The Rights of Man
Over the weekend, the Inquirer editorial said current commanders are Nostalgic for Palparan ; but it was this news item -Ships’ 45 accidents listed: Lloyd’s details Sulpicio’s 28-year history- that provoked the most commentary, from yesterday’s editorial, Sucking up to Sulpicio, to today’s editorial, MV Scandalous .
Especially interesting to me is that it took digging around by Inquirer’s research department, and access to Lloyd’s database, for this story to emerge, when it should have been front and center from day one. And the reason it wasn’t -if you’ve noticed, letters to the editor basically supplemented original reports of the number of Sulpicio-related sea accidents- surely has everything to do with the slovenly way our government agencies maintain records. This is fruitful grounds for Congressional action but… the legislature is no paragon of record-keeping itself.
(On a related note: Passenger shipping industry drowns while budget airlines fly high.)
My column for today is Chaos in Barangay Bansot.
Last week’s columns, Bringing the world to our shores and Embracing evolution, were remarked on by The Warrior Lawyer and blackshama’s blog . Even in the context of religion, in Ren’s Public Notebook. Earlier blog entries was commented upon by missing points and Howie Severino.(A kind account of my show also appeared in Jose A. Carillo’s column recently) Incidentally, the website of the program I’m looking at is here: University of Western Australia MBA Program in Manila.
Provincial-related stories to explore further (specifically: is this a real emerging news story or a well-managed media campaign by Evardone?): PDCC brings hope to Eastern Samar bad roads and E. Samar’s biggest calamity: Bad roads.
Als, with regards to food: Food gets scarce in Cotabato as floodwaters continue to rise and P18-per-kg rice disappearing from Bicol markets.
Overseas: Stagflation Sightings Multiply:
Unfortunately for policy makers, different weaponry is called for to vanquish the two heads of the stagflation dragon. Recession can be held at bay by lowering interest rates, while inflation is usually tamed by raising interest rates. Given the impossibility pursuing both courses of action simultaneously, priorities come into play. Historically, inflation has been considered the greater long term economic menace, and has therefore been dealt with first.
This was the plan of attack successfully mapped out by President Ronald Reagan and US Fed Chairman Paul Volcker in the 1980s. With the president’s political backing, Volcker was able to kill stagflation with a short but heavy dose of double-digit interest rates. With the stable currency and low inflation that resulted, the stage was then set for a sustained and robust economic expansion.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has recognized the stagflation threat for some time. But rather than studying the playbook of Volcker and Reagan, his gaze rests on events 40 years earlier. A well-known student of the financial history the 1930s, Bernanke is well aware that when the same beast raised its head following the Crash of 1929, the Fed rapidly raised interest rates. His conclusion was that this overreaction magnified the recession of 1930 into the Great Depression of the ensuing decade.
Scared stiff that these events could repeat themselves on his watch, Bernanke is loath to push up rates. In so doing, he is ignoring the much more recent and equally instructive lessons of the 1970s, in which a politically cowed Federal Reserve stood by while inflation raged uncontrollably.
Also, a long overdue link (from July 4): Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis: Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive.
Today is Bastille Day, the national day of France, a day of inspiration to republicans and revolutionaries down the ages.
The French Revolution gave us the metric system and, along the way, the blueprint for the abolition of monarchy and its replacement with a constitutional, republican regime. And one of its seminal documents was the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
It’s interesting that Jose Rizal set out to translate the Déclaration des Droits de l’homme et du citoyen du 26 août 1789 into Tagalog, which clearly suggests he felt it to be one of those seminal documents necessary for the public instruction of the citizenry. According to Ambeth Ocampo, it’s in Escritos Varios or Escritos Politicos de Rizal, under the title Manga Karapatan ng Tao.
(illustration above: Lafayette’s copy, Library of Congress collection)
Here is a very recent (re)translation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citzen:
Preamble
The representatives of the French people, formed into a National Assembly, considering that ignorance, neglect or scorn of the rights of man to be the only causes of national misfortunes and the corruption of governments, have resolved to set out, in a solemn Declaration, the natural, unalienable and sacred rights of man,
so that this Declaration, always present to all members of society, reminds them constantly of their rights and their duties;
so that the acts of the legislative power and those of the executive power, being able to be compared at every moment with the aim of the whole political institution, should have greater respect for that aim;
so that the demands of the citizens, founded henceforth on simple and indisputable principles, are always oriented to conserving the Constitution and to the happiness of everybody.
Consequently , the National Assembly acknowledges and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:
First Article â€â€Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be based only upon benefit for the community.
Article 2 â€â€The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural rights of man, which rights must not be prevented. These rights are freedom, property, security and resistance to oppression.
Article 3 â€â€The fundamentals of sovereignty has its origins essentially in the Nation. No organisation, nor individual, may exercise any authority that does not expressly come from there.
Article 4 â€â€Liberty consists in being able to do anything that does not harm other people. Thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those limits that that ensure to the other members of society the enjoyment of these same rights. These limits may be determined only by the law.
Article 5 â€â€The law has only the right to forbid those actions that are detrimental to society. Anything that is not forbidden by law may not be prevented, and none may be compelled to do what the law does not require.
Article 6 â€â€The law is the expression of the collective wishes of the public. All citizens have the right to contribute, personally or through their representatives, to the forming of the law. The law must be the same for all, whether it protects or it punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, shall be equally eligible for all important offices, positions and public employments, according to their ability and without other distinction than that of their qualities and talents.
Article 7 â€â€No man can be accused, arrested or detained except in the cases determined by the law, and according to the methods that the law has stipulated. Those who pursue, distribute, enforce, or cause to be enforced, arbitrary orders must be punished; but any citizen summoned, or apprehended in accordance with the law, must obey immediately: he makes himself guilty by resisting.
Article 8â€â€The law must introduce only punishments that are strictly and indisputably necessary; and no one may be punished except in accordance with a law instituted and published before the offence is committed, and legally applied.
Article 9â€â€Because every man is presumed innocent until he has been declared guilty, if it should be considered necessary to arrest him, any force beyond the minimum necessary to arrest and imprison the person will be treated with severely.[2]
Article 10â€â€No-one should be harassed for his opinions, even religious views, provided that the expression of such opinions does not cause a breach of the peace as established by law.
Article 11â€â€The free communication of thought and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man. Any citizen can therefore speak, write and publish freely; however, they are answerable for abuse of this freedom as determined by law.
Article 12â€â€Guaranteeing the rights of man and of the citizen requires a public force[3]. This force is therefore established for the benefit of all, and not for the particular use of those to whom it is entrusted.
Article 13â€â€For the maintenance of the public force, and for administrative expenses, a common tax is necessary. It must be spread in similar fashion among all citizens, in proportion to their capability.
Article 14â€â€All citizens have the right to verify for themselves, or through their representatives, the necessity for the public tax. They further have the right to grant the tax freely, to watch over how it is used, and to determine its amount[4], the basis for its assessment and of its collection, and its duration.
Article 15â€â€Society has the right to ask a public official for an explication of his management and supervision.
Article 16â€â€Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not ensured, nor a separation of powers is worked out, has no Constitution.
Article 17â€â€Property, being an inviolable and sacred right, no one may be deprived of it; unless public necessity, legally investigated, clearly requires it, and just and prior compensation has been paid.
How very far off we are, in terms of achieving what these 18th Century Frenchmen envisioned not only for themselves, but for all humanity.
A magnificent retelling of the story of the French Revolution is “Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution” (Simon Schama). The great Catholic historian Christopher Dawson and his views on The Rights of Man predate Schama’s by two generations, yet his views seem to be echoed by Schama and incidentally, illuminates the Philippine situation as it’s existed since the 1960s:
For the French peasants and workers had not been taught, like the English, to follow their landlords and employers. It had always been the policy of the French government to detach the people from the privileged classes and to maintain direct control of them through the Intendant and the Curé. They lived their own life in their communes and guilds and looked for guidance not to the nobles and the rich merchants but to the ultimate sources of all authority — the King and the Church. And hence, though they had little class consciousness in the modern sense, they had a strong national consciousness which had found expression hitherto in their loyalty to the King and their devotion to the Church. Now, however, everything conspired to shake their confidence and disturb their faith. Ever since the death of Louis XIV they had seen the higher powers at war among themselves; Jansenists and Jesuits, Church and Parlements, the government and the magistrates; and more recently the continual succession of reforms and counter-reforms, such as the abolition and re-establishment of the Corporations and the changes that produced the rises of prices and periodic crises of unemployment and food shortage, caused an increasing feeling of insecurity and discontent. There were the disorders and the revolutionary agitation of the last two years, the sinister rumors of treachery in high places, and finally the appeal of the King to the nation by the summoning of the States General and the extraordinary democratic forms of election which exceeded the demand of the reformers themselves.
All these factors combined to rouse popular feeling as it had not been roused since the days of the League. The deeps were moved. Behind the liberal aristocrats and lawyers who formed the majority of the States General, there lay the vast anonymous power that had made the monarchy and had been in turn shaped by it, and now it was to make the Revolution. To the liberal idealists – to men like Lafayette and Clermont Tonnerre, to the Abbé Fauchet and the orators of the Gironde, the Revolution meant the realization of the ideals of the Enlightenment, liberty and toleration, the rights of men and the religion of humanity. They did not see that they were on the edge of a precipice and that the world they knew was about to be swallowed up in a tempest of change which would destroy both them and their ideals. “Woe unto you, who desire the day of the Lord. It is darkness and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand upon the wall and a serpent bit him”; they were a doomed generation, fated to perish at first by ones and twos, and then by scores and hundreds and thousands, on the scaffold, in the streets and on the battlefield. For as the Revolution advanced it gradually revealed the naked reality that had been veiled by the antiquated trappings of royalty and tradition — the General Will — and it was not the benevolent abstraction which the disciples of Rousseau had worshipped but a fierce will to power which destroyed every man and institution that stood in its way. As de Maistre wrote, the will of the people was a battering ram with twenty million men behind it.
A subsequent passage illuminates, too, the problem with Year Ones and Year Zeros, of New Societies and those who aspire to raze and refashion entire societies:
But if it was a time of freedom and hope, it was also a time of illusion. The Constituent Assembly went to work in a mood of boundless optimism without any regard for the facts of history or the limitations of time and place, in the spirit of their arch theorist Sieyès, who said that the so-called truths of history were as unreal as the so-called truths of religion. When their work was finished, Cerutti declared that they had destroyed fourteen centuries of abuses in three years, that the Constitution they had made would endure for centuries, and that their names would be blessed by future generations. Yet before many months had elapsed their work was undone and their leaders were executed, imprisoned or in exile. They had destroyed what they could not replace and called up forces that they could neither understand nor control. For the liberal aristocracy and bourgeoisie were not the people, and in some respects they were further from the people than the nobles and clergy who remained faithful to the old order. On the one hand there were the vast inarticulate masses of the peasantry who were ready to burn the castles of the nobles but who were often equally ready to fight with desperate resolution for their religion. On the other hand there was the people of the communes, above all the Commune of Paris.
The Commune of Paris would, of course, keep throwing up barricades in an attempt to return to the republicanism of the Revolution. The France of 1789 and of 1870 (the Paris Commune) are commemorated in two songs detested by the Right: the French national anthem and the Internationale, anthem of Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists.
The Marseillaise has ferocious lyrics, which may explain the unease it inspired in regimes wary of the republicanism established by the French. My favorite examples: the Czar of Russia, manifesting a new alliance with France, shocking his fellow monarchs by standing at attention while the French anthem was played; years later, when Lenin arrived in Russia after years of exile, a band played the French national anthem; in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (and mention has to be made here of Beethoven’s extremely jolly Wellington’s Victory which showed how a national anthem could be woven into a crowd-pleasing piece of bombast), and in fiction, see this marvelous paper, Bogart’s Nod in the Marseillaise Scene: A Physical Gesture in Casablanca.
And of course, the closing portion of our own national anthem pays homage to the French anthem: listen to the closing phrases of the French anthem and see for yourself; but unlike us, the French aren’t pedantic about their anthem).
The other musical heritage from revolutionaries in France is The Internationale: It was the national anthem of the Soviet Union from the time of Lenin until World War II:
The Chinese also pay ritual Socialist homage to the song, in this case, beginning with the original French version and then shifting to Chinese, complete with large scale rhythmic clapping (not very different from this 1965 version in the same hall):
A Chinese heavy metal version!
Which is nice n’ rhythmic, but this other (truncated) version which mixes the rock version, which begins with Mao proclaiming the People’s Republic at the Gate of Heavenly Peace, then shifts to creepy Cultural Revolution iconography, is enough to send shivers down anyone’s spine:
And of course, there’s a version in Filipino (an old revolutionary once tried to explain to me the nuances of the various versions floating around, one apparently belonging to the Huks, the other to the CCP, and woe unto any radical singing the wrong version in the wrong company: I wonder what this video set to a photo of the Great Helmsman with Imeldific is all about?): but so you know what all the Socialist, Communist, and Anarchist fervor’s about, here’s a version in English:
The French Revolution gave us the metric system and, along the way, the blueprint for the abolition of monarchy and its replacement with a constitutional, republican regime.
The Romans already did this over a thousand years before the French. The rights of man was prefigured by the Magna Carta. Even separation of church and state in its modern form was proposed by Martin Luther. But yes, the French revolution stays in the mind because of its high drama and cast of characters (Let them eat cake.). Let’s not forget however that barely three years after Bastille, the French revolutionaries, filled with republican and ‘rights of man’ fervor, instigated the Reign of Terror.
Gotta give it to the French to do everything with style, including their revolution.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
mlq3: You are giving the Philippine media a pass. So the Inquirer inquired into Lloyds database to provide a report. Malaya could have beaten the Inquirer to the news; the manila Times; other newspapers could have done it, too.
But my dissatisfaction with the media is more on heroes. I know of the dolphin; also that the UN representative had praised Philippine officials for their response. But praise for the PhilNatlRed Cross or governors and mayors doing a good job can not seem to undo what is now encoded in my memory banks — blogthread reports about Filipinos refusing their neighbors from climbing onto their roofs as flood waters raged.
How many news articles or TV segments have been “spent” by the Philippine media to highlight Filipinos’ acts of courage and heroism during typhoon Frank? No heroes, the country needs heroes; the country needs to hear stories affirming that there are heroes still in their midst [..... in my opinion]
And this may be unpopular — to say that there are heroes among Filipino soldiers of today. But I believe there are, and I believe that the Philippine media should not be afraid to shine the spotlight (and say thank you!!!) on these acts of heroism by its soldiers.
How very far off we are, in terms of achieving what these 18th Century Frenchmen envisioned not only for themselves, but for all humanity.
Inilapag na sa harap natin, pinaglaban na nang iba, mula sa reforma nang Monarchia sa Englatera, Revolution na Francia, Civila War sa America, revolution nang Katipunan, laban na Hukbalahap…Binansot nang manga Lideres natin, kasama na ang manga lider nang Religion at tayong Mismo manga ordinaryong mamayan na di naghihirap, pero gusto ‘ata makaexperiencia nag “actual” na struggle para ma-appreciate ang tinatawag na Rights of Man.
“But praise for the PhilNatlRed Cross or governors and mayors doing a good job can not seem to undo what is now encoded in my memory banks  blogthread reports about Filipinos refusing their neighbors from climbing onto their roofs as flood waters raged.”-UP n
@UP n
Blogthreads, or mainstream media in Phil. setting, the reality is ‘good news is no news.’ Commercial advertisers will not bite the good news, is all.
you can add:
http://goodnewspilipinas.com/
to your rss readers, i believe it’s a project of rico hizon. they have advertising, too.
mlq3: thanks for Goodnews!
Bert: Is Commercial advertisers will not bite the good news, is all. equivalent to saying that Inquirer only prints stories depending on the revenue the Inquirer gets from San Miguel Beer or Cebu Pacific or Sulpicio?
That is not an attractive business-model…. seems to clash with “freedom-of-the-press” special-claim-to-fame.
Found one (not for Frank, though).
Sometime back, Jeg asked whether the fact that Sulpicio continued to have customers was a case of market failure
http://www.quezon.ph/1859/quailing-before-the-palaces-pet-magistrates/#comment-851371
I replied then that it could indeed be considered market failure in that there was Information Asymmetry between the passengers and Sulpicio, the former not knowing what they bargained for when they purchased their tickets:
http://www.quezon.ph/1859/quailing-before-the-palaces-pet-magistrates/#comment-851438
With the publication of the Lloyd’s database record on Sulpicio, it’s becoming clearer to me what the source of the ‘market failure’ may have been. Either it was the lack of passenger travel insurance, or if ever there was, a travel insurance premium that did not reflect the actual risks of travelling via Sulpicio. I’m now wondering why no such proper insurance appraisal has been done considering that the info is already in Lloyd’s database. Any feedback on this would be appreciated.
(BTW, regarding the biofuels link, as i commented in other blogs, the report explicitly states that “…biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact [on food prices]“, so this report cannot be used to criticize Migz Zubiri’s initiative which is based on sugar cane.)
“…mamayan na di naghihirap, pero gusto ‘ata makaexperiencia nag “actual†na struggle para ma-appreciate ang tinatawag na Rights of Man.”
mang_isko, ‘actual na struggle’ ba parehas ibig sabihin na maghirap din sila at makatikim kung paano kumulo ang tiyan sa gutom para ma-appreciate ang tinatawag na Rights of Man?
In Brazil, only 3.2 million hectares, out of 320 million hectares of arable land, are used to grow sugarcane for ethacane (ethanol from sugar cane). Brazil has another 100 million hectares of underutilized pastures suitable for agriculture.
The Philippines, on the other hand, has only 38,500 hectares of land planted to sugarcane. The Sugar Regulatory Administration identified another 60,250 hectares of new sugarcane areas that can produce as much as 274 million liters of bioethanol. Studies by the same agency showed a total of 377,182 hectares of land are suitable for planting sugar. 17.2 percent of these are in Luzon, 53.3 percent in Negros Island, 6.9 percent in Panay Island, 4.4 percent in the Eastern Visayas region, and 19.1 percent in Mindanao.
Was the 60,250 hectares of new sugarcane areas also suitable for planting rice?
How much more of the 377,182 hectares of land suitable for sugarcane will be converted to produce ethacane?
Supremo, those are very useful stats. 274 million liters is around one weeks’s worth of consumption in the Philippines so it does look like too much land allocated to produce quantities that would hardly make a dent on the energy market. Would you have similar stats for jatropha?
cvj,
The Sulpicio debacle is less a market failure and more of government failure, specifically regulatory capture by Sulpicio, rent-seeking, and imperfect information.
Market failure is “the condition where the allocation of goods and services by a free (emphasis on free) market is not efficient.” A public utility, in this case water transportation, is subject to more stringent government regulation. In the Sulpicio case, it was regulation which was badly inadequate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_failure
cvj,
A hectare of jatropha produces 1,892 litres of fuel.
PSI, that’s also what i thought so at first until Jeg brought up the possibility that it was market failure. I agree with you that there is definitely government failure involved. However, i don’t think it’s a case of either or since it could be both. It occured to me that shouldn’t insurance premiums protect us from these kinds of things? I mean, if an insurance company correctly appraised the risk of riding Sulpicio, with its 45 prior accidents, then its premiums would have risen to a level that would have made it uncompetitive. (At the extreme, their record would have made them uninsurable.) Since this did not happen, then there was no price signal to the consumer warning them of the true costs of riding Sulpicio, hence market failure brought about by lack of information.
Thanks Supremo. So 1892 liters per hectare for jatropha vs. 4550 liters per hectare for sugar cane. The advantage of jatropha though would be that it can be planted on more marginal land so its collateral effect on food prices may be less.
But, in terms of biofuels, the real promise might be with algae:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
cvj: have they made public the insurance premiums that Sulpicio paid this year (and the years prior) for its insurance policy (or policies) on Princess Stars? What is your basis… can you put numbers… when you say
UPn, i was thinking more along the lines of the passenger, had he/she availed of travel insurance whose premiums were correctly appraised to take into account Sulpicio’s 45 accidents in 28 years, would have found the price of travel higher than the other similar mode of transport (in Aboitiz for example). Perhaps the absence of such correct insurance appraisal is the key to information asymmetry.
The regulatory implication then would be to make travel insurance in favor of the passenger mandatory (with payout of at least 3 million, maybe up to 10 million). I suggested over at Filipino Voices that the passenger can shoulder the portion of the premium that is aligned to industry safety records while the carrier can shoulder the excess premium owing to any poor safety record. An accurately appraised travel insurance would mean that information about the true risks of using a particular carrier is made more transparent. After all, the market is only as good as its price signals.
“…the premium that is aligned to industry safety records while the carrier can shoulder the excess premium owing to any poor safety record.” -cvj
Copy you, cvj. I believe Actuarians (?) or Risk analysts in the insurance industry call that ‘experience rating’ to make an insured’s current premium payments to be based on claims history (or something to that effect, anyway).
But if Sulpicio Lines was hiding all its accidents and sea mishaps (until Lloyds through Inquirer revealed them) then our risk rating buisness model collapses. All for naught.
PSI, you’re right and i think the failure to undertake an accurate insurance re-appraisal of Sulpicio would go to the DoTC going back to 1980 up to today.
cvj,
I read in another site that the 15,000 square miles of algae farm will produce 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel. That is enough to replace the current US consumption of 60 billion gallons of petroleum diesel and 120 billion gallons of gasoline per year.
to PSI: It should be breach-of-contract, hence Insurer has relief, if Sulpicio intentionally provided fake data to the underwriter’s request for historical information.
@ UP n,
But if their insurer knew all along about Sulpicio’s dismal sea record (these firms know everything about heir industry right?) but insured them ‘regular’, then they should also be liable?
Who is their insurance carrier anyway?
Like the insurer of Sulpicio Lines just would have had to check with Lloyd’s, as what Inquirer did. Hmmm, I believe that the plot thickens.
The chronic problems in the Philippines are rooted in (the absence of) Article 12 of Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citzen – The force guaranteeing the rights of every man and citizen is for the benefit of all and not for particular group wielding power.
Today, the muslim and communist insurgencies have no solution polarized by the combined State military policy (of wiping out declared enemies) and rigid church stance against godless/heretic enemies. Both dominant players in Philippine society have found each other on the same side though uneasy relationship.
The state has been sponsoring military tactical operations (extra judicial means) from Palparan method to para-military solution. Example, Kuratong Baleleng was initiated by the Philippine Army 101st to combat muslim and communist insurgency in Misamis and Zamboanga at the beginning. It was a success story to turn the enemies away from towns and cities. Unfortunately, the paramilitary killers with weapons found life easier with money by robbing banks, kidnapping and raiding companies elsewhere. Military solution itself spawn lawlessness that it had to silence its own henchmen (Lacson on Kuratong Baleleng). Human rights is virtually non existent for such purpose.
The Catholic church is blind and silent to atrocities to Filipinos who did not have its faith.
“…polarized by the combined State military policy (of wiping out declared enemies) and rigid church stance against godless/heretic enemies.”
Last time I checked, this is also being practiced in the great land of U.S. of A. of D0d0ng, am I right?
In the recent graduation ceremony at FBI training for Philippine military officers, the trainor speak of the grave challenges facing the officers to carry out their missions. Unlike, the FBI which has clear ground rules and control of various component in a tactical situation (including media), the trainor leave the control subject back to the officers who should be (sugar coated – he was smiling) experts in dealing with NPA or Abus. Translation – you follow your political officer rules.
In short, there is selective application as opposed to uniform, wider application depending who is calling the shots.
“Last time I checked, this is also being practiced in the great land of U.S. of A. of D0d0ng, am I right?”
Not against its own people, in its own territory.
“Not against its own people, in its own territory.”
Oh yeah, because you just ship them to Guantanamo, Egypt, or Jordan.
the rights of man? we cannot talk about the “rights” without mentioning the “obligations”. human existence is not a one-sided coin. every right carries with it a corresponding responsibility. what is wrong with a flawed society is that its members are focused solely on their rights while ignoring, or even resisting, compliance with their individual responsibilities. freedom has been described as having “the will to be responsible for oneself”.
both the french and the universal declarations of human rights are not just a list of unfettered freedoms that individuals have, but also of things they must observe and obey. as one u.s. sc justice puts it, “your right ends where the tip of my nose begins”.
PSI and d0d0ng: There is a long continuum from (a) we are friends, it benefits the both of us to help each other; to (b) we are friends; it benefits me to help you even if do not help me; to (c) you are not my friend now, but I will help you; to (d) you are not my friend now, but I can tolerate your presence; to (e) you treat me as your enemy, but I can tolerate your presence; to (f) you are my enemy who because your actions are to kill me, then I have to keep you away (in jail if necessary), away from myself and mine and where I know where you are always; to (g) you are my enemy who because your actions are to kill me, then I will be ready to kill you if it comes to that.
cvj: On this thought … regulatory …. to make travel insurance in favor of the passenger mandatory (with payout of at least 3 million, maybe up to 10 million). There is a “but”.
Many people do not need life insurance (except to cover burial costs). The purpose of life insurance is to protect those survivors have a financial-dependence on the person who dies. For example, KG will need enough life insurance to provide cash to ensure the well-being of his children until they reach adult-status (as well as welfare of his spouse). A 16-year old student (who is the dependent, not the breadwinner) does not need life insurance. A 72-year old whose children are all grown and supporting themselves also does not need life insurance. A 39-year old bachelor who has no obligations to provide monthly support-checks (not to children, parents, siblings or “others”) also does not need life insurance.
The state has been sponsoring military tactical operations (extra judicial means) from Palparan method to para-military solution. Example, Kuratong Baleleng was initiated by the Philippine Army 101st to combat muslim and communist insurgency in Misamis and Zamboanga at the beginning. It was a success story to turn the enemies away from towns and cities. – Dodong
I think Kuratong Baleleng is not a military creation. It had been there all along, engaged in notorious activities, but at the same time was doing a Robinhood work for ordinary folks who have been neglected by govt. The military just rode on its popularity, trying to manipulate it to do its own bidding. But certainly fighting the Muslims in Mindanao is not one of them. You may be referring to the Ilaga, a paramilitary group that fought the Barracuda and Blackshirts (Muslim paramilitary/vendetta groups).
But you are right there, regardless of religious persuasionevery person should enjoy human rights and freedom. Even criminals should be treated with decency as human beings. That’s the spirit in a true democracy!
“Oh yeah, because you just ship them to Guantanamo, Egypt, or Jordan”
You are lost on the issue that Philippine military is killing Filipinos as sponsored by the State within its own territory.
sulpicio lines is insured with Oriental Assurance valid from August 16, 2007 to August 15 this year.
benefits to passenger and victims family:
the family of victims listed on the vessel’s manifest are entitled to receive P200,000 in insurance compensation.
It also entitles the kin to additional benefits as well. These include an added P20,000 in burial benefits and another P20,000 in repatriation expenses.
On the other hand, injured passengers are entitled to an added P50,000 compensation.
Marina warns Sulpicio against having victims’ kin sign compensation waivers….
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/105450/Marina-warns-Sulpicio-against-having-victims-kin-sign-compensation-waivers
about samar bad roads…
is the result of corruption and utilization of poor service. roads will not last a lifetime. conflict of interest exist between the politician and contractor. very common even until now. no actual bidding and bidders have no history of quality service. initial projects were not disclosed to public until public complained the result of the project. the cycle will continue. the best thing that happened between samar and leyte in terms of transport.. is the san juanico bridge ( marcos time)
Di ba sinabi ko na pano tayo mag gather ng lumot?
kukuha ba tayo sa dagat?
I know brackish water would do, so this has to be near the shorelines as well.
sa sugar cane, pagkain ba ito?
madami artificial sweeteners, meron nga lang sa sugar din kinukuha tulad ng splenda,sugar cane vinegar can be replaced by sukang paombong the problem is gagamitin din ito para sa cocodiesel.
from a columnist who used to be an insurance guy.
Every passenger in the ill-starred Princess of the Stars was insured for P200,000 under a group accident policy. Will paying this amount wipe away all of Sulpicio Lines’ liabilities for a passenger’s death, especially if the Board of Marine Inquiry rules that Sulpicio was negligent?
I do not think so.
The passenger’s kin had better be careful when he signs the claim release. This paper should refer to the accident policy only. It should not free Sulpicio of any and all other liabilities. The kin’s lawyer should guard against this.
……………………………………………………………
The insurance policy that could have covered all of Sulpicio’s liabilities is Protection and Indemnity. P&I covers every conceivable liability. It covers unlimited liability to passengers and crew (including loss of wages). Personal injury and property damage to third parties are covered.
If the ship rams a pier or another vessel, that is covered in full. If a vessel is diverted from its intended course because of mechanical trouble, the extra expense is recoverable from the P&I policy.
Of course, a P&I cover is expensive. But a prudent ship owner pays it because it is far, far more expensive to carry those liability risks all by yourself, as Sulpicio has surely realized by now.
But Sulpicio does not have a P&I cover on the Princess of the Stars and the rest of the fleet.
…………..
Sulpicio had to apply to enter a ship(s) into the P&I Club, a London-based cooperative enterprise of ship owners worldwide. A basic requirement is: the ship has to pass the rigid rules of a so-called classification society.
There are about nine such societies, with branch offices in Manila. I know the names of only three, Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, American Bureau of Shipping and Bureau Veritas.
A society has to approve the plans of a ship to be built. It supervises the construction. Then, the hull and machinery are “classed.†This classification has to be maintained though the life of the ship to keep its membership in the P&I Club.
Apparently, none of the Sulpicio fleet is classed and has ever been entered into the P&I club. And even if the fleet qualified for membership, the P&I Club would have thrown out Sulpicio a long time ago because of its terrible loss experience over the past 20 years or so.
about the records of congress
I asked Congresssman ruffy biazon (in his blog)about the inquiry and pending bills.
I will paste his reply:
Has this senate bill of your dad has a counterpart in the congress?
Biazon filed Senate Bill No. 2417 which seeks to create the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) – an independent body and non-regulatory agency that would ensure thorough and impartial investigations of transportation accidents.
Yes, I filed HB 77. Ironically, it’s been pending since July 2007 (there hasn’t been even one hearing on it) in the committee that’s investigating the MV Princess of the Stars tragedy. That’s why on the day of the hearing, I issued a statement urging the committee to focus on the legislation which the inquiry could produce. During the hearing, I mentioned that there are bills currently pending that we just need to act on.
During the hearing, once congressman berated the Coast Guard, “Why are you acting only when people are killed?”. I was a bit ashamed for the institution with that remark.
Because nine years ago, the Board of Marine Inquiry which investigated the sinking of MV Princess of the Orient (another Sulpicio Lines vessel), the Board recommended in its final report the creation of a Transportation Safety Board-Maritime Division to replace the BMI itself.
The last statement of that report said that many of their recommendations need to be acted upon immediately by COngress…if not, we can be sure that such tragedies will be repeated in the future.
Well, it seems the BMI was prophetic…the proposals were unacted upon and nine years later, another Sulpicio Lines ship sinks.
How can Senator Escudero’s coast guard bill be reconciled with your dad’s coat guard bill.where your dad wants the coast guard to be under the DND and escudero(maybe the rest) wants it to be under the DOTC.
Well, one has to give in. My version of the bill establishes the PCG under DOTC. I guess I would have to invoke my privilege as a son for the father to give in. he he!
lastly if trillanes can’t legislate , can he still file? ano ang mangyayari sa bill na ito:
14th Congress
Senate Bill No. 1944
DEPARTMENT OF MARITIME AFFAIRS ACT
Filed on December 7, 2007 by Trillanes IV, Antonio “Sonny†F.
Sen. Trillanes can still file the bill. It would just be unfortunate that he wouldn’t be able to defend it himself.
With regard to the bill, it would depend now on the committee chair to act on it.
We filed that bill before, but the creation of a new department is really difficult. The cost involved in establishing a new department will have difficulty finding space in an already tight budget.
There are other bills filed that would address the needs of the maritime industry, such as the codification of maritime laws (HB 76), rationalization of all maritime and admiralty agencies and creation of admiralty courts (HB 87), establsihment of a maritime and ocean affairs center under DOTC (HB 73)and of course, the PCG and NTSB bills. I filed those in the House of Representatives.
congrats to manolo for taking MBA…
In today’s world, the candidate’s qualification that is most beneficial to
everyone, anywhere, is efficiency in money management. Anything else is
secondary. Not choosing a candidate with a solid background in economics and management is foolhardy. Economics or business administration background should be a condition sinequa- non for most candidates today. His managing proficiency  or the lack of it  will reflect on how skillfully he will manage the public affairs and your tax money, once in power.
The poor financial health of our country ( inequality of income and unemployment) is a result of a mismatch of talents. Gloria must have her team equip with economics and business skills or else, her talent is also a mismatch of her very own team. Thus the team is non existence or obsolete.
leytenian,
try looking up Occam’s razor.
leytenian,
ikaw sa tingin ko nag mba ka, at feel na feel mo sa mga words na sinisingit mo sa comments mo.
But,by admitting that you let others do the budget for you is normal for a higher up,but it is not normal not to know how to prepare it.(for a higher up with an mba degree)
the budget needs justification,ilan taon na justification na ang nadinig mo.
dapat marunong ka na mag budget nyan.
if that is a way you run your company,how can you expect me to listen to you on how a government should be run.
UPn (at 4:15am), what i’m more interested in is the price signalling function that mandatory insurance (given an accurate insurance appraisal) would provide. Karl’s comment (at 7:04 am) on how Sulpicio should have had Protection and Indemnity cover, is relevant particularly this sentence:
Sulpicio’s inability to qualify for P&I Insurance given its track record would have been a very useful signal to the passenger (or regulator). Unfortunately, the regulators did not make such insurance cover mandatory, hence the market failure.
The Rights of Man according to our Charter:
Section 1
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Section 1 Charter of Rights of Freedoms:
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Here, the Charter is specific as to the limits, that they should be:
1. Reasonable within the context of a Free and Democratic Society and
2. The Limit is Justified.
Prescribed by law, means that the limits should either be prescribed by code, common law or statutory law that can stand the Challenge to its constitutionality or had already stood the challenge. Or the courts should establish what is the justified limits according to the standard of Community at the time the case comes before them..
“the regulators did not…” equals “regulatory failure”.
cvj: you really do not have to work very hard to claim Pinas is beset with market failure regarding information that save lives. Just think smoking. Think pre-natal care.
UPn (at 9:35am and 9:40am) which underlies the crucial role of government in creating, shaping and sustaining markets. The absence of proper regulation and its enforcement leads to market failure. That’s why i think government regulation and the market mechanism are not necessarily opposites but in many ways, complementary and mutually reinforcing.
Now to remember about Princess Stars. Its load-factor at time-of-mishap was only 40%. Market-failure notwithstanding, another “strong wind” had affected the magnitude of the disaster —- competition from Cebu Pacific and other airlines.
also that apparently, the income of Pinas travellers have risen to a point where a large (enough) number can afford the peso-premium of air travel over Sulpicio fares [ evidence : from plus-80% load-factor to below-50%-load-factor. ]
“Regulatory” (per KG’s blogposts about bills still pending in congress) has been weak and slow.
Article 10â€â€No-one should be harassed for his opinions, even religious views, provided that the expression of such opinions does not cause a breach of the peace as established by law.
September mssacres:
http://www.thenagain.info/WebChron/westeurope/SeptMassacres.html
Article 8â€â€The law must introduce only punishments that are strictly and indisputably necessary; and no one may be punished except in accordance with a law instituted and published before the offence is committed, and legally applied.
Marriages republicains:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_marriage
I dont want to rain on your Bastille day parade, but it’s best to consider what really went on instead of the romantic pictures in our heads of what this revolution did and what the revolutions that followed its ‘principles’.
Upn (at 9:48 am), that ‘only 40%’ still translates to 800 lives lost and is little comfort to the victims of this government and market failure. If the market was working correctly (via insurability or insurance premium price signals), those 800 lives would have been spared.
KG,
I don’t think one can graduate with an MBA if one will not know how to prepare it. It’s actually basic.
In addition to Manolo’s justification.
The typical MBA will include in its curriculum advance courses such as finance, accounting, marketing, HR, R&D and organizational behavior. It also includes some soft skills classes to help form future political leaders besides training /managing local government units on how to analyze and solve economic situations. it also prepares them on how to deal and manage change especially the current ills of globalization.
Political managers need to propose solutions to problems and situations that are constantly changing in our surrounding (problem solving). In addition, an MBA degree can promote ethical conducts in our society by incorporating social responsibility, risk management and environmental sustainability issues into all of its units or departments. These are courses not found in any other degrees unless one will specialize.
Advance knowledge of macroeconomics,, microeconomic, statistics, constitutional law, income tax, advance business planning, budgeting, knowledge of general culture and humanities, the ability to manage change and work under uncertain situations, and the ethical commitment towards society and the environment are among the best.
Politicians prompt hundreds upon hundreds of important legislative actions every day that changes the inner workings of our towns, cities, and regions. Also, most politicians are highly visible community figures who must feel at ease speaking in front of large groups and making tough decisions under close public scrutiny.
The whole package of knowledge will definitely help politicians to be more prepared to manage change, maintain or grow.
there’s really more… it also includes outsoursing, merging, partnerships, types of corporations, rule of law, contracts, negotiations, international trade and many more. it covers everything.
upn, re: your questions on local government revenue, you may find executive order 723 interesting:
http://www.ops.gov.ph/records/#EO
leytenean: don’t forget the rolodex, the language of bullshitting, and how to hold a drink. If you finish the MBA and have not learned these 3 skills, your education is seriously incomplete.
those are dvance UP N . needs CEU’s for that. lol
Apart from qualification, a leader should be able to feel the people’s pulse and that can only be a Gift from God.
mlq3: thanks for that link. The executive order tells me that the IRA funds to the LGU’s were not denied, they were delayed. Now, damage is done when funds are delayed, (the LGU’s have to find (and pay the transaction costs for the) pesos to meet their cash-flow requirements) but “delayed” apparently is consistent with the powers granted to Malacanang. Section 2 – monetization again reiterates that the LGU’s can go to the trustee banks so they can monetize “now” the pesos they will receive later from the Treasury.
I actually think that’s the essence of an MBA, kinda like a finishing school for Ateneans.
“I think Kuratong Baleleng is not a military creation. You may be referring to the Ilaga”.
Christian Ilaga is the brainchild of military tactician and UP baron Ferdinand Marcos and so was the Jabidah massacre and Martial law. Kuratong Baleleng was created in 1986 by the Philippine Army 101st. I have generations of military relatives including 2 generals.
Hawaiianguy, D0d0ng, when i was in Misamis Occidental back in 1993, a resident told me that the ‘godfather’ of Kuratong Baleleng was an AFP General (his name skips me right now).
What is happening????? The sector of the economy with the highest number of mathematicians, economists and business managers with PHD’s – the financial sector in the U.S. is going bust. Mr Public is now having to rescue these guys behind Mr. Market…..
How did a guy with no experience in either of these disciplines, FDR, solve the problems then created by the then masters of exchange of mankind’s goods, then in 1930….
Which maven with a boatload of Phd’s do you see who will have to preside over these times when demand destruction becomes an imperative.
Capitalism’s penchant for creative destruction is weaving its way throughout the globe.
To save it you have to destroy !!!!!!!!!!!!!
leytenean: on “…being able to feel the people’s pulse”. A bureaucracy that depends on gifts from God to read the people’s pulse are sitting ducks doomed to make serious mistakes. “Feel the people’s pulse” is a skill that can be taught. In fact, University of Michigan has been actively teaching it to China for the past few years.
Kuratong Baleleng was created in 1986 by the Philippine Army 101st.
I remember another group coddled by the army to fight the communists: the cultish Tadtad, so named because of their penchant for chopping commies into little pieces. When I was in Zambo sur riding on the back of a dump truck, a group of them hitched a ride, armed with long bolos and sporting red headbands. They started talking to each other and my companion at the back who understood the language grew quiet. When they got off, I asked him what they were saying. He said one of them was scolding the other for cutting off a head too soon.
agree UP N , everything can be taught.
but for one reason… the result of the collective ( team) performance do not reflect the people’s pulse. I am seeking for the gift of God… it could be the Youth.
http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=132607
cvj: Of course, you know that you are an elitist, right? Evidence — the number of times you present your point of view as automatically correct.
There is an assumption buried in this sentence :
“Capitalism’s penchant for creative destruction is weaving its way throughout the globe.”
Under FDR, US became the principal arms supplier and key financier of allies which dramatically opened new opportunities, achieved full employment and vast expansion of industries unparalled in history. The irony US became the most powerful at the time of chaos. Many scientists believed that our generation is dealing with 3 theories namely, relativity, quantum mechanics and chaos. Capitalist exploited chaos (profitability peak at chaos).
Profitability Peak at Chaos and No economy in the world is decoupled.
http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/2008/Asian-Economies-Hit20mar08.htm
Like the crash of ’29, its all about excessive greed. The financial geniuses got carried away making money, they forgot their common sense. In simple terms, you cannot pool substandard risks and re-package them as improved risks. First sign of trouble, this sub-prime segment will default. They don’t care, they’re already bad credit anyway.
Why this time this stagflation is different. When the term stagflation was first used after the oil crisis of 1973 the economies of the West responded by cutting their use of oil and finding newer sources of crude in the North sea and elsewhere. Both these actions cut the influence of OPEC then. The Iranian revolution brought the other oil shock.
But oil demand was predominantly coming from the West. This time it is different. There is more demand from China, India and the GCC countries themselves. Supply situation is tight for many reasons. 1973 & 1978 oil crisis was political. This time it is fundamental with the dollar crisis making it worse.
There is no question the repeated debasing of the dollar since Nixon then Reagan and now this similar attempt to save the domestic economy of the U.S. has its unintended consequences.
Since the unit of account for commodities is the dollar and the international settlement of trade is still denominated in dollars the resource based countries are reeling from the inflationary effects of too many dollars. To save the U.S. from deflation it has to create inflation and thus the internationality of the dollar is creating this massive waves of inflation for the rest of the world.
This time the solution of the Volker years demand destruction (high interest rates) resulted in the fall of Marcos.
The Philippines is till in the cross hairs of a demand side jolt in the form of high interest rates that will have to come.
All those bonds issued during the last few years of low interest rates will have to be repriced in the bond markets. Hence you saw the shorting of the bond markets in the Philippines that resulted in the weakening of the peso.
Low interest rates = high bond prices. High interest rates = lower bond prices.
Hence Big Mike and GMA will have to make sure that the budget deficit is severely limited as higher interest rates are on the way. Even if the budget deficit (as far as the GAA is concerned) is balanced interest rates have to rise.
This would be a perfect time for an agricultural revolution in the country.
Forget the urban areas. They can fend for themselves.
No amount of policy planning that does not start with getting the primary sector in shape- agriculture – and asset reform in the primary sector will get anywhere. Forget about plantation agriculture or the Danding model as it will not work to give high incomes to the largest number. Small owner owned farms are the most productive.. The issue of economies of scale do count where we ares still labor intensive in the primary sector.
That is the only way. Intensive farming requires absolute control and possession of the means with adequate support and parameters to achieve productivity. Only persons with the knowledge that the produce of labor will accrue to them will work hard to raise productivity.
No more photo -ops of Yap planting rice. Those tillers out there know what to do. they have waiting long for a revolution to come along to change THE POLICY FRAMEWORK from consumption for a few to incomes for the many and production for all.
Let the productive forces loose and they will respond.
“Like the crash of ‘29, its all about excessive greed. The financial geniuses got carried away making money, they forgot their common sense. In simple terms, you cannot pool substandard risks and re-package them as improved risks. First sign of trouble, this sub-prime segment will default. They don’t care, they’re already bad credit anyway.”
Sub prime mortgages account for less than 10% of all mortgages in the U.S. Most were written during 2004-2006.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have far more stringent requirements for mortgages. They are not involved in the sub prime crisis.
Without government intervention the company could very collapse. Why????
Why not let the market go to a hard landing which would be demand destruction on a scale unseen since the 1930′s. Postponing the inevitable would prove to be more dangerous in the end.
Sooner or later the Volker model will have to be used and it will be painful too.
The last few days have seen the rising loss of confidence in U.S. Banks. That can get contagious.
UPn, what assumption?
So you said it yourself Leytenian, you have an MBA degree.
are just playing dumb,in your as if you were born yesterday comments?
para saan yung mga binato mo sakin na mba subjects?????
are those to impress me,or the others who think you are clueless???
have you looked up Occam’s razor like I asked you to?
keep it simple,……..!!! K.I.S.S.!
As i have been explaining in the previous entry, payment of the IRA to LGU is delayed due to paperwork requirement or timing difference.
the statistics shown in the previous post about the budget where cut-off was 2007 does not reflect the financial transactions for the whole fiscal period of 2007-2008 and therefore not all reimbursements, clearances of advances and release of more financial subsidy for the LGU are fully accounted for.
This is what i have been harping about. getting the pulse by using more scientific results from the survey and not just because one taxi driver says so, one friend thinks so and a group of biased columnists declared so.
and the process is not complete if the reports or news will fail to mention how many says so and what is the confidence level and margin or error.
so if you find me pooh pooh-ing some comment just because the commenter find their opinion similar to a few and states as if it is already the universal truth, it is because my training is more on quantification of the opinions and subjecting them to validity.
Once mlq3 takes the MBA and has taken the subjects, quanti and research i am inclined to believe that there will be a change of outlook.
BTW, the some nonthesis programs do not really mean you do not have to
prepare a major paper and module types can make you concentrate on one subject at a time but classes are hectic because of the shortened period of attendance.
Some World Leaders talk about protecting the environment, some about conserving the beauty of Nature, but most of them just talk about them, but would not commit..Today Premier McGuinty has committed 225,000 sq. kms. of the his Province for permanent protection from development and this area is rich with Mineral Resources and Forest Products.
http://www.thestar.com/News/Ontario/article/460305
Ontario has made the largest conservation commitment in Canadian history, setting aside at least half the Northern Boreal region – 225,000 *square kilometres – for permanent protection from development, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced yesterday.
* approx. 21% of the province area..
It’s an area almost the size of the United Kingdom.
“It is, in a word, immense. It’s also unique and precious. It’s home to the largest untouched forest in Canada and the third largest wetland in the world,” McGuinty said.
The announcement is globally significant in the fight against climate change, advocates say. Nearly 100 billion tonnes of carbon are stored in the Northern Boreal region and another 12.5 million tonnes are absorbed each year.
These lands remain, for the most part, untouched by development. But with increasing world demand for resources, it was just a matter of time before mining and logging inched up from the south.
Now, those resource industries will be barred from half the land and have to work with the government and local First Nations communities to create sustainable development plans for the rest, McGuinty said.
Over the next 10 to 15 years, the province will work with scientists and communities to map out the specific lands that are the most valuable as carbon storehouses and for species protection and which lands have the greatest resources and should be developed.
“We’re going to strike the right balance between conservation and development,” McGuinty said. In the interim, the government is relying on prospective developers’ respect for the laws governing Crown and First Nations lands to protect the region’s forests and wetlands.
The government will introduce legislation in the fall to reform the outdated mining act so all future mine developments will need approval of local First Nations (natives), which will get a share of the revenues.
to PSI: this sentence is not true : In simple terms, you cannot pool substandard risks and re-package them as improved risks.
Go check some statistics books and you’ll see why the sentence above is NOT true.
Also note that there were buyers of these “re-packaged” notes with substandard risks. The buyers were sophisticated, too (i.e. the buyers were institutions with their own analysts with graduate degrees).
The scheme fell apart more because of the valuations and not as much because of the math.
UPn, what PSI said is true. I don’t think PSI was criticizing the portfolio approach per se but the process of repackaging the loans (i.e. securitization and re-securitization), where valuable information is lost.
http://www.cvjugo.blogspot.com/2008/01/ingenuity-of-market-primer-on-subprime.html
It’s the simple lesson of garbage in, garbage out which the financial wizards ignored. They believed too much on their own sophistication.
‘And so when I found out you could take an Australian MBA without going to Australia, my interest got piqued. The University of Western Australia sends its professors to Manila to conduct classes designed to appeal to the working professional. This is really quite an unprecedented opportunity: to break out of our insular confines, without having to leave the home islands.’
If mlq3′s future classmates are mostly Filipinos from UP, La Salle or Ateneo then I think mlq3 is better off taking the MBA in Australia.
cvj: I was not commenting on what I thought PSI said. I was commenting on what PSI said. [ Ain't got that gift --- mind-reading. ]
Securitization is like MV Princess Stars. When operating safely within the boundaries of its designed capabilities (waves under 1 meter, competent captain, winds less than 20 mph, maintenance “up to snuff”) no problem.
Subject securitization to serious stress — who knows what happens next?
Garbage-in/garbage-out — human-interface operator-problem — not a math problem. [ My opinion.... ]
——————–
speaking in their funny accent, spouting highfalluting terms.
mlql3′s future classmates will gain a lot from Q3′s participation. So will the professors. I can not imagine Q3 being intimidated by white-devils
cvj: I keep getting the impression that you are old-school in business thinking, I imagine like the Chinese that Lee Kuan Yew says are, well, old-school. I’ll be the last to say that there is no place during these days and time and given the diversity of opportunities for old-school business transactions where the vetting process includes checking out the other side’s reliability based on their last-name pedigree and recommendations from the people who have dealt with them before.
This may be the explanation (that you were not looking for), a reason why many of Pinas old-money keeps thinking of malls, office-buildings, beer/soft-drinks, cigarettes. haciendas. They do not want to operate outside the boundaries of their capabilities.
As the securitization/re-securitization has illustrated (and likewise the Internet-bubble a few years before that, and the Tulip bubble of many many years ago) there is wisdom when cvj and a number of Pinas “old-money” folks say they do … not want to operate outside the boundaries of their comfort-zone.
UPn, as far as businessmen go, the local Taipans are timid and lackluster compared to their Taiwanese or Korean counterparts who have built world class industries. However, i don’t think you can compare the Taiwanese and Korean industrialist with the Wall Street financial-types since the latter are not entrepreneurs but speculators who don’t build any real value, but rather shuffle values around producing bubbles in the process with the now familiar consequences.
Your analogy with Sulpicio (at 12:25 am) is applicable only if it was Sulpicio itself that created Typhoon Frank which is clearly not the case. The stresses that the financial system subjected itself to are not because of an outside phenomenon but is self-generated via the process of securitization, speculation and re-securitization and further speculation.
– cvj
You’re right, even in Ozamiz almost every street corner thug knows who protects the Kuratong Baleleng (KB). But there’s one up there, a senator, the same guy who is charged with the rubout and murder of some of its members. But this group, I learned, is a break-away faction – like a lost command, which has earned the ire of the central KB.
Still, I can’t make sense of Dodong’s claim that the military is the one that created the KB in 1986. I’ve lived around the area and know who’s behind it, a mafia-like group cum-vigilante, one of whose notable members became Ozamiz City’s high ranking official. The patriarch of KB was assassinated by a military guy, who was in turn liquidated by his kin with dispatch.
Whatever, human rights are frequently violated when one talks of this group and its military protectors.
“With the publication of the Lloyd’s database record on Sulpicio, it’s becoming clearer to me what the source of the ‘market failure’ may have been. Either it was the lack of passenger travel insurance, or if ever there was, a travel insurance premium that did not reflect the actual risks of travelling via Sulpicio. I’m now wondering why no such proper insurance appraisal has been done considering that the info is already in Lloyd’s database.”
With or without insurance coverage, a transport company is liable for damages under due care principle. This is regardless wether the transport company is at fault.
Insurance is also not a factor on the decision to travel. In fact, the riding public have no idea of the carrier insurance and its amount.
The role of the government is to set a MINIMUM requirement for third party liability on all carriers, so when accident happens the riding public will have the minimum coverage to begin with and can be paid prior to actual settlement. Actual liability will be settled in court which can take years to determine.
Comprehensive insurance is only required if one company has business interest over the other such as the case of a bank financing the loan to a transport carrier to cover the loan balance.
Sulpicio as it owned its ship, did not need to have insurance except for third party liability. Insurance company limit their loss exposure by capping the amount of group or umbrella coverage to certain dollar amount. With only the third party liability plus a cap amount, the premium is not that prohibitive.
“your questions on local government revenue, you may find executive order 723 interesting”.
Under the IRA monetization program, the local government can opt to get a lump-sum net of fees today than receive the total amount in equal installments over 7 years.
Very interesting:
1. Naturally, the local officials whose term are less than 7 yrs would rather use the discounted amount right now than have their successors (could be political opponent) enjoying the receipts.
2. Facilitators from DBM, DOF and DILG can get a cut.
3. The discount (IRA less Trustee Bank releases) becomes a windfall amount sitting at the President discretionary “Unprogrammed Fund” (to support her blank checks).
“Still, I can’t make sense of Dodong’s claim that the military is the one that created the KB in 1986. I’ve lived around the area and know who’s behind it, a mafia-like group cum-vigilante, one of whose notable members became Ozamiz City’s high ranking official. The patriarch of KB was assassinated by a military guy, who was in turn liquidated by his kin with dispatch.”
I found a similar claim in this link:
http://www.pcij.org/imag/PublicEye/kuratong.html
supremo,
“If mlq3’s future classmates are mostly Filipinos from UP, La Salle or Ateneo then I think mlq3 is better off taking the MBA in Australia.”
do you have any other reason why mlq3 may want to go to Australia? i am curious.
“I can’t make sense of Dodong’s claim that the military is the one that created the KB in 1986.”
Even NPAs have to raid police stations for arms. In a country where guns and ammos are illegal, the military has the monopoly and has the information on who possess the weapons. Any armed group have to be well financed to begin with. The 101st army provided arms and allowances to Kuratong (bamboo instrument to alert) Baleleng (young girls) to counter insurgency. KB became the paid assassins for the army. A change in army commander changed the support system. The group turned to robbery and hijacking. Leader Onkoy Parojinog was later killed by another military unit PC 466th over a cockfight. Aldong (the son) took over.
“UPn, as far as businessmen go, the local Taipans are timid and lackluster compared to their Taiwanese or Korean counterparts who have built world class industries. However, i don’t think you can compare the Taiwanese and Korean industrialist with the Wall Street financial-types since the latter are not entrepreneurs but speculators who don’t build any real value, but rather shuffle values around producing bubbles in the process with the now familiar consequences.”
Of the richest Americans only Warren Buffet is in the investment industry.
The rest are in IT and retail.
Of the richest Asians: The richest from HongKong although has a diversified portfolio ,built his empire on the container port terminals; the next richest Asian an Indian national is an It mogul.
I don’t know the criteria for forbes,because I don’t see any Bolkiah or any Arab there.
why talk about securitization, the closest thing we can talk about securitization is the SPV law which was only meant to transfer bad debts of banks to another party.
If you mean corporate securities;kaya madikit pa din ang pangalan ng mga taipan at mga sikat na apelyido ay dahil mahilig tayo sa name recall,di dahil sila ang may ari ng corporations or the business is actually family run.Kaya nga na uso IPO, pero you can not escape the thought that most are still family run, dahil sa listahan ng mga richest pinoy.
======================================
Tulad ng sinabi ko Ports involved ang richest asian on forbes .
Kaya wala akong nakitang taga Dubai sa top 25 ay dahil they have been busy spending. The US might have turned them down but there are plenty of fish in the sea; dyan tayo pwede makisabay through Ricky Razon,yun nga lang Dubai is handling ICTSI’s rival Asian Terminals,dirty as it might sound Razon should partner himself with Dubai to stay alive in the Ports business. If Razon can do it alone,then better.
Sa IT, we have been the next best thing in outsourcing .If we play our cards right we can do it on our own.
=====================================
Madami pa tayong kakaining bigas,so better solve that first.
In the seventies OPEC and oil crisis lang ang napansin, but there were agricultural shocks, like the sudden problem in Peruvian Anchovies were most fertilizers then were based.
=================================
FDR was mentioned, he acted fast after blaming everything on Hoover
nagpakitang gilas sya on his first 100 days.
Everyone was depressed, they did not want to invest.
he had this emergency banking act were 66 to 75 % of the banks reopened , he separated commercial banking from investment banking,he created FDIC,etc etc.
The subprime mess also went to Europe.
http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/global_market_brief_subprime_crisis_goes_europe
Sure, Fannie Mae,and FreddieMac were not exposed to the Sub prime lending market from 2004-2006.
Can they escape it now?
Many are having bad credits,so the subprime lending market, can be the way to go.
The recent foray into the subprime mortgage market by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has renewed the debate over their role in the affordable housing arena. The subprime market targets borrowers with credit problems or limited credit histories who do not qualify for cheaper, prime loans. Fannie and Freddie traditionally have purchased a small share of these loans, but this figure is expected to grow significantly in the next few years. Proponents say that the two huge intermediaries can bring better pricing for some subprime borrowers and help to curb predatory lending. Competitors and some analysts say they will only cream the least risky borrowers, making other subprime loans even more costly to borrowers who need them. Still others forecast that a bigger role in the subprime market may pave the way for making traditional prime loans more expensive for some borrowers.
Pinas also offers 15-year, 20-year and 30-year fixed rate loans.
————————-
GSIS offers 6% loan
By Cynthia Balana
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:29:00 04/27/2008
MANILA, Philippinesâ€â€The Government Service Insurance System will charge only 6-percent interest for 15-year housing loans, the GSIS said Saturday.
Guesting on Vice President Noli de Castro’s weekly radio program, “Para Sa Iyo, Bayan,†Joseph Andres, GSIS vice president for business development and accounts recovery, said the agency’s board approved a program of fixed-interest rates for housing loans to enable low-income members to own homes.
For GSIS members wishing to avail themselves of the 20- to 30-year payment period, the interest rate would be 8 percent, Andres said.
KG, Dodong
Thanks for the info. KG’s link is also very useful for those who don’t know much about Kuratong B. Actually, the people behind it were already known, feared – even venerated – in Ozamiz City before the formation of the group. They had been engaged in mafia-like activities (e.g., masyaw or illegal numbers game), the military just capitalized on their reputation.
However, compared to the deadly Ilaga and Alsa Masa (of Davao), KB is not as violent.
KG:
This is where I see the Forbes World’s billionaires. Two Filipinos – Lucio Tan/family and Henry Sy/family. Five from Singapore; thirteen Saudis (led by Prince Alwaleed); one from Oman; fourteen Aussies.
http://www.forbes.com/billionaires
The sub prime mortgage crisis was born in a decade-long housing boom fueled by low interest rates and excess liquidity. During these ‘boom’ years, mortgage brokers enticed by the lure of big commissions, talked buyers with poor credit into accepting housing mortgages with little or no down payment and without proper tax documentation and credit checks. And so the groundwork was established for the coming mortgage meltdown.
These loans, usually adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) were known as subprime mortgages. They typically cost two or three points above those with less-risky credit reports and carry interest rate structures with low ‘teaser rates’ for the first couple of years, followed by a reset to much higher rates. This RESET or JUMP, frequently resulted in raising the borrower’s monthly payment by as much as 100% and thereby making it financially impossible for him to handle.
The new homeowners saw a rising value of their homes during the initial year or so of their mortgages, and frequently took out home equity loans for extra cash.
In addition, banks and financial institutions often repackaged these debts with other high-risk debts and sold them to worldwide investors creating financial instruments called CDOs or collateralized debt obligations.
now the whole story began, starting in June of 2007 when two Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed….
UP N, what’s the downpayment for GSIS mortgage loan? i think it’s 50%? right. that’s very safe compared to US 3% down for FHA loans.
the blurb on Lucio Tan says Former engineer from Fujian Province in China started out mopping floors to put himself through school.
And of course, we all know Henry Sy is old-fashioned with his pre-disposition for malls. Both of these guys will be impressed with #462 Xiaofeng Peng from China and that USA-kid ex-Enron trader now a billionaire, too.
supremo, the clases i sat in are about half and half: half expats, half pinoys, and the pinoys are from varied backgrounds, one reason i liked the program.
“Once mlq3 takes the MBA and has taken the subjects, quanti and research i am inclined to believe that there will be a change of outlook.” The C at.
===============================================
Ohhh love this.!
to leytenean: One of my friends just declared bankruptcy 3 weeks ago. At 2 houses, he knew he was rich. At 4 houses, he knew he was just 2 years away from retiring. The 6th-house broke him (he got the last 4 with undocumented/no-income-verification loans and pumped-up valuations). 4 of the houses were already negative-cash at the teaser rates, then blam-blam-blam — the teaser-rates expired one after the other just as you described. He carried the last house for a full-year with no tenants using his credit card!!! All his credit-cards are now maxed-out; his net-worth is deadly-negative ( compared to Wow-I’m-rich!!! (from I-can’t-believe-this-house-costs-this-much!!! numbers)).
———————–
Pag-ibig loans : 30% down
http://www.lozaph.com/realtyph/2007/08/pag-ibig-housing-loan-program/
Karl (at 6:43am), by ‘Wall Street-financial types’ i wasn’t referring to the US entrepreneurs and industrialists.
Also, i don’t think we should evaluate our taipans by their net worth but by whether they are able to set-up local production capabilities. Malls and airlines-services are nice, but it would be better if we have our local counterparts to Nokia, Toyota etc. Lucio Tan, Gokongwei and Henry Sy have failed in this respect. It’s not entirely their fault since our government, unlike our more successful neighbors did not put in place an industrial policy that would have helped them along.
up n… oh wow, there’s a way out instead of bankruptcy. tell your friend to mitigate or modify his loans according to current market value and avail the new Fed/government package/assistance of lower interest rates. he has to show income though . income that would pay all of his mortgages on new monthly payments. the calculation of debt to income is 43%…
that’s the only way. he can keep it and sell it in two years. he must be in vegas or somewhere in california? if he is unemployed, then i’m not sure of what he is going to do. Bankcruptcy is common nowadays. another solution, is to find an investor as his partner ( like an LLP or LLC) to buy all his property at foreclosured price. Investor could be someone he knows, wil own 50% shares.. this require preparation of financial statement in his part.. like proposing a new business to an investor. corporation must be formed quickly …
have him call his old mortgage broker.. he should know all the deals out there. poor guy… information is crucial in time of crisis. there’s a lot of solution.another one is shortsale without hurting his credit.
UP N student:
i can’t help but share…. for example..
if one house has a mortgage balance of $800,000, that house will probably be appraised and valued according to recent sales ( recent sales are shortsales and foreclosed sales- about 40 to 50% off of mortgage balance) .
my estimate in california and the rest of the US will probably be at $450,000 as the new appraisal.( for the $800,000) . this new figure will then qualify to a lower payment of 5.6% for primary home and at fixed rate. he should do it that way… he will save his home and his family will not suffer ongoing stress. the hope is there. or he can call HUD.
amazing, isn’t it? $800K 3 years ago, now $450K? Buy-high/sell-low is a fast way to the poorhouse; with leverage the jet-fuel to get you there super-faster.
Up n… if he will foreclose it, the investors will grab it at $300,000 in a day and resale it at $400,000 after the US election or wait until the 3rd quarter of 09.
with those numbers, his bank will probably allow him to keep his home at $450,000. the bank will lose more if he will pursue to let go as in filing bankruptcy or go into foreclosure.
it’s amazing… the ripple effect is still coming. i haveard that a lot of our politicians were investing their money in US real estate… i hope it was not the people’s money.
another way to the poorhouse is to put your profitable business as collateral so you can open another business because you want to hire people.
[or your house; banks likes to take your house-personal residence as collateral]
Sabi na nga ba mali yung listing na natingnan ko ,di yung latest
Hawaiian guy, no problem.
leytenean: my friend who submitted for bankruptcy was always a renter. All the houses were “speculator” houses. he was a “flipper”, was making good money with flipping, Then he noticed the houses he had flipped (and the other houses his realtor was showing him) were ramping up in super-charge fashion. He felt bad that he had left so much profit on the table. He switched from his expertise — flipping — to a new model — buy-and-hold-for-longer (hey… hot market). He thought he could time things. He guessed wrong.
mlq3,
Go for it as long as you’re comfortable. All I’m saying is discussions, esp. heated discussions, among Filipinos in a setting like that tends to degenerate into mudslinging.
KG,
‘Sure, Fannie Mae,and FreddieMac were not exposed to the Sub prime lending market from 2004-2006.
Can they escape it now?’
Don’t worry about those 2 companies they will not go down. China and Russia are in too deep to the tune of $1 T in US treasuries. The US will not allow them to lose there money.
CVJ,
medyo naintindihan ko kaya hinighlight ko si Warren Buffet.
sya yumaman sya sa pagiging investor nya.even from that old listing.(wrong url)
since you can’t compare entreps and industrialist to the wall street guys, tama ka, we can’t.
====================
ourorry pero ang mga walang masyado pera,foreign partners din ang hin own version of toyota,etc.
sad story about the guy with the water ran car, 1969 ,pa yun natakot tayo sa mga oil rich country eh.
even our reversed engineering sucked,because it is only an imitation.
remember our version for Pajero,the Pareho
we almost had a fiber glass car called the conge car,di rin umubra.
we had a plan to have the pinoy suv,hanggang plano na lang
now how bout that electric jeepneys.
our own nokia? we have been manufacturing components of cellphone,computers for years.magaling naman tayo gumaya at magbutingting,ang lakas ng loob nga nating magbenta ng iphone kahit walang authorized na mag aayos nyan dito.(baka outdated na naman ako?) wala, wireless landline lang yata tayo eh.
pero it is cut throat mind you. nortel the canadian company that supplies our call center’s IP phones is or was in trouble(news can be history in a second)
why not make our own IT phones that is cost effective for prospective clients.
Ang sarap mangarap ng gising.
don’t worry me mga anak at apo naman yang mga taipan at billionaryo eh.
for the sme types utang ng katakotakot.and of course the occassional foreign partner.
yung microlending, we are masters of disasters di rin natin naayos,naging for ever lending.
most banks are reluctant to extend commercial credit even with collaterals or good credits. some banks are highly illiquid.
Karl, there’s nothing that the Japanese and Koreans can do that we can’t if pursued the same policies as them (with appropriate modification for our context). In the beginning, they also sucked but got better at producing stuff along the way. Even Finland’s Nokia took 17 years to be successful. The difference is that Japan and Korea addressed inequality first, and then industrialized. We haven’t done that necessary first step.
Sabi mo nga, kahit anong subukan natin pumapalpak. All through our various policy experiments these past one hundred plus years, what factor has remained constant? Isn’t it the presence of rent-seeking Oligarchs and inequality in Philippine Society? Kaya tama si hvrds in his comment above:
The first order of the day is asset-reform in agriculture. That’s why i think that this crisis is also a window of opportunity since it may finally force us to do the right thing out of desperation just like what happened in Vietnam in the late 80′s. (Puwera usog)
Question when private banks of shadow banks get into trouble why is the government obliged to rescue them?
Is it not an article of personal responsibility that both depositors and banker be held responsible for their actions whether they fail or not.
Si if you fell for the sales pitch since banks sell deposits and buy loans depositors are the buyers and if they do not keep tabs on their banks they deserve to lose their money.
John Mangun said that the passengers of Sulpicio made their choice and they paid for it with their lives.
What happened to accountability. I thought that in a free market there will always be winners and losers. To the wise and responsible go the winnings.
What gives??????
The people who bought their sub prime loans knew that the rates would reset. You go to a party with a huge buffet and you indulge.
The price for credit was set very low to get you to play.
Now the whole world is going to suffer for the excessive partying of America.
Dito naman, ramdam na ramdam and asenso. Ngayon naging Noah’s Ark at pantawid sa kahirapan.
A policy framework is supposed to be at the very least according to our set of rulers medium-term.
Wha happened????????
supremo, except when the inferiority complex of our kebabs comes in. one dynamic i noticed in the classes i observed was that the filipinos didn’t ask questions, were afraid to make comments, the foreigners were the ones who questioned the professor (i think most kebabs are still traumatized by the local tradition of professors sneering at students who dare ask for clarifications or who challenge their professors’ orthodoxy)
“You go to a party with a huge buffet and you indulge” – hvrds
Its bad enough that mortgage loans were granted to sub-prime borrowers in the U.S. What’s worse was when these loans were re-packaged (CDOs) and sold to worldwide investors.
That, created the contagion that crept up and battered the better quality assets, including bonds and equities. As KG said, Fannie and Freddie might have no sub-prime loans in their accounts, but could not escape its effects.
Talk of ” Little Houses in the Praire” bringing down Wall Street.
Kinda like what Ca T does. I hope our kababayans realize that such attitude is normally an attempt to hide a weakness on the part of their professors so it’s nothing to be traumatized about.
Wow…. The regulators are taking over the markets in the U.S. Man the real blood was not yet hitting the streets…..
What about the volume of call options in the oil futures that are all heading upwards and are the basis for price discovery ??????? Not likely.. Need to get Iran under control first…..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080716/bs_nm/sec_shortselling_dc
“WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. securities regulators issued an emergency rule on Tuesday to limit certain types of short selling in major financial firms, including Fannie Mae (FNM.N) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N).
“The rule is the latest effort by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to clamp down on market manipulation that some blame for the sharp declines in financial stocks and the demise of investment bank Bear Stearns in March.”
“The rule will go into effect on Monday, July 21, and last through July 29, although it could be extended to last up to 30 days. The SEC said it will consider rules to address short selling issues across the entire stock market.”
“The emergency rule applies to 19 financial firms including Lehman Brothers (LEH.N), Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Merrill Lynch (MER.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Citigroup Inc (C.N).”
“The SEC said that a loss of confidence in markets can lead to panic selling, which may be further exacerbated by certain types of short selling.”
U.S. regulators are saving the stock price of the Big Money Center Banks.
What about the poor consumer of oil products who are subject to the speculative price discovery in the futures market for oil.
Do they merit a bailout?????? With Big Oil in charge of the White House you think they will move?????
Man we are witnessing the largest example of crony capitalism on a massive scale that is humongous compared to our friend Alex Magno and his patrons Big Mike and GMA.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz101
The End of Neo-liberalism?
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Joseph E. Stiglitz
“NEW YORK – The world has not been kind to neo-liberalism, that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently, and serve the public interest well. It was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and the so-called “Washington Consensus†in favor of privatization, liberalization, and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly on inflation.”
“For a quarter-century, there has been a contest among developing countries, and the losers are clear: countries that pursued neo-liberal policies not only lost the growth sweepstakes; when they did grow, the benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top.”
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rogoff44
The World’s Runaway Train
by Kenneth Rogoff
…..A general rise in global demand will simply spill over into higher commodity prices, with little helpful effect on consumption. Isn’t this obvious? Yes, there is still a financial crisis in the US, but stoking inflation is an incredibly unfair and inefficient way to deal with it.
…….This runaway-train global economy has all the hallmarks of a giant crisis in the making – financial, political, and economic. Will policymakers find a way to achieve the necessary international coordination? Getting the diagnosis right is the place to start. The world as a whole needs tighter monetary and fiscal policy. It is time to put the brakes on this runaway train before it is too late.
CVj,
sorry me di ako nabura sa message ko sa yo.(sanay kana with almost three years of exchanges)
tulad ng sinabi ko madami pa tayong kakaining bigas.
let us take it literaly.
Karl, i agree
Missing in the back-and-forth discussions in the comments section about the US sub-prime mess and the overall downward valuation of US residential (mainly) real estate is the collateral effects they create among those homeowners who not only financed prior to all these but did so conservatively and were vetted strictly according to traditionally safe guidelines.
Because of short or quick sales, or forced sales, or worse, foreclosures and subsequent auction sales, overall valuation of neighborhoods, cities, and statewide, has been impacted negatively. Thus those we played by the rules have also seen their real estate equities vanish overnight. While this appears not to substantially affect the economy overall, it does erode greatly these people’s confidence in the economy, and their thoughts of the dream houses they thought they had purchased.
It would be interesting to find out from the aforesaid commenters if they have indeed been personally affected by all these developments. Last year, I was quite successful in disposing a property in Daly City CA held for over 20 years at a price almost 7 times its original purchase price. And using the proceeds to purchase into a new development about 70 miles away. Now, we have seen the valuation of that new house possibly down by 50% – all in a span of a single year!
In an ironically new twist, the valuation of the old house sold may have gone down, but definitely not as drastically as the new house. The issues could be whether the area is an older development as compared to newer ones. Or whether certain areas are insulated from too wide fluctuations because of limited supply or differing relative demands for housing.
Another property purchased in a new development over a 100 miles away going Sacramento way, done within the years of frenzied grants of sub-prime mortgages92004-2007), but again done conservatively ( with substantial down payment, income verification, and even acceptable debt-to-income ratio), we have seen its value diminished by about 30% over the past two years.
“..the losers are clear: countries that pursued neo-liberal policies not only lost the growth sweepstakes; when they did grow, the benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top.†– Joseph Stiglitz as quoted by hvrds
It was during FVR’s term that RP took hook, line, and sinker all the Washington-consensus prescriptions of free trade, privatization, and liberalization. The slogan then: enlarge the economic pie first and benefits will trickle down.
Erap was more circumspect and slanted towards pro-poor agenda: Erap Para sa Mahirap
PGMA seems to have taken the middle road as globalization reared its ugly head: employment-generating investments cum subsidies
There you go again Manolo.
I have had several foreign students in my class before.
Filipinos will always have the inferiority complex whether it is inside the classes or just attending a conference together with foreigners not because they were bullied by their professors or teachers. Many of them do not want to get embarrassed on the thought that they may be wrong.
The foreigners don’t mind. They will always have that superiority feeling.
But believe me, the noisy ones are those who do not excel in the program.
Kinda, paimpress lang.
Why have you seen me in action inside the classroom?
It is different when you traumatize the students because you discourage them from asking questions
It is different when you encourage them to talk and express their opinions by CHALLENGING THEM.
It is part of the training in the Graduate school. And when you are an expert in the subject, you are not bullied by the students who pretend that they are one, like some commenters here who hide behinds the links and quotations from other sources.
And in the graduate school, there is such a thing as simulation.
the Ca t: “… part of the training in graduate school”. If you mean that there is a formal class (and there are textbooks on the matter), can you post the titles (both of the class and of the books) ?
I can understand the “…kinda like what Ca T does” comment from cvj —the blogposts from you that I have encountered project an unfriendly bellicose “don’t tread on me!” attitude. Are you just practicing on this blogsite?
i don’t have to go to oz as cat pointed out, the course brings the aussies to manila.
cat, i’ve seen foreigners in their own classes in their own culture and so i do have a point of comparison, both in terms of the students’ own attitudes towards authority and the authorities’ own attitude to their students. and in any case it’s not the quiet grinds who always do well just as being talkative isn’t a sign of genuine ability.
I can give you several titles of different reference books on different subjects.
Unlike in the undergrad, professors should not be using one textbook, she should be ahead of several reference books to the graduate students.
I prepare my own syllabi and cases based on actual corporate environment. Many of the cases in the foreign-authored texbooks are not
applicable in the Phil. management environment.
I ask the students to present their case analyses from several viewpoints.
It depends on the professors how they will conduct the classes..by boring lecture of principles or by applying the principles as the graduate students relate them their experience.
By simulation, students are asked to role play in negotiation techniques and project presentation with some invited guests as the panel.
I do not assume the role of a professor/lecturer. I always assume the role of a moderator anddevil’sadvocate among students who are also managers ad professionals in their own respective fields.
…… can you post the titles . . . . .
I had an Iranian woman senior manager from one of the families close to the shah. 50% of the time, she’s very charming, and then there are times she would snarl :
Or if the other party did not belong to her chain of command, she’ll interrupt, then go with : ….. come on, John! Enough of the song-and-dance. There are people here who do have to get work done, you know!!!
UP n, I sense an attitude, Bro. My favorite was business policy where marketing, production, and human behavior techiques and approaches get integrated. Well, I probably dreamt to be CEO too much.
But I must admit; I was weak on quanti that’s why.
“Many of the cases in the foreign-authored texbooks are not
applicable in the Phil. management environment. ”
no wonder, management in the philippines do not exist. i can sense insecurity . the students will suffer if teachers think that foreign textbooks are not applicable to the Philippine management.
i’m just excited for manolo…the program is very diverse.. i like it. more power manolo.
Amadeo
“Because of short or quick sales, or forced sales, or worse, foreclosures and subsequent auction sales, overall valuation of neighborhoods, cities, and statewide, has been impacted negatively.”
very true… that’s paper losses.
“It would be interesting to find out from the aforesaid commenters if they have indeed been personally affected by all these developments.”
you are not alone. of course, it’s painful to think but my house is my house and i’m in here for the next 5-10 years…
Who said that management does not exist in the Philippines? It does.
Why will students suffer? Very stupid statement.
If the professor knows how to conduct classes which can make the students appreciate the differences in the management style, the students learn.
For example what is the management style of the Japanese managers compared to their Western counterparts. And did I mention text books? I mentioned about the cases found at the end of the chapter of the textbook.
NagMBA kaba talaga?
The cases that I prepared are only designed to the PHilippines Business Environment so the managers attending the classes can relate to the situations.
Who said that they are paper losses.
Properties put in shortsale are sold at less than the appraised or loan value. The proceeds are just enough to pay for the loan. What did the property owners lost, the house, and the payments that they have paid in the past.
This is also true for foreclosed properties because they are the same properties that may have been put up for short sale but there are no buyers.
The property owners lost the house and the money, they had amortized in all the years they’ve been paying.
These are not paper losses. These are actual money lost.
one will lose if one will sell. why would someone sell if the value is not there if they can afford the payments… ( paper losses).
Since this blog began with the Rights of Man, I think I’ll add something here for the ladies. A line from Macaulay, the Great British Reformer, Liberal Politician, Sharp-Witted Historian, Font of Many Wonderful Quotations and (I think) one of the first to call the Press the Fourth Estate:
“I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.”
(Just wanted to lighten up the conversation a bit)
marcelo, i’m not sure if you noticed it. it seems every thread in this blog, for the most part, begins and ends with discussions, or kilometric dissertations, on “economics”. it’s amazing how many armchair economists and “experrts” we have in the country, in general, and in this blog, in particular. little wonder that our country is in such an economic mess.
Ah no, you should not be so down on our dear compatriots.
Can you imagine what the discussions must be like on Indian, Israeli, Arab, French and Latin American blogs? Now those folks can talk and blog forever (I know. I’ve been to coffeeshops in many of those places, and in every one of them, some one is telling someone else what’s wrong with the government of the day).
So relax, and relish the exchange of ideas without the discomfort of having them attached to an acutal living and possibly onboxious person.
(Too bad, though, that a good cup of java can’t be part of this deal!)
putang ina
fuck america
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