The central bank of the United States (the Federal Reserves) and many countries around the world have dropped their prime interest rate below one per cent in an effort to stimulate their respective economies.

Could someone please inform me, and the rest of the Jamaican public, the logic and/or reason the Jamaican banks still have interest rates in double digits and the BoJ is announcing an increase in bond rates to 'soak up' liquidity?

Most of the business world today has very low interest rates to stimulate the economy.

By our government's actions, I would understand, then, that by raising interest rates or keeping them so high they want to slow down our economy or kill it.

- Andrew Williams Apwillia@cwjamaica.com

Savanna-la-mar, Westmoreland

Wrong GCT figure

The article entitled 'Lifesaver: Mortgage Relief ...', published on December 15, indicated that "General Consumption Tax (GCT) will be reduced by half for a period of six months, starting January 1, 2009, down from 8.5 per cent".

Please note that the GCT rate on tourism revenue was previously 8.25 per cent, and not 8.5 per cent.

- Eleanor Wallace eleanor@islandms.com

Travesty of justice

The death penalty is a human sacrifice, a ritualistic slaughter carried out in cold blood by the state.

It is a travesty of justice, a violation of the right to life, torture and "nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering".

It is rarely and arbitrarily enforced, with little guarantees for the accused and a predilection to target racial minorities.

It is a cancer for the law and a 'privilege' of the poor, because capital punishment means that those without the capital get the punishment.

It is an irreversible punishment that kills the insane and the innocent.

It is not self-defence, but a revenge. It is not a more effective deterrent than prison and makes worse the evil it pretends to cure, because the death penalty brutalises and makes society more violent.

Sooner or later, everybody will realise that capital punishment is an immoral, indecent, illegal, expensive, stupid, cruel, dangerous, racist, classist, arbitrary, capricious, inconsistent violation of human rights.

- Claudio Giusti

giusticlaudi@aliceposta.it, Italy