St. Maarten Private Eye

Flipper, gay marriages would be just one thing we would have to accept, there would be more. Dont have much time now to explain, but let me give some small highlights of the reason we have a huge national debt and some dutch benefits of the Antilles, lets see:

By the way Flipper, take a good look when the Antillian debt was largly created, your answer is around 1985 to present. But whappened in those years?

1. Shell bailed out, the island of Curacao lost hundreds of jobs and hundreds of millions in revenue
2. The dutch cancelled several fiscal treaties (to their own benefit) with the result that the financial sector lost, billions per year, yes billions!
3. Failure by Holland to re-grant a beneficial BRK for the islands (again to their benefit) with us losing to other tax havens
4. With the socalled restructured Antilles of 1994, tons of studies and reports had to be made and who made the hundreds of millions, hhmmm dutch consultants!
5. And, yes our own politicians who fail us over and over again and not make the right decisions, as hard as they may be, to solve our problems.

Lastly, if you would get a copy of the budget of the Antilles (Federal Govt) you would see clearly that we generate a small surplus just right before the interest of loans to Holland totally wipes it out, leaving us having to borough from our local banks and pension funds.

Thats just a few in my opinion.