Lennox Grant

?Days be­fore the Cen­tral Bank launched its $100 blue note to mark the Com­mon­wealth Heads' meet­ing, Gov­er­nor Ewart Williams struck a note of his own sure to spread the blues around the Twin Tow­ers, and the oth­er tow­ers of PNM pow­er. From the Gov­er­nor's mouth, on No­vem­ber 12, fell the key­word, "re­ces­sion." The R-word is sin­gu­lar­ly ca­pa­ble of de­press­ing of­fi­cial spir­its, and of dis­abus­ing oth­ers con­soled by gov­ern­ment as­sur­ances that Trinidad and To­ba­go could re­main a shin­ing ex­cep­tion to eco­nom­ic "con­ta­gion" af­flict­ing the rest of the world. As pro­nounced by Mr Williams, "re­ces­sion," to char­ac­terise the present T&T eco­nom­ic con­di­tion, came out so qual­i­fied as to dis­qual­i­fy its use as a ban­ner head­line. True, mea­sures of gross do­mes­tic prod­uct had de­clined over nine months, and were ex­pect­ed to de­cline still fur­ther.

Un­em­ploy­ment here, how­ev­er, had in­creased by just one-tenth of one per­cent­age point, and in­fla­tion had ac­tu­al­ly fall­en. "Are we in a re­ces­sion?" He an­swered his own ques­tion, "Per­haps we are." Then he asked an­oth­er, rhetor­i­cal­ly: "What's in a word?" A lot, when it's the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor's word, his own con­sid­ered choice, not prompt­ed nor pro­voked by any­one, in T&T, where no­body is as­sumed to speak with equal eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial au­thor­i­ty. Be­fore he had marked it present, "re­ces­sion" didn't ex­ist. He called it out; then he put the best face on it, but on­ly to recog­nise it as a char­ac­ter in the band of T&T Re­al­i­ties To­day. Over more than a year since Patrick Man­ning had re­tak­en charge to cor­rect the tra­jec­to­ry of Karen Nunez Tesheira's Sep­tem­ber, 2008, bud­get, re­ces­sion has been iden­ti­fied as a fate to be re­sist­ed, or a re­al­i­ty to be for­sworn.

"T&T is not in a re­ces­sion. There must be no mis­take about this," Mr Man­ning said last No­vem­ber. "We must do our best to avoid a re­ces­sion." Dur­ing an­oth­er na­tion­al ad­dress in Jan­u­ary, he said, "We are firm­ly com­mit­ted to do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to avoid a re­ces­sion." The three-part avoid­ance for­mu­la en­tailed keep­ing the econ­o­my "on a growth path," keep­ing peo­ple em­ployed; and keep­ing "the so­cial fab­ric re­silient." Some cap­i­tal big tick­ets took cuts. Few­er schools and few­er gov­ern­ment hous­es were to be built; two big hos­pi­tal projects halt­ed; street light­ing slowed. The start of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah Car­ni­val Cen­tre was "post­poned." Ad­mo­ni­tions for cut­ting back ap­plied not on­ly to the gov­ern­ment. "Be fru­gal in your spend­ing," Mr Man­ning ap­pealed to all. "Save wher­ev­er you can."

By April, the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit ex­cite­ment took over. As Mar­i­ano Browne re­called, the Oba­ma-led del­e­ga­tion, for its sheer size, it­self rep­re­sent­ed "ef­fec­tive­ly a fis­cal stim­u­lus pack­age." For T&T, the Sum­mit ex­pe­ri­ence, though not in name, did rep­re­sent a stim­u­lus spend­ing ex­er­cise in job cre­ation and in­fra­struc­ture ex­pan­sion, in­clud­ing the lease of two cruise ships. The prover­bial­ly Tri­ni-favour­ing Lord must have put a hand. By late Ju­ly, Mr Man­ning's own eco­nom­ic preach­ing to the con­vert­ed busi­ness peo­ple at Paria Suites was: light­en up; get a life. "I must now say the time has come for you to re­lease your belts." Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford re­port­ed for the Guardian that the Prime Min­is­ter "re­ceived thun­der­ous ap­plause."

Now, just as the Com­mon­wealth meet­ing� stim­u­lus spend­ing pack­age is about to be un­wrapped, the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor voic­es his in­con­ve­nient truth. "Re­ces­sion" has ar­rived, he warned. It's here, even if in a pain­less, 2009, Tri­ni styling, that is, with full em­ploy­ment and low in­fla­tion. "I will have to say we are in a re­ces­sion." Mr Williams' de­ter­mi­na­tion bore the high-mind­ed air of one dis­charg­ing an un­pleas­ant du­ty of speak­ing truth to PNM pow­er. Maybe he could have wait­ed un­til af­ter the Com­mon­wealth talks, to re­lease the bank's Oc­to­ber Mon­e­tary Re­port, with all rel­e­vant in­ter­pre­ta­tion and com­men­tary. But tim­ing, in this town, is fre­quent­ly and im­per­son­al­ly per­verse. In recog­ni­tion of the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion's as­pi­ra­tions for "in­ter­na­tion­al promi­nence," the Cen­tral Bank is­sued a com­mem­o­ra­tive $100-bill.

Mov­ing with the times, the bank self-ef­fac­ing­ly re­placed the fa­mil­iar Twin-Tow­er im­ages of the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex and the Unit Trust build­ings. In­stead, you find rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the high­er-ris­ing Wa­ter­front build­ings. What re­mains, ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, con­stant is he�ban­knote's�back­ground im­age of an off­shore gas plat­form, the serene­ly un­manned ba­sis of all the tow­er­ing Port-of-Spain am­bi­tions. Re­ces­sion or no; Com­mon­wealth and oth­er heads come and go: it is that time of year when Car­ni­val is al­so in the air. The open­ing of the Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts com­mu­ni­cat­ed a re­minder of what re­mains to be done for ac­com­mo­da­tion of the Car­ni­val per­form­ing arts.

A fourth Car­ni­val ap­proach­es since the raz­ing of the Grand Stand and the Sa­van­nah Big Yard set­ting, and its re­place­ment with, well, noth­ing.

No­body in of­fi­cial Car­ni­val ad­min­is­tra­tion has the heart any more to pro­mote the al­ways un­vi­able myth of "mas on de move," when that means no stage on which to show­case play­ers of mas and mon­u­men­tal char­ac­ter cos­tumes. Long be­fore the on­set of re­ces­sion, Mr Man­ning's gov­ern­ment had "post­poned" im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Sa­van­nah Car­ni­val. At the No­vem­ber 9 Acad­e­my open­ing, Mr Man­ning was moved to raise ex­pec­ta­tions afresh. Sug­gest­ing that the Car­ni­val cen­tre was next on the con­struc­tion agen­da, he was recom­mit­ting to the on­ly mod­el imag­in­able to him these days. That is, re­ces­sion-proof Chi­nese ge­nius in de­sign, con­struc­tion and fi­nance.