MANILA, Philippines — It’s remarkable that we can be in the 21st century and still not know fundamental things about what lives on our planet,” observes Cindy Van Dover, a director at Duke University’s marine laboratory, referring to the assortment of unique life-forms recently discovered living in vents in a distinct biological zone a mile deep under the Antarctica.

Not knowing about the interplay of fundamental things on this world seems to be a recurring theme in a lot of fields now. Physicists are in hot pursuit of the implications of the super string theory, the unified theory that will explain the most fundamental workings of the universe. Not that we’ll get the finer points any time soon. It’s like a space ship from the future has just landed and we’re trying to figure out how it works with eighteenth century mechanics.

Global finance is the midst of a slow burn meltdown. Charles Ellis, who oversees Yale’s fifteen billion dollar endowment fund observes that “Ninety percent of stock market volume is done by institutions, and half of that is done by the world’s fifty largest investment firms, deeply committed, vastly well prepared—the smartest sons of bitches in the world working their tails off all day long.” And yet, everybody shares the same anxiety of not knowing the full implications of an unfolding slow-burn global economic meltdown.“I noticed something about my stock portfolio,” a long-time investor friend told me. “Given all the ups and downs of the market, my losses have been more than any gains I might have in every uptick. Regardless of what everyone says, the trend is going down.”

In their article “Collateral Damage: What Next? Where Next?”, David Rhodes and Daniel Stelter note that the past 30-year credit boom has run its course. Unfortunately, given man’s short-term memory and attention span, we know of nothing else. The world economy boomed and prospered fuelled by cheap credit and sophisticated finance hinged on air. Now, there’s just too much debt junk lying around in the yards of too many developed countries, which have helped make other countries prosper. Ok, Asia doesn’t have as much debt but who will buy our exports if the developed countries are hurting? How do we clean up a situation that we have never faced before and all the logical methods we know point to differing levels of pain that people are frantically trying to avoid?

Insulated

Coming home with insights on how the average guy in a developed country soldiers on with fear given the economic uncertainty of what the near future brings, I asked a small local businessman if he personally felt or fully knew of the growing economic threat overseas brought on by Eurozone and the contraction of the U.S. economy, along with it those of China’s and other emerging markets. “Nope,” he said cheerfully.

The country’s lack of ability and wherewithal to integrate proactively and fully with the global financial economy has mercifully insulated it from its vagaries. Also, with most of the population that largely has survived from paycheck to paycheck, there is no wealth to protect or to lose; in a kind of twisted fortune, this brings no sleepless nights.

Rising prices of gas and food seem to be occasional vents for frustration or just fodder for table chat with friends and family and must be borne patiently day to day, as always. Meanwhile, the local media’s thin economic data or analysis of how the local economy—and hence, the average Filipino—might be impacted by unfolding global economic events does nothing to deepen a grasp of the future. But on the other hand, as the rest of the world grapples to find answers for an uncertain future, the Filipino does his or her best to survive daily with as much grace as one can. In a twisted beneficent way during these current times, it’s the country’s saving grace.

Evangeline a.k.a. Girlie, Navarro is a serial entrepreneur and investor, a finance teacher; and a student at heart on how money and resources affect people. She can be contacted at evangeline.navarro@gmail.com.