HOW Rich Countries Got Rich

I was preparing a lecture on the economy and the task brought me to a continuum in time or to where we have been and to where we are going in achieving our goals as a nation. As teachers or as social development activists we should feel implicated and responsible for the unspeakable poverty that we Filipinos are in.

If we really think deeply and study the past centuries or if we look around with empirical eyes, some of the reasons why some countries are rich and why so many countries are poor are not really a secret. These observations can be likened to immutable laws of science like the law of gravity. This is the thesis of the book I am reading now by Erik S. Reinert which has inspired my piece today.

Yes - we need agriculture for food security but it is not enough. Yes, the agriculture sector complements the industrial and manufacturing sectors. But, rich countries are really into massive production of finished products – the kind that brings increasing returns as well as employment as opposed to the kind that produces raw materials that is bringing us diminishing returns and so much poverty. The world economy has been like this for many centuries and this is becoming relevant again because there is an emerging similarity between poor countries and the rich countries which are in a financial mess now. The similarity is in the variable called production. Just as poor countries are producing much less & in raw materials; the rich countries which are in financial trouble now are not that into basic production like they used to be. The rich countries which are in trouble now have somehow neglected the variable called basic production as they have focused now on finance and trade. This trade is the kind where one trades stocks, bonds, real estate, debentures, financial debts, commodities trading without delivery and the like which is not unlike the pyramid scam that we know so well here in the Philippines. And the financial elite are doing these with ease through “rent seeking behavior”: the kind that is in cahoots with policymakers at the expense of the ordinary taxpayer.

But, never mind the rich countries. How do we attain sustainable development  in the Philippines? Let us start the action by naming & framing the issues. One place to do this is in the academia.. What kind of graduates are we producing? There is a common observation that we have so many unemployed & underemployed professionals. I think one of the reasons is that our society is so enamored with titles as the route to achieving stature in our society. But, if such kind of titles & college degrees do not bring us employment then our parents, students, and our schools must think again.

One of my students said that one solution to unemployment is for schools to be able to produce employers instead of employees. This is another way of saying that we must produce entrepreneurs instead of more graduates who are aspiring to be civil servants or rank & file employees.

Those who have access to these air conditioned malls are a small percentage of the total population. The large majority have excluded themselves from these establishments due to unspeakable poverty. This is an initial observation that we are in for difficult times. And our solution for this is really simple. Both state & market must provide the climate for economic activities for our ordinary citizens so that we all can afford the basic necessities in life. And this is going back to the basic premise of why poor countries are poor. For now, the experts are saying that to increase the gross national product the magic variable is to engage in real production & manufacturing. This clarion call is indicated for both state and market institutions. And hopefully, other sectors like the academe will give a supporting & crucial role in developing our human resources.

But, the more important question would be who and how many will benefit from the national goal of improving our economy. In economic parlance, we have given these many names "redistribution with growth" or "inclusive development" & the like.

The globe is interlinked. There is a brewing twin American & European financial mess. The trend is towards Asia becoming the center of the global economy. Our traditional theories in Economics are not working or are not able to solve the economic problems of the world. We also need to revisit some of these theories because some of these are true. On top of these theories is the one about the world economy divide as well as the socio- economic divide inside nation-states. The divide inside nation states ( read : so much Philippine poverty) is an issue that national economies like the Philippines can continually address even as the world economy is undergoing reconfiguration. 

A Pause On My Birthday

I kind of pause a bit every year around this time in November because I turn one year older and because it is the thanksgiving season. So, let me share at random my current stream of consciousness. On a personal note, I have my share of angst in life and always there are reminders around me. The dreams that turned out to be elusive, personal problems and the problems of the world that in my social development work feels like I carry the weight on my shoulders.

So, I have developed a method of reciting a mantra to tell myself that I cannot have everything and that our collective work is hopefully always to make things better. And, yes, across the years, I find that things are different and so much better now. One example is that technology makes life handy and fun. The one technology that reminded me that I am one year older is Facebook. This is a wonderful medium and indeed we are now a global village.

I went to a meeting in Manila last week and it was a meeting of a development law group ( Alternative Law Groups) that I have not been to for a while now. I was much pleased to realize that our group has consciously developed a successor generation: the best and the brightest lawyers and development practitioners who are choosing to work for the poor and the oppressed instead of for the rich and powerful. But, I am also wary that the recent economic crisis is affecting the various development funding windows in a precarious way. I hope that this will not make social development work unattractive to the younger generation as a career track.

Ideally, it is about the challenge of tapping the centers of wealth and power towards social responsibility and the promotion of social justice. The rule of thumb here is the biblical saying “ Ask and it shall be given.”

We were discussing the national situation at this juncture in time and the twin issues that are plaguing us : corruption and poverty. The variation of the themes in a nutshell as shared by Representative Walden Bello to our group are on poverty reduction through conditional cash transfer (CCT), the likelihood that the reproductive health bill will be passed as a law, that there should be a reversal of trade liberalization which is the cause of our current economic crisis, the absence of a real opposition in the House of Congress because the 30 representatives in the lower house are headed by Rep Gloria Arroyo, our eight ( 8) million Filipino economic refugees spread around the world, and the Balay vs Samar political factions in the P-Noy cabinet which are personality driven and which are in a kind of tug of war in terms of programs and policies in government. ( read : Balay is the Roxas- Araneta home in Cubao & so it is the Liberal Party & more ; & the Samar group is the group which held office during the campaign period in Samar Avenue in Quezon City and is the other set of power holders in the P-Noy team)

To set the anti-corruption agenda in motion, the newly created structure is the Truth Commission. I am filled with hope that this will work out because some of the personalities that are here are our friends who came from the social development circle. The other structure is, of course, the track of impeaching our Ombudsman and the Akbayan Party List is very much into this track.

The latest on poverty reduction is the billions worth of conditional cash transfer which has recently been practiced in other jurisdictions like in Mexico, Brazil and Bangladesh. It is such a resounding success in Brazil. Anyway, this methodology is about giving cash to the poorest provided they send their children to school and that they visit health clinics and this project is being presided over by our Department of Social Welfare & Development (DSWD). Our legislators are examining the capacity of the DSWD as a bureaucracy to deliver this huge four (4) billion pesos worth CCT program. This CCT transfer program is related to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG). My personal take is that, perhaps, the impact of CCT will take time. There was a sense in our development law group that asset reforms like agrarian reform, modernization of agriculture, taxation, moratorium on debt repayment should also be pursued more vigorously towards real reduction of so much social inequality.

I now realize that my life is so very much intertwined with my work that I find very meaningful in the larger scheme of things in this world. And that is a good reason to celebrate my birthday.

Wall Street : Money Never Sleeps

Wall Street : Money Never Sleeps




This is the first movie I saw on the big screen this year so I might as well revisit it with you.

As a sequel of the first 1987 Wall Street movie and made relevant with a poetic treatise of the real 2008 financial crisis, this film is worth writing about.

Manhattan is postcard pretty as ever as the financial center of the universe.

The screenplay is made familiar by a show of the state of the art of the financial markets and some of our current concerns such as energy requirements of the future and progressive non profit websites that are tools to change the world for the better for our children and the next generations.

This Oliver Stone ( 1987 Wall Street JFK & Nixon fame ) film opens with Gordon Gekko ( Michael Douglas) being released after eight years in jail for financial fraud, which as the character explains later in the film, is actually a much larger crime than the insider trading crime, the initial transgression that we saw at the end of the first Wall Street film.

After seven years we find Gekko a star again as the author of a best seller book : Is Greed Good?

But, the angst of the life of Gekko is mostly about his estrangement with Winnie ( Carey Mulligan), his daughter who blogs in a non profit website, that started to get 50,000 hits or website visits per day and ultimately got 200,000 hits per day when indications for market corrections were published.

The daughter blames the absentee Gekko in jail for all the tragic events in their dysfunctional post modern family : a brother who died due to drug overdose and a mother who went mad.

The partner of Winnie is Jake Moore ( Shia LaBeouf) an energy investment expert working in Wall Street who thinks that energy fusion using water, through hydrogen fusion, is the next “bubble” that will solve our energy problems for the next generations.

The poetic screenplay ( Allan Loeb & Stephen Schiff ) is actually narrated from the point of view of Jake, a protégé of Lou ( Frank Langella of Nixon fame), who commits suicide after his financial investment bank falls. With the help of Gekko, Jake finds out how and why the company of his mentor went bankrupt.

The next scenes are about the so called “ market corrections” in the financial meltdown that is ailing Wall Street. These corrections largely use the legal and justice system structures.

This film tries to explain in scenes, not unlike the television clips we saw in the real life 2008 financial crisis, what is wrong with our financial markets :people borrowing to the hilt, all of the profits coming from financial services such as trading, leveraging, hedge funding and some of these funds are used to finance industrial military weapons of mass destruction ( WMD) and that only about almost a hundred people in the world control these transactions.

That speculation is the mother of all evil.
Gekko describes the current Ninja generation as the generation with “no income, no job and no assets.” The solutions to all these in the words of Gekko are three words “Buy My Book” as the answers can be found in his best selling book.

Gekko, while introspecting in jail felt that he was the lone sane man inside and everyone and all out of prison were crazy.

The conflict in the movie is the struggle of Jake to make the corrections in the cancerous financial market mess, not unlike the real life 2008 financial mess that as we saw was bailed out by the United States treasury in what was called the billions worth “stimulus package.”

The concept of “ moral hazard” is explained: “someone gets your money and that someone is not responsible for it.”
The villain in Bretton James ( Josh Brolin) is exposed; the wall street crook was found committing securities fraud : trading for his own account and betting against the market he was making.

One of the scenes described by A.O. Scott in the New York Times movie review, that also caught my fancy was the fundraiser soiree event where one finds the beautiful people of Manhattan dressed in designer clothes and the camera of Rodrigo Prieto, director of photography, zoomed in on the bulky & beautiful earrings of the women in gorgeous gowns.

 It was such an ostentatious display of wealth for charity.

The beauty and the beast that is Manhattan & Wall Street as further described
by A.O. Scott is the intersection of “ material excess…. with genuine beauty”
and that “ what went wrong” in the financial center can be explained in two words: “ human nature.”   

Christmas

We all need to feel the spirit and magic of Christmas amidst all the mayhem we are experiencing in Mindanao.

This is not to downplay nor forget the monstrosity of the Maguindanao heinous massacre and the Agusan del Sur and the Basilan tragic events that followed but an invitation to reflect on the meaning and significance of Christmas.

If the goal of warlordism is wealth, fame and power, it would do us well to remember that the great Jesus was born very humbly in a stable among farm animals.

Of course, we agree that the Jesus Christ who said that we should love one another is our model of how one should be famous and powerful. Wealth, fame and power can be harnessed to serve humanity and therefore are not evil per se; the evils are its misuses to harm humanity. Harming others is an act of harming ourselves.

For many years now, we in the local feminist scene have been contemplating on what we call the “ Alternative Christmas.”

It is a growing concept so it is continually evolving. For example, in advocating that child care is a family and social concern, we promote Christmas cards that has the father St Joseph holding the baby Jesus.

In this sense, we still need to promote The Nativity image that will promote breastfeeding as I imagine there was no commercial cow’s milk formula nor television advertisements to undermine breastfeeding in Bethlehem at that time.

We like to imagine The Belen, or the Nativity scenes to be set in a barn or stable and include Mary, Joseph, the child Jesus, angels, shepherds BUT the Three Wise bearers of gifts are “WOMEN: Balthazara, Melchiora, and Caspara,” who are said to have followed a star, known as the Star of Bethlehem, and arrive after His birth.

We are not anti – men, but we wish to be allowed to imagine a world where women can be “ Three Queens” and find time to leave the domesticity of home to be able to travel and be as gracious and magnanimous as the Three Kings.

While we welcome the economic activity during the Christmas season and particularly, in these times of recession, it is prudent to be austere amidst all the hunger around us.

Don’t we feel violated when others spend millions on lavish Christmas parties while others are hungry? A recent Philippine Human Development Report published by the United Nations Development Program ( UNDP) has determined that “ massive and abject poverty and economic inequity, particularly in the distribution of wealth and control over the resource base for livelihood” is one of the root causes of internal conflicts and rebellion in the Philippines.

This kind of rebellion is perhaps not seen in Maguindanao, a province in Central Mindanao, among the high and mighty enough to have declared a state of martial law.

Our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who are not able to go home for Christmas are missing their loved ones in a very big way. I have read their entries in social networking sites and they are missing our “simbang gabi, puto bongbong, caroling, office parties, etc.”

Our fellow countrymen abroad will assuage these feelings by remitting funds and Christmas presents galore. This is why some mothers think they wish to be “MRDs” ( mothers receiving dollars).

My wish is to be able to feel Christmas through the eyes and heart of the child in me and to believe in the magic of Christmas: faith in a Santa Claus from the heavens, giving gifts of love and all the works.

Faith is a lot like love and hope and invoking that warms my heart !

The Sociology of Sickness

I spent my weekend in the hospital taking care of my mother –in-law who has been experiencing chest pains and difficulty of breathing.
The sociology of illness is related to the organizations managing health care, the professions giving health care and the attitude and behavior of people around illness or health care in general.

In first world countries, rich and poor people rely on public health care. In short, public health care is very accessible. 
In our country, tertiary hospitals are found in cities only as though only people in the cities get sick of ailments requiring highly specialized health care such as major surgical operations requiring state- of -the - art facilities.

In many rural areas, if you need emergency tertiary health care between midnight and dawn, you are at risk of dying because there is no public transportation at these hours to bring you to tertiary hospitals in cities. 

The health profession, especially the medical profession is now very specialized that one wonders whether, at all, the doctors remember that there is a value added to examining the entire body as the sum of all the body parts.
Doctors feel constrained to be the MD of record of a patient if the ailment is not their specialization - even if MDs studied medicine for decades. 

This kind of medical ethics and tradition need to be revisited. 

Today, in doctors’ offices, we find medical secretaries getting the medical history of a patient when the tale of a patient is crucial to the diagnosis of an ailment.
In effect, what the doctor gets in terms of history is hearsay.
Indeed, perhaps, this is part of the medical transcription age.

In emergency rooms, resident doctors spend more time preparing their report for their mentors rather than physically examining the patient who has come for emergency treatment.

In another third world country, I actually witnessed resident doctors neglecting to pay attention to a patient who was having a heart attack because they were more focused on writing their report to an incoming mentor consultant doctor.
Perhaps, the patient could have lived if they had focused their attention to the patient instead of writing their report.
I mean, there should be a time for writing the report later when the patient has emerged from the emergency condition.  Instead of studiously hearing the symptoms as felt by the patient and religiously performing a physical examination, the knee jerk reaction is to order a battery of  laboratory procedures ( expensive for a majority of patients ) as a data gathering procedure in aid of diagnosis.
Needless to say, some of these procedures are unnecessary for some good doctors.

The emergency rooms of our public hospitals are another sordid tale.

All these observations are related to how public health care is financed in this country which is also related to budgets and government revenues from  taxation.
In other first world countries, the ordinary citizen is mostly taxed thirty five per cent ( 35%) of  gross income.
Just after the second world war, rich British citizens were charged ninety five per cent ( 95%) from income.
We need this kind of taxation provided public funds are really used for public expenditures but this is another topic altogether. 

                            

Demystifying The Flu: A ( H1N1)  Virus

                                    

The flu that we know as children was so ordinary.
Doctors call it a self limiting disease as one gets healed rapidly even in the absence of treatment. All right, granted, one gets over the counter drugs but for the symptoms only.  But, this influenza A ( H1N1) virus is something.  Doctors go to school for years or decades and that is why we always think that health knowledge is a monopoly of health professionals. But, with this pandemic, the tendency is to “ google “ and read to know this ailment. Some of us are still skeptical about this swine virus. Why? Because, health care is an industry.  It can spell the difference between  rich  first world manufacturing drugs and third world  consuming drugs.

As young activists, we were socialized and educated to understand that  treating a sick patient is as important as working for a society where there is no poverty and  where health care is affordable and accessible. Someone asked me, “ what is the gender perspective to the swine virus pandemic? “  I said, women are poorer, and that  in reality, when someone gets sick in the family, it is always the mother or wife who takes care of the children or who  gets to be absent from work.  Ideally, of course, health should be a social concern with state funds for health care services. 

  

Just before this swine virus, there was an Ebola virus. Then, they said, that animal to human transmission is not possible. So, some of us said, maybe bird flu, but swine flu, as in pigs flying?

Nobody wants to be infected with this swine virus and so let us see what we already  know so far. The mode of transmission is droplet inhalation. It is not transmitted through the air per se. School briefings have advised that the masks are for the infected only. 

WHO experts have said that the H1N1 virus is not so severe and that most of those infected have made a rapid recovery often in the absence of treatment and that the number of deaths are small.  In the Philippines, the cases for the virus have reached 193 cases.   Despite the pandemic level, with 30,000 confirmed cases in 74 countries, the World Health Organization said, “ it continues to put  NO  restrictions on travel.’’  Of course.  To restrict travel, would be a violation of liberty.

So, why the media hype?  Dr. Kenneth  Balanay- Antonio, my surgeon cousin says, that what  is  precarious is the potential for an “ exponential  transmission from person to person. 
 Imagine, if you will, a passenger in a crowded international airport waiting for a flight  to wherever   for about an hour, coughing and smearing  secretions all over the place that        is then easily picked up by even a fraction of those within his / her immediate         vicinity, who  will also have destinations to other  points abroad.  Then, the             danger  that the virus will mutate  is always there; the more it gets           propagated globally the greater the chance of it developing into an instantly   fatal or really virulent strain that would be a public health nightmare.
While,  there is also media  hype abroad as  updates or news are released   to inform     the public, these are not as scary or panic-laden as our news releases here.   Someone emailed me that  Australia has the highest number of A(H1N1)         cases per capita in the world but nowhere were  the kind of measures being       taken in the Phil.  In Melbourne alone there are over 1,000+ cases and         Melbourne has a small population of under a million.  The screenings were     done in airports only but there is  no  temperature taking in schools. As most      everyone agrees, dengue is an even more scary as an  epidemic or pandemic           as it can be fatal within a few days.
Death from swine flu will be  due to             neglected symptoms of pneumonia, dehydration and general debility brought      about by the infection usually in very old or very young or very health-           compromised patients. The swine flu...like any other flu...is very debilitating             especially for  the very young and the very old and the very immuno-     compromised. Otherwise,  it is just like any other flu…  maybe a bit more    debilitating compared to the run-of-the-mill types of flu. So, when flu     symptoms do come about...do not ignore...have a consultation  WITH A  COMPETENT AND TRUSTED MEDICAL PRACTITIONER.”

Health & pharmaceutical industry are already making big money in the sale of pharmaceutical gadgets and drugs. So, expect the market to be flooded with the vaccine soon. This needs to be monitored and we ask the question: Who benefits? Who loses?

Alternative Futures *

Planning alternative futures is a way of thinking and is a tool for planning. We imagine what might happen (possible future), a preferable future ( the future that we desire), what will happen ( plausible future), and probable future (more likely to happen). There is not just one future but many possible futures for if there were just one future, then, we are determining the future itself.

 Future thinking has always been part of human history and Futures Studies as a discipline uses the tools of science like Mathematics etc as tools in forecasting, for example, population growth and in trying to understand the big problems of the world.

 For our economic recession now, I am sure that we were not lacking in economic forecasts. What were needed, perhaps, were instruments to regulate the market and, more importantly, instruments to regulate “greed. ”

 I remember that in the late eighties, while I was doing development studies in Europe, we asked why the United States, if it was deficit spending already, did not have to undergo structural adjustment as prescribed by world financial institutions for poor countries.

 The answer we had at that time is that the United States has so much productive capacity. Anyway, with the failure of the financial and banking system at this juncture in time, nation states will have to find the fit between state regulation and free market or between protectionism and free trade.

There are many alternative futures for Mindanao. It was inspiring to hear our Mindanao & national leaders on ANC television in February 2009 as they invested themselves in re- imagining Mindanao.

One of the issues that caught my attention was whether economic development can be had in the meantime that peace is not yet at hand. Two decades ago, MINCODE, the coalition of NGO networks had already indicated in a policy paper the political, economic & socio-cultural road map to development in Mindanao. To be sure, all of the proposals will be a hurdle now amidst the economic recession now resonating deeply – in many ways- with nation states as well as with ordinary citizens. One of the constant themes in that MINCODE paper is that Mindanao is tri-people and multi-cultural.

Which is why, one of the panelists in that recent ANC TV special sponsored by the Asia Foundation and the embassy of Canada, remarked that these kind of conversations must also reflect the voice of the indigenous peoples in Mindanao. It was also noted that small or big victories in programs and projects of NGOs are not enough if these did not evolve into policies or in the case of the MOA-AD, if they do not fulfill the legal & constitutional requirements

The fate of the MOA-AD was a major piece in that ANC TV special coverage on Mindanao. Some of the lessons of that entire process leading to the non signing of the MOA-AD as described by Ms Irene Santiago, chair of the Mindanao Commission on Women, were a deficiency in tactical planning and this current administration’s lack of political capital and leadership to pave the way towards signing; the MOA-AD as a peace agreement should have been forged as an iconic event and putting as conditions the eventual passage of the legal and constitutional requirements, at some point.

 Looking back, yes, this is how the Tripoli agreement happened in 1976. Then in 1977, a Code of Muslim Personal Laws was passed which made possible the creation of Shari’a Courts in 1985. Much later, the 1996 peace agreement between the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation Front was also signed. All these instruments in 1977, 1985 and 1996 were based on the Tripoli agreement.

With the coming elections next year, now is a great time to draft those policy & legislative agendas needed for the proposed institutional arrangements for Mindanao.

* based on my column on the opinion page of the Mindanao Times on Feb 11, 2009 entitled Continuing Conversations on Mindanao