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Monday, December 8, 2014
Richard James Mendoza's invitation is awaiting your response
P347-billion added debt burden
P347-billion added debt burden
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 07-07-2014 MON)
National government debt increased year-on-year in May by P347 billion or 6.57 percent. Gloria Arroyo left the country a P4.9-trillion debt. BS Aquino’s now stands at P5.6 trillion.
This debt is unnecessary in light of the huge amounts wasted in the so-called BS Aquino Disbursement Acceleration Program cum presidential “pork barrel” (BADAP) or on Congress’ wastage of P35 billion last year passing only one law postponing the Sangguniang Kabataan elections.
This is especially so considering the country’s over $20 billion in foreign exchange surplus or its Special Deposit Account with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) of P1.7 trillion ($ 40 billion) costing 2.5 percent to keep idle, or BS Aquino’s June 2012 boast of lending $1 billion to help keep the Eurozone afloat.
Taking all that into account, does it still make sense for the Philippines to continue growing its debt principal and interest? No!
The Philippines continues to borrow ONLY because of subservience to the US-led Western financial-political mafia. As domestic banks get 70 percent of such borrowings, so too are local banks exploiting the people in this unnecessary debt.
The global banking mafia has had, and continues to make, many impositions deleterious to the country, one of which is the invasion of foreign capital into our rural banks, which will result in control by these global “too-big-to-fail” banks that had brought about regular financial collapses such as the 2008 financial meltdown.
The only alternative to this cycle of financial looting is People’s or National Banking, which is part of the broader monetary system in its many forms, from cooperative banks to nationalized or government dominated banks, to the modern evolution called “crypto-currencies.”
This is the banking system of the main economic tigers of Asia, namely, China, Vietnam, Singapore, etc. The people create the wealth and the surplus and savings out of it are lent to projects that benefit the people in a perpetual cycle of enriching people’s communities instead of private bankers.
There is no opposition from the Philippine establishment, i.e. the present ruling class of corrupt politicians and financial mafias (or banks) with interlocking ownership by mega-corporations, because the present financial-political-economic system benefits only them and excludes the people (the middle class and the masses).
BADAP and legislative “pork” are just the share of the system’s political cronies to keep the present system going. Hence, there will eventually be a resurrection of BADAP and “pork” if the present system is to survive, which the powers-that-be are determined to do--unless, there is genuine change or revolution.
Revolution (peaceful desirably) is possible only if the ideological foundation of the prevailing system is undermined, by bringing to light values of right and wrong in matters such as ownership of the nation’s common wealth (land, capital-financial system, public utilities) or of public vs private ownership and control of such resources.
Without such public ownership or control (especially of the financial system), a government dedicated to the peoples’ welfare will never have the wherewithal to serve them. Instead, a government controlled by private wealth will only protect private wealth and grow more private wealth--exactly the situation we have today.
Congressional “pork” was allegedly diverted to the personal coffers of Janet Lim-Napoles and various politicians. But BADAP, now revealed, was used by BS Aquino to rid the Supreme Court (SC) of Chief Justice Renato Corona, who was an obstacle to the Aquino-Cojuangco clan’s desire of obtaining a P10-billion (instead of P490-million) government compensation for the distribution to farmers of Hacienda Luisita.
Unable to skirt clear constitutional separation-of-powers provisions, the current SC struck down BADAP but gave BS Aquino an escape hatch, mindful of his possible retaliation on the high court’s own “pork,” the Judiciary Development Fund.
The Makati Business Club’s “Coalition Against Corruption” made a call to abolish the P25-billion congressional “pork barrel,” but “pork” goes all the way down to the city council level. Moreover, “pork” is public funds meant for public good, too.
But what about the P5.67-trillion debt, 70 percent of which goes to domestic banks and 30 percent to foreign banks? Where do these banks get the money to lend government from which they charge taxpayers interest?
Renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith says, “The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”
Positive Money cites from England, “Where does money come from? In the modern economy, most money takes the form of bank deposits. But how those bank deposits are created is often misunderstood. The principal way in which they are created is through commercial banks making loans: whenever a bank makes a loan, it creates a deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money.”
The loans banks issue (including to governments) create bank assets, from which they can loan money out again, ad infinitum. We are taxed to pay the interest to them.
Why don’t the people earn the interest by being the bankers themselves--through publicly-owned People’s or National Banks?
Napoles and company are certainly no match for the Ponzi schemes of the private banking mafia.
(Watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., this week on “New PCA vs Cocolisap”; tune in to 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; and visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)
Responses to China-RP alliance
Responses to China-RP alliance
(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 12-08-2014 MON)
It was at the Diliman Book Club Yuletide get-together last Saturday that I learned of more unexpected reactions to our Wednesday article, which posited that an RP-China alliance would open better prospects for the Philippines’ prosperity than maintaining its foreign policy status quo with the US today.
Earlier, former congressman Willy Villarama had emailed me back the said article indicating that he had BCC’ed it to his email directory. Several other responses by email reflected a general interest in the proposition. But it was China analyst Chito Sta. Romana who gave me a surprise at the Diliman Book Club gathering.
Chito told me and the others around one table that he was surprised to find the article “China: A better ally” on the Facebook page of Roilo Golez and his group with a note, according to Chito, “Let’s get it straight from Herman Tiu Laurel.” Roilo Golez is, of course, one of the staunchest anti-China and pro-US proponents alongside Rafael Alunan, Loida Nicolas-Lewis, Rodel Rodis et al. who’ve tried to organize mass rallies against China the past two years but which have never gone beyond a hundred or so participants.
I was intrigued by the news. I wondered if it was a tactic to scare the anti-China crowd further with the “Yellow peril” and “the communists are coming” bogeys.
I will take the Golez inclusion of my article last week positively and assume it is in the interest of having an honest discussion on what the Philippines’ foreign policy direction should be as nations traverse the crossroads of the 21st Century. Chito, however, had an advice for me: China, he said, champions the “non-aligned movement” and declares itself “non-aligned.” What China looks forward to, he said, is “partnerships.” “Besides,” Chito added, “China may not want the Philippines as an ally.”
I didn’t interpose any disagreement to Chito’s advice; indeed, China is known for its advocacy of the Non-Aligned Movement since the time of Premier Zhou Enlai in the 60s.
The line between “alliance” and “partnership” is quite thin, but the semantics is important and Chito is right to be careful in using the term. “Alliance” in the global and geopolitical context has come to assume an almost automatic political-military connotation, as we have seen in the controversy erupting in Japan when its premier Shinzo Abe forced the reinterpretation of that country’s Peace Constitution to allow Japan to engage in defense of “alliance” states.
As China eschews military alliance, in May 2014 Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Asian countries against “unhelpful military alliances,” which the US has been reinforcing in the region.
At the turn of the 20th Century, treaty defense obligations to smaller allied countries imposed by military alliances with major powers dragged Germany, France, England, Russia, and the US, often against the better judgment of leaders, into mankind’s first true world war. But China is not averse to all kinds of alliances and, in fact, today it champions economic alliances of politically non-aligned nations such as BRICS, the economic alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa for “a new economic order.” The same is true for its spearheading the recent FTAAP, the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, with 21 member-states, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to enhance ties with Central Asian states and Russia.
Chito Sta. Romana suggests a more gradual process of establishing a new policy direction with regard to relations with China. Instead of an alliance with any country, the Philippines, he says, should declare an “independent foreign policy” unallied to either China or the US. To my mind this is enough to constitute a “revolution” in our hundred-year-old policy of subservience to Uncle Sam. This is the same view expressed by De La Salle University International Relations academic Dr. Elaine Tolentino on my GNN cable TV show last Saturday.
However, I believe we should go one step further to ensure a peaceful world environment for the peaceful development of all: The Philippines is a citizen of Humanity which faces the great risk of World War III today in all parts of the globe where the US is supplying hundreds of tanks and planes, such as in Ukraine and the Baltic states bordering Russia--this, amid the backdrop of Resolution 758 practically authorizing Kiev to attack East Ukraine (http://www.globalresearch.ca/reckless-congress-declares-war-on-russia/5418287), as well as the US “pivot to Asia” and its pursuit of the “Air-Sea Battle” and ”Offshore Control” doctrines against China, ad nausea.
It is the obligation of all nations, including the Philippines, to contain the hegemonic aggressiveness of the US by promoting a global “balance-of-powers.”
The Philippines must not only break free of the US but engage in building that “multipolar world.” Aside from benefitting from the economic boon, it should end the domination of a singular superpower imposing its arbitrary idea of peace on humanity and, to paraphrase President Xi in his speech to a Central Foreign Affairs meeting, work toward an “enabling international environment for peaceful development.”
(Listen to Sulô ng Pilipino, 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)
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