THERE are times when those charged with managing Bermuda's affairs are of more interest as possible case studies in the pathology of Narcissistic Personality Disorder than for any decisions they make. Or don't make, as is so often the case.

A former St. Brendan's Hospital psychiatrist, after too many one-on-one dealings with a former Premier and Health Minister, openly discussed the need for adding a sanity clause to the oaths taken by Cabinet Ministers, one providing for their removal from office if ruled to be medically incompetent.

Even to the layman the cardinal symptoms of malignant self-obsession are all too frequently in evidence in Bermuda's corridors of power.

Grandiosity. An epic sense of entitlement. A bemused contempt for laws, conventions and regulations that govern the rest of us. The habit of seeing the world as they would like it to be rather than as it in fact is. Exalting themselves as unassailable benchmarks of distinction. Surrounding themselves with sycophantic place men who conform to their distorted and largely illusory vision of reality while simultaneously ? and systematically ? devaluing, demeaning and denigrating those who question it. The steady stream of distortions, half-truths and outright untruths, told without compunction or any evidence of conscience. An utter lack of empathy for the people they nominally serve, one so pronounced on occasion it suggests these decision-makers view Bermudians as objects to be used, manipulated and exploited rather than flesh-and-blood individuals whose lives and livelihoods they are solemnly charged with safeguarding. This insufferable sense of omniscience, of being all-knowing and all-powerful, is in fact all in the mind.

But, unavoidably given their positions of public trust, these pocket potentates' inner fantasy lives collide with outward reality on an almost daily basis. The results are both predictable and messy.

Take the Finance Minister, for example.

Bright, articulate and personable, she is routinely lionised as a shining intellectual light in a Government with an otherwise scanty reputation for original thought.

Yet even she would on occasion prefer to deny reality than confront it.

When Trimingham Brothers was absorbed by the HSBC bank, the Finance Minister claimed ? in the face of a mountain of statistical, historical and anecdotal evidence to the contrary ? this was not indicative of a crisis in the retail sector.

Presumably if she bothers to read the regular reports prepared by Government's own Statistics Department, she would be aware of the dramatic contraction in the retail sector.

It's a contraction caused in part by an ongoing decline in tourism arrival figures and the ruinous effects of an across-the-board 33 per cent import duties. These duties, of course, make the cost of everything in Bermuda so prohibitively expensive. They are the chief reason why Bermudian retailers are no longer competitive, the chief reason why Bermuda's unofficial inflation rate continues to spiral upwards.

But then to concede the obvious would be to concede this Government's role as an accessory-before-the-fact in the loss of 200 additional Bermudian jobs that will be caused when Trimingham's closes its doors for the last time.

It would be to concede that the Tourism Ministry is still a disaster area seven years after David Allen pledged to turn the industry around in 100 days.

It would be to concede that Government has failed to amend penal tax laws that would allow retail to survive into the 21st century as a viable industry.

Far easier, then, to play to the Progressive Labour Party gallery, to resurrect and further exploit the old Front Street/Court Street divide that has about as much bearing on the modern Bermudian socio-economic scene as the old onion export crop.

By doing so she effectively blamed the now spectral 40 Thieves for selling out Bermuda's heritage to a foreign concern. Never mind the inconvenient fact they could only do so when the Finance Minister herself signed off on the HSBC deal. Even those responsible for drafting the PLP's campaign platform believed there was an industry-wide crisis in retail during the run-up to the 1998 General Election.

In the "New Bermuda" manifesto, the PLP was going to introduce tax-relief for retailers. In the "New Bermuda" a PLP Government would work closely with the retail sector to try to salvage what was left of Bermuda's old economic power base and resuscitate its tourist-based market.

Once elected, such promises ? along with the one to operate in "the sunshine of public scrutiny" ? were promptly forgotten, of course.

And the politically-motivated attempts to resurrect Front Street as Bermuda's economic string-puller cum bogeyman notwithstanding, the PLP is quite aware of the addresses of Bermuda's new financial powerbrokers.

They operate from addresses on Bermudiana Road, Pitts Bay Road and East Broadway, not Front Street, addresses the PLP Government is increasingly calling on for "contributions" to underwrite an array of not very practical, not particularly public-spirited Cabinet pet projects ? contributions the captains of the re/insurance industry now view as a form of indirect taxation and increasingly resent paying.

A confrontation between Government and what is now the only pillar of Bermuda's economy is inevitable if such shakedowns continue. The re/insurance sector believes it gets precious little from this Government in return for its money in terms of stability, co-operation or even fair hearings for its concerns regarding the impact of Independence on the island's continuing viability as an off-shore business jurisdiction.

But given this is a Government that regularly detours into solipsistic fantasy whenever it's confronted with an inconvenient reality, the mounting anxieties of those in the international sector's executive suites are all too easy to understand.

How prescient that great old philosopher Marx (Chico, not Karl) was when he lamented the fact there ain't no sanity clause.