Inquirer.net reports that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will meet with financial and banking experts in New York this week to find out more about the U.S. financial crisis. As if she’s in any position to do anything about it.

Her ostensible reason is to attend the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly. The visit had been previously canceled due to pressing domestic concerns. This was before the Lehman Brothers collapse. Suddenly, she decided to push through with the trip. Read the rest of this entry »

When I learned early in the week about the turmoil in Wall Street and that the collapse of Lehman Brothers would probably impact on a number of local banks (around seven, as it turns out, plus AIG subsidiary Philamlife) my first impulse was to make panic withdrawals. But then I quickly realized I had nothing to withdraw. And this caused me to panic even more.

Which brings me to my point. I’m in the position of the many millions of Filipinos whose reaction to the worldwide financial paroxysm would be “Huh? What crisis?”. The Philippines is a nation in perpetual crisis. How can things possibly get worse than they already are ? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been called a tectonic shift in the global economic environment, with aftershocks to be felt for some time to come.

First, investment bank Lehman Brothers , a firm founded in 1850 and which survived the Great Depression, two world wars and every market upheaval before and since, went belly-up over the weekend. Then rival Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America for a fraction of its value of just a few months ago.

American International Group (AIG), one of the world’s largest insurers, was effectively bought by the U.S. Federal Reserve for a bailout amounting to US$ 85 billion to forestall its impending bankruptcy. AIG is the mother company of the local Philippine American Life Insurance Company (Philamlife). It’s often been said that when the U.S. sneezes, the Philippines catches a cold. Well, when the U.S. gets a cold, we get pneumonia. Read the rest of this entry »