Dickson C. Igwe. Photo: VINO/File

The US economy is booming this July 2018. The US economy is expected to grow 4.5% in 2018. The preceding is a very strong growth rate: unusual for the current western deflationary economy.

OK! A long recession in the Virgin Islands is a danger the country cannot afford.

There is a growing awareness that the country is getting complacent with the recessionary situation it finds itself post Irma.

Recessions have damaging social, economic, and political implications.

One Caveat: Post Irma, The United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, together with Irma ravaged islands in the region are all suffering severe economic contraction.

Then, there has been no simply stated solution offered to getting the British Virgin Islands on the road to sustainable economic growth. A simple vision has still not been formulated for a Post Irma Virgin Islands.

A vision is critical at a time of uncertainty and confusion. Why: because, a vision offers residents a clear pathway out of recession and despair. A vision allows all national institutions, a shared platform for development.

A unified national vision offers institutions and the people that man those institutions a shared script and common narrative towards a common goal and objective.

A short, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time related (SMART) vision, ties all the various ideas and policy matters together.

A realistic vision for the Virgin Islands will lead to full economic recovery, and a prosperous post recovery, making for better and more effective governance and a more wholesome country.

The following story is Part B of an analysis of a booming US economy. It is written with the Virgin Islands economy in mind. 

OK. Frustrated blue collar workers are driving a growing intolerance towards migrants and minorities in the freedom loving west. Western politics is undergoing a sea change as a growing authoritarianism, and public anger, is becoming part of the political culture. This is not good!

Western freedoms and values are pivotal to global peace and prosperity. The world without the prop of a freedom loving and prosperous USA is a very unsafe place. It is that simple! 

Post World War 1 tells the tale of American might and power, and its stabilizing effect on world institutions and markets.  

Now! Milton Friedman's Chicago School offered a rendition to trickle down, top down economics.

The end of the 1970s began the story of Friedman’s business first, economic thinking. Laissez faire became the core economic narrative after a Middle Eastern Oil Crisis that plunged the west into a deep recession.

From the very beginning of the 1980s, Friedman’s Supply Side Economic Model began to rule the world.

Stimulus and the managed economy ideas of John Maynard Keynes were given the proverbial boot, at the tail end of the 1970s.

Keynesian ideas were blamed for soaring inflation. However that idea of a failed Keynesian economics was an incorrect diagnostic.

Late 1970s inflation was driven by a steep rise in the oil price that made western goods and services unsustainably expensive. It was not driven by big government.

Inflation was driven by a Middle Eastern political crisis. So, ended thirty plus years of Keynesian economic stability Post the Second World War.

To be continued

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