Usapang POLITIKA: Exchange rate o palitan ng pera

 

https://usapangecon.com/2018/09/20/mga-dapat-mong-malaman-tungkol-sa-exchange-rate/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mainam ang pagpapaliwanag ni Ginoong Jefferson Arapoc hinggil sa exchange rate, o yung katumbas na halaga ng pera ng isang bayan sa salapi ng isa pang bayan.

Sa ating mga Pinoy, ang pinakababantayan nating exchange rate ay yung palitan ng ating pera, ang piso, kontra sa dolyar ng Estados Unidos. Sa ngayon ay naglalaro ang palitan na yan sa halagang P54.00 sa isang dolyar.

Tulad ng ating naunang ginawa hinggil sa inflation o yung bilis ng pagpalit ng mga presyo ng mga batayang bilihin, bubusisihin natin ngayon ang exchange rate o yung palitan ng isang salapi, katulad ng piso, sa isa pang salapi, katulad ng dolyar bilang isang usaping pampulitika.

Mag-kabit at mag-kaugnay ang inflation at exchange rate hindi lamang sa larangan ng ekonomiya kundi maging sa larangan ng pulitika.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magsimula tayo sa pagkilala na ang isang bansa ay nakikipag-kalakalan sa mga banyagang bansa. Una’y dahil ang isang bansa ay nangangailangan ng mga produkto at serbisyo na di nito kayang gawin o kaya’y kulang ang kaya niyang gawin kumpara sa kabuuang pangangailangan ng kanyang ekonomiya.

Pangalawa, nais ng mga lokal na kapitalista na palawakin ang palengke para sa kanilang mga produkto. Hindi sila kuntento na maibenta lamang ang kanilang mga produkto at serbisyo sa loob ng isang bansa. Gusto nilang makabenta sa ibang bansa sapagka’t mangangahulugan ito ng higit ng maraming benta at mas malaking kita’t tubo.

Pangatlo, kailangan din nating maunawaan na kapag bumili tayo ng mga produkto at serbisyo mula sa ibang bansa (yung tinatawag na import), hindi natin maaring gamitin ang ating sariling pera, ang piso, bilang pambayad sa ating mga import. Hindi katanggap-tanggap ang piso na pambayad sa ating mga import. Kailangan nating magbayad sa pamamagitan ng mga katangap-tanggap na salapi tulad ng dolyar, Euro, yen, at pound sterling.

Saan kukunin ng mga Pinoy tulad natin ang mga dolyar at Euro na kailangan natin para pambayad sa ating mga import?

E di sa pagbenta ng sarili nating mga produkto’t serbisyo sa mga banyaga!

Magkakaroon din tayo nga mga dolyar at iba pang mga banyagang salapi mula sa mga dayuhang turista dumadalaw sa ating bayan.

Nagkakaroon din tayo ng dolyar sa pamamagitan ng mga padala ng mga Pinoy na nag-tatrabaho sa ibang bayan (yung tinatawag nating mga OFW).

Kung nagbenta tayo sa mga Amerikano, magkakaroon tayo ng mga dolyar. Kung nagbenta tayo sa mga Europeo, magkakaroon tayo ng mga Euro at yen kapag nagbenta tayo sa mga Hapones.

 

 

 

Kaya mahalagang malaman kung mas marami ang kita natin sa pagbenta ng ating mga produkto at serbisyo sa mga banyaga kesa sa ating gastusin sa pagbayad ng ating mga binili o inangkat mula sa mga ibang bayan. Itinuturing na mainam kung mas maraming dolyar na pumasok kesa sa lalabas bilang pambayad sa ating mga import.

Kung kulang ang imbak nating dolyar mula sa benta ng ating produkto sa mga banyaga para pambayad sa ating mga inangkat, kakailanganin nating makakuha ng dagdag dolyar sa ibang paraan tulad ng pangungutang sa mga banyagang pamahalaan at bangko kasama na rin ang mga multilateral tulad ng International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Hindi tiyak na mas marami tayong kikitaing dolyar kesa sa kailangan nating pambayad sa ating mga import. Hindi tiyak o garantisado na makakahiram tayo ng sapat na dolyar para matustusan ang ating mga pangangailangan sa dolyar.

Kung may kakulangan sa kailangang dolyar ang isang ekonomiya, malamang na babagsak ang halaga ng kanyang salapi laban sa dolyar.

Maaring matuwa ang pamilya at kamag-anak ng ating mga OFW dahil mas marami silang makukuhang piso kapag nagpapalit sila ng ipinadalang dolyar.

Kaso, di natatapos dun ang usapin.

Alam natin na ang pagtaas ng halaga ng dolyar laban sa piso ay may masamang epekto sa presyo ng mga batayang bilihin sa loob ng bansa. Tataas tiyak ang presyo ng gasolina at diesel dahil kailangan tayong umangkat nito mula sa ibang bansa, lalo na sa mga bansang nasa Gitnang Silangan tulad ng Saudi Arabia. Alam din natin na ang pagtaas ng presyo ng gasolina at krudo ay magdudulot ng pagtaas ng presyo ng mga batayang bilihin tulad ng bigas at iba pang pagkain, kuryente, tubig, pamasahe, atbp.

 

 

 

 

Nauna na nating naipaliwanag ang epektong pulitikal ng pagtaas ng presyo ng mga batayang produkto at serbisyo.  Maaring basahin ito sa pamamagitan ng pag-click sa sumusunod na link:

 

https://bongmendoza.wordpress.com/2018/09/20/inflation-usaping-pampulitika/

 

 

Liban sa epekto sa presyo, ano pa ang maaring epekto ng pagbabago ng exchange rate sa ating pulitika?

 

 

 

 

Itutuloy…

The political economy of the Marcos dictatorship, 1972-1986 (Part II)

The industrial anatomy of the Marcos dictatorship

 

 

 

Why would a would-be dictator want to be a dictator?  In this case, why would a democratically-elected (and re-elected) president like Ferdinand Edralin Marcos want to be a dictator?  One of the most apparent answers is that he want to stay in power indefinitely (or for life).  Under the then prevailing 1935 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, Marcos’ term of office as re-elected president was only up to end-1973.  Presidential elections in 1973 will not include him as the 1935 charter allowed only two terms for presidents.  Marcos was first elected in 1965 and his first term as president ran from January 1966 up to end-1969.  He was re-elected (the first President to accomplish this feat) in the November 1969 elections and started his second term as president in January 1970.  So if Marcos did not impose martial law over the entire Philippines in September 1972, elections would have been held in November 1973 and a new president would have taken over the reins of power in January 1974.

 

Benigno Aquino Jr.

 

 

The next question even if the answers are obvious would be: why would he want to stay in power indefinitely?  Let’s consider Marcos’ answer:  he declared that he wanted to save the Republic from deadly attacks both from the Right and the Left and reform and build a new Philippine society (Marcos 1978).  For this reason and ever the legalistic mind, Marcos called the regime created by his declaration of martial law “constitutional authoritarianism’—an obvious oxymoron!  He also claimed to be a progressive launching a supposed “revolution from the center”.   So, a temporary response to national emergency—martial law—morphed into a grand non-time-bound social reform/revolutionary project.

 

Fernando Lopez Sr.

 

 

To a certain extent, Marcos was indeed correct.  A tacit alliance between ‘Rightist’ elements (particularly his estranged vice president Fernando Lopez Sr. and the Lopez family who owned or controlled many of the biggest corporations in the Philippines like the Manila Electric Company, ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation, and the newspaper Manila Chronicle) and ranking officials of the opposition Liberal Party and the armed leftists [the New People’s Army (NPA) led by the newly-re-established Communist Party of the Philippines (MLMTT)] was arrayed against his regime in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  The New People’s Army (NPA) was supposedly established in March 1969 inside Hacienda Luisita and some of its first firearms were reportedly supplied by then Senator Benigno S. Aquino, Jr., a leading light of the Liberal Party (LP) and Hacienda Luisita administrator.  The raid on the Cauayan airport led by Lt. Victor Corpuz, who defected from the AFP to join the NPA, which destroyed a government helicopter-gunship supplied by the Americans, was reportedly launched from the farm of then Cauayan City Mayor and LP official Faustino Dy, Sr.

 

Meralco head office

 

 

In addition, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) initiated a secessionist revolt with the intention of creating a separate state in Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan—islands in southern Philippines where most of the Bangsa Moro people (who were Muslims) lived. 

 

MNLF flag

 

 

What would be the obvious reasons for a politician to aspire for an indefinite term of office and rule by personal decree unencumbered by counter-vailing political institutions and power centers?  First is to enjoy an enormous amount of power and influence over an entire people, nation, and society.  Second, is to amass an inordinate amount of wealth for himself, his families, friends and allies, and for followers, supporters and lackeys.  Last, but not least, the would-be dictator has a bloated sense of importance and capability and sincerely believes he will make a big difference, that only he can save a rotten society or he is the one who could make a good society so much better.  Ultimately, one can argue that the would-be dictator is afflicted by all but one of the deadly sins—avarice, pride, lust, envy, gluttony, and wrath.  The dictator is not lazy; being and staying a dictator is obviously hard work.

 

How did Marcos, an elected and re-elected president, become a dictator?  It is obvious that being dictator is not an accident; it is a political project. The communists gave him the pretext to run a dry-run to martial law when they bombed a political rally of the opposition Liberal Party in August 21, 1971 (see Weekly; Jones, Salonga).  Even if nobody believed Marcos as he claimed that the communists carried out the Plaza Miranda bombing, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus—an exercised believed by many observers to be the prelude to martial law’s proclamation a year later.

 

Danding Cojuangco

 

 

What key preparations did Marcos make so he can get away with proclaiming martial law and rule by personal decree?  First, he had to get the consent of key members of a winning coalition—including the US government, important local warlords and political influentials like the Dimaporo clan in Mindanao, major lieutenants like Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos, and businessmen-cronies like Danding Cojuangco, Rodolfo Cuenca, and Roberto Benedicto.  He consolidated his control of the security forces by appointing many fellow-Ilokanos to various command positions in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Department of National Defense.  He trained immediate members of his family—the First lady Imelda Marcos and eldest daughter, Imee Marcos—to help him man important posts in the martial law regime bureaucracy.  Imelda eventually became the governor of the Metro Manila Commission, the office formed to administer the national capital region.  Daughter Imee will head the Kabataang Barangay (KB), the nation-wide federation of youth groups loyal to the Marcos dictatorship.  And he had to win the propaganda war—he successfully tarred traditional political rivals like Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. as being in league with the fearsome godless communists. 

 

 

The young Imee Marcos as chairperson of Kabataang Barangay

 

 

Ilocos Norte governor Imee Marcos

 

 

Mechanisms for enrichment and surplus extraction

 

Any ruler, including dictators, has to maintain a winning coalition through a mixture of material and non-material inducements.  We now turn our attention to the methods used by the dictator and his regime to raise the material resources needed not only to run the government machinery but also to satisfy his winning coalition. 

 

The easiest and crudest way is to steal from the public treasury (including the printing of money). 

 

The second method is to rig and award government contracts to favored suppliers in exchange for bribes.

 

A third way is to erase the property rights of political rivals and enemies and assume ownership and control over these captured assets.

 

A fourth method was to borrow foreign currency-denominated loans from international banks, induced and seduced easily by sovereign guarantees, and to siphon parts of the proceeds to private pockets and bank accounts.

 

A fifth method is the siphoning of portions of the grants and development assistance funds provided by foreign governments to the Philippine government and any of its agencies and instrumentalities.  

 

It goes without saying that the dictator and other beneficiaries will do two things in connection with the accumulation of ill-gotten wealth.  First, they will cover their tracks.  Second, they will try to spirit the wealth away from prying eyes.  Among the favorite methods were the opening of secret bank accounts and the establishment of shell corporations and other legal entities abroad.  Last but not least, they will lie and claim that their wealth was earned and accumulated legally.

 

In Ferdinand’s case, he will claim that he found the so-called Yamashita Treasure, the huge stash of gold bars, precious stones and jewelries supposedly seized by the Japanese Imperial Army General Tomoyuki Yamashita (nicknamed the “Tiger of Malaya”) as his troops swept through Southeast Asia.  The treasure was reportedly buried in caves and tunnels in northern Philippines.  The supposed center-price of the Yamashita Treasure is a large Golden Buddha statue. Marcos claimed to have found it but a resident of Baguio City, Rogelio Roxas, charged that Marcos sent troops to his house to steal the said statue.

 

https://newslab.philstar.com/31-years-of-amnesia/never-convicted

‘What happened to the Marcos millions?’

 

To be continued…

Explaining the Philippine (Non-)Growth Record, 1946-2000: From Independence to Estrada’s Ouster

Explaining the Philippine Growth Record 1946 to 2000

Note:  This is another ‘old’ paper resurrected from my external disks.  I am again sharing it for what its worth.  I intend to update the monograph to cover the presidential administrations of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (2001-2010) and Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III (2010-2016) very soon.

Banking liberalization in the Philippines (Last part)

Concluding remarks

 

If one is to assess the efficacy of the banking liberalization using the economic efficiency standards of liberalized markets, then it was a failure.  It did not bring down the cost of money, did not narrow intermediation spreads (the gap between bank borrowing, i.e., deposit rates, and lending rates), and did not increase the supply of loanable funds to the cash-strapped economic groups and sectors, including agri-business and venture capitalists/entrepreneurs.  Under the relatively-constricted terms of financial liberalization, the new banks came in only to cater to the already competitive but still lucrative high-end corporate market.

This lack of potency can only be explained satisfactorily by the mangling of the terms and the intent of the banking liberalization law.  To the extent that the law hewed closely to the preferences of the financial oligopolists, then it signifies another notch up their sleeves.  To the extent, however, that new players have come in and may be able to offer significant competition in the future, then the law can be considered a skillful compromise as well as an opportunity for thorough-going financial openness.  The future course of events is, of course, an empirical matter that could not be settled in this paper.  One can only speculate and perhaps hope for a more competitive financial regime that can offer cheaper credit to all fund users but still able to afford investors with respectable yields and acceptable risks.

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De Dios, Emmanuel. 1996. “Resource Mobilization and Industrial Organization.” In Financial Sector Issues in the Philippines, pp. 55-82. Edited by Raul Fabella and Kazuhisa Ito. Tokyo: Institute for Developing Economies.

Frieden, Jeffrey. 1991. “”Invested Interests: The Politics of National Economic Policies in a World of Global Finance.” International Organization 45(4): 425-51.

_____________and Ronald Rogowski. 1996. “The Impact of the International Economy on National Policies: An Analytical Overview.” In Internationalization and Domestic Politics, pp. 25-47. Edited by Robert Keohane and Helen Milner. Cambridge University Press.

Haggard, Stephan and Chung H. Lee. 1995. Financial Systems and Economic Policy in Developing Countries. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Haggard, Stephan and Sylvia Maxfield. 1996. “The Political Economy of Financial Internationalization in the Developing World.” In Internationalization and Domestic Politics, pp. 209-39.  Edited by Robert Keohane and Helen Milner. Cambridge University Press.

Hutchcroft, Paul.1998. Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Goodman, John and Louis Pauly. 1993. “The Obsolescence of Capital Controls? Economic Management in an Age of Global Markets.” World Politics 46(1): 50-82.

Kurzer, Paulette. 1991. “Unemployment in Open Economies: The Impact of Trade, Finance and European Integration.” Comparative Political Studies 24(April): 3-30.

_______________. 1993. Business and Banking: Political Change and Economic Integration in Western Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Lee, Chung H. and Stephan Haggard. 1995. “Introduction: Issues and Findings.” In Financial Systems and Economic Policy in Developing Countries, pp. 1-27. Edited by S. Haggard and C. H. Lee. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Mendoza, Amado Jr. 1995. “Who’s Wagging the Dog?: State, Rent-Seeking and Finance in South Korean NIC-hood.” Kasarinlan 11(1-2):149-174.

______________. 1996. “Democracy and Economic Growth: What’s in Store for South Korea?” Kasarinlan 12 (1): 45-70.

Montes, Manuel and Johnny Noe E. Ravalo. 1995. “The Philippines.” In Financial Systems and Economic Policy in Developing Countries, pp. 140-81. Edited by S. Haggard and C. H. Lee. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Pauly, Louis. 1988. Opening Financial Markets: Banking Politics on the Pacific Rim. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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