Dear Sir:

Gordon, thank you for helping clear up the picture of exactly what the relationship between the UK and Cayman is really about (“Everybody’s Business: Cayman’s bailout”).

I have suspected for some time that the decision for Cayman to stay a colony, when Jamaica went independent way back when, had a lot to do with the pending expiration of the UK’s 99 year lease on Hong Kong.

I suspect that some far sighted decision makers in the UK (elected or appointed, I have no idea which it might have been) realised that Mao’s communists regime wasn’t going anywhere and that their number one financial center for the kind of activities you describe, would eventually be in communist hands.

Whilst I have no proof of this, and might just be a befuddled Yank trying to connect dots and find a pattern where none exists, I think your article buttresses my theory of why Cayman exists in its present form.

I have no doubt that you are quite right when you say that the UK could shut Cayman down as a tax haven in a heartbeat; so why hasn’t it happened?

One can only surmise that there is important business being done in Cayman on behalf of the Crown. One can also surmise that the UK’s harder line has come because the business the Crown does in Cayman is somehow threatened.

There’s a Chinese saying that “Fish aren’t aware of water.” I think it’s possible that Cayman’s would-be decision makers have lived so long with the status quo that they have lost sight of some critical realities about their relationship with the mother country.

When I look at what’s become of Jamaica and Cayman since Jamaica’s independence, I have to say that being a colony has had a lot of benefits. However, as you point out, it’s well to remember that being a colony carries its own downside and that means having to measure anything that the local government wants to do against the interests of the Crown.

Mike Hennessy