Statistics on Government employment

The conflict between the political Left and the political Right, played out over the various media, mainly revolves around the size of the government. Specifically, the Left argues that in an era of high unemployment and slow economic growth, the government should spend more and take on more activities in order to lift aggregate demand and increase economic growth. The Right argues that, far from being energized, now is the time for the government to step back and let the private sector do its job of increasing investment, and thereby, employment. 


This post has nothing to do with resolving this conflict. 


Instead, it has something to do with the nagging conflict inside TheEconomizer's guts. One of the Left's main evidence for saying that Barack Obama should spend more government money and do more to electrify the economy is that government employment -- authors continually state "at all levels of government," meaning state, local and federal -- has fallen year-on-year starting in March 2011. This is not the record -- no, nobody can claim that it is -- of a man who is determined to expand the state apparatus to ensnare individual lives. 


But TheEconomizer could not sleep. Really? Aren't they supposed to count only Federal employment, as it is the one most directly influenced by the Left's Deliverer? So TheEconomizer has spent considerable time and talent culling data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics and has come up with the table at the end of this post. (I mistakenly pasted it before finishing the post, and I can't undo it any more. So forgive the inconvenient reference to the Table.) 


It turns out that the change has only recently happened. Year-on-year March 2011 up to June 2011, but none of the other months show a decline. ALL of the months in 2009 (Obama assumed office in January 2009), 2010 and January and February 2011 all posted increases in Federal employment. 


At a stroke, TheEconomizer's gut feel is vindicated. There is nothing to the allegations of lower government employment in the time of Obama. 


But this is not all there is, yet. What should be done is to compare the change and level of Federal-government employment with those of total private-sector employment in the relevant periods, in order to see if a more robust relationship can be observed. Also, there is something to the view that state and local government employment should be looked at also, because these entities receive considerable Federal aid, and in any case respond to policy directions at the Federal level. 


Alas, TheEconomizer has run out of time. Such delimitations will have to wait a few more days or weeks, but as of the moment, the main point of this blog post should be reiterated: Federal-government employment has increased, not decreased, in 26 out of 30 months of the Obama presidency. THAT is the record of this statist, ideological President. 

British phone-hacking scandal: a lesson in crisis management

Dear readers,

Today I will indulge myself and write about what I have been watching and observing the past days ... and months and years. I am talking about David Cameron and politics as crisis management.

As you know, the past two weeks in Britain have been dominated by news of illegal phone-hacking activities allegedly being perpetrated by journalists and executives at the tabloid News of the World (NoTW). This concerns the Prime Minister because the former editor of the newspaper, Andy Coulson, was employed by David Cameron starting in 2007 when he was still Leader of the Opposition, until January this year when Mr. Coulson resigned from his post as Director of Communications at No. 10 Downing Street.

Specifically in this post, I would like to talk about the Prime Minister's performance at the Dispatch Box, versus that of the current Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, during the debate on the public's confidence in the media and the Metropolitan Police, on 20 July 2011.

At the outset, I would like to tell you that my all-time political and public-affairs and statecraft hero(ine) is Margaret Thatcher. No one, it seems, can equal the combination of charm and forcefulness with which she led Government and dominated politics, not only in her own country but also the entire world, and in the process, changed the political imagination itself.

None can equal that achievement, but it seems that David Cameron is three-quarters of the way. His performance in the Commons is not as masterly as Thatcher's in her last major speech after she resigned as Prime Minister on 22 November 1990, but I suppose no one can really expect to equal that. Rather, he performed in such a way that brought out his strength and emphasized his basic honesty and decency, which was reassuring to a public that was getting exhausted and cynical about the whole scandal. In contrast, Ed Miliband could not shake off the impression that he was engaging in political point-scoring, something that Mr. Cameron ingeniously pointed out during his opening statement.

What matters in politics is the impression of competence and leadership, not so much the actuality of those. What transpired at the Despatch Box was that Ed Miliband, by being unable to convey that same impression, left the field open for Mr. Cameron to take. But it is not just by default that Mr. Cameron projects the image of being the only plausible Prime Minister for a few more years. I have already mentioned transparency and decency, but his basic intelligence also shines through in a quantity that manages to overwhelm the meagre supply in the Miliband brain. Only someone who can think on his feet is able to say, "I can assure the house that I have not met Mrs. Brooks in a slumber party, and I have not seen her in her pyjamas."

Which broke the mood, and for good. This is a scandal that teaches many lessons to everyone, but for this political observer, it teaches above all, that in a crisis, it helps to be transparent, decent and intelligent, and to show convincingly that you are all three.

NAMFREL and The Legend of FPJ's Contrabida

Greetings, Dear Readers! 


I have been missing in action for almost a year, but today I start making up for lost time. 


News reports have flooded in that the venerable election watchdog NAMFREL is supporting the conduct of an inquiry into allegations of cheating during the 2004 Philippine presidential elections. Granted this has nothing to do with TheEconomizer's avowed interests of economics or finance, it nonetheless resides in a lingering intuition in TheEconomizer's heart. 


And so here it is. 


If all of this engenders in you a sense of deja vu, it is because "calls" like this have been heard before, notably during the height of the Hello Garci scandal in 2005. But what really grates is the ventriloquism of NAMFREL and the Legend of FPJ. 


Back in 2004, the Secretary General of NAMFREL, Guillermo ("Bill") Luz, proclaimed in front of TV cameras that COMELEC tally sheets showing that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was leading her opponent, Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ), in the presdiential race, were not materially different from the results of the NAMFREL Quick Count and other NAMFREL tallies. At the least, the differences were not material enough to affect the outcome, which was a win by GMA. Indeed, in the Terminal Report of NAMFREL released on the 5th of June, 2004, GMA was leading by almost 700,000 votes (the final COMELEC tally showed that GMA had won by 1.1 million votes). 


Fast forward two years later, after the Hello Garci scandal had changed everybody's perception of GMA from a technocrat to a trapo, the very same Guillermo Luz told ABS-CBN news that he could no longer vouch for the legitimacy of the 2004 election results because certain other information and data might not have been disclosed by the COMELEC to NAMFREL and the general public. In effect, Mr. Luz was attempting to distance NAMFREL from the election results and the GMA presidency. And, it seems, from NAMFREL's own Quick Count. 


This is not the place to discuss the merits or demerits of flip-flopping, or indeed, the merits or demerits of NAMFREL being stripped of its electoral-watchdog status by the COMELEC during the 2010 national elections in favor of the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV). However, this is the place to question the attempt by NAMFREL to gain credibility by surrendering it. 


In 2004, NAMFREL declared that GMA had won, based on its own count. If two years later it could not support that proclamation, because of data it MIGHT not have, then that is NAMFREL's problem. Indeed, the only thing that can be said to describe this behavior is that it follows the Legend of FPJ's contrabida. 


One hopes the plot is still familiar. This powerful local warlord, at whose command the local populace shakes in terror, tortures some poor farmer, who turns out to be the father of the woman who tugs at FPJ's heart. After much gunfire and more rapid-fire punching, the warlord is reduced to begging FPJ for his life, saying he did not really touch the woman's father, it was his predecessor wot won it. 


Which brings us back to NAMFREL. Bill Luz now runs the Ayala Foundation as Executive Director, to which TheEconomizer can attest personally, having seen him in the lobby of the BPI Bldg, at whose 10th Floor that Foundation holds office. In July 2011, the current secretary general of NAMFREL declares in a grammatically and verbally venturesome manner NAMFREL's support for an inquiry. Perhaps then he can blame his predecessor for blessing GMA's win back in 2004.

A Safety Net for the Poor

Opinion



Posted on 08:33 PM, September 15, 2010



Calling A Spade... -- By Solita Collas-Monsod



A safety net for the poor



The secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Devlopment has been getting a lot of flak lately about the more-than-doubling of the DSWD 2011 budget to finance the government’s Conditional Cash Transfer program, known locally as the 4Ps or the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program. The objections which arise from various sectors -- religious, activists, politicans -- have one thing in common: they think that the program is a dole-out, probably given with ulterior motives, and therefore is at best useless.



Senator Ralph Recto has been quoted as saying that the Philippine program has "not proven to be effective in reaching the parameters set under the UN’s Millennium Development Goals." Others claim that the money would be better spent providing employment for the household head.


Let me disabuse the critics. First, it is NOT a dole-out.



It is a contract between the government and the household, where in return for the cash transfer, the family must fulfill certain conditions regarding education and health. If the conditions are not fulfilled, the money stops coming.



Exactly who can be the contractors, and what are the terms of the contract? To qualify for the program, the household income must be below the provincial poverty threshold, must either have a pregnant woman or children 14 years old and below.



And the terms of the contract are that for P500 a month, the following health safeguards must be in place: the pregnant women must avail of pre-and post-natal care and be attended during childbirth by a health professional; parents must attend responsible parenthood, parent effectiveness, and mother’s classes; children below 5 must receive preventive health checkups and vaccines, and children 6-14 must receive deworming pills twice a year. And for P3,000 a year each for a maximum of 3 children, the following education conditions must also be met: Children from 3-5 years old must have an attendance rate of 85% or higher in preschool or day care classes; children from 6-14 must have an attendance rate of at least 85% in elementary and/or high school classes.



And there is a unique feature here: the cash is received by the woman of the house, and for a very valid reason -- it has been found that women’s expenditure patterns are more focused on basic human priorities than those of their male counterparts.



Thus, the minimum amount that qualified household gets a year is P9,000 (with one child who is at least 3 years old) and the maximum is P15,000 (with three children up to age 14).



The second point that must be made is that while, as Sen Recto says, the CCT in the Philippines has not proven to be effective in reaching the UN Millennium Development Goals, that is not because it is a bad program, but because it hasn’t had time to take effect, and has had, so far, very little reach.



It was piloted in late 20007, and was supposed to have reached 123,000 poor families in 2008, and will reach 900,000 families by the end of this year.



Compare these to the number of households living below the poverty line in 2006: 4.68 million. Even if the percentage of poor familes has been estimated to have decreased marginally since then, the absolute number will have increased.



It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that the program is not going to have that much effect on the poverty situation.



Which is why the DSWD is more than doubling its budget, for the CCT, with the encouragement of both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, who are financing the program through loans.



And why are the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and by the way, the United Nations, so enthusiastic about the program?



Very simply because it has generally succeeded in many other countries -- 17 at last count. So much so that Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development has been quoted as saying that "these programs are as close as you can come to a magic bullet in development."



Why? Because evaluation studies show that they have significant beneficial impacts on schooling, health, infant mortality, child labor, and poverty. And on inequality as well.



What essentially the CCT boils down to is a social protection or safety net for those suffering from income poverty in the short run, that also addresses outcome poverty at the same time, building human capabilities so that in the long run, the intergenerational transfer of poverty is short-circuited.



There is always room for improvement, of course.And the success of the CCT in terms of human development outcomes will depend on the availability of the schools, health centers, and other facilities that are needed by the poor to fulfill their part of the contract, as well as the accessibility of the source of funds for the women. Not to mention the ability of the DSWD to target the poor without political interference.



Is P30 billion too costly a program? Compared to the subsidies given by the government to some of its GOCCs (with less or even nothing to show for it), not to mention the humongous government corporate debt that the national government has had to take over over the past 25, the CCT is not only reasonable, but certainly well worth it.



One must congratulate the Aquino government for putting its money where its mouth is with regard to poverty and development. If anything, it should be spending even more, as as long as the proper safeguards are met.



In any event, the CCT represents the Philippines’ only chance to make significant gains in achieving our Millennium Development Goals. Let us all be reminded that given the current (sans CCT) pace of progress, halving the 1990 income poverty incidence will only be achieved in 2026, reducing the 1990 maternal mortality rates will be reached only in 2048, universal elementary school completion in 2075.



Come to think of it, the success of this administration’s CCT program may yet go down in history as one of its most important accomplishments.

Not Enough

BusinessWorld Opinion

Posted on 09:05 PM, September 08, 2010

Calling A Spade... -- By Solita Collas-Monsod

"Not enough"

The government launched its Fourth Progress Report on the Millennium Development Goals, showing the Philippines’ pace of progress with regard to the 21 targets and 60 indicators that are being used to determine whether these MDGs are being met. President Noynoy Aquino and House Speaker Sonny Belmonte led the list of attendees (together with former President Fidel Ramos) -- which presumably sent the structural message that achieving the goals were of the highest importance to our leadership.

In his speech, PNOY emphasized that it was the responsibility of every Filipino citizen, not solely of the goernment, to help achieve these goals.

It would have helped if the President had reminded us of what the stakes are -- so that people would not simply dismiss the speech as just motherhood statements.

It has been estimated, for example, that achieving these goals means, among others, that more than 10 million people would be lifted out of poverty (between 2006 and 2015); more than 2 million people would be no longer go hungry; 240,000 more children would be able to reach their fifth birthday; 12 thousand mothers’ lives would be saved, and almost 7 million more people would have access to safe water. That would surely make everyone sit up and take notice.

The report, based on actual performance versus the target levels, evaluates the probability of achieving the goals (broken down into several targets and even more indicators) -- as either "low," "medium" or "high" -- using methodology suggested by the UN Statistical Insitute for Asia and the Pacific (SIAP).

But the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has another methodology which is more useful, and certainly more colorful and more specific: it determines whether a country is an "early achiever" (a dark green circle) or "on track" (a light green triangle) or "off-track slow" (an orange square) or "off- track regressing" (a red upside down triangle), depending on, respectively, whether the achievements have already been achieved, or will be achieved on or before the target date of 2015, will be achieved, but after 2015, or whether the country is actually regressing (moving backward) rather than progressing. Moreover, the year the target will be achieved (given the country’s present pace of progress) can also be derived.

For example: MDG Goal 1a, which is to halve the proportion of population living below the poverty threshold is, in the Fourth Progress Report, rated as of "Medium" Probability. Using the ESCAP method, the country’s progress toward this goal is rated as off-track, slow, and will be achieved, at current pace, only in 2023 -- or eight years after 2015. With regard to the population living below the food or subsistence threshold, the probability of attaining the target is classified as "High"; but using the ESCAP method will tell us that using the country’s official poverty data (which should not be used because the poverty data over time are not comparable), the target will be achieved by 2011; and using the Balisacan estimates (which can be compared over space and time) will show that the target will be achieved by 2016, and therefore the country is off-track, slow.

And if one thinks that "off-track, slow" means a delay of one to eight years, think again. The probability of achieving the goal of universal completion of primary or elementary education is considered "Medium" as measured by the cohort survival rate; using the ESCAP methodology reveals that not only is the country "off-track, slow," but that at its current pace of progress, it will achieve the target only -- are you ready for this, reader? -- by 2070. The elementary school education completion rate, which has a "Medium" probability in the report, will be achieved only in 2075.

Or take MSG Goal 5, which is to improve maternal health, as measured by the maternal mortality ratio, and the contraceptive prevalence rate. The report rates the probability of achieving these targets by 2015 as both "Low." But using the ESCAP methodology tells us that at the current rate of progress, reducing maternal mortality ratio by three-fourths from its 1993 levels will be achieved not in 2015, but in 2064; while doubling the contraceptive prevalence rate from its 1993 levels will occur only in 2048.

Clearly, saying that the probability of achievement is "Medium" gives us a false sense of security, and makes these development challenges seem picayune; and considering a goal as having a "Low" probability of achievement is not enough. We have to be aware of what the time horizons are. Because it is one thing to say that the probability of having 100 children who started Grade 1 reach grade 5 is "Medium"; but it is shocking to hear that this so-called 100% target cohort survival rate"can be achieved only in 2070, or 55 years after the target date of 2015.

In other words, the Philippine performance in these areas is unacceptable, and must be reversed. It is not enough to say we will double or triple our efforts, because even then, that will not guarantee that the targets will be met. It is not enough to say that without corruption, there will be no poverty. Integrity is not sufficient. Commitment (political will) and competence are at least as important.

Noynoy Flunks His First Test

The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Page 15

By Maria A. Ressa

     Filipinos have high hopes for President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, who took power two months ago with the largest margin of victory in two decades and an 85% approval rating. His popularity rested mostly on promises of good values and cleaner governance--promises his mother, democracy icon Cory Aquino, made too. Yet his first major test in office shows how early political compromises are exacerbating problems in the weak institutions he's promised to reform.

     On Aug. 23, a disgruntled former police officer took a tourist bus hostage and after a long stand-off, killed eight passengers, all Hong Kongers. The government's response was an excercise in incompetence. In public hearings that began Friday, police and politicians admitted that untrained, ill-equipped forces were used while elite units were put on standby; that national leaders played no role in the crisis response despite foreigners' involvement; and that ad hoc, unclear lines of communication between local politicians and local police complicated matters. To add insult to injury, the authorities in charge left the scene to eat in a nearby Chinese restaurant precisely when the killings began.

     The incident sparked outrage in Hong Kong, where the government has called for an independent investigation and compensation for the victims' families. But Mr. Aquino only belatedly realized the gravity of the situation. His first instinct was to blame the national media for covering the event live, a sentiment that citizens in the blogosphere and on Twitter quickly echoed. When the hearings did little to quell public anger on Friday--two weeks after the fiasco--he claimed responsibility "for everything that has transpired."

     There is truth in that assertion. The agencies tasked with resolving the hostage crisis--the Department of the Interior and Local Government and the Palace [sic] Communications [G]roup--are divided into two political factions, both of which are competing for political influence. Instead of choosing between them, Mr. Aquino rewarded both with high cabinet offices.

     The first, the Samar faction, is named after the street where one of Mr. Aquino's campaign headquarters was located, and includes former aides and officials with long personal ties to the president and his family. Many of them, like National Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, served under Mr. Aquino's mother's government in 1986. The second, the Balay faction, is associated with the Liberal Party and former cabinet secretaries who publicly challeneged Mr. Aquino's predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Younger and perceived as more professional, the Balay group is also associated with Senator Mar Roxas, Mr. Aquino's vice-presidential candidate who did not win election.

     These factional splits played a big role in last month's bungled response to the hostage crisis. The Department of the Interior and Local Government is in charge of both local government and security, and the Secretary of the Interior usually controls the Philippine National Police. But in July, President Aquino stripped Secretary Jesse Robredo, who belongs to the Balay faction, of his powers over the police.

     Mr. Aquino handed leadership to an underqualified member of the Samar faction, his personal friend and "shooting" partner, Interior Undersecretary Rico E. Puno. During the crisis, Mr. Puno exerted almost no leadership, preferring to let the local police handle the situation. There was little crowd control, and a local radio station was allowed to speak to the hostage-taker in the final moments of the crisis. During the later hearings, Mr. Puno said, "I am not capable of handling hostage situations. . . . I am not trained to do that."

     The factions also played a role in the management of public informatoin and press coverage. The Palace [sic] Communications Group, which in the past was headed by one press secretary, now has three leaders with cabinet secretary rank: the Samar faction's Sonny coloma and the Balay faction's Edwin Lacierda and Ricky Carandang, the latter of whom is a former television news anchor for my news organization. Thus on the fateful day, the administration had trouble deciding what to say and how to say it. Local officials were left to handle messaging, focusing on the details rather than the broader substance and impact of the day's events. Hong Kong's chief executive Donald Tsang was even prevented from talking to Mr. Aquino.

     For many Filipinos, this bungling is wearingly familiar. The country has a famously weak system of law and order which often sees criminals go unpunished. Mr. Aquino ran for office promising to clean up this culture of corruption. That's why the hostage crisis was so disturbing: It was a disastrous example of incompetence, political factionalism and lack of national leadership.

     All of which points back to the president's office. Like his mother, President Aquino is easy-going, well-liked by his peers, and shies away from controversy and conflict. That manner of governance might have worked in the House and Senate, where he failed to initiate or pass any bill, but it doesn't work in the president's office. The Samar and Balay factional split represents a real test of Mr. Aquino's leadership--between familiar, highly valued personal loyalty and generational change and professionalism.

     The president's indecisiveness has already indirectly led to one tragedy. The coming weeks will show whether he can learn from his mistakes, or whether the Philippines is in for another Aquino presidency that has good intentions but bungled outcomes.


Ms. Ressa is the head of news and current affairs at ABS-CBN Broadcasting and the author of "Seeds of Terror" (Free Press, 2003).

    

WSJ: The Alien in the White House

The distance between the president and the people is beginning to be revealed.
OPINION JUNE 9, 2010
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ


The deepening notes of disenchantment with Barack Obama now issuing from commentators across the political spectrum were predictable. So, too, were the charges from some of the president's earliest enthusiasts about his failure to reflect a powerful sense of urgency about the oil spill.


There should have been nothing puzzling about his response to anyone who has paid even modest critical attention to Mr. Obama's pronouncements. For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.


Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.


A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.


One of his first reforms was to rid the White House of the bust of Winston Churchill—a gift from Tony Blair—by packing it back off to 10 Downing Street. A cloudlet of mystery has surrounded the subject ever since, but the central fact stands clear. The new administration had apparently found no place in our national house of many rooms for the British leader who lives on so vividly in the American mind. Churchill, face of our shared wartime struggle, dauntless rallier of his nation who continues, so remarkably, to speak to ours. For a president to whom such associations are alien, ridding the White House of Churchill would, of course, have raised no second thoughts.


Far greater strangeness has since flowed steadily from Washington. The president's appointees, transmitters of policy, go forth with singular passion week after week, delivering the latest inversion of reality. Their work is not easy, focused as it is on a current prime preoccupation of this White House—that is, finding ways to avoid any public mention of the indisputable Islamist identity of the enemy at war with us. No small trick that, but their efforts go forward in public spectacles matchless in their absurdity—unnerving in what they confirm about our current guardians of law and national security.


Consider the hapless Eric Holder, America's attorney general, confronting the question put to him by Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas) of the House Judicary Committee on May 13.


Did Mr. Holder think that in the last three terrorist attempts on this soil, one of them successful (Maj. Nidal Hasan's murder of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, preceded by his shout of "Allahu Akbar!"), that radical Islam might have played any role at all? Mr. Holder seemed puzzled by the question. "People have different reasons" he finally answered—a response he repeated three times. He didn't want "to say anything negative about any religion."


And who can forget the exhortations on jihad by John Brennan, Mr. Obama's chief adviser on counterterrorism? Mr. Brennan has in the past charged that Americans lack sensitivity to the Muslim world, and that we have particularly failed to credit its peace-loving disposition. In a May 26 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mr. Brennan held forth fervently, if not quite comprehensibly, on who our enemy was not: "Our enemy is not terrorism because terrorism is just a tactic. Our enemy is not terror because terror is a state of mind, and as Americans we refuse to live in fear."


He went on to announce, sternly, that we do not refer to our enemies as Islamists or jihadists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam. How then might we be permitted to describe our enemies? One hint comes from another of Mr. Brennan's pronouncements in that speech: That "violent extremists are victims of political, economic and social forces."


Yes, that would work. Consider the news bulletins we could have read: "Police have arrested Faisal Shahzad, victim of political, economic and social forces living in Connecticut, for efforts to set off a car bomb explosion in Times Square." Plotters in Afghanistan and Yemen, preparing for their next attempt at mass murder in America, could only have listened in wonderment. They must have marvelled in particular on learning that this was the chief counterterrorism adviser to the president of the United States.


Long after Mr. Obama leaves office, it will be this parade of explicators, laboring mightily to sell each new piece of official reality revisionism—Janet Napolitano and her immortal "man-caused disasters'' among them—that will stand most memorably as the face of this administration.


It is a White House that has focused consistently on the sensitivities of the world community—as it is euphemistically known—a body of which the president of the United States frequently appears to view himself as a representative at large.


It is what has caused this president and his counterterrorist brain trust to deem it acceptable to insult Americans with nonsensical evasions concerning the enemy we face. It is this focus that caused Mr. Holder to insist on holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in lower Manhattan, despite the rage this decision induced in New Yorkers, and later to insist if not there, then elsewhere in New York. This was all to be a dazzling exhibition for that world community—proof of Mr. Obama's moral reclamation program and that America had been delivered from the darkness of the Bush years.


It was why this administration tapped officials like Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Among his better known contributions to political discourse was a 2005 address in which he compared the treatment of Muslim-Americans in the United States after 9/11 with the plight of the Japanese-Americans interned in camps after Pearl Harbor. During a human-rights conference held in China this May, Mr. Posner cited the new Arizona immigration law by way of assuring the Chinese, those exemplary guardians of freedom, that the United States too had its problems with discrimination.


So there we were: America and China, in the same boat on human rights, two buddies struggling for reform. For this view of reality, which brought withering criticism in Congress and calls for his resignation, Mr. Posner has been roundly embraced in the State Department as a superbly effective representative.


It is no surprise that Mr. Posner—like numerous of his kind—has found a natural home in this administration. His is a sensibility and political disposition with which Mr. Obama is at home. The beliefs and attitudes that this president has internalized are to be found everywhere—in the salons of the left the world over—and, above all, in the academic establishment, stuffed with tenured radicals and their political progeny. The places where it is held as revealed truth that the United States is now, and has been throughout its history, the chief engine of injustice and oppression in the world.


They are attitudes to be found everywhere, but never before in a president of the United States. Mr. Obama may not hold all, or the more extreme, of these views. But there can be no doubt by now of the influences that have shaped him. They account for his grand apology tour through the capitals of Europe and to the Muslim world, during which he decried America's moral failures—her arrogance, insensitivity. They were the words of a man to whom reasons for American guilt came naturally. Americans were shocked by this behavior in their newly elected president. But he was telling them something from those lecterns in foreign lands—something about his distant relation to the country he was about to lead.


The truth about that distance is now sinking in, which is all to the good. A country governed by leaders too principled to speak the name of its mortal enemy needs every infusion of reality it can get.



Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.








Source:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703302604575294231631318728.html?mod=WSJASIA_newsreel_opinion#articleTabs%3Darticle

Confidence debate

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the speech of her life. 

Speaker: The Question is, That this House has no Confidence in the present Government. 

              [pointing to President GMA] Madam President!

President GMA:

Mr. Speaker, Sir, it is of course the right and duty of the loyal Opposition to challenge the position of the Government of the day. It is also their right to test the Confidence of this House in the Government, if they think the circumstances warrant it. I make no complaint about that.

But when our critics’ windy rhetoric has blown away, what are their real reasons for bringing this motion before the House, because there were no alternative policies, only a lot of disjointed, opaque words.

They can’t be complaining about the Philippines’ political standing, for that is deservedly high, not least because of the recently concluded, successful automated elections—the first for this country, and achieved only with the determined support of this Administration. They can’t be complaining about the country’s finances. We are a net creditor to the world in 2009, something which has not happened since the start of the Third Republic. And they can’t be complaining about this Government’s consistent economic policies—whose achievements were demonstrated during the recent financial crisis, when the Philippines became one of the highest-growing countries in Asia while our neighbors suffered through a recession. 

The critics’ real reason is the perception of corruption and incompetence that pervades all media coverage over the Administration, a perception which is not based on fact but on opinion, based not on dispassionate analysis but on hateful emotion. It is a perception which is not in contrast to the record of the winning candidates in the last election for President and Vice President: one who has no record to speak of, the other, while in office, has simply stayed too long and earned too much—precious little competence and integrity there.

The real issue to be decided, by Members of this House, is how best to build on the achievements of this decade—how to carry this Government’s policies through to the next—how to prevent the fall of our political leadership unto the lap of a certain television personality. 

Mr. Speaker, nine years ago, we rescued the Philippines from the parlous state to which our predecessor had brought it. I remind this House, that under President Estrada, this country had come to such a pass, that the exchange rate had gone to 55 Pesos to the Dollar, interest rates went through the roof, and the hope of Philippines 2000 had been extinguished; where a fragile political environment and a bankrupt government had resulted in the ouster of a corrupt President. The Arroyo Administration has changed all that.

Once again, the Filipino people can turn their hopes to a country that is admired for its economic performance compared to the rest of the world, and to a government that has brought unparalleled prosperity to our citizens at home.

We have done it by improving our infrastructure: increasing farm-to-market roads by 6 times to nearly 18,000 kilometers, building one-and-a-half-times the length of roads built during the three previous Administrations combined, building the roll-on-roll-off nautical highway, and extending electrification from 80.1% to 99.39% of rural barangays.

We’ve done it by investing in education: 100,000 new classrooms built in this Administration, improving classroom-to-students ratio from 1:60 to 1:39 in primary school, and textbook-to-student ratio going up from 1:5 to 1:1 in many subjects in elementary and high school.

And we’ve done it by caring for social development: 11 million beneficiaries of food-for-school program, which offers incentives for young students to stay in school; and 1 million household beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer program, which provide additional incentives for educating poor children.

Mr. Speaker, our stewardship of the public finances has been better than that of any Government for over fifty years. It has enabled us to repay debt and improve infrastructure, and the resulting success of the entire economy can be talked about for years to come: the doubling of GDP per capita from the year 2000 to 2009, the halving of inflation and foreign debt-to-GDP ratio, and the tripling of Gross International Reserves. There have been fourteen million more jobs since 2000, and PhilHealth membership has been widened from 30 million to nearly 84 million people, or almost the entire population of the Philippines.

That is the record of nine-and-a-half years of the Arroyo Administration, and Arroyo policies. Mr. Speaker, all these are grounds for congratulation, not censure, least of all from the Members of the Opposition, who have no alternative policies.

Mr. Speaker, over the past nine years, this Government has had a clear and unwavering vision of the future of our democracy, and of the Filipino people’s role in it. It is a vision which stems from our own deep-seated attachment to Constitutional democracy, and this Government’s commitment to economic liberty, to enterprise, to competition, and to the free-market economy.

The fact is that, more than any previous Government, we have fought for charter change as the most basic way to enhance our competitiveness compared to other countries, which allow for the free competition of foreign entities with local businesses. For us, part of the purpose of the Constitution is to demolish trade barriers so we can all benefit from trade both within Asia and with the outside world, especially those small businesses which we have assiduously promoted. It wouldn’t help them for our economy to continue to be dominated by Spanish-era conglomerates, headed by Spanish families, linked by a colonial old boys’ network; or for the bureaucracy to be concentrated in the capital city, far removed from the life of the rural peasantry. Our people deserve a country where there’s room for their growing sense of nationhood, and a place to decide their own destiny after a lifetime of deprivation.

Are we then to be censured for standing up for a free and open society through a free and open economy? No, Mr. Speaker, our policies are in tune with the deepest instincts of the Filipino people, and we shall not be censured for what is thoroughly right.

Despite the failure of our initiative, Mr. Speaker, we have never hesitated to fight for development and for the Constitution in other ways, particularly in the area of peace and security. This Government has received no thanks for its imposition of martial law in the aftermath of the event known as the Maguindanao massacre. Yet it was our swift action which enabled the Army and the Marines to arrest the Ampatuan family members responsible for the massacre, and which allowed the Commission on Human Rights to collect evidence without being disturbed by lawless elements.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, our critics have been quicker to point out the definition of civil war and rebellion which should, they said, have guided the imposition of military rule. Yet at the same time they called for the writ of habeas corpus to be suspended and the Ampatuans to be arrested first and then charged later. The only difference between our action and their proposed action was that theirs was not called martial law—it was just martial law in all but name.

Clearly our critics want to prevent a replay of the events of the 1970s, when most of them came of age and and came to political maturity. But such is our forward-looking view of our society, of which 75 percent were born after martial law, that we do not believe it is right to take revenge upon the past by compromising our future. The previous generation might have failed in stopping the institution of a dictatorship, but it does not mean that this generation must fail as well.

Not for us this blind replaying of our past, this jaundiced reading of our history. Ours is a larger vision of our democracy, where Filipinos cooperate more and more closely to the defense of the Constitution.

Should we be censured for our strength, or the critics for their weakness? Surely the vigor of our Constitution has been displayed more vividly by our action than by the second-guessing of our critics. I have no doubt that the people of this country will willingly entrust their security in the future to a strong government that protects them rather than to socialists and academicians who put little faith in our Constitution and ascribe little hope to our Nation.

And we realize our hope, Mr. Speaker, in the conduct of future elections in this country. Since time immemorial, we as a Nation have desired automation for our elections, variously to improve the process of vote-counting and canvassing, and to minimize the incidence of cheating. Many attempts have been made to automate nation-wide elections, but none has succeeded until this year.

Despite the obvious success, a lot of voices, mostly of those who lost, have been raised to question the validity of the results. We have been here before, when the candidate who was leading the official count was also the one who had been leading in the pre-election surveys, in the exit polls, in NAMFREL counts, in the tallies by media organizations, and in the predictions of fortune-tellers. Independent foreign observers also said that while there had been irregularities, they were sufficiently few in number to have affected the results of the elections. Back then, the losing candidate made the same claims of “trending,” a term so completely wanting in intellectual foundation it has never been uttered in polite conversation.

Nobody believed that candidate, who later died an unhappy man, yet the following year someone let out a digital recording of a conversation between me and a Comelec Commissioner, ostensibly proving the existence of cheating. Never mind the evidence of all those surveys and independent observations, never mind that you could have given all the votes of Maguindanao to the losing candidate and he would hardly have made a dent in the one-million-vote lead: the allegation was believed nonetheless.

Twice in my time as President, we have leaned upon the loyalty of soldiers to the chain of command to discipline rouge elements who had staged a coup d’état to overthrow the legitimate government—both in the Oakwood mutiny and in February 2006. Street rallies have also been led and paid for by those who, too cowardly to suffer the heat of the noonday sun in support of their politics, or to share the stench of their people on the ground, perverted the meaning of the people power revolution.

To those who have never had to face such personal and professional terror, may I say to them, that they are faced with a heavy heart, in the knowledge of the manifold dangers, but with tremendous pride in the professionalism and courage of our Armed Forces. But there is something else which one feels as well, Mr. Speaker. That is a sense of this country’s destiny, from nearly a century of history and experience, which ensure that the Filipino will always fight for his Christian, constitutional and democratic way of life.

It is because we in this Administration have never flinched from difficult decisions, that this House, and this country, can have Confidence in this Government today.

Time to rebalance

A special report on America's economy

America’s economy is set to shift away from consumption and debt and towards exports and saving. It will be its biggest transformation in decades, says Greg Ip (interviewed here)

Mar 31st 2010 | From The Economist print edition

STEVE HILTON remembers months of despair after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. Customers rushed to the sales offices of Meritage Homes, the property firm Mr Hilton runs, not to buy houses but to cancel contracts they had already signed. “I thought for a moment the world was coming to an end,” he recalls.
 

In the following months Mr Hilton stepped up efforts to save his company. He gave up options to buy thousands of lots that the firm had snapped up across Arizona, Florida, Nevada and California during the boom, taking massive losses. He eventually laid off three-quarters of its 2,300 employees. He also had its houses completely redesigned to cut construction cost almost in half: simpler roofs, standardised window sizes, fewer options. Gone were the 12-foot ceilings, sweeping staircases and granite countertops everyone wanted when money was free. Meritage is now catering to the only customers able to get credit: first-time buyers with federally guaranteed loans. It is clawing its way back to health as a leaner, humbler company.

The same could be said for America. Virtually every industry has shed jobs in the past two years, but those that cater mostly to consumers have suffered most. Employment in residential construction and carmaking is down by almost a third, in retailing and banking by 8%. As the economy recovers, some of those jobs will come back, but many of them will not, because this was no ordinary recession. The bubbly asset prices, ever easier credit and cheap oil that fuelled America’s age of consumerism are not about to return.

Instead, America’s economy will undergo one of its biggest transformations in decades. This macroeconomic shift from debt and consumption to saving and exports will bring microeconomic changes too: different lifestyles, and different jobs in different places. This special report will describe that transformation, and explain why it will be tricky.

The crisis and then the recession put an abrupt end to the old economic model. Despite a small rebound recently, house prices have fallen by 29% and share prices by a similar amount since their peak. Households’ wealth has shrunk by $12 trillion, or 18%, since 2007. As a share of disposable income it is back to its level in 1995. And if consumers feel less rich, they are less inclined to spend. Banks are also less willing to lend: they have tightened loan standards, with a push from regulators who now wish they had taken a dimmer view of exotic mortgages and lax lending during the boom.

Consumer debt rose from an average of less than 80% of disposable income 20 years ago to 129% in 2007. If other crises of the past half-century are any guide, America’s consumers will spend the next six or seven years reducing their debt to more manageable levels, reckons the McKinsey Global Institute. This is already changing the composition of economic activity. Consumer spending and housing rose from 70% of GDP in 1991 to 76% in 2005 (see chart 1). By last year it had fallen back to 73%, still high by international standards.

The effect on the economy of deflated assets, tighter credit and costlier energy are already apparent. Fewer people are buying homes, and the ones they buy tend to be smaller and less opulent. In 2008 the median size of a new home shrank for the first time in 13 years. The number of credit cards in circulation has declined by almost a fifth. American Express is pulling back from credit cards and is now telling customers how to use their charge cards (which are paid off in full every month) to control their spending.

Normally, deep recessions are followed by strong recoveries as pent-up demand reasserts itself. In the recent recession GDP shrank by 3.8%, the worst drop since the second world war. In the recovery the economy might therefore be expected to grow by 6-8% and unemployment to fall steadily, as happened after two earlier recessions of comparable depth, in 1973-75 and 1981-82.

No bounce-back

But this particular recession was triggered by a financial crisis that damaged the financial system’s ability to channel savings to productive investment and left consumers and businesses struggling with surplus buildings, equipment and debt accumulated in the boom. Recovery after that kind of crisis is often slow and weak, and indeed some nine months into the upturn GDP has probably grown at an annual rate of less than 4%. Unemployment is well up throughout the country (see map), though it declined slightly in February.

So if America is to avoid the stagnation that afflicted Japan after its bubbles burst, where is the demand going to come from? In the short term the federal government has stepped up its borrowing—to 10% of GDP this year—to counteract the drop in private consumption and investment. Over the next few years this stimulus will be withdrawn. Barack Obama wants the deficit to come down to around 3% of GDP by the middle of this decade, though it is not clear how that will be achieved. Indeed, if the rest of the economy remains moribund, the government may be reluctant to withdraw the stimulus for fear of pushing the economy back into recession.

Tighter credit and lower consumer borrowing are not the only drivers of economic restructuring. A less noticed but significant push comes from higher energy prices. A strengthening dollar and ample supply kept oil cheap for most of the 1990s, feeding America’s addiction to imports. That began to change a few years before the crisis as the dollar fell and emerging markets’ growing appetite put pressure on global production capacity.

A fourfold increase in oil prices since the 1990s has rearranged both consumer and producer incentives. Sport-utility vehicles are losing popularity, policies to boost conservation and renewable energy have become bolder, and producers have found a lot more oil below America’s soil and coastal seabed. Imports of the stuff have dropped by 10% since 2006 and are likely to come down further. When natural-gas prices followed the rise in oil earlier this decade, exploration companies used new methods to get at gas trapped in shale formations from Texas to Pennsylvania. Abundant domestic shale gas should radically reduce America’s gas imports.

America’s economic geography will change too. Cheap petrol and ample credit encouraged millions of Americans to flock to southern states and to distant suburbs (“exurbs”) in search of big houses with lots of land. Now the housing bust has tied them to homes they cannot sell. Population growth in the suburbs has slowed. For the present the rise of knowledge-intensive global industries favours centres rich in infrastructure and specialised skills. Some are traditional urban cores such as New York and some are suburban edge cities that offer jobs along with affordable houses and short commutes.

A burst of productivity could lift incomes and profits. That would enable consumers to repay some of their debt yet continue to spend. The change in the mix of growth should help: productivity in construction remains low, whereas in exports the most productive companies often do best. But the hobbled financial system will make it hard for cash-hungry start-ups to get financing, so innovation will suffer.

The outlook for business investment depends on whether it is for equipment or buildings. Spending on equipment is expected to be fairly strong, having largely avoided excess in the boom period, and indeed in the fourth quarter of 2009 it raced ahead at an annual rate of 19%. In February John Chambers, the boss of Cisco Systems, a maker of networking gear, called it “one of the most robust, positive turnarounds I’ve seen in my career”. Demand for new buildings is far lower: empty shops and offices attest to ample unused capacity. And business investment typically accounts for only 10-12% of GDP, so it will never be a full substitute for consumer spending.

The road to salvation

As consumers rebuild their savings, American firms must increasingly look abroad for sales. They have a lot of ground to make up. Competition from low-wage countries, mostly China, has increasingly taken over the markets of domestic industries such as furniture, clothing or consumer electronics. Yet shifts in the pattern of global growth and the dollar are laying the groundwork for a boom in exports. “There’s a world view that the United States is the consumer of the world and emerging markets are the producer,” says Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase. “That has changed.” He reckons that America will account for just 27% of global consumption this year against emerging markets’ 34%, roughly the reverse of their shares eight years ago.

The cheaper dollar will resuscitate some industries in commoditised markets, but the main beneficiaries of the export boom will be companies that are already formidable exporters. These companies reflect America’s strengths in high-end services and highly skilled manufacturing such as medical devices, pharmaceuticals, software and engineering, as well as creative services like film, architecture and advertising. Thanks to cheap digital technology, South Korea and India now knock out the sort of low-budget films that compete with standard American fare. But only Hollywood combines the creativity, expertise and market savvy to make something like “Avatar” which has earned $2.6 billion so far, some 70% of which came from abroad. That adds up to several jumbo jets.

Exports are a classic route to recovery after a crisis. Sweden and Finland in the early 1990s and Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea in the late 1990s bounced back from recession by moving from trade deficit to surplus or expanding their surplus. But given its size and the sickly state of most other rich countries’ economies, America will find it much harder. It has been exporting more to emerging markets than to developed ones for several years, but if other countries, particularly China, do not sufficiently boost domestic demand, “the unwinding of the global imbalances could reverse quite quickly in 2010,” says an IMF staff paper.

America’s current-account deficit, the broadest measure of its trade and payments with the rest of the world, shrank from 6% of GDP in 2006 to 3% last year (see chart 2). Could it come down to zero? It nearly did in 1991 after five years of booming exports. This time the deficit started out a lot larger and the rest of the world is weaker. Still, even stabilisation around 3% would be a blessed relief because it would slow the growth in America’s indebtedness to foreigners.

America’s imbalances were years in the making and will not be undone overnight. But the elements of a rebalanced economy are already visible a 40-minute drive to the south of Mr Hilton’s offices in Scottsdale, Arizona. Around the same time that Mr Hilton was watching sales of his homes dry up, Brian Krzanich, head of global manufacturing at Intel, was finalising plans to spend $3 billion retooling his company’s massive semiconductor factories in nearby Chandler. Mr Krzanich knew perfectly well there was a recession going on. Intel’s sales were down and 3% of the staff at the factories had been laid off. But he also knew that once global demand rebounded, Intel would have to be ready to produce a new generation of cheaper, smaller and more efficient chips. “Unless you think your business is going to shrink for an extended period, like seven years, it always pays to make that investment,” he says. In the last quarter of 2009 Intel, helped by resurgent demand for technology, enjoyed record profit margins, and Mr Krzanich was approving overtime.

Mr Hilton, for his part, runs his company on the assumption that the days of easy money and exuberant consumers are gone for ever. In his office he has a yellowed copy of the Wall Street Journal from September 18th 2008, the week when Lehman failed and American International Group was bailed out. “Worst crisis since the 30s with no end in sight”, reads one headline. “I wish I’d had that article in 2005,” says Mr Hilton. He keeps it around as an antidote any time he is “feeling all happy and slappy”.

News from the Front

An interesting reading session tonight for The Economizer, as news about Noynoy Aquino's plans for his impending assumption of his country's Presidency, the Vietnamese economy's downward spiral, and  what might be termed "inconsistency" in the decisions of the Supreme Court of the Philippines emerged. 

***

First, Noynoy Aquino's presidential plans. Perhaps miffed by insinuations regarding his lack of experience and the inexistence of a campaign platform, Senator Benigno Aquino III has spoken -- and spoken loudly. The banner headline in the Philippine Daily Inquirer announced in boldface letters: "Aquino to create group to run after Arroyo ‘crimes’." Not content with announcing that he will cause the impeachment of a still-to-be-appointed Chief Justice, the good Senator now speaks for a future Justice Department in assigning State Prosecutors to future cases against President Arroyo. Just so the Filipino people are clear about what they are voting for:

There are several things wrong about this plan. One, the Senator has not yet been elected President. Granted, candidates have a duty to explain what their platform of government is. But is the next Administration really dedicated to the prosecution and imprisonment of the outgoing Administration? The courage is not in the the former, but in the latter: could the present Cabinet really preside over a peaceful transfer of power given that they know they would be prosecuted by the next Cabinet? That this remains a democracy is no thanks to the election front-runner -- credit is due the anonymous, unsung men and women who, despite having no mention in the media, despite all the threats of prosecution, despite the uncertainty of their future, keep the government functioning. 

Two, the Senator's statement is a conclusion that obscures due process and preempts and prejudices the future prosecutors. What if they found no evidence, or found it insubstantial? Would the future President keep firing them until he found someone willing to "find" it otherwise? Such is the regard to which the law is held by our presumptive President. 

Finally, what does it say of a President who has nothing to say about energy, agriculture and tax policy except that whatever is wrong is attributable to the evils of the President he replaced? The idea is absurd, too absurd to merit a reply. Except this: such is no platform of government. 

***

Second, news about Vietnam, which could affect the Philippine economy. According to The Economist, that country is suffering from "dollar shortage," which is fatal for a country that depends on trade to grow its way out of poverty. (The Philippines relies on domestic demand and the export of people.) This has led the central bank, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), to devalue the currency -- by 5.4% in November 2009 and 3.4% in February 2010. 

The effect is high inflation. Standard Chartered warns that although Vietnam's GDP growth this year will be 6.7%, inflation would be high and trade deficit will widen. Analysts expect inflation will be 8.9% for the whole of 2010, up from 7% in December 2009. This compares with about 4.3% for the Philippines in February 2010. 

The higher inflation drives up interest rates, and, coupled with a reduction in liquidity from open market operations by the SBV, crimps lending growth.


What this means is that Vietnamese assets are falling in value, due to the currency devaluation and the increase in interest rates. The end-result is that foreign capital, denominated in foreign currency, cannot bear the mark-to-market losses any longer and leaves the country. The only result from devaluation is more devaluation. 

There are lessons here for the Philippines. One is the importance of a stable source of foreign currency. The Philippines is lucky in having so many of its people remitting billions of dollars monthly, so much so that more than 10% of the 2009 GDP is made up of remittances. The other big dollar-earning industry, business process outsourcing (BPO), is not due to luck. These factors -- OFW remittances and BPO earnings -- keep the cost of foreign debt manageable, such that despite the recent upgrade of Indonesia by credit rating agencies, the Philippines' credit spreads remain smaller. 

(A note must be said that both OFW and BPO have a social cost that are far removed from high finance. It is counted in terms of broken families and an increase in HIV/AIDS cases.) 

The other important lesson is the control of public spending. The recent extension of VAT exemption to senior citizens is an example not of concern for the elderly, but of concern for the elderly vote. If, instead of granting a 32% across-the-board discount for a substantial proportion of the population, the service quality of DSWD, SSS and GSIS and other government bureaucracies and programs had been improved, the poorest of the elderly would have benefited immensely and disproportionately. What happened was that all elderly people -- rich, poor, and other non-earning members of the citizenry -- made gains at the expense of the earning population. 


The main proponents of the Expanded Senior Citizens Act are Senators Loren Legarda and Pia Cayetano, who do not need any more "pogi points" or "beauty points," judging from their photographs. The Philippines, however, does not need to follow the example of Greece and add to its budget deficit. A Vietnam must be avoided.


***


Finally, a worrisome trend at the Supreme Court, pointed out by Dr. Winnie Monsod. It appears that an earlier decision stopping the sale of the assets of the Philippine National Construction Corporation (PNCC) to a Malaysian consortium is about to be reversed by a "second" motion for reconsideration (MR). That sale transaction, amounting to billions of pesos, is a curious case because only the assets will be transferred to the Malaysian entity, but the Government of the Philippines retains the liabilities.It is disadvantageous to the Government (and the Filipino people), yet it is about to be given a blessing by the Court through an arguably illegal method.


It is a good thing that Chief Justice Puno has abandoned his quest to spearhead "moral" politics in the country. People in glass houses should not throw stones.