A Fool and his Money SHOULD be Parted....

Because I excel at ticking people off, it is relatively easy for me to find topics that nobody else wants to talk about openly, or at least not from the perspective of the truth when to lie is so much more fun, profiatable and gives us collective warmth.

Take the the greedy numbskulls who took their own money on their own volition and put it into CLICO for greater returns than the banks were offering,  thinking they were on to a special little secret. The rest of us, schooled in the knowledge that anything that looks too good to be true usually is, resisted those eagerly preaching the gospel according to Lawrence and made more frugal but sensible investment and saving choices.

I have scores of friends who were involved at some level of that ponzi empire, from insurance sales to investment brokers who were all zealous to convert me; giving me untold reasons, plans and calculations of future earnings that were supposed to boggle my mind, armed with snappy come backs to my objections and dressed in shiny splendor that were just too much for my cynical mind to accept, each approach raised red flags of warning that there was more here than was being shown soon to come. 

I was burnt once when, in a much younger version of myself my then boss convinced me to get my parents to join him and all his friends in their 'investment' club. Too young to know what a pyramid scheme was, i got my father to part with twenty five hundred dollars on the idea that in two weeks he would get seventy five hundred. Now, as a teenager I had no way of knowing that I was being taken advantage of, so new to the world of investment and interest was I. But my father should have known better, should have resisted his own greed impulse, and explained to me what some people are capable of when driven by greed.

Needless to say we lost, and that loss burnt a lesson right through me that lives with me still. It has saved me taking silly financial chances in my adult life, and I owe that thieving bastard a thank you for preventing me jumping aboard the CLICO express.

I learnt two things then: Something called 'the cost of doing business' and the second, that when you are taken advantage of by schemers and your own greed, learn from it because that's all you're going to get, there is  no one to turn to for redress.

Why then, are we covering the investments of people who were wealthy enough to know better?

Armed with free will,  people took a chance at increasing their lot and lost. It is the risk inherent in any gamble, and I believe that Mr. Permel and his friends are guilty of trying to intimidate and embarrass the Government into taking further advantage of the taxpayers and the people to cover their bets.

I am sorry for the two hundred and fifty thousand plus people rumoured to have been screwed by Duprey, Monteil and friends, but it is they who owes the debt, not the Governemnt, the Treasury or the taxpayers; Go after them.

I think the Government is doing the best it could under the circumstances, except for the slow pace of action to bring racketeering legislation to Parliament to seize all the property of the Dupreys, the Monteils et al, and to wind up the Companies and dispose of all assets and pay same into a consolidated fund from which we will know the size of the debt, the size of the loss, and dole out the proceeds proportionately.

We also need to see these men wearing handcuffs and paraded through the streets for their dishonest enrichment and thievery, and crushed under the weight of the law.

From what I gather there should be a one third equity loss or something like seven billion dollars, which I do not believe to be large enough to cause systemic collapse. Make it fail, and distribute the remnants.

The lessons we need to learn here is that the Government is full of shit at the best of times, and no amount of fancy words and fancy dress could make up for incompetence or dishonesty.

Harrilal, Williams and Tixiera deserve to be jailed for failing to act to protect the State and the people against abuse that was rumored to be ongoing since Panday was in power, and every subsequent Minister of Finance then and since should get a twelve months for impersonating a competent person in Public Office.

While we're at it, every Agency Head who was in the loop, every member of the Million Dollar Round Table (Neil Jones and that shiny Pedophile Smile) should get at least a six months for rape because they damn well knew they were in a pyramid scheme, busily robbing Peter to pay Paul, working to climb the ladder of a deceitful and dishonest corporate enterprise.

While I would like to put on my gloves and join in the bullshit, I prefer my truth warm and runny.

If we were to talk the honest truth here, everyone who lost money in this endeavor knew there was risk involved and need to take their lash and shut up.

We should not be rewarding stupidity at any level, and if I got back sixty five cents on the dollar I would shut my mouth, breathe a sigh of relief that all was not lost, and learnt my lesson well.

The day we get a Government in Office with testicles and integrity enough, to engage the people honestly and transparently, to speak the truth to all and share the national pie equitably, only then will being a Trinidadian mean something other than jam and wine.

But it takes the people to develop something like self respect, to make personal choices based on things other than self glorification, to engage their lives and their politics with sense and committment to Country first, only then will we stop producing assholes like Manning and Panday, and the potentially abusive assholes sitting on both sides of the aisle right now.

Add this to my political record, because I never want to win anything by deceit. I am certainly not in this to make friends.

If it's true what they say, that a fool is born every minute, when they ask you who's your daddy, say Lawrence Duprey.