The Reuters News Agency reported: "The World Bank said it had no plan to contribute to a regional standby fund that would help Southeast Asian banks that might be affected by the world financial crisis." Apparently, this was contrary to the announcement made by Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo which, if I am not mistaken, was bannered in yesterday's (15/10/08) major broadsheets across the country. Though this may sound disheartening. I do believe that the ASEAN emergency fund can, as of the moment, stand by itself. Just as World Bank vice president for East Asia, Jim Adams stated: "the region's (South East Asia) economies remained strong, but should be vigilant in the face of the expanding credit crunch."
Its a known fact that the world economy is on a spiraling crash course towards imminent global recession as of the moment, the US Dow Jones Industrial Average is again down -733.08points. So is the NASDAQ at a down of -150.68 points.
But really, the credit crunch hasn't effected the Philippines and its South East Asian neighbors as much as it has in the Euro Zone and North America. In Iceland, the frozen country just South of the North Pole, major financial institutions have been forced to freeze all assests. We see Morgan Stanley, AIG (American Insurance Group), the Lehmann Brothers all bankrupt. While here, back home, for the moment at least, we haven't seen BPI (Bank of the Philippine Islands), Banco de Oro, Metrobank, and others freeze up and declare bankruptcy.
There must be something we're doing right. Well, if not right, we're doing something that the Europeans or even the Americans don't practice. We should at the least congratulate ourselves for still being able to stay afloat as we watch the First World West sink.
I personally think austerity measures are the key to keeping everything in a not-so-bad situation compared to the rest of the world. I mean, unemployment is still relatively high. Corruption is still as usual on its high. I don't thinks its been at a tolerable low for the past 50years anyway. But people are not loosing their jobs and homes in the millions as that in the West.
Its a known fact that the world economy is on a spiraling crash course towards imminent global recession as of the moment, the US Dow Jones Industrial Average is again down -733.08points. So is the NASDAQ at a down of -150.68 points.
But really, the credit crunch hasn't effected the Philippines and its South East Asian neighbors as much as it has in the Euro Zone and North America. In Iceland, the frozen country just South of the North Pole, major financial institutions have been forced to freeze all assests. We see Morgan Stanley, AIG (American Insurance Group), the Lehmann Brothers all bankrupt. While here, back home, for the moment at least, we haven't seen BPI (Bank of the Philippine Islands), Banco de Oro, Metrobank, and others freeze up and declare bankruptcy.
There must be something we're doing right. Well, if not right, we're doing something that the Europeans or even the Americans don't practice. We should at the least congratulate ourselves for still being able to stay afloat as we watch the First World West sink.
I personally think austerity measures are the key to keeping everything in a not-so-bad situation compared to the rest of the world. I mean, unemployment is still relatively high. Corruption is still as usual on its high. I don't thinks its been at a tolerable low for the past 50years anyway. But people are not loosing their jobs and homes in the millions as that in the West.
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5 comments:
I think the economic turmoil is being experienced by everyone right now. United STates appears to be in a recession and there are growing fears that Japan and Europe will be heading for a spell of economic stagnation as well. Although our country now is actually not experiencing the negative growth like what other countries are experiencing, I think we do not have much of the good news too. Our economic growth has been slowing down to half this year as to compare with that of last year. From the highest attained after 17 years of 7.6% last year, our economic growth slowed down to 3 to 4 % this year, when in fact our government was actually targetting an 8% economic growth this year. I think before we actually wait for recession to take place in our own country, the government got to do something about this. Although having also the good news of the dropping of world oil prices to $74 a barrel, still I think this would not be of great help to boost up our economy, since the oil prices only affects 6.950% in the basket of goods in our country.
Our banks still have not declared bankruptcy here yet maybe because of the fact that:
1. The government did not encourage down-to-earth real-estate loans (which is actually the main cause of the problem in the US now).
2. Information control - Relatively few local banks admit that they have exposures with those gargantuan US Financial Institutions - cause this will result to panic which without a doubt, would pull down our local banks.
It's not that we're doing things right, it's just that the plague, if you may call it that way, is still eating its way down to reach us. Now the only way to do it right, is to get armed and fight, before it eat us up.
Yes, it’s amazing how the Philippines is still standing while the west countries are sinking slowly. I watched in one show, the guest said that in order for the US to survive, the middle class people should not be deprived of the consumer power in order to keep the economy running. If the middle class won’t buy, the economy won’t move.
So I think the reason why the Philippines is still standing because the people didn’t stop buying. Even if we’re budgeting, the Filipinos did not stop using their consumer power since the Filipinos still buy Christmas lights, Christmas trees, gifts and etc. unlike in the west that avoided buying the unnecessary things that made the economy freeze.
The world bank does not want to help the ASEAN countries will not stop us from progressing. As of now the asian regions have stronger financial stability compared to the Western side of the world. The Philippines was affected by the financial crisis but not drstaically since we are already in a poor state of economy which means we were not able to put funds into offshore acounts.
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