Gilbert NMO Morris

Gilbert N. M. O. Morris is a legal scholar, economist, government advisor, author and publisher.

Gilbert NMO Morris was born in Abaco Island, in the Bahamas. He had a strict religious upbringing-that later influenced his philosophical work. His mother - who is a theologian - tutored him intensely and he shared with her a passion for learning and scholarship. As a boy, his family moved from Abaco to Freeport, where he attended the prestigious Parish Hall school, then headed by His Eminence, Bishop Michael Eldon of St. Stephen's Church. Morris was a very good student by all accounts, but had a tendency to follow his own reading beneath his desk during classes-a habit that revealed and lead to the development of a fiercely independent quality of mind. In an early speech-at age 15- he said the following: "Originality is not an external thing. It emerges from a deepest possible connection one may have with one's inner light in the darkest corridors of perception". Morris gained experience in a variety of pursuits as he developed. He gained a reputation in bodybuilding while in senior school and was known to have designed and built his own gym out of wood. He joined with his friend Chett Role' and founded the Couture Model Agency, and won the Male Model of the Year in 1984. "Of this experience Morris says: I was shy, but my approach was to subsume this tendency in an activity that required a skill". Known throughout this period for his instinctively conservative writing, largely on economic issues, in the local newspaper, the Freeport News, Morris got his first experience at business running BIENICHES, a fine clothing emporium; which he turned around and made a profit during his one year odyssey as a businessman. "I entered university as a most unusual type' he said at a forum at the Institute for Economic Affairs in London, "I was a free market adherent by experience." In his 12 years as a Professor teaching formally at univerity, Morris has embodied four distinct phases, each AbOUT 4 year in intense duration, sometimes overlapping:

(1) Literary Scholar - here he discovered an escape from the theology of his childhood in poetry; particularly that of T.S. ELiot, John Donne, Jules Laforgue, Melvin B. Rahming, and O.M. Smith. Of these influences, T.S. Eliot was the most powerful as can be witnessed in his huge unpublished manuscript: "The Creative Lacunae: An Examination of Philosophy in Poetry from Aristotle to T.S. Eliot". (The 800 page tomb was first written as an essay in his flat at Russell Square in London, but was expanded to a book in three intense solitary months on Morris's arrival in Washington DC in 1996). A critical feature of Morris approach to literary work, is his constant invocation of philosophy.

(2) Philosophy-Morris encountered philosophy at the age of 16 when his mother gave his the book "Let the Trumpet Sound" a biography of Martin Luther King jr. written by Stephen B. Oates. The book gave an intense bibliography of Dr. King's scholarship. Morris followed that 'reading list' with great discipline and stumbled onto JP Sartre, JS Mill, Kant, Hegel and more importantly Kierkegarrd and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Morris' approach to philosophy was set in a framework based on his readings of Wittgenstein , (anti-epistemology) and Kierkegarrd (conscience beyond morality or discernment). This all rests on a foundation built on his readings of Einstein's 'General Theory of Relativity (We are exiled to our perceptions (The Lacunae)), and a combination of Heidegger's writings and the fragments of Anaximander (546 BCE) -an obscure pre-Socratic philosopher of whose work only a single sentence remains. The influences of these studies are evidenced in the Creative Lacunae, which was passed around and discussed in manuscipt form in Morris' early years at Mason.

(3) Law-The law has a curious role in the intellectual development of Gilbert Morris. It is almost entirely based-as far as one can tell-on the influence his mentor and friend Maurice O. Glinton-whom he has written of as the "having the singlemost pure intellect I have ever encountered". Mr. Glinton seems to have less a philosophy of law than an approach to the application of law in the pursuit of a larger philosophy. For both he and Morris therefore law is a tool, not an end-point in itself. This can be seen readily in their complimentary work on financial services regulations widely available on the intenet.

(4) Finance and economics-Morris believes in the "cultivation of markets" in economics. The influence of his studies in the subject at the London School of Economics, coupled with the application of "shock therapies" in the old Soviet Block at the time, left Morris dissillusioned With It. His point is that countries should try to seek market solutions for problems and not force markets onto their populace without relevant institutions and a programme to cultivate a disposition toward such institutions; such as courts and research centres. It was in this same light that he saw both the attack on financial service centres and the failure of an adequate response by financial centres in that the later had failed to cultivate a true market for their services which the former had to acknowledge and accept in legal or competitive terms.

Morris gained international prominence when in 1998, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) "blacklisted" "International Financial Centres", (IFC) referring to them as "tax havens". Whilst financial services is a critical component of international finance, Morris is one of few scholars/advisors who work in the arena of the structural formalities of Financial Centres. In 1999, Morris, was retained by a number of the most prestigious Swiss Banks to develop a theoretical basis for "cross border regulatory diplomacy" which he presented to The White House Economic Staff in 2001 leading to the US's rejection of the OECD programme based on its "Harmful Tax Practices" report. Having found an ally in then US Treasury Secretary The Hon. Paul O'Neill, Morris and his colleagues also softened the impact of the EU Savings Tax Directive for IFCs, which he called "a non-state institution programme in superstate guise". Morris produced hundreds of much sought after papers on financial service centre design and development, regulatory arbitrage and the global financial system Gilbert NMO Morris was born in the Abaco Islands of the Bahamas, and studied varied subjects including law, theology, political science, and philosophy at Oxford Brookes University, Harvard University Extension School, Institute for British and Irish Studies (IBIS) at Mansfield College at Oxford University, and the London School of Economics.

He has been a Carmelite monk, a Member of Gray's Inns of Court in London, a clerk for the United States Court of Appeals, and a professor at George Mason University from 1995 to 2001; in 1998–1999 he was the director of the African-American Studies program at GMU. He is Chairman of a Private Equity Fund CAICOS Brothers LP, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of the TCI Free Press and is the Chief Economist of the Landfall Centre, a think tank concerned with international trade. Morris has written three books: In Defense of National Sovereignty, (An essay on "smart nation stratgies") The Hidden Costs: what Children owe to Parents), Fiat Accompli: The Progurm Against International Financial Centres.