Ready, steady ... debate
We can now end the debate about the debate - or non-debate. The People's National Party (PNP) has decisively lost that round in the media and in the court of public opinion. How will the party fare on Tuesday when the real debate, for which it can no longer plead insufficient preparation time, begins?

The Jamaica Debt Exchange: Many rivers to cross
The Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX) has been floated. Already bolstered by the broad support of bankers and security dealers, there is now an open 'invitation' to the body of domestic holders of Government of Jamaica debt to participate.

The Church and crime
Years ago, when crime was getting out of hand and the government of the day launched a Home Guard programme to help deal with it, the then prime minister, Michael Manley, volunteered to serve and set an example. The police high command quietly talked him out of it. The prime minister on the streets would have been a security nightmare.

Governing without government
Prime Minister Bruce Golding told Guyanese journalist Ricky Singh, "there is hardly a functioning government in Haiti." After 2006, Haiti did improve from being a failed state to a fragile state. By mid-2009, reports on its political stability, executive-legislative relations, technical competence and national security were becoming more positive.

Obama - a one-term president?
American author John Maxwell in his book on the laws of leadership placed the 1976 victory of Jimmy Carter as president of the United States in context. He argues that it was the forces of change and Carter's relative 'unknownness' that brought him to power, rather than his appeal.