This is a background paper for Observatory of Globalisation workshop on "The regulatory framework of globalisation" (October 2001).

How is it that so many Guyanese seemed to be working as, or for, New York stockbrokers and international financiers? Why is it that a country exports so many of its best, and best-trained people? Why do more Guyanese live in the New York borough of Queens, in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, Ontario, and in the borough of Tottenham, London, than in Greater Georgetown, Guyana? And why cannot a country so potentially rich that the first European adventurers called it El Dorado attract its diaspora back to redevelop its economy?