Trinidad & Tobago’s Central Bank Governor, Ewart Williams, recently addressed Barbadians at the Hilton during their pan-regional seminar “General Financial Sector Issues & Policies” where Mr Williams addressed ‘Regional Financial Sector Issues‘ to a fairly capacity audience.

The fiscal expert cited the current “” movement which originally was New York only has now spread to 70 US cities and over to Europe as well as how Bank Of America lost hundreds of thousands of customers after making the mistake to place a duty for Online Purchasing – Mr Williams saw these two instances as a means where the consumer via technology drew rapid support and also how antiquated means of drawing residual revenue can painfully backfire on fiscal entities.

While the challenges of CL Financial and the Stanford Bank have been likened to Ponzi schemes and compared with Bernie Madoff – the TT Central Bank Governor feels the wounds they got came from self inflicted greed as opposed to public outcry or prosecution.

Mr Williams also gave evidence how the current global recession is still in force as Barbados’ delinquent loans have risen from 3 to 10% in the last 3 years, while Trinidad & Tobago’s have also jumped… In 2008 there were only 1% of loans which defaulted while in the twin island Republic up to right now it’s spiked to 6%!

Mr Williams believes if the Caribbean could adopt more modern approaches to banking solutions then our monetary status would not be so stark nor steep… He says most places are doing without Cheques and yet the region holds on to it for the floating capacity which can lead some to choose a fraudulent path for profit.

In Mr Williams’ view – not only banks but all financial institutions have a duty to meet the needs of their customers or face a regional version of Occupy Wall St… An audience member asked why Trinidad was so quick to do a CLICO bailout and his response was that considering the investments CL Financial had there was no choice {CLICK ON FOLLOWING LINK FOR FULL AUDIO};-

However, what Bajan Reporter asked was related to British Prime Minister that if Commonwealth members wanted British financial assistance then they must redress laws pertaining to . There was also a similar threat after Dole Chadee and his gang were executed in Trinidad, how Amnesty International would suggest to the UK to limit funding if the Death penalty was not revised… Did Mr Williams foresee a time when regional territories as a means of accessing funds would succumb to conditional direct investment? {CLICK ON FOLLOWING LINK FOR FULL AUDIO};-