The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
So what should a bagel be? For me, it’s really nothing more than a roll shaped like a donut, the size of my hand. According to food writer and connoisseur, Mimi Sheraton, among commenters solicited by The New York Times for an item on the State of the Bagel in the NYT, “a bagel should be about 3.5 inches in …
Points of View & Perspectives
December, 2016
-
11 December
Above the political fray
As we approach the end of 2016, rather than prepare for the merriment of the holidays, Kris Kringle and Christmas parties, and what is effectively a half-month of toiling at the proverbial salt mines at the height of the Yuletide season, the backroom offices and cubicles of most accounting departments across the archipelago are busy pouring over the year’s T-accounts, …
-
11 December
Duterte should give MMDA’s Orbos a rest
Last Friday, motorists were fuming as a new traffic scheme being implemented by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) along Edsa and Annapolis Street in Greenhills, San Juan City, caused virtual paralysis in the country’s main road artery.
-
11 December
On the Blessed Mother and breastfeeding
I once took for granted that all mothers breastfeed— among Filipinos especially, who doesn’t? Yet, with Pasko in our minds as early as September, I’ve hardly thought of the Blessed Mother nursing the Baby Jesus; have you ever? Like me, I’m sure you haven’t, so much so that seeing her openly feeding the Baby in a fresco at the Basilica …
-
4 December
The opportunity costs of a political scandal
We were asked by at least three respected gentlemen to identify the economic losses of the ongoing investigations into the illegal-drugs trade that seemed to have spread wildly and had interwoven itself deep into the fabric of the government bureaucracy. Indeed, public concern is high and feverish to the point of pandemic alarm and utter nauseating disgust. Congressmen, living up …
-
4 December
Duterte’s Christmas present for Yolanda victims
When President Duterte visited Tacloban City several weeks ago during the third-anniversary rites for Supertyphoon Yolanda, he gave a directive to government officials overseeing the rehabilitation efforts in the typhoon-devastated areas to hasten the transfer of the victims to their permanent resettlement sites before Christmas.
-
4 December
No one looks, no one stares
Hair brushed back from an ideal profile, summer sheer whites draped on well-proportioned shoulders, slim pants fitted to skim her straight back, she positions herself a bit off McDonald’s entrance on a plant box on Granville Street, and as if from a view deck aims her sight in the distance—apparently the cross street, where pedestrians cued by traffic lights either …
November, 2016
-
27 November
High productivity from lower taxes
For most economists we respect, it’s what works. It is embodied in the Laffer Curve – a graphic model central to most Libertarian economics often advocated by politicians vying for a popular mandate based on change.
-
27 November
Piggybacking on ERC woes
In the midst of chaos, some see danger. Many others see opportunity.
-
27 November
It’s easy to spot us
Like an exclusive club, some of us compose take-charge crews that include preparing the altar for Mass, arranging the flowers, watering plants in the grotto, cleaning altar crevices and polishing the brass candelabras. Filipinos also comprise the cathedral’s multiple Legion of Mary presidia. As well, in my parish, a Filipina had been president of the Catholic Women’s League while another …