went.

At that juncture, the great wall of silence that has surrounded so many things will break like a dam.

But until then, rather than going bankrupt on Saipan, note that the smart money is going to Guam, and that place is looking better and better from a business perspective. I don’t know if it’s too late to jump on that bandwagon, but from what I know it does rate a serious look. I didn’t see that one coming, it was my pals who smacked me in the head and clued me into all the activity down there.

And Guam isn’t the only place where folks are nibbling at tropical opportunity. Thailand remains an intriguing place, and the Philippines has recently received investment from at least two Saipan-based players. I was just in the Philippines, and I hope to get to Thailand again soon.

I was actually supposed to nibble at a shore of Kiribati this month, but that is going to have to wait until July.

In the meantime, you can expect the drama and emotion to start getting cranked up on Saipan, as a few people finally wake up to the fact that Saipan’s “darn good” economy only has a few crumbs left to offer, and those are being snapped up by the usual suspects. Those in the business community knew they were playing against long odds, and the odds, my friends, are going to get even worse, since economic gravity is a force of acceleration.

Yes, it’s a heck of a show. But you knew that already.

I mean, come on, Saipan is a nice place and all, but you business owners (those who remain, anyway), can’t entirely suspend critical thinking when you’re constantly faced with these foolish acts playing out on the very stage in front of you.

Even my pals in Guam are laughing at us, and they didn’t used to do that. It’s no coincidence that the smart money on Saipan has been fleeing to Guam over the past couple of years, and the trend continues to this day. I might buy some land there myself, if for no other reason that my pals are twisting my arm to join them in their investments.

Little wonder I have not recently encountered any investors dumb enough to swim against that tide, because they know they would be skinned alive here.

Oh, investors. The Junta and the Econocrats said that they are on the way here with bags of money to lavish on us.

Uh…where are these phantom investors?

Same place the tourists are: Somewhere else. Maybe everywhere, maybe nowhere, but, in any case, certainly not here.