The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Overheard at lunch, from behind us in a restaurant on Amsterdam in New York. Turning my head—I guessed right, apparently visiting moms of Filipino nurses working in a hospital close by. Their conversation pitched as each grabbed the floor from the other, throwing in cinder to burn this alleged virtual criminal at a stake, in their minds, that is.
Points of View & Perspectives
August, 2016
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21 August
De Lima’s vague explanations on presidential exposé
Will neophyte Sen. Leila de Lima eventually emerge as the figurehead of a token opposition to the administration of President Duterte?
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14 August
Heckling Duterte won’t work
There seems to be an organized mass heckling campaign directed against President Duterte. It is being mainly played out in social media. It is obvious that it is being carried out by parties that have supported losing candidates in the last presidential elections.
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14 August
One can never guess
Who you meet could serve you a true story, which you had thought was but a tall tale. The setting: Broadway in New York’s Upper Westside, where you either flow with or against an incessant stream of people, scissoring the tunneled breeze, or sigh in relief from the oppressive heat into your window seat on the bus, on a midday …
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7 August
The Philippine waste export industry
We were seething when one North American economy had sealed its decaying hospital waste in huge metal containers and shipped them over to our pristine shores. Our emotions ranged from being insulted and branded an international dump to being the clueless recipient of toxic waste that absolutely had neither economic value nor any utility, save for spreading illnesses and deadly …
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7 August
A secret illness
Given my penchant for nostalgia, especially if progressed to its extreme, I would have been diagnosed with this malady had I lived in the 17th century—when longing for the past skidded beyond its reputation as romance into an identified illness.
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7 August
Cuba seen as model for Phl food security
The Philippines can learn from Cuba on how to achieve food security through sustainable agriculture, coupled with an efficient healthcare system and genuine universal health coverage.
July, 2016
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31 July
Taxation as political weaponry
One of the first acts initiated by the Duterte administration to address past flaws was the suspension of audits contained in an eleventh-hour issuance from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).
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31 July
What’s being happy
Jean and I had dipped into the subject of happiness after an impassioned discussion regarding the gray state, where elderly women living alone, who worked in low-income jobs, end up. Summing up their perceived condition, she and I opined, “unhappy,” as the simplest but truest description of their seeming solitary lives, insulated by hue-less walls, where dinner would be but …
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31 July
Challenge to real change
IBON explains why the 10-point economic agenda President Duterte cited in his State-of-the-Nation Address (Sona) hangs like a dark cloud over his pro-people economics prospects and even his recently affirmed popularity.)