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'Beware of the Greeks...'
Morris Cargill
We all know the warning: "Beware of the Greeks bearing gifts."
Cable and Wireless, bless its big monopolistic heart, is now offering free of charge until June 30 next year, a service which it calls Intouch. This seems to involve a free gift more to Cable and Wireless than to its subscribers.
At the present time, if somebody calls you from abroad and you are not at home and don't answer, the caller doesn't have to pay for the call.
If, on the other hand, you have an answering machine, the moment the machine cuts in the call has to be paid for. For that reason, I avoid having an answering machine and hate like hell when I call abroad to somebody who has one, having to pay for my call because of the bloody machine.
The whole purpose of Intouch is to put us all in the position of having an answering machine, so that when somebody calls us from abroad and we are not in, our caller has to pay for the call.
I have many friends and relations abroad whom I don't want to have to pay for any call to me if I'm not in.
It seems to me that this "free gift" of Intouch is simply to ensure that every single person who calls us from abroad, whether we are in or not, gets charged for the call.
Cable and Wireless is too damn smart by half. I told the company that I thanked it very much for its generosity, but they can stuff their service.
Unless you have strong reason to the contrary, I suggest you do the same.
INVESTMENT ADVICE
I am not qualified to give people advice about their investments. Indeed, when I myself need any such advice, I rely on two very valued friends, Dr. R.D. Shoucair and Mr. Brian Pond.
Nevertheless, there is one piece of fundamental advice which seems too obvious and good not to pass on.
As you know, due to the very strange policies of this Government, the Bank of Jamaica (BoJ) has been instructed to subsidise the price of American dollars at your expense. That being the case, the only sensible thing for you to do is to recover some of your money by buying as many of these subsidised US dollars as you can. There's nothing as good as buying something cheap.
However, when you have bought these dollars, lay not up for yourselves US dollars in Jamaican dollar accounts, where moth and rust doth corrupt and where financiers break and steal. One never knows what a very broke and really desperate Government might do.
So lay up your dollars in Cayman in a British bank and sleep well at nights.
Morris Cargill is The Gleaner's senior columnist and has been writing for more that 45 years.
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