According to testimony at the Commission of Inquiry held in the Turks and Caicos Islands earlier this year, a private catchphrase apparently frequently used between former Premier Michael Misick and his then wife, Lisa Raye McCoy Misick, was “We ain’t broke, we rich.”

This particular phrase came back to haunt Mr Misick during more recent public demonstrations against the deteriorating economic situation in the TCI, which featured signs carried by protestors saying, “We ain’t rich, we broke.”

Now, it seems that the people of the Cayman Islands might be justified in saying the same thing: “We ain’t rich, we broke.”

The fact that the poster child for global tax havens, which enjoyed one of the highest gross national products per capita in the world, but is now in the space of a few short months reportedly facing bankruptcy has certainly caught the attention of the world’s press.

One interesting aspect to emerge from these various reports is the political reaction here. Apart from the expected pot/kettle finger pointing as to the underlying blame for the country’s economic mess, the People’s Progressive Movement (PPM) is also blaming the Leader of Government Business, Hon. McKeeva Bush, for being too forthright in his public pronouncements on the subject, thus leading to the negative reports in the foreign media.

In turn, Mr Bush seems to be saying that if the local media hadn’t reported his remarks, they wouldn’t have been picked up by the overseas press.

In other words, we’re back to the old way of “dealing” with pressing issues – if no one talks about them, they really don’t exist in the first place.

Unfortunately, the foreign media are unlikely to heed Mr Bush’s recent admonition, to engage in “responsible and mature reporting”, so the government as well as the private sector must realise that they have to deal with the situation as it is – not as they would wish it to be.

However, what the government and other local observers/commentators have not yet apparently realised is that Caymanian businesses are really hurting financially and much of this distress results from government not paying its bills to local vendors and suppliers.

This newspaper is owed tens of thousands of dollars for advertising and other services by various government departments and agencies but we cannot collect what is due to us because the Treasury apparently has no money to pay us.

What this means is that we have to cut our overhead and other expenses in order to survive. In particular, we are in the process of reducing staff numbers by some 20 percent by normal attrition and redundancies, on top of a similar reduction earlier this year.

Furthermore, we have asked our remaining staff to accept a 5 percent cut in salaries across the board.

Yes, times are hard – perhaps harder than many people realise – and we do not apparently have the government’s magical ability to be out of money yet at the same time reject even modest proposals to cut staff costs.

And, judging by comments made to us by the business community locally, we are by no means alone in having to face serious financial pressures.

So, in the event the government had not realised this before, hopefully it does now – that not paying local suppliers and vendors has a severe knock-on or domino effect and, while it may be doing this to protect its generously-remunerated civil servants, it just cannot ignore the problems that are thereby occurring in the wider community.

Government, its civil servants, statutory authorities and other agencies do not produce a dime of public revenue. All they do is collect taxes and fees and spend – we should say overspend – the proceeds. All public revenue is in fact contributed by the people who live and work in the Cayman Islands and the businesses that serve them.

It is no good denying the private sector critical liquidity and then expecting it to cough up higher import duties and other fees in order to maintain existing expenditure that ought to be cut.

If the government thinks the country is going to survive by squeezing the private sector revenue producers in order to protect the non-productive public sector, then it will soon have a rude awakening when the foreign media reports of bankruptcy turn out to be accurate, notwithstanding the official wishful thinking denials.

In that event, we will very likely see signs in the streets of the Cayman Islands: “We ain’t rich, we broke.”