Aliens over our rural banks

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

6/10/2013

Daily Tribune

While countless half-conscious thinking Filipinos (most of whom are not even thinking anymore) were being distracted by the antics of self-serving senators dramatizing their "sacrifices" for principles and country, countless more foreign exploiters continued to extract their pound of flesh from the Malacañang occupant whom they conspired to boost to power in 2010 through the Smartmatic Hocus-PCOS (precinct count optical scan) machines.

So, as expected, BS Aquino delivered fast on many items on these foreign interests' wish list. The earliest was the implementation of the value-added tax (VAT) on toll fees, put off by PeNoy's predecessor Gloria Arroyo for five years after the forced passage in 2005 of the so-called rVAT (deformed, not reformed).
Lately, we again picked up one little known concession to these aliens that managed to creep surreptitiously through Congress but has now suddenly turned into law, reportedly allowing foreigners 60-percent ownership of Philippine rural banks.

That law was signed by BS Aquino on May 24. When I called my rural banker-friends about this, their reactions confirmed my worst fears. A former head of a rural bank association in the country has sounded off the alarm that foreign interests with ominous intentions will now gain not only a foothold but control of the grassroots credit network of rural banks, allowing them to push programs that may be totally unhealthy for the Philippine economy and the Filipino people.
One example he cited has to do with control of rural financing and its access to farmers. Under the new law, foreign companies such as Monsanto can now fast track their insertion of genetically modified organism seeds and ancillary products such as pesticides and fertilizers into our food chain that will ultimately prove immensely harmful to the nation, especially for future generations that may be irreversibly damaged by these perilous products, which countless other countries are already rejecting today.

I picked up the information about BS Aquino's signing of RA 10574 from one of the dozen or so foreign newspaper columnists spread throughout print media. This one I read from Ben Kritz of The Manila Times, who described the law BS Aquino signed allowing majority foreign control of Philippine rural banks as "Only a gesture, but a welcome one." Kritz is a very good business writer and I have quoted him once before when his view of the Fitch's and other ratings upgrades supported the correct view (which I have been impressing on the Filipino public's mind) that these are just come-ons to get the Philippines to borrow more without really being investment-drivers. This new item from him, though, reflects the core mission of all foreign columnists in our mainstream and second line print media — advancing foreign access into and control of the Philippine economy.

Kritz describes the Philippine rural banking sector as "troubled." Yet those troubles would not be there if not for the unhelpful policies of the Western—controlled international banking community and institutions. The most recent imposition on the Philippine rural banking system comes all the way from Basel, Switzerland via the Basel III Accord around supposedly "global, voluntary regulatory standard on bank capital adequacy, stress testing and market liquidity risk… agreed upon by the members of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in 2010 to 2011… scheduled to be introduced from 2013 until 2015…"

Basel III supposedly strengthens bank capital requirements by increasing bank liquidity and leverage. But as a consequence, the vast majority of Philippine rural banks (no matter how well and professional these are run) are finding themselves undercapitalized.
Basel is the base for the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). What emanates from it has come to be known at Basel I, II, and now III. It's also known as the central bank of central banks. While few even know of this body, it rules with the power of life and death over hundreds of millions of people.
In the great, voluminous book by historian and theorist on the evolution of civilization, Dr. Carroll Quigley "Tragedy and Hope: A History of Our Time," he writes of the international bankers behind the BIS:

"I know of the operations of this network because I … was permitted … to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments… The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations." (Continued on Wednesday.)

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m. on "Mon-Satan, the GMO evil"; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0923-4095739)