Category: Economy

PNoy showed what a sore loser he is in his 6th and last SONA

July 28, 2015July 29, 2015 Ilda 107 Comments

Philippine President Benigno Simeon (BS) Aquino’s last state of the nation address (SONA) was pathetic. The captive audience had to sit through a series of blame-games, videos of individual testimonies mostly praising the current administration and, just when you thought it was over, the President enumerated all the people he wanted to thank for supporting…

Development, Economy, Government, Politics

Filipinos need to rethink how they value their overseas contract workers

July 20, 2015July 22, 2015 FallenAngel 14 Comments

Overseas Filipinos, whether they be migrants or overseas contract workers (OCW’s), are a valuable resource to their home country. Obviously, they pump money to the homeland and to their families, which props up the economy, to the tune of about 10-14% of its GDP. Second, the skills they learned from their jobs overseas could and…

Culture, Development, Economy, Lifestyle

Lessons from Greece: Can Third World nations really afford ‘democratic’ governments?

July 15, 2015 benign0 7 Comments

You can almost hear Robin Leach snootily addressing his audience in the popular 1980s TV show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous when you read this: See that demoractic government? You can’t afford it. By hook and, literally, by crook a while back, Greece joined the European Union and replaced the drachma with the euro…

Development, Economy, Government, Politics

Crisis in Greece: Would you lend money to a person who can’t pay?

July 13, 2015 benign0 32 Comments

Lots of debate around who is the victim and who is the bad guy in Europe nowadays thanks to the financial crisis gripping Greece and, as a consequence, the rest of the European Union. It seems to point to the underlying fundamental difference between the way creditors and debtors think which is not too different…

Development, Economy, Government

We must learn from Greece and stop relying on the government to save us

July 13, 2015July 13, 2015 Ilda 23 Comments

A friend of mine who just came back from a three-week holiday in Greece confirmed what we have been reading in the news about how a lot of the banks in the country have closed and there was a long queue for people who wanted to get cash from the few automated teller machines that…

Development, Economy

The Greek financial crisis is really a simple issue

July 7, 2015 benign0 62 Comments

The financial crisis gripping Greece is really not that complicated. Greece opted to join the Eurozone and replace its local currency, the drachma, with the euro in 2001. Its government then started tapping the Eurozone financial market taking out euro-denominated loans as part of its normal course of doing business. However, underneath all that, Greece’s…

Development, Economy

Road Trains: Another Band-Aid Solution for the Country’s Skull Fracture

June 30, 2015June 30, 2015 Grimwald 32 Comments

Well, there’s no denying the fact that traffic has become one of the major problems this country faces. If one were to consider the roads of cities as the blood vessels of the Philippine anatomy, one can say that the Philippines is screwed quite royally. So no President Aquino, congested roads in major cities are…

Development, Economy, Government, Technology

Speech delivered by Vice President Jejomar Binay after quitting PNoy Cabinet

June 25, 2015 benign0 19 Comments

[The following speech was delivered in Tagalog by Philippine Vice President Jejomar Binay at the Coconut Palace, Manila, Philippines today and, here, translated into English by the author of this post.] My countrymen: Now is the new beginning of our fight against poverty. I resigned from the Cabinet because I cannot accept the way my…

Crime, Development, Economy, Education, Government, Politics