RedBlueThoughts

” Those who have no sin, let him cast the first stone,” said Jesus Christ when he spoke before a throng of Jews who accused a woman of adultery. No one threw a stone nor a pebble.

It is in this context that I ask Senators Jamby Madrigal and Ping Lacson–can you possibly say with all honesty that you did not use your power to influence any activity in government? Did you or did you not, in one instance or another, use your influence to push for a project?

Yes, they would probably tell me. Yes, there are instances where we used our standing to push for a project. But, this is different, Pat. We are casting a stone against Senate president Manny Villar because he used his influence to gain more money from his projects. We pushed for projects using our influence, yes, but we did not gain a single cent from it.

Imagine, Senator Enrile categorically saying that Villar did, indeed, requested for a double insertion in the C-5 project. Yes, Villar did that, and the good senator admitted it. He did push for that project because it would benefit his constituents. Yes, they will gain from the C-5 project, I agree, Mr. Villar. They’ll benefit from a flyover without a road. They’ll benefit from it, especially those living in your subdivisions.

Who pushed for the c-5 project to pass the properties of Brittany and Vista Land? Villar. Who gained from selling “right of way” properties worth 1,500 per square meter to 15,000 per square meter? Villar. And who’ll amass billions of billions of pesos from that C-5 extension road? Villar.

Madrigal and Lacson are right–this is not a political issue. No. This is plain and simple corruption or plunder even. Villar should be cruxified and jailed.

Erap and Jinggoy are laughing right now. Remember that Villar banged the gravel when he was Speaker of the House, after accusing Erap of plunder. Erap is now free, and those who accused him of crimes against the people, are those who are now being accused of the same. And this time, there’s no Jose Velardes.

Those who have no sin, let him cast the first stone.

The United States military has deployed a regular army unit inside the US mainland to deal with local insurgencies and possible civil unrest. This is the first time that the US government did this. The US State Department has considered contingency measures in the event of a possible outbreak of violence due to the worsening economic crisis.

Have you bought or drank Lipton Milk tea lately? I’ve been scanning regional news reports and came across an item that says that Unilever already withdrew the Lipton green milk tea from the shelves off Taiwanese groceries and supermarkets after finding out that Unilever might have used tainted milk from Chinese companies. That tainted milk, my friends, contain melamine, a plastic resin used for manufacturing plastic cups and plates. 

Jose Montelibano’s article says it all. There’s a palpable tension in the air caused by the worsening economic crisis, coupled by a deepening political turmoil. People feel a deep resentment against the established order, and the obvious lack of leadership from organized change setters are further fueling the frustration. What we are seeing, says Montelibano, is a building up of tensions which is expected to lead to an implosion.

You can definitely see it coming. Huge throngs of people leaving the country, seeking greener pastures abroad. You see large numbers of families scraping everything they can find just to survive. Middle class families are drastically changing their lifestyles to fit their ever decreasing budgets. On the extreme side, you see normal poor families turning into neurotic ones, frustrated because they can’t feed themselves properly.

Regulation, says former US President Bill Clinton is the solution to the US sub-prime crisis. Speaking at Dave Letterman’s show, Bill blames the American’s penchant for making money out of money which created this pyramidal financial web that now threatens the economy. What’s needed, says Bill, is for the Fed Reserve to infuse life in the economy, by absorbing the toxic debts, and enabling banks to free their books and expand their loan portfolios. That will allow American enterprises to still borrow money and support expansion of their businesses. Without expansion, the economy will continue to remain laggard and could seriously lead to depression.

Or, Washington could allow mortgagees to restructure their loans, making payments reasonably low to enable them to at least pay those amortizations. In this way at least, money would pour in instead of the present situation where there’s nothing coming in.

And Washington seems to be the obvious winner in all of these. By infusing $700 billion into the financial system, it would control most of the global financial institutions through loans. That will, in effect, make Washington the world’s biggest financial institution.

Some Americans are worried that the US will lose its global dominance due to this crisis. Yet, it’s the opposite. The US government, through the Federal Reserve, will now become the world’s only financial superpower should the US Congress allow Paulson and Bernanke’s bailout proposal.

If that happens, then the world has entered a New era of neo-imperialism. Scrumpeter maybe right that obviously capitalism dies within a cycle of 50 years, then, slowly comes to life through creative deconstruction. What we are now seeing is the death not of capitalism per se, but the rise of regulated capitalism. What will be the effects of this newer kind of capitalism? We will never know, says Bill Clinton.

Finally, I met Jester-in-Exile and some of the younger writers over at FilipinoVoices. I also met Manolo Quezon at the Philippine Blog Awards 2008. It’s really nice meeting fellow bloggers and it was just my second time to do so.

I’m not supposed to reveal who I was but there’s an itch to connect with those whom I consider as colleagues. And it is equally nice to know that Jester, Marochim and even their common friend, Maya, are all young people attending the University of the Philippines-Diliman. I told myself, there is still hope since my alma mater is still producing such fine young specimens of brilliance with a conscience.

Sometimes I think that it is time for me to rest my pen and pursue family interests. Because whenever I don my activist robe, I sacrifice my family. Truly, the time I’m spending with my family now, I consider the best of my life. For most of my young life, I spent pursuing causes which either nearly destroyed my professional career or put my life in extreme danger. The last four years are ones I consider stable since I’m blessed with jobs that provide me financial comfort. Yet, I’m still not that financially stable and it’s just 3 years before I reach 40.

My contemporaries are enjoying the prime of their careers. Mike Defensor, a classmate of mine, has his own companies and enjoying the fruits of his collaboration with Gloria. Same as Miro Quimbo and even Bong Bongolan. My batchmates at the University are now either here, practicing law or abroad with their families. I heard that I can only count with my fingers the number of classmates I have here, still living a tough life in this patch of earth, called home.

The ones we’ve beaten during our active university life are now political heavyweights. Alan Peter Cayetano, who lost his campaign against Angelo Jimenez for the UP Student Council plum post, is now a Senator defending his political patron, Senate president Manny Villar. Those who still hold the torch for the masses, they are those who still continue the struggle.

Sometimes I think that those years studying Marx, Engels, etc. are just worthless years since I’m not even using them in my job. My job requires me to think like Guy Kawasaki or a Nora Ephron or do the things that Charlie Agatep or Dante Ang or Babes Romualdes did in their prime. If I think like Marx, i’ll go wreck the establishment and probably de-construct it the way many people want it to be. But, would it be the best thing to do?

And sometimes, I blame myself for going back here. My years working in Singapore, I consider, truly the most memorable years of my life. Probably, I should not have left Singapore. It could have been great studying another Masters over at Nanyang Business School. Yet, I chose to raise a family instead of pursuing my intellectual interests.

I told Marochim that I tried to write lifestyle pieces. But I can’t. My soul lives and breathes politics. But, irony of ironies, I’m not directly involved in politics, just doing polemics. And I’m doing it just here, in the blogosphere. My years doing political work is probably over. I’m too out of touch and too far of reach by those who are still working for a Truly Just and Humane Philippine society.

And I’m probably doing okey, since my peers nominated me for the Best Blog in the Social, Historical and Political Commentary division. I lost eventually to a guy whose passion is to write about birds. Well, I could have wrote something about the Philippine eagle and probably, won? Like what the Rebel Pixel said, it’s not the award, it’s the peer recognition.

I long for the day when I can (a) make money out of a business which I have a passion about (b) not report to a boss (c) directly work for the liberation of the country from tyranny and (d) raise my family while building a country. Someday, I’ll do it. I’ll plunge myself into the entrepreneurial world and make history.

Where is Development Bank of the Philippines president Rey David? Rumours have it that David is now in the States. And why there? Is it to attend the UN meeting? Maybe. Or maybe not. David had been away since the Lehman Brothers collapse. And why in the US?

Wagging tongues say he’s there with a mission–how to recoup US$160 million losses due to exposure to the Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch collapse. Is this true?

And why is GMA in the US? Official statements show that GMA went to the States to learn more about the US sub-prime crisis. Whattah? Meaning, Gloria wants to see first-hand what it means when people say “crisis”? She just needs to look around the Pasig river and she’ll already see and feel crisis.

Is there a connexion between GMA and David’s trips to the US? Has David been successful in mitigating the investment losses of the First Family, as some sectors alleged? Sectors say GMA and her husband the First Grafter, err, the First Golfer have incurred millions of dollars worth of failed investments in the US that David, a trusty lieutenant, has been tasked to “re-coup”.

Is this true?

Other sources say, wealthy Pinoys are frantically withdrawing their monies from foreign banks and trying to either setup their own or buy banks, especially rural banks. And sources say, that’s the plan of the First Famine, err, First Family, to try to get what’s left of their investments and re-invest locally. Is this true? Is there a “conjugal crisis” happening there in the Enchanted Kingdom?

Signs that things will get worse before we see some comfort seems to be the current news. Yet, upon closer study of the global financial crisis, there are indications that things are really not that bad afterall, especially to the Philippines.

First, I realized that Gloria and her factotum, NEDA Chief Ralph Recto could have told us the truth that there will be minimal impact on the economy. But, it’s not because they prepared for this or because of VAT. No. It is the very nature of the Philippine economic superstructure that would probably insulate us from further serious damages to our financial institutions.

First, our financial structure is still underdeveloped. Exposure to riskier investments is minimal because our bankers are traditionalists. Most banks invest in long-term instruments, like bonds, and government-backed securities. We don’t have enough rogue traders to cause a downfall of our system simply because our bankers are mostly “seguristas”. They don’t play the games that big players do. Under normal circumstances, that’s foolish. Yet, Philippine bankers have foresight that foreign bankers don’t. That’s why local banks do not have huge exposures in foreign risk investments simply because our bankers are sophisticated enough to know the limits of playing risky. And they know what risk management really is.

Second, most foreign bank branches here are deposits-oriented and off-shore operations. They are mostly retail banks. We have a small number of investment banks, the kind that caters to big players and financial investors. The reason is obvious–most of our rich, wealthy brothers and sisters invest their monies abroad. And those monies are kept in long-term, high-yielding investments, mostly in term deposits. They can’t park their monies here for obvious reasons–they don’t trust our banks enough. Exposure would probably emanate from those who deposited their monies with banks that have exposures with Lehman and Merrill Lynch but they’ll not feel it simply because their monies are insured and guaranteed against risks.

Lastly, the number of maturing mortgages are small compared with those of the United States, or even Singapore and Hongkong. Upon closer scrunity, the BSP can very well absorb these. I don’t know about GSIS, SSS or Pag-Ibig and how exposed they are right now (since I have’nt found the time to study their declared financial statements), but the 30 billion peso problem of the National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation (NHMFC) could easily be absorbed.

The question is–how much money will the BSP actually absorb before it says “enough is enough”? That should be determined at this early and government should help banks not only through financial transfusions, but also in managing their books. I mean, government and the private banking groups should sit down, be transparent with each other, lay down their cards and focus on what contingency plans they should do if projections go to the wrong direction. There should be plan a, b,c and even d. Crisis management plans should be set in place in case tremours from the US sub-prime crisis hits us in areas where we least expect it. Yes, we see one potential problem–the effects of an economic slowdown.

Yet, this economic slowdown can be mitigated by (a) focusing our sights in Middle Eastern financial markets and probably seeking assistance there and (b) China. These two places have tons of money. By encouraging Middle Easterners and more Chinese investments in the country could mitigate the impact of the crisis. Likewise, encourage more Filipino professionals to go abroad especially in these areas so that the level of remittances will go even higher than what analysts say would be reduced due to the impact of a global slowdown.

If you don’t want to lose your eyes, don’t violate any traffic rule in Makati City Philippines. That’s because traffic cops will get your two eye balls if you violate traffic rules.

story at: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/classified-odd/09/17/08/makati-cops-traffic-violators-stop-hand-me-your-eyes

So…for those kaskaseros out there, beware! Makati Cops are hunting for your eyes!