Ja: Will his ideas work?

In what was more like an academic presentation rather than the usual parochial and histrionic Budget Debate, the Opposition Leader again demonstrated his intellectual acuity and grasp of overarching economic issues by proposing a radical reordering of our economic strategies.

"A strong case exists to examine the option of either a currency board with a fixed rate of exchange or an independent central bank with a special regime to maintain a pegged rate as the means of ending the frustrations of a stagnant, debt-ridden economy", Seaga told Parliament on Thursday.

No doubt speaking above the heads of some in the nation's Parliament, Seaga went on to fundamentally challenge the Patterson Administration's philosophy of regional integration by saying that "these options have far greater potential for the Jamaican economy than being shackled to a Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) in which the market size is insignificant; or to be further shacked with a Caribbean monetary union, which is likely to be still-born or if surviving would be pointless and futile in promoting the adoption of a whole new currency regime to satisfy a tiny fragment of Jamaica's trade".

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