Investors: ‘Why did they leave?’

We look at investment with enthusiasm deficit, still paralyzed by the anxiety of our grand negligence to guard it full court. It’s a haunting sentiment, the origin of which emanates from the way we passed up opportunities to nurture and shore up lasting partnership with investors during the Japanese bubble years.

It burst and flushed out most foreign capital through the floodgates of our Taga Stone isles. Would there be something similar by way of reinvasion of investments? It’s a question we’re pondering in retrospect as prospective investors pointedly quiz, “Why did they leave?”

Sure, we can sit back at day’s end when most disruptive issues grinding through our mind finally settle down. It allows for a more sober review over this and other troubling issues that have piled up by the dime a dozen over the last three decades. As we try to answer relevant questions, we find more queries popping up everywhere as we withdraw temporarily to review and remap our assessment. The enthusiasm deficit kicks in and out the window goes organized efforts to proactively start anew.

The days of the bubble economy were shored up by billions of dollars in leftover money from the Japanese Reconstruction Fund after WWII. Its use was stopped at the onset of the Asian financial crisis. The domino of investment withdrawals went from the NMI, Guam, Hawaii, and coast to coast.

Japan hasn’t stopped investing abroad. I doubt, though, that it has surplus funds to tinker with venues such as the NMI like it did before the crisis. Now, its foreign investments are concentrated in nearby or in China. It’s the largest manufacturing venue equipped with a huge market for basically anything consumers use worldwide.

Sadly, we were snoozing on the job as large investments started deployment plans. We didn’t lift a finger to talk to them in hopes of easing problems they had to endure. We left them to fend for themselves, “sink or swim,” and they sank slowly as the tide of confidence receded into the open waters.

The task of recouping investor confidence is woefully difficult and protracted. If anything, reinvestment would be very passive. Why do you think prospective investors appropriately ask, “Why did they leave?” It happened for a reason, reasons new investors wish to explore and understand. Call the departure of previous investors the direct result of our collective negligence. Now revenues have plummeted to 1990 levels. And I could hear the painful sigh of sorrow in most quarters here.

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From JR’s Notes

Public officials were pleased at the large turnout of job seekers at the recent job fair. But it also took them by surprise that the number was about 900-plus folks doing search and rescue for meaningful employment.

The event confirms the steady march toward joblessness under an administration that has failed in wealth and jobs creation. Why stage another job fair when most applicants can’t land jobs given the contraction in private industries?

Sooner than later, the NMI would find itself mulling how it eventually became the Disneyland of Unemployment. Eh, time to snap it up with SNAP. It’s the only concrete answer for the next decade or so.

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The offer of the Northern Islands for purposes of investments has also drawn mixed reactions from the simple folks at home.

I am sure it has also become a serious icon on the monitor of the federal government given the challenges it faces with security issues relating to Asia and the Pacific. With allies, the U.S. normally turns its head the other way. But we’re dealing with an arrogant military power known for unnecessarily flexing its muscles in the Spratley Islands. National defense and security of the regions would take precedence over investments.

Local reaction would be a mixed bag. A few would support investment, though they know the weakness of the undervalued yuan. The first group needs to justify subsequent proposals to the penny to demonstrate it’s worth the risk. Others would turn out in full force to oppose it in favor of indigenous rights to use the islands for expansion purposes. Still others would sit by in hopes of following the green bag as land sharks.

If anything, it’s good to lure investments, though most that came from the Land of the Rising Sun have fizzled. Why did this happen? Has anyone researched this query for a satisfactory answer? The next course of action is to openly and critically discuss and define the future of these isles, say 50 years from now, if only to secure a glimpse of our tomorrows.

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We have been promoting tourism and even go out on a limb to lure investors. But mirrored against our inability to ensure a safe destination, why spend millions of dollars promoting the islands as a quiet Destination for Robbery?

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Legal eagles from the Fund and the heads of the trustees and program were at the Legislature doing chamber theatrics to repeal PL 17-51. There’s the admission that with or without the new law, retirees could still sue! So why seek for the repeal of the law?

The damage is done already and you still want to insulate firms who made off with millions of dollars proceeded by their abandoning ship? Where’s the substance of your argument? So it seems that in your book our interest as members of the Fund takes second fiddle? Did you forget the source of your existence? Wonderful public relations theatrics but it doesn’t change the fact that administrations have failed to remit their obligations since 1984. Need we say more?

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Delrosario is a regular contributor to the Saipan Tribune’s Opinion Section