The shifting sands of bankruptcy

We walk around with nervous or weak-kneed confidence as though everything is cool.

It isn’t!

There’s the towering financial trouble descending in paradise.

Leadership juggles the same figures, praying and hoping for different results.

Einstein calls it “insanity.”

The answer isn’t anywhere in sight!

It seems that each time the word “bankruptcy” enters the mind of leadership they brave derailing the inevitable with weak-kneed determination to bluff it. How do you bluff the inevitability of bankruptcy engulfing the entire archipelago?

Retirees ponder the imponderable, i.e., what happens when checks are reduced or stop coming altogether?

For active employees under the defined benefit plan, would there be anything for them upon retirement? For regular employees, what’s their future against the tide of severe reduction in local revenues? Would they be included in plans for a reduction-in-force?

Is this decision forthcoming anytime soon? Does leadership have the coconuts to inflict such a very unpopular policy decision?

As bell of ‘bankruptcy’ rings louder

Given the disastrous economic conditions, there really is nothing but certainty of hopelessness in the muddled swamp of uncertainty. It derails any meaningful planning of family pocketbooks. Everyone feels the strange sensation of the shifting sands of bankruptcy.

It even forces questions on the cost of catastrophic or long-term illnesses. You take the issue further, quizzing if you could continue paying for real estate loan for the first family home and other familial obligations such as health and life insurance. With deficit spending swelling annually by as much as $25 million mostly for medical referral, two things come to mind:

1. We have a very unhealthy population who leave personal health for magical treatment by medical experts here and abroad. Isn’t health a personal responsibility?

2. The dire need for our people to pay cash (for those without health insurance) following treatment at CHC, take out catastrophic health insurance for long-term illnesses and charity where we give to our fellow man some help, especially those who could hardly make ends meet.

To these troubling queries, the answer would be inconclusive, governance being wary that conditions won’t result in the failed promise of “better times.” Not when more home foreclosures are in the horizon or as familial obligations skyrocket while salaries go south or remain stagnant. You can’t even pay for gasoline at the pump or critical medication and must stretch your tolerance level until the next retirement or social security paychecks arrive.

Has leadership done a double down to reducing the bloated payroll of the NMI? Has it done anything proactively to lure the NMI into a trajectory of economic revival? Must governance repeat with a dysfunctional administration and legislature?

Politicians sell same old filthy rugs

You ask, if only to elicit belly chuckles, why politicians on the hill have quieted down in search of some fabricated answer, any answer. Or have they each taken shelter in self-deception while tucking their tails between their spindly or fat legs? Would they still sell the same filthy rugs inundated with maggots of failure?

The hardship is cyclical as mentioned in the bible that hits the entire global village every 100 years. We pray that it was just a bad dream but we live to see it as its fatal fiery magma devours everything in its way in our presence.

In spite of it all, I haven’t given up hope for there lies ahead better and brighter days for fellow men all over. The question is: When? I haven’t any answer either other than to say that it really depends on whether we’ve collectively hit rock bottom and have turned the corner for recovery projected to be woefully slow.

How do we pick up the pieces? I think the answer is in mastering how others have provided real time answers from reputable economists, entrepreneurial experts, investment experts, financial planners, pension experts, bankers, educators, farming and fishing. Though this may sound fitting, it seems a bit too late given the highly dysfunctional leadership who’ve seen fit to watch our taking stable posture in the shifting sands of bankruptcy.

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Communal forte returns

The NMI’s cultural forte of communal sharing moved center stage last Mother’s Day. For some, it was also their children’s First Holy Communion. It was a day of familial gathering.

It was a combined occasion that was somewhat obligatory as the oldest among siblings checks out who’s doing what on this special occasion.

It was time to pitch in, though a firm believer in individualism, specifically harvesting the sweat equity of personal industry. Handouts aren’t part of my working vocabulary, though equally aware that some in our community definitely need it for their children.

The term is “dystopia,” where nothing works. This is exactly where the NMI is situated today. It’s the net result of global recession that triggered a depression, a stage way below normal recession. Everything in this archipelago has gone dry! But the culture of communal sharing has been illuminated once more where we all check out on one another.

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Miscellany

We now look around us to see where things went wrong. It’s a bit too late for the blame game. It’s best that a renewed effort is undertaken to remap the future of these isles. The entire nine yards is in the palm of your hands. You can make a difference and please do so with brain in gear before engaging the tip of your pencil.

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It isn’t surprising that as conditions worsen, the thieves have also equally honed their skills how to make the best hits on the property of others. Beware of this as you leave home for work or elsewhere. These thieves have done their homework on potential hits, i.e., time you leave for work and return, etc. They even use cell phones to rally up other partners in crime.

They even take out cars from car rentals so when they hit tourists in remote places, it’s difficult to tell if they are on the scene because they have car rentals, too. This took DPS by surprise. Before using car rentals, they’d pick up the guys with lunch and drop them at a designated place. They’d stay there and make their hits before pick-up time.

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Now, if tourism is the number industry here, doesn’t it make sense for all key players to pitch in to ensure the safety of visitors? Why is it that we only move our fingers when theft happens to visitors? Why are you sleeping on the job? Shouldn’t safety be the first order of business? Isn’t it understood that word-of-mouth could easily ruin the reputation of the NMI? Why then must we pontificate on what needs to be done when doing it now is the most fitting thing to do? This inaction and indecision boggles the mind.

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John DelRosario Jr. is a former publisher of Saipan Tribune and a former secretary of Department of Public Lands.