2023: The year from hell
Disastrous economic policies for more than 30 years led to the political chaos of 2016, which led to…
Hate working? Be an economist
“The Iceman” mummy lived around 5,000 years ago on the Austrian–Italian border. Among his possessions was a complex…
Faulty thinking
While I am sure you think that it is merely the ramblings of a “pre-pre-dementia” Boomer, I cannot…
Learn these two
The two most valuable courses to take to learn how the financial and asset markets function are history…
About the money
The past 10 days have seen the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) make it to the front pages,…
Why nothing makes sense
The world that we live in makes it hard to believe that anything makes sense. While I adhere…
Laugh or cry
There is a Chinese idiom, in Pinyin kūxiàobùdé, that describes the confusing feeling of not knowing whether to…
On being the 20 percent
There are basically two kinds of people in the world. There are those who first complain and grumble…
War continues as Putin wins
Ludwigshafen, a German city across the river Rhine from Mannheim, was founded in 1844. With a population of…
The ‘bullwhip effect’
From the dictionary: “A free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are…
What the Philippines needs now
This is an optimist. “Everyone knows that there is a pot buried at the end of the rainbow.…
No turning back the clock
Humans are different from other animals. There is one particular factor that separates us from the bear in…
I can’t believe you
Maybe it is a characteristic of my generation, but I am naïve or dumb enough to give the…
Investing
People ask me how I can conclude and then say publicly that the global economic situation is marching…
Time to be serious
WE have a global economic situation and the potential consequences cannot be ignored or underestimated. I have been…
You make the economy
I keep saying it, no one wants to believe it, but I know that you know more about…
Dismal today, bright tomorrow?
It’s tough out there in the real world and getting depressed about the situation is perfectly justified. I…
Looking for a perfect lover
The relationship between the Philippines and Foreign Direct Investment is complicated, maybe Johnny Depp/Amber Heard complicated. The Philippines…
PHL is not the Titanic
WE have this idea that “we are all in the same boat” and usually that boat is the…
RCEP now?
IF you want to be realistic about it, international trade has been a tale of misery. Shall we…
Global experts and elite
Words do not mean what they used to mean. For example, the word “awful” used to mean “worthy…
Stay positive
I take a positive approach about the future. Perhaps I am genetically hard-wired that way. Maybe it is from…
Crypto crazy
Having a discussion about cryptocurrencies with some investors is like discussing polygamy with some followers of Islam or…
It’s a horse race
Humans are a strange species. Soon after we stopped dragging our knuckles and started walking upright, we have…
Post-election thoughts
There must be something in the DNA of all earthly animals—from penguins to people—that requires that we look…
The Ratchet Effect
IN the biblical book of Matthew, Jesus of Nazareth tells the story of the king who gives three…
Political pessimism
Looking at the economic numbers coming out of the United States might make you less depressed about the…
How the world has changed
Running one of those programs designed to catch plagiarism, I ran an analysis of my own writings over…
PSE: Post-Covid, post-election
IF we are going to look six months down the calendar, we are going to have to make…
‘Challenges 2022’
There will be a hard learning curve this year and it is not the presidential candidates’ fault that…
The candidates are not ready
Every election is always for the “soul of the nation.” It is because of SocMed where we hear…
Just my theory
IN a world where “fake news” or “misinformation” is treated as if it were an STD, we often…
How the system changed
The war in Ukraine has upended what we assumed was cast in concrete. By that I mean in…
Are you afraid?
West of Paris is Poissy, what we would call a municipality of 37,000 people, its population basically unchanged…
Why aren’t you rich?
One of my favorite maxims is, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” It is one…
Be a warrior not a drone
Right now, you are probably asking yourself, “What the hell is going on and what can I do…
My celestial burden
There have been a couple of notable observations that I have made recently. On June 11, 2007, I…
‘Vox Populi, Vox Dei’
There is—or should be—a special section in hell for someone making this statement. But here goes. I do…
On the Ukraine crisis
The comments from both the candidates and the pundits on the war in the Ukraine—“standing in admiration of…
‘Winning solves everything’
“A new study has “discovered” the world’s most boring person in the world. According to new research from…
World War Three
Combining the “Roman Republic” and the “Roman Empire,” they had a good run of almost 1,000 years. It…
Certifiably insane
Driving up East Service Road from Muntinlupa to Bicutan this past Saturday morning, I realized something. The amount…
Global economic collapse?
While some are trying to calculate how many political “angels” can fit in 1 square meter at an…
No meat tonight
IN the Age of SocMed, people have been made to believe—by design or by chance—that they as individuals…
When the world is coming unglued
My mantra for several years now has been T.G.Y.F.—Thank God You’re Filipino—and I make no apology for it.…
‘Wars and rumors of wars’
The Behistun Inscription is a multilingual (three different cuneiform languages) inscription and rock relief at Mount Behistun in the…
Moving into March
“WE know that 2,500 years ago, a Babylonian astronomer realized that eclipses come in cycles that are 6,585…
Time for belt-tightening?
“Saint Nicholas was a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop in the region of Lycia in Turkey. Nicholas was known…
What are the stock markets betting on?
Trying to explain inflation is like trying to explain conception, gestation, and birth to a five-year-old. It is…
Dangerous times…Not
Pick a topic and it is easy to find raging hysteria. What shall we start with first—the election,…
Vote for this candidate
The three broad issues for this election season are, in alphabetical order, corruption, economy, and foreign policy. All…
Going to the mall
MY trip to the mall this weekend was most revealing. This mall “has a gross floor area of…
The best leading indicator
Maybe it comes with advancing age and simultaneously increasing crankiness, but this election seems different to me than…
Covid lessons learned?
The Covid-19 pandemic taught us many lessons, probably least of which is in health care. When a candidate…
What ‘democracy’ is
Winston Churchill said in 1947 that “many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in…
‘Bad moon rising’
Humans may be much “smarter” today, but they may also have been much “wiser” in the past. Much…
The window to public thought
Joseph Overton was a senior vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and is known for…
Stagflation strategies
There are three major components to an economy. These are “economic growth” or the amount of increase or…
This is not the end
These are dark times. We have the two forces of the pandemic and politics pulling us into the…
The great painkiller
Two years ago on January 8, 2020, the Philippine Stock Exchange Composite Index was at 7,736. We are…
Dalio and Roubini
My grandmother was seven years old when New York City had a population of 100,000 horses producing around…
Better be worth it
The Philippine Stock Exchange Composite Index ended 2021 virtually unchanged, down 17 points from the 2020 close. The…
You are what you read
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was a 17th century French lawyer and politician, who, as the author of The Physiology of Taste,…
Exciting times ahead
“Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the…
You can’t fool the market
AN iconic television commercial from the 1970s shows Mother Nature in a gown of white, adorned with a…
The coming Panic Chaos
Political Chaos followed by Economic Chaos followed by Panic Chaos. The first two are inevitable. The third depends…
Stock market snowflakes
Medilines Distributors Inc. (MEDIC) listed its shares on the Philippine Stock Exchange on Tuesday. The offering of 825,000,000…
‘The Summit for Democracy’
The apologists for China and its government have been out in full force these past couple of weeks.…
The candidates: Not looking forward
Near the end of September, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua said the following: “The estimated long-run…
‘Filconomics’
Here are a few quotations that I particularly like. “The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive,…
‘Hugs, not bullets’
Every nation struggles with the problem of illegal drug use. The related crime issues, such as robberies and…
Let’s go Brandon
The last five years has seen an increasing global trend on what I can only describe as a…
What does China know that we don’t
US President Richard Nixon called it “the week that changed the world.” From February 21 to 28, 1972,…
COP-OUT 26 and the energy crisis
The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP-26) is taking place in Glasgow, Scotland. Note this is the…
Some money thoughts
The intensity of the 2022 presidential campaign is amazing, breathtaking even, considering the voting is six months away.…
Global outlook: Not good
There is a lot of madness in the world today. I call your attention to Turkey. The country…
What would the next president do?
The past days have seen several “political pundits” addressing the 2022 election framed in terms of WWJD? (What…
Everybody knows
Binge listening to the music of Leonard Cohen on a Sunday afternoon is good for both mind and…
Start thinking ahead now
The leader of a family has the duty and responsibility to provide two things to the members of…
May you live in interesting times
Even having lived the past 19 months with the sword of death and economic destruction hanging over us,…
The Water Tiger
The year 2022 is set to be the year of the Water Tiger. From Karma Weather: “The New…
Another cycle is coming
IN mid-2015, I started writing about the cyclical turning point that would lead to “political chaos” in 2016.…
Governments ‘hate’ poverty
My grandfather was born in 1886. At that time 72 percent of humanity lived in “extreme poverty.” In…
Productive value and speculative value
Around 1560, an Italian couple, the Bernacottis, made the first blueprint for the modern, wood-encased pencil. Their concept…
China’s problem is not our problem?
Now that we are approaching the official start of the 2022 election season, it appears that the main…
‘Orcs’ and Evergrande
Americans, in general, and some US politicians, in particular, are the most ignorant people on planet Earth when…
The PSE going forward
IT has been easy not to talk about the Philippine stock market for months. In 2021, the range…
What really changed since 9/11
The world stopped on a morning in New York City 20 years ago. It does not matter if…
The great Covid reset
Even a casual understanding of history would determine that the catastrophe of World War I was the result…
How strange is it?
Filipinos had a flair for the dramatic long before there was even a Philippines. Ferdinand Magellan’s singular achievement…
Perception and reality
Perception: “A way of understanding or interpreting something.” Reality: “The world as it actually exists.” “There are two…
Breaking our ‘resilience’
IT is obviously a “generational” thing. The famous 2017 study in the United Kingdom found that most people…
The Grind
The concept is so much a fundamental part of nature that it is found in almost all scientific…
Dynamic stability
Which of the two scenarios is better? You teach your child the moral lesson by encouraging and supporting…
The great game Asia style
Although different in magnitude by a factor of a million, what happened in Afghanistan has similarities to what…
Current event thoughts
There are many exciting things going on, spanning the globe from the earthquake in Haiti to the takeover…
How to win an election
IT is probably a good thing that we have the triumphs of Philippine Olympic athletes to occupy our…
The elites are different
American author F. Scott Fitzgerald of The Great Gatsby fame is said to have had a conversation with the equally…
It’s my business
A couple of days ago, a comment was posted on Twitter. “If you are stocking up on booze…
China at war with the world and itself
This is the way the event was reported. July 16, 1971: “Yesterday, President Nixon shocked the world by…