The 93-page (220 pages if one includes the Deloitte corporate usage addendum) final report of the independent review of British offshore financial centres (OFCs) conducted by Michael Foot is for the most part a restatement of the obvious – or what should have been obvious to public and private stakeholders here – with the addition of some useful statistical and other research.

Everyone in the Cayman Islands that is living and suffering through these dire economic times must already know that the previous administration made a serious miscalculation when it relied on a “trickle down” economic policy to counter the effects of the global financial crisis.

Although we have warned on many occasions then and now that this type of economic policy is always going to be too little too late to make any meaningful difference to the pressing need for immediate liquidity in our economy, it seems as though the current government is determined to pursue the same ineffective approach.

It should, therefore, come as a surprise to no one that Mr Foot says that decisions “…to use increased revenues to raise current and capital public spending, sometimes combined with insufficient attention to data quality and the absence of robust medium-term planning, has left local governments facing difficult short-term choices to restore the public finances.”

We are also well aware that the previous government had “lost control of the public purse” in the words of the Auditor General, at a time when there was probably in excess of one billion dollars not properly recorded in up-to-date public sector financial statements. Heaven knows what the situation is today.

Mr Foot’s allusion to “insufficient attention to data quality” really means that, in the case of the Cayman Islands, no one had a clue where the country stood financially, at least certainly not on the strength of up-to-date audited accounts.

And, yes, we all know that the Cayman government is left “facing difficult short-term choices to restore the public finances.”

Regrettably, the “short term choices” outlined in the recent Budget will only exacerbate an already dire situation for small businesses and lower paid workers.

The report recommends that the Cayman Islands and other jurisdictions should not rest on the accomplishment of having signed the required 12 tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs), but must demonstrate an ongoing commitment to the spirit and not just the letter of the tax transparency standards developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

This echoes the point we made in an earlier editorial that the qualitative aspect of the TIEAs now in force is still subject to peer review by the OECD, along with a presumably ongoing review of actual compliance.

We also asked how we can justifiably claim to be moving away from a status and reputation as a “secrecy jurisdiction” into a new era of global financial transparency and uniform regulation when we still have the Confidential Relationships Law on the books.

As Mr Foot says, the Cayman Islands “must show a commitment not just to the letter but also the spirit of international standards. Effective implementation will be an important test of this and evidence will be provided by the OECD’s Global Forum through a monitoring and peer review process.”

The report also discusses a topic that has been the subject of some debate in recent years, namely, whether or not the UK bears the ultimate financial and/or reputational risks of things going dramatically wrong in any of its Overseas Territories.

It reiterates the conclusion reached by the National Audit Office that “the UK bears the ultimate risk from potential liabilities” arising from the actions of Territory governments and it also acknowledges that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has not, in recent years at least, been consistently proactive as regards the Territories’ public finances.

It is very likely that we are now enduring the results of Britain failing to take a more hands-on approach in relation to our own public finances over the last several years.

Apparently, an unidentified Overseas Territory expressed the thought that the UK should act as lender of last resort in the event of a shock to a jurisdiction’s financial system and economy which was beyond the resources of that jurisdiction to deal with in the short-term.

We hope that the assumption seemingly made by some Overseas Territories that there are circumstances in which they should be entitled to financial support does not apply to our own government.

In seems that they are having a hard enough time as it is in making the difficult decisions that are required to deal with the current economic situation.