Tag: banking

LANDBANK-UCPB merger clears way for further development of Philippine coconut industry

July 2, 2021 Ramon Ortoll 1 Comment

The United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) was one of the largest unibanks in the country before the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) sunk its claws into it. After 1986, the bank continued its sterling performance until the old guard were replaced by executives who managed to weasel their way in through political godfathers. The…

Business, Money Talks

Opposition “economists” like Winnie Monsod sow doom and gloom in lead up to 2022

June 19, 2021 Ramon Ortoll 1 Comment

If the fundamentals weren’t sound, as Winnie Monsod asserts in her Inquirer piece “So much for sound fundamentals”, we’d be worse off to begin with. Mareng Winnie attempts to dismiss even the smallest iota of optimism in the prognoses issued by the country’s economic managers saying these are all just coming from people whose job…

Business, Economy, Money Talks

Money laundering joins list of crimes that flourished under Noynoy Aquino government

March 18, 2016 Ilda 11 Comments

It looks like Philippine President Benigno Simeon Aquino is going out with a bang. Less than two months before the next Presidential Elections, an audacious cyber heist incident has sent shock waves around the world. If not for its sheer brazenness, that it involved a tiny Third World Catholic country like the Philippines makes this…

Crime, Government

Entrenched thievery: The Philippines remains home to institutionalised money laundering

March 18, 2016March 18, 2016 benign0 7 Comments

In an era that has seen the demise in just a couple of decades of the legendary secrecy that shrouded Swiss banking and the shadowy transactions of its princely clients, the Philippines stubbornly persists as a blight to global banking transparency thanks to its infamously outdated bank secrecy laws. Certainly it comes as no surprise…

Crime

Addressing poverty from the ground up should be central issue in Philippine elections

August 8, 2015 Add 69 Comments

The political mudslinging that is being amplified with gusto by headline news is good for the rating wars of media. It may be a whole class of unavoidable news they have to report. However, if the intent is the beguilement of the public to desensitize same to the real problems of the country, media is being stonyhearted…

Development, Education, Government, Media, Politics, Society

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

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

Philippines to remain ‘paper’ tech tiger until local tech solutions applied

June 2, 2014June 2, 2014 benign0 2 Comments

The Philippines has “all the ingredients of an emerging tech tiger” — on paper, that is. Despite an enormous population “addicted to social media” and low labour costs, the “patchy at best” mobile internet coverage and “atrocious” internet speeds — a “measly 3.6 megabits per second (Mbps), well below the regional average of 12.4 Mbps”…

Culture, Development, Economy, Lifestyle, Tech Talk