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Governments and countries must ultimately live within their means as
well. Governments can spend more than they receive in taxes by
borrowing, but purchasers of their debt will stop lending to any
government whose debt they think is growing too large for the
government to service. With forecasts playing down the chances of a rapid upturn, issues of liquidity and volatility will continue to play major roles in markets over the coming months. The impact of monetary base growth on the value of the US dollar. The unorthodox monetary policy of quantitative easing being pursued by the Fed in response to the global financial crisis has, of late, caused widespread speculation that out-of-control inflation will erupt in the world’s largest economy and significantly weaken the value of the US dollar. What role do investment advisers and private bankers have to play in a world where most investors have lost a lot of money? Is the traditional client investment advice role a relic of the past? Should individuals even be investing at all? Providing loan facilities to investment funds is certainly nothing new and it has been a lucrative business for a number of banks here in the Cayman Islands for many years. With single manager funds obtaining their finance at brokerage level, the primary market for Cayman banks are fund of fund vehicles (usually formed as Cayman Islands exempted companies) to which they provide both bridge and leverage finance. The Cayman Island Monetary Authority operates a currency board to ensure adequate backing for the Cayman Islands currency and that enough paper currency and coin is available to meet the demands of the market. In 1971, the political leaders in Cayman and the UK decided that the Cayman Islands economy had grown sufficiently to support its own currency, through the use of a currency board and that such a currency would be in the political and economic interests of the Cayman Islands.
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