Last week, this newspaper noted the lack of any serious attention paid to the economy in the Government's Throne Speech.

On Friday, the Opposition United Bermuda Party hammered the same point home in its formal Reply to the speech, laying out in detail the challenges facing the Bermuda economy and presenting several ideas on how to deal with it.

Earlier the same day, Finance Minister Paula Cox had presented a new statement on the economy, but for all its length, it did not give much more information to the general public than they had already heard in September when Ms Cox issued her last major statement to MPs.

Talking about difficult economic times is a challenging task; it is possible to talk your way into a recession – or make a recession that much worse – simply by being too downbeat. That was the point US president Franklin Roosevelt was making when he said "we have nothing to fear but fear itself".

And of course, Roosevelt's successor, Harry S Truman, made the complementary point when he said he wanted a one-handed economist who would not be able to say, "on the other hand …"

Bermuda finds itself facing these dilemmas. It is clear the Island will be faced with difficult economic times, with some saying the Island is already in recession.

For the year, despite a flat third quarter for tourism arrivals, tourism will be down. International business is in an "on the other hand situation", with the future of some major companies uncertain, while reinsurers are expecting for an improvement in rates. But anyone predicting major growth in international business is whistling Dixie.

Bermuda's domestic economy is closely tied to its foreign revenue earners. When they suffer, consumers do too. The only real silver lining is the likelihood that inflation should now start to decline as fuel and electricity prices drop from their summer highs.

The UBP is right to call for an austerity plan in Government and a freeze on hiring. Its criticisms of Government spending are also well taken as its call for the phased (but not immediate) use of public projects to maintain employment.

Public works are a good way of helping an economy in recession because they provide plenty of jobs, they inject cash into the economy and they improve infrastructure, parts of which in Bermuda's case are creaking.

However, there are two problems for Bermuda, albeit not insurmountable ones. The first is Government's spotty record of managing public projects and its practice of handing out untendered projects to favoured contractors, as Opposition Leader Kim Swan noted in his speech, gives the public little confidence in its ability to deliver these projects on time and under budget.

The second problem comes down to financing. Mr. Swan noted Government's public debt had ballooned to $456 million in the last four years, meaning that its ability to borrow further, especially when credit is short, will be constrained and the terms may not be as desirable as they have been in the past.

Compared to many countries, Bermuda is still extremely creditworthy. But at a time of tight credit, things could be better.

The UBP also proposes tax relief, including its election proposal to eliminate lower earners, along with duty relief for taxi drivers and here the case is less compelling, if only because balancing the current account of the Budget at a time when tax revenues are likely to be falling or flat is going to be difficult enough without tax reductions.

There's a good deal more that's of merit in the UBP's Reply, but, to borrow the Bill Clinton campaign's 1992 mantra: "It's the economy, stupid."

Premier Dr. Ewart Brown tried to defend the cursory treatment of that issue in the Government's Throne Speech by saying that Ms Cox had talked about the economy recently, and "the Government did not think it was prudent or necessary to repeat what we had said (previously) in the Throne Speech".

Just why it would be imprudent when jobs and livelihoods are at stake was not clear. Perhaps it was the cost of the paper the speech was written on. Still, Shadow Finance Minister E.R. (Bob) Richards put it best when he said: "The Throne Speech skips over the event (the global economic crisis) and starts talking about what we will do after the event.

"What we do after the so-called event and what we will be able to do for the Bermudian people after this so-called event will depend entirely on how we handle this challenge that faces us now."