The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Imagine me rooted under the eaves of our apartment gate on learning that Divo’s and Dili’s care topped the divorce settlement of my neighbors, Don and Dee Ann —especially Dili’s special needs (with snow-white fur and sky-blue eyes, he’s deaf), in lieu of child support, as well the two-and-a-half bedroom apartment—one, being theirs, has been awarded to Dee Ann, too, …
Points of View & Perspectives
October, 2016
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2 October
RMB joins elite currency club to reflect China’s rise in power
Washington—China’ s currency, the renminbi (RMB), is breaking the financial world’ s ultimate glass ceiling and embarking on a new journey toward global reserve status when it formally joins the elite currency club of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Saturday.
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2 October
Proposed tax plan inconsistent with pro-poor thrust—IBON
The research group IBON has said the Department of Finance’s (DOF) proposed tax plan essentially remains elitist and is inconsistent with President Duterte’s pro-poor stance. Following the President’s lead, the government should be brave enough to tax the richest businesses and families instead of burdening the poor with new taxes, IBON said.
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2 October
Sex, lies and video tape
When the story first broke that there was a possibility that the opposition senator then chairing the congressional investigation on the extra judicial killings perpetrated recently in connection with the anti-illegal drugs campaign of the government might be personally complicit, the major broadsheets had immediately dispatched reporters and photographers in a race to ejaculate the next morning their most eye-catching …
September, 2016
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25 September
Misdefining pork
This time, the typically vigilant and characteristically incisive debt watchdog seemed to have gotten its messages mixed. As aggressively zealous as the watchdog is, caution and prudence still seem to be the best practices in any endeavor, including the most passionately purposed special-interest group.
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25 September
De Lima’s political demise
Is the current situation of Sen. Leila de Lima consistent with the saying that “haste makes waste?”
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25 September
‘P125 wage hike necessary, possible and good for economy
The research group IBON says the P125 across-the-board wage increase proposed by the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) is necessary, possible and good for the economy.
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24 September
Would a DNA result of my ancestry make me taller?
While the rest of us slipped in and out of inanities, as it often happens midway in lunch gatherings like a year ago in Westbury, New York, Lille, whose family immigrated from Manila in the 1970s, stared at her iPhone, waiting for results of her DNA from ancestry.com. “Once and for all, I can finally understand who I am,” she …
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18 September
The promise of employment growth
One of the strangest phenomena in the last six years under the Aquino administration was the dramatic increase in gross domestic productivity (GDP) amid nearly stagnant, if not negative, employment. Note, of course, that employment data are mere derivations—mathematical projections, like the imagining of a figure from shadows cast.
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18 September
A journal I wish I had written 20 years ago
But none of it would have been possible—after all, in improbability lies the essence of a wish; no amount of flailing to reach the sky from the ground, it’s like that. Yet, because the past hardly ever locks us in, almost exactly the same wish somehow pops up.