Changing World

Changing World

Changing World

It has been repeated ad nauseam that the Philippines is rich in natural resources. Unfortunately, it has been poor in the goods and services that are needed for economic development.

To the small entrepreneurs, agriculture has always been a symbol of backwardness and unprofitable business.

Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz, working with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, may finally do something concrete about the imperfections of Gross Domestic Product accounting that economists have recognized for decades but have done little to address the problem.

I would like to ask my readers to pray for the continued health of my mother who turns 100 years Thursday.

Next Friday, October 9, my mother — Isabel Malvar Villegas — will turn 100, still in full possession of her senses.

The Magna Carta for Women has just been signed by the president. It has many valuable provisions that protect women in the Philippines from certain cultural biases and abuses that still persist in some regions and sectors of our society.

How do you get everyone of your employees to own the mission and vision of your company?

Indonesia will be at the center of the world’s attention when US President Barack Obama pays a state visit to the country of 17,000 islands where he spent four years of his childhood.

Lessons are being learned from the ongoing global economic crisis.

Once again the policy debates in the Executive and Legislative departments of government about the taxation of the so-called "sin products" like tobacco and alcohol are heating up.

A 35-year-old Filipino nurse, married and a mother of a year-old baby, is waging a battle against the culture of death that has been given a boost by the Obama administration in the United States.

If and when constitutional change will happen after the May 2010 elections, I will actively campaign for the removal of many of the existing restrictions against the entry of much-needed foreign equity capital to the Philippines.

Some concerned members of the business community have formed a foundation called Philippine Business for Education.

Bankers and business people are used to the acronym BRIC.

PRESIDENT Barack Obama may be praised for being true to his campaign promise to allow US funding to be channeled to NGOs that include abortion in their family programs. Consistency is no virtue, however, if the original commitment involved doing something inherently evil. Killing a defenseless human being in the womb of the mother is inherently evil. It violates the right to life, the very foundation of all human rights. Without the right to life, all other human rights are meaningless.

CONCERNING family businesses, it has been repeated ad nauseam that "the grandfather starts a business, the children weaken it, and the grandchildren bury it." Another way, especially in Europe, of expressing this same observation is to talk of a "grandfather who is an entrepreneur, a son who is an engineer, and a grandson who is a poet." Having read a book by an authority on family business in Europe, Professor Miguel A. Gallo of the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain, I have begun to question this untested theory. Without denying that there may be indeed cases in which the third generation witnessed the demise of a business started by the grandfather, Professor Gallo in his very wide experience of working with hundreds of family businesses in Spain and other European countries, puts the primary blame on the first generation. The eventual failure of a business founded by an entrepreneur is usually the result of sins of commission or omission of the founder himself.

ONE of the major challenges to the Obama Administration in the next four years is to build a democratic culture in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It would be a serious handicap if in the process of establishing democracy in these two predominantly Islamic countries, President Obama will be heavily influenced by the moral relativism that pervades the thinking of many politicians of the American Democratic Party. Unless all the parties concerned recognize the existence of some absolute truths, like the dignity of every human person, the respect of human rights, and the commitment to the common good as the guiding criterion for political life, a democratic system can never take root in these countries.

DESPITE its current economic woes, the United States is still the biggest and most powerful economy in the world. President-elect Barack Obama and his highly select team of economic and international relations experts have a unique opportunity to use this present crisis to effect a radical transformation of the international community so that the interests of the entire human family be equally represented. As he rightfully remarked, "change will come from him." It is, therefore, paramount that President-elect Obama have a clear idea of what changes are needed in the international community so that justice, peace, and development can be attained by each and every person on this planet. The blueprint for this change can be found in the social teachings of the Catholic Church as contained in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.

THE ongoing global crisis should not be an excuse for critics of market forces to throw the baby with the bathwater. Strictly speaking, the free market is still very much a baby in the Philippine economy. For more than forty years after the Second World War, what we had in the Philippines was not a market economy but a curious mongrel of mercantilism, state interventionism, monopoly capitalism and our own version of crony capitalism. Hardly did we allow market forces to really operate because of all the protectionism, state enterprises, bureaucratic controls, and populist economics. Like China till 1978 when the reforms of Deng Xiaopeng began and India till 1991 when then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh opened up the Indian economy, the Philippines was a market economy only in name till the deregulation, privatization and liberalization movements began in the 1990s during the Presidency of Fidel Ramos.