Those Caribbean island states are selling their passports because they’re bankrupt. And Malta is going to dump itself in the same image basket.

The Economist carried a piece a few days ago which gives perfect insight into why those Caribbean island states have succumbed to the overtures of Henley & Partners and are selling passports for hard cash.

They’re ruddy desperate. They’re on their uppers. They are bankrupt or almost bankrupt.

The article is short, so click on the link below and read it, but here’s a pertinent paragraph:

The reason debt relief has risen so high up the heavenly agenda is that, like many islands in the Caribbean, Grenada’s finances are in an unholy mess, and threaten to push up poverty. Most countries in the region were hit by a collapse in tourism after the financial crisis in 2008-09. Governments tried to spend their way out of stagnation, causing deficits to rise. The IMF calculates that public debt in the region averaged 70% of GDP in 2012, and current-account deficits were a staggering 23%.

Malta’s finances are sound, or were sound at the point Labour got in – so why tangle our image up with this mess, and the consequences that will have for us?

What do you conclude when you notice people you thought were financially sound suddenly selling off their assets for cash? Exactly.

But our government works from the principle that citizenship is not an asset in that sense, but the equivalent of stock, like pigs on a farm. You sell what you’ve got and more litters are born ad infinitum. And what’s best is that you don’t even have to invest in care or feed.

But the effect is the same: it makes Malta look desperate for money, really desperate. And there are serious repercussions to that.