Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

Fix Cuba & Haiti and we fix the entire region.

This is the assertion, that despite the fact there are 30 member-states that constitute the political Caribbean, 2 of them – Cuba & Haiti – constitute almost the majority of the population, and will require strenuous efforts to reform and transform. See the distribution here, based on 2010 numbers; (retrieved from the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean Page 66):

Yes, these two countries are heavily populated, but they have something else in common: they are de facto Failed-States.

So to repeat, if we can fix Cuba & Haiti, we can fix the entire region. How?

By executing strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies proven to be effective in rebooting other societies, no better model than recovering Europe from their Bad Old Days – World War II (1939 – 1945); see Appendix VIDEO below.

Neither Cuba nor Haiti have experienced the required Turn-around from their Bad Old Days.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean, a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), identified one solution: a Caribbean version of the Marshall Plan – the European Recovery Program. It is important that we understand that “Plan” better, so that we can model it locally.

George Marshall,(1880-1959) pictured here as a General of the Army before he became the US Secretary of State. It was during his term as Secretary of State that he planned, campaigned for and carried out the Marshall Plan.

The Go Lean book (Page 68) introduces the Marshall Plan for Caribbean remediation. See this excerpt here (and the Appendix VIDEO below):

The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was the American program to aid Europe, in which the US gave economic support, amounting to $12.4 billion, to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II (1948-1952).

The ERP addressed each of the obstacles to post-war recovery. The plan looked to the future, and did not focus on the destruction caused by the war. Much more important were efforts to modernize European industrial and business practices using high-efficiency American models, reducing artificial trade barriers, and instilling a sense of hope and self-reliance. By 1952, as the funding ended, the economy of every participant surpassed pre-war levels, with output in 1951 reaching 35% higher levels than in 1938. Then over the next two decades, Western Europe enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity.

In addition to money, the Marshall Plan extended a Technical Assistance Program. By implementing technological literature surveys and organized plant visits, American economists, statisticians, and engineers were able to optimize European manufacturers, increasing productivity and efficiency in all industries.

The years 1948 to 1952 saw the fastest period of growth in European history. West Germany embarked upon an unprecedented two decades of growth that saw standards of living increase dramatically. In 1973, while this country was home to 1.26% of the world’s population, it featured the world’s fourth largest GDP of $944 Billion (5.9% of the world total).

There is some debate among economic historians over how much this should be credited to the Marshall Plan. Most reject the idea that it alone miraculously revived Europe shows that a general recovery was already underway. But most believe that the Marshall Plan sped this recovery, but did not initiate it, asserting that recovery was a result of eliminating central planning and restoring a market economy to Europe, especially in those countries which had adopted more fascist and corporatist economic policies. Former US Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan gives most credit to German Minister for Economy Ludwig Erhard for Europe’s economic recovery. Greenspan stated that it was Erhard’s economic policies and reductions in economic regulations that permitted Germany’s miraculous recovery. [Source: Cini, Michelle, in Schain, Martin, (ed.) “From the Marshall Plan to the EEC”, in The Marshall Plan: Fifty Years After, New York: Palgrave, 2001]

The Marshall Plan also played an important role in European integration. Many leaders felt that this was necessary to secure the peace and prosperity of Europe, and thus used the Marshall Plan guidelines to forge it. Institutions like the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community would eventually grow into the European Union.

The CU will implement a Caribbean-version Marshall Plan to reboot the economic engines of the region. These initiatives will entail funding (loans, grants, access to capital), technical assistance (coaching) and fostering a laissez-faire regulatory environment to institute pro-growth strategies.

There is so much that the Caribbean can benefit from in consideration of this historicity. This commentary commences a series on Lessons Learned from the Marshall Plan. Here for May 2019, we present a full series of commentaries related to Marshall Plans, the historic European one and the Caribbean versions. The full series is presented as follows:

1. Marshall Plan: A Lesson in History.
2. Marshall Plan: Cuba – An imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence
3. Marshall Plan: Haiti – Past time for Mitigation
4. Marshall Plan: Funding – What Purse to Fund Our Plans?
5. Marshall Plan: Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

In this series, reference is made to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines of Cuba & Haiti, and by extension, all of the Caribbean. Of all the plans out there, this – roadmap presented in Go Lean…Caribbean – is the only one that double-downs on the prospect of regional interdependence.

We are all in the same boat, the book states; we need to work together. This is the best way to recover, reboot and turnaround.

The theme of societal recoveries have been detailed in previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample list here:

This movement – behind the Go Lean book – just published a month-long series on the Way Forward. Some individual member-states and institutions were identified and qualified. Cuba & Haiti were not singled-out for any Way Forward consideration. The Go Lean book asserts that these two member-states are Special; they therefore need a Special Plan; this is the Marshall Plan. (They are not better nor worse than other Caribbean people; they just have a different history).

The Marshall Plan for Cuba and Haiti must do what the Post-WW-II Marshall Plan did for Western Europe.

No pressure!

But it is good to have a proven track record. We do not have to “re-invent the wheel”, only follow the well-traveled path of Best Practices. This is still not easy though, in fact, all communications from the Go Lean movement have consistently asserted that the effort to recover, reboot and turn-around the Caribbean member-states is:

Heavy-lifting!

We need all hands on deck! We will need all Caribbean hands just to impact Cuba & Haiti. But once we complete that, we actually would have impacted the entire Caribbean. So yes we can … make our homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

• Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
• Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
• Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Appendix VIDEO – The Cold War: The Marshall Plan (Episode 9) – https://youtu.be/ALcX2BlrxOE

I’m Stuck – GCSE and A-Level Revision
Published on Feb 20, 2018 – In this video, we look at the Marshall Plan which was implemented in Europe as a way of consolidating US power in the west. After a negative review of Europe by both Clayton and Acheson, the Marshall Plan was seen as an essential means of preventing communism in all of Europe.

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/ImStuckYoutube?la…

For information on the full “Cold War” series: http://imstuck.wix.com/imstuckgcserev…

• Category: Education

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Other VIDEO‘s:

1. https://youtu.be/IU_QQtPRhSU
2. https://youtu.be/fAajKjLK0dM