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Colm Im­bert will be re­mem­bered as the worst min­is­ter of fi­nance in the his­to­ry of Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T). But he did not act alone. For 10 years, every reck­less de­ci­sion he made with re­spect to our ex­change rate was en­dorsed, de­fend­ed and en­abled by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley.

Row­ley in­ex­plic­a­bly kept him in the crit­i­cal po­si­tion of min­is­ter of fi­nance of­fice for al­most 10 years, and al­lowed Im­bert to pre­side over the most de­struc­tive decade of eco­nom­ic man­age­ment this coun­try has ever en­dured. This re­sult­ed in a wrecked econ­o­my, van­ish­ing for­eign re­serves and a na­tion brought to its fi­nan­cial knees.

Im­bert’s cen­tral blun­der was aban­don­ing the “man­aged float” sys­tem, ad­min­is­tered by the Cen­tral Bank (CBTT) that had served this coun­try very well. A man­aged float would have al­lowed the TT dol­lar to de­cline grad­u­al­ly, cush­ion­ing in­fla­tion, pre­serv­ing our for­eign ex­change re­serves, and sus­tain­ing our role as the fi­nan­cial pow­er­house of the Caribbean.