IT'S no secret that I have always enjoyed pricking the balloons of pomposity, arrogance and greed. And, my God, there's certainly no shortage of potential targets to choose from in Bermuda these days!

Your lead story "Magazine names and shames Bermuda executives" (, March 28) reminded me of the fact that in modern Bermuda it's not strictly what you know that earns you a fat pay cheque in the off-shore financial services sector ? rather it's what angles you know that results in the sort of overinflated compensation packages some of our Bermuda-based executives are currently pulling down.

I am sure that majority of chief executive officers in the financial services sector are decent men and women of integrity. But there is an overpaid, overindulged minority who have systematically engaged in bilking their shareholders ? who have turned their companies into the corporate equivalents of their personal bank accounts.

We are dealing with a handful of CEOs who are brazen, self-absorbed and increasingly attracting unnecessary attention to both themselves and Bermuda ? exactly the type of people Edward Heath had in mind when he made his famous comment about "the unacceptable face of capitalism."

Sometimes I think Dorothy Parker was right and that you really can tell what God thinks of money by looking at the type of people he gives it to. For surely you don't have to be blessed with either a first rate IQ or even common sense to reach the very top of the off-shore financial services sector. Frankly, the unthinking way in which some of these corporate fat cats conduct themselves in a post-Global Crossing/Tyco business environment suggests they have long-since lost their marbles.

Almost 30 years ago, when I was Minister Without Portfolio in Sir David Gibbons' Government, I made a speech in the House of Assembly warning of the growing imbalances in Bermudian society being caused by the emerging off-shore sector ? which then comprised approximately one-third of our economy.

Today, of course, the financial services sector accounts for fully two-thirds of Bermuda's GNP, with tourism now just a sorry shadow of its former self. The imbalances that I catalogued in 1979/80 ? imbalances impacting on housing, the internal inflation rate, the impact on our physical infrastructure caused by a growing influx of corporate guest workers ? have all grown exponentially.I hate to say I told you so ? but I did. And even your former columnist Eric Hopwood, who was among my most regular (and reliable) critics during my political career, actually agreed with what I said at the time. Allow me to take your readers on a trip down memory lane by quoting from a column Hopwood wrote about that speech entitled: "Are exempt companies becoming our crown of thorns?"

"Off-shore companies have brought riches to Bermuda. Their business now amounts to 33 per cent of the island's revenue . . . They have also, however, produced some problems, and the Hon. Harry Viera, Minister Without Portfolio, has done his country a valuable service by risking disapproval in certain quarters and drawing public attention to the situation.

"It was indeed time that someone spoke out in such a manner, for unless something is done to arrest the course of present trends, it could very well be that, in the ultimate, these offshore companies prove to be more of a liability than an asset . . . Mr. Viera's greatest concern is the general shortage of housing ? and the high cost of such housing as is available. In normal circumstances of existing inflation, building costs and rents would be going up, but in Bermuda rents are reaching astronomical levels ? quite out of the reach of the average Bermudian ? because of the very high rates which offshore companies are prepared to pay in order to house their executives . . .

"The problem does not end with housing. It also concerns wages. Off-shore companies want the best that Bermuda (and the rest of the corporate world) has to offer and they are prepared to pay heavily for it. In most cases local companies cannot compete with these off-shores, many of which are multinational with financial resources often amounting to billions of dollars.

"In consequence, the employment (packages offered by off-shore firms) has become a breeding ground for Bermudian dissatisfaction. And it is not always easy for an employee to understand why one firm can pay twice as much as another, Bermudian firm for the same job.

"Mr. Viera wraps it up like this: 'It is a very dangerous situation because it could lead to instability or outright hostility to the offshore companies . . .' And in my view he never said a truer word."

I was criticised at the time for describing what was then called "the exempt company sector" as Bermuda's "crown of thorns". I didn't apologise for using that term then. And these days, of course, this description seems even more apropos than it did at the time.

Middle-class Bermudians ? the indispensable backbone of this community ? are feeling the pressure from all sides.

They cannot afford to buy homes, they cannot afford to educate their children in private schools, they cannot afford the prices in the island's stores. And their patience with the go-go financial services sector they can never hope to join is being increasingly eroded by the type of corporate arrogance they see all around them ? arrogance as personified by the four off-shore chieftains rightly "named and shamed" by MSN Money's Michael Brush.

And it's not just Bermudians who are growing increasingly resentful of such corporate clowns.

Their high-living antics in Bermuda are continuing to attract the interest of US officials on both a local and Federal basis. There are 49 other potential Eliot Spitzers in the United States who, like the New York State Attorney General, are in positions to make life exceedingly difficult for re/insurance firms operating in Bermuda.

There are also hundreds of Congressmen and Senators in Washington, DC who represent tens of millions of constituents who have come to believe that Bermuda is the place which has that Tax Triangle that American money and jobs keep disappearing into. There are no votes for these American politicians in Bermuda. And all it takes is for one Congressman or Senator to decide that it's time to plug the loopholes in the US tax code which have so benefited the off-shore companies operating here and Bermuda will get shut down as a going concern overnight.

Bermuda, after all, got a foreshadowing of what could happen during the 2004 Presidential race Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry campaigned against Bermuda almost as fiercely as he campaigned against George W. Bush in 2004. A Kerry Administration in the US would quite obviously have been catastrophic for Bermuda's financial services sector: you would have thought the more ostentatious and disreputable of our off-shore executives would have learned from that close run thing.

But quite the reverse seems to be true.

They continue to pursue their sick "Greed is good" philosophy; they continue to antagonise hard-working Bermudians who are increasingly hard pressed to find the money for their mortgages or rents by indulging in "superperks" like unnecessary housing allowances (Axis Speciality's John Charman is one of the richest men in the UK; his cash compensation package in 2004 was worth $7.2 million ? salary, bonus etc.; his total compensation package when exercised and underexercised stock options is added in was $32 million. He needs a housing allowance like bed-hopping Paris Hilton needs another lover); they continue to not only indulge in some of their less savoury corporate activities but to flaunt them ? rejoicing in the wretched excesses that raise hackles both among Americans and their Bermudian hosts.

Eventually the Bermuda off-shore financial services sector will get a rude awakening. That awakening may come in the form of a deficit-crippled America finally eliminating the tax benefits these firms enjoy as a result of operating in Bermuda (George W. Bush might have given up the sauce 20 years ago but he still spends in a manner that would not shame a drunken sailor). Or it may come in another, more ominous form. The inconvenient truth is that the world is at war. Anyone listening to the increasingly lunatic speeches being delivered by Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be forgiven for concluding that he or she was listening to Adolf Hitler in the immediate pre-World War Two period. It's 1938 all over again, people.

Shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, Bermuda's then Deputy Governor ? who had extensive background in counter-terrorism activities ? warned that an off-shore financial centre like Bermuda (an off-shore financial centre like Bermuda, an island with only the most cursory internal security infrastructure) might well make an inviting target for international terrorists. Nothing that I am aware of has been done since then by the Bermuda Government to actually strengthen or reinforce Bermuda's internal security situation.

So God forbid that Ahmadinejad or any of the terrorist cells that Iran now sponsors have put vulnerable Bermuda on their hit lists. Al Qaeda operatives have already blown up the HSBC headquarters in Istanbul to protest British involvement in Iraq. Istanbul is a major, security-conscious city and it must have taken a combination of expert planning and plain old good luck for the perpetrators of that atrocity to avoid the routine Turkish military patrols and to infiltrate the heavy security cordon that was already in place around HSBC.

Can you imagine the results if a well-equipped, highly motivated cell were to plan terrorist operations in Bermuda? Within one day Hamilton would look like London after the Blitz.

This is another reason for some of our less salubrious off-shore corporate citizens to stop courting unwanted international publicity for both themselves and Bermuda with Caligula-scaled displays of self-indulgence and decadence that would not have been out of place in a Roman Empire orgy.

I am not for one minute suggesting that Bermuda show the door to its entire financial services sector. After all, ours is now a one-crop economy and the island would collapse if we were to do that.

All I am doing is asking for the saner CEOs and Bermuda's politicians to lean on the vocal, publicity-hungry minority of corporate buccaneers operating in Bermuda and ask them to exercise more prudence and good sense.

Their lurid excesses could well result in the signing of Bermuda's economic death warrant.