What’s the point of GMA’s SONA boast of a P1.4-trillion national budget for next year -- a huge jump from 2002’s P778 billion to last year’s P1.2 trillion -- if the national poverty numbers continue to grow in leaps and bounds? In 2007 alone, the Philippines ’ ranking in the United Nations Human Development Index plunged to number 99 from number 77 in 2002, notwithstanding our budget’s hefty 50-percent increase over the past six years.
Poverty surveys like Pulse Asia and SWS, as well as, the government’s own National Statistics Office and National Food and Nutrition Council studies show escalating poverty and hunger incidence in the country. These days, 60 percent of Filipinos already rate themselves poor while 2.9 million families suffer from abject hunger.
Despite these, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) last week even prided itself for having “increased” the country’s international reserves. BSP Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. said the country’s gross international reserves (GIRs) reached $36.6 billion at end-May from $36.4 billion at end-April. Given that the country’s GIRs stood at $25.6 billion at end-May last year, this year’s figure translates to a 43-percent-increase year on year.
But why are these reserves being increased on borrowed money, at a time when the people are experiencing financial drought from increasing oil and food prices, higher interest rates that choke industry and dislocate employees, and a gyrating peso? Aren’t reserves supposed to be used during rainy days, in times of need and crisis?
Well, that’s because RP’s finance management is topsy-turvy and contradicts common sense. GMA and her fellow neo-liberals’ policies are like illusion mirrors in carnival houses, presenting distorted and grotesquely twisted images of reality. And as this fun house is run by the IMF-WB, along with its international and local banking mafia, the BSP only sees the country’s finances from this distorted view vis-à-vis “bankers’ mathematics” of our debt, currency and economic policies.
Even as the national budget balloons, the country gets poorer and poorer because the budget growth is merely based on more borrowings, which prompts the BSP to print more debt-based pesos to mop up dollars that are then placed into reserves. Invariably, both increase the profits of international and local bankers.
The way the present financial system works is, sadly, the way the IMF-WB likes it. Still, with this perverted economics’ detriment to our nation, why is the BSP not being made to answer for it? Simple. It’s only answerable to the IMF-WB; not to the Filipino people or its government.
The Philippine Constitution, written by the cabal of Joker Arroyo’s wife, the Jesuit Bernas and Cory Aquino’s other clones, created Section 20, Article 12, which stipulates that the BSP, being supposedly “independent,” should be run by a board consisting of seven members, two of whom are public officials appointed by government, with the majority of five being representatives of private banks. This, in effect, puts the BSP under the control of the banks, and not the Republic of the
As proof, let us consider the following: Local bankers, with their enormous clout, got exemptions from the Agri-Agra Law mandating banks to lend 25 percent of loanable funds to farmers, by simply buying government Treasury Bills. Then, in 2005, bankers got National Treasurer Norma Lasala fired for opposing the late BSP chief Rafael Buenaventura’s transfer of government securities custodianship and authorizing fees to the Philippine Depository and Trust Corporation, adding billions in cost to government and profits to five favored private banks, namely: the Bank of the Philippine Islands, the local units of Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, and Standard Chartered Bank.
Don’t let the “ng Pilipinas” tag of the BSP fool you; it’s there to hoodwink people into thinking it’s a public institution. It is no different from the US Federal Reserve board, which is neither federal nor public, with a so-called “independent” board comprising seven members whose names are nominated by the private District Federal Reserve banks to the
The US Federal Reserve Chairman has always come from the private banking sector and is never independent. Perhaps, the Federal Reserve is only independent in that it has never been audited by the
“But aren’t there enough people who know this and who would expose it?” the layman would often react. As the Rothschilds have said, “The few who understand the system will either be so interested in its profits or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class…” Thus, our doctors of economics or finance from UP, Ateneo and UA&P who want jobs and consultancies from these banks and their subsidiaries, or the IMF-WB think tanks, just keep quiet and join the plunder.
Since we do not count among their servile ranks, let us expose the ones in control of the US Federal Reserve: Rothschild Banks of
Notice the preponderance of Jewish names? Now you know why Obama immediately spoke at the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) after nomination. These bankers control the IMF-WB (note that the IMF chief is always nominated from European financial circles) and the US Federal Reserve. The BSP is just an adjunct of these larger instrumentalities of the global finance oligarchy.
A real Philippine Revolution requires that the people understand this fundamental financial reality, and the key to an independent financial system is to control the value of one’s currency independent of these foreign powers, as well as, the flow of capital in and out the country -- the way China, Vietnam, Venezuela, and other truly independent countries have done.
The financial revolution is the start of the national revolution. President Estrada, General Danny Lim, Senator Trillanes, the Bagong Katipuneros, Grace Padaca, Among Ed, et al should study this and realize that “good governance” is not enough for real change. We need radical change in our financial set up. Like Hugo Chavez’ nationalization of Banco de Venezuela, we need to return the power to issue credit and money to the people through the State.
(Tune in to: Talk News TV on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 3, tomorrow at 8:45 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. with our topic, “Kosovo in Mindanao”; Kape’t Kamulatan, Kabansa on 1098AM, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m.; and Suló ng Pilipino every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the same station. Also, check out: http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)
