Dear Editor,

According to Taneka Thompson, senior reporter at The Nassau Guardian, the mortgage bailout plan announced by the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) recently is significantly different from the 10-point plan promised ahead of the May general election.
With an estimated 3,000 people not able to qualify for the new mortgage bailout plan, maybe the PLP deserves some credit for listening to the critics, or should I say realists, who told it it was impractical and it realized its initial idea was impossible to implement without putting the country further along the road to financial ruin. Seems governing is a little different than campaigning?
Many of us, or family members, have been touched by the international economic troubles in one way or another, but that does not give government the authority, moral or legal, to increase the national debt and by extension the taxes every Bahamian will have to pay as a result of even the revised program.
Meanwhile, banks are being forced to write off debt that is legally owed them according to the terms of a mortgage all the while paying their depositors a pittance in interest, possibly forcing retirees, (people on fixed incomes) etc., into hard times.
The Clearing Banks Association now tells us the new plan reflects what it was doing all along, and if the revised plan helps but a few people, that makes it worthwhile. But what about all the people who were given false hope because of politics? At least they deserve an apology.
There's no easy answers but one thing we've learned is one bad policy like the mortgage bailout plan can have far reaching effects on the general welfare of all Bahamians, as there is not enough wealth to go around. Just because the additional taxes necessary to pay for it will be dispersed among all taxpayers does not make the bailout any more palatable.
For some reason the policies preferred by so many in the political class destroy wealth, rather than policies that will create it so we will all be better off.
To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of the U.K., the trouble with bad government policies like this is they eventually run out of other people's money, and then the entire society is worse off.

- Rick Lowe

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