Martes, Oktubre 1, 2013
Sabado, Marso 23, 2013
The economic crisis that has been affecting the global economy for the last two and a half years started in East Asia. We’ve heard story after story about the problems in Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, and even Japan—but we’ve heard almost nothing about the situation in the Philippines. Is there something that the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank don’t want us to know about the situation there?
The IMF has acted as the mean cop for the global financial system for a long time, but its role in this crisis has brought it new notoriety. In every case in which it has gotten involved, its prescription has been the same: reduce or end any restrictions on global flow of capital; don’t defend the domestic currency by purchasing it with foreign reserves—let it fall until it stabilizes in the market; and raise interest rates as high as necessary to keep capital in or attract capital to invest. (These prescriptions benefit multinational corporations and foreign investors, who are largely—but not exclusively—based in the United States.) And do not worry about the social consequences of adopting such an economic program.
In every case, the result has been the same: each economy that has followed IMF prescriptions has seen widespread social dislocation. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, and standards of living have plunged drastically, even for those who still have jobs. The cost of internationally traded goods and services has increased, due to local currency devaluation against the U.S. dollar (the denomination in which most goods are traded on global markets). Poverty and malnutrition have increased, as have the number of related deaths. However, foreign investors have been able to purchase goods and services, raw materials, and even entire corporations more cheaply since the onset of the crisis than before.
The crisis has spread beyond East Asia. It has hit Russia hard—and a bunch of hedge funds in the so-called developed countries—and its latest major victim has been Brazil. The shock to Brazil has already spread to Argentina. And while it appears that many of the worst economic effects have attenuated in the last few months, the global economy is still being rocked.
The global crisis has also hit the U.S. economy in some sectors, although the impact has been masked overall by strong stock markets, low inflation, and low unemployment rates. Tourism in Hawaii, on which the state is largely dependent, has been devastated; agriculture (particularly corn) and agricultural machinery manufacturing have been hit hard in the Midwest; and so much steel has been dumped in the United States that the United Steel Workers have joined the steel companies in demanding import protection. In addition, the U.S. balance of trade—which measures the difference between exports of goods and services and imports of goods and services—was -118.1 billion dollars between January and June 1999; this exceeds all of 1997 (-104.7 billion dollars—itself a record at the time), and will certainly exceed the 164.3 billion dollar deficit of 1998.
Yet, as bad as all of this has been—the United States and Western Europe have largely been sheltered because of the way their officials have set up the global system—the countries that have garnered the most attention have a considerable amount of industrial development. What about the economies that don’t have this industrial development, but are trying to industrialize on the basis of their cheap labor? What has the crisis meant to them?
I want to address the situation of these countries, but instead of perhaps another litany of the horror of the crisis—by the summer of 1998, Business Week was already referring to the situation on the ground in Asia as a “depression”—I want to focus on the general solution as proposed by the IMF. To do this, it is necessary to look at the situation in the Philippines.
The Philippines is, in some ways, a special case: while its economic development program has been based on neoliberal principles promoted by the IMF and the World Bank, it did not begin as a response to the recent crisis; the Philippines has been carrying out a neoliberal development program since 1962. An examination of these experiences, therefore, should give some idea of the quality of “advice” being given to economically less-developed countries by the global watchdogs. And while I don’t excuse the Philippine elite for their role in this, I want to focus on what a neoliberal program has meant to a country that has been following its prescriptions for the past thirty-seven years.
Like any country that had been colonized, the Philippine social order was organized to benefit people in the colonizing country and not Filipinos. An extractive agricultural economy (sugar, tobacco, hemp, coconuts) and a political system dominated by members of the various regional elites were the product of 381 years of Spanish, and then U.S., colonization.
When the Philippines was granted “independence” by the United States in 1946, it had been devastated by the Second World War; the United States used this to set up a neocolonial relationship with the now-ruling elites. Economic relief was made dependent on political and economic concessions to U.S. investors, establishment of U.S. military bases across the country, and a currency whose value in relationship to the U.S. dollar could not be changed without the explicit permission of the U.S. President. These impositions, in addition to the extractive economy and corrupt political system, were all “grants” to the newly freed nation.
An economic crisis in the late 1940s, when luxury imports by the elites threatened to bankrupt the country (in addition to a peasant revolt in Central Luzon and a newly emerging radical labor movement), forced the ruling elites to try a new economic program, with U.S. permission. Unwilling to implement a genuine land reform program, the elites tried industrializing as a way of restoring the economy, pacifying the peasants and workers, and maintaining their land-based power. Although I don’t want to ignore the repression directed against peasants and workers (or the direct involvement of the CIA), I’m going to limit my focus here to the economic policies implemented.
To implement their new industrialization program, the Philippine government initiated foreign exchange and import controls. The controls provided multiple economic benefits to the state: they limited both general imports (such as consumer goods for the rich) and repatriation of capital outside the country, and allowed the state to select imports to assist the industrialization process and to protect industry established in the country. This import substitution industrialization (ISI) program was a serious effort to industrialize.
While this program did not benefit the majority of the population at the time, it was a success as an industrialization program by 1960. A moderate industrial base had been established: the country had food, wood, pharmaceutical, cement, flour, textile, paint, pulp, paper, glass, chemical, fertilizer, telecommunications, appliance, electronic, plastic, refined fuel, intermediate steel, shipbuilding, motor vehicle, machine parts, engineering, and other industries. From 3 percent in 1949, almost 18 percent of the total national income was derived from manufacturing in 1960. And it was largely built by Filipinos: from 1949 to 1961, Filipinos had invested fourteen hundred million pesos in new activities, as compared to 425 million by the Chinese (mostly Chinese-Filipinos) and only thirty-one million by U.S. investors. The Philippines was then considered to be the next Japan of Asia.
But this industrial progress came at a cost: the state maintained the peso at the incredibly overvalued rate of two pesos to the U.S. dollar (established by the U.S. government before “independence,”) and this made it increasingly difficult for agricultural exporters to find markets for their products, though it aided the industrialization program. (To make it easier to follow below, one dollar would buy 2 pesos, or U.S. one dollar: P2). Since the agricultural elites were funding much of the industrialization program, they were in the driver’s seat when they pressed the state to agree to end controls and effectively devalue the peso. Ultimately, in 1959, an agreement was made that the foreign exchange and export controls would be ended in 1964, and it was these controls that had kept the peso so strong. This five-year interval was intended to make the transition less painful than an immediate termination of controls.catti_alba@yahoo.com
Linggo, Marso 18, 2012
Introduction
English has become one of the most popular languages in the world.
Proper English skills are becoming a valuable asset in business around
the world. Do not put off learning English because of the great variety
of word orders available (even for simple things). Have a go and keep
trying. Practice.
It is well worth remembering that English is not a fixed language - it is shifting like sand and so these "rules" are in the process of change and are often ignored or bent - much to the disdain of erudite scholars. This may be one reason why English can be tricky to learn.
The subject English has always been wide-ranging, inclusive and eclectic: hardly surprising in that it is based on a vividly elusive entity – a living language. There are both positive and negative aspects to this breadth, in terms of the teaching of English: positive in the infinitely resourceful possibilities of the creative English classroom; perhaps more negative in the uncertainty of what precisely constitutes the subject English – what, in these terms, should actually be taught in its name. The purpose of these pages is to emphasize the positive, whilst acknowledging and, hopefully, clarifying the elusiveness of the subject.
It is well worth remembering that English is not a fixed language - it is shifting like sand and so these "rules" are in the process of change and are often ignored or bent - much to the disdain of erudite scholars. This may be one reason why English can be tricky to learn.
The subject English has always been wide-ranging, inclusive and eclectic: hardly surprising in that it is based on a vividly elusive entity – a living language. There are both positive and negative aspects to this breadth, in terms of the teaching of English: positive in the infinitely resourceful possibilities of the creative English classroom; perhaps more negative in the uncertainty of what precisely constitutes the subject English – what, in these terms, should actually be taught in its name. The purpose of these pages is to emphasize the positive, whilst acknowledging and, hopefully, clarifying the elusiveness of the subject.
Martes, Marso 13, 2012
I. The Isles of My Portfolio in English 121
IV. Reflection in English 121
Since
English was my favorite subject throughout high school, there was a lot of
pressure to continue my success in the topic in college as well. With that
pressure came great disappointment after my definitional essay was returned to
me with the letter B. This is only one example of how college has challenged me
far beyond high school. In order to view descriptions of my assignments and to
link to the finished products navigate to the English course page under the
"Courses" heading. My first college assignment was very
intimidating, which is why my instructor's decision to give a graded but not
weighted assignment was greeted with my personal sighs of relief. I had no idea
how much higher the bar was in college, or if I could reach that bar with even
my greatest leap. It felt like more than simply a new level; it felt like I had
suddenly jumped into a brand new league, a league where past standing meant
nothing. It also meant starting over with a new instructor whose preferences
for style and organization were completely unknown to me.
My initial problem with writing this
assignment was simply the topic. What memory in my life was important enough to
become a part of the present momentous moment? Eventually, that problem was
solved when I forced myself to think of the first memory that seemed truly
significant to my intellectual growth. It beam abundantly clear that the
appropriate moment for my paper would be when I truly started thinking for
myself despite obvious contradictions with what my mother had always taught me.
A new problem arrived to replace the old when my teacher informed me we were to
incorporate a visual element to liven up our papers. I thought back to senior
year, when I read my friend's research paper on Oscar Wilde. In her paper, she
split her piece with headers that were each assigned their own subject. This
seemed to greatly contribute to the smooth flow of her paper and helped to
connect every piece of her writing to the larger picture. Since the visual
element worked so well for her, I decided it could work for me as well and
proceeded to divide my paper into smaller subject headings.
I was fairly satisfied with my finished paper and didn't
think I would go back and change much of what resulted from my work. I would, however,
change my presentation of the paper because I was not well enough prepared. I
should have practiced the speech more so that I did not end up making my
introduction a third of the speech, which caused me to have to compress the
true point of the speech and the paper into one sentence. Immediately following our introduction assignment was,
of course, yet another essay. This time we were asked to write a definitional
essay, which was quite different from our previous diagnostic assignment. Up to
this point in my life I had written one other definitional piece for a speech
class in 9th grade, so, as you can see, it had been awhile since a similar
request was made of me. Not to mention the fact that the pressure was back on,
considering this would be our first valid graded assignment. It also didn't
hurt that it was worth 20% of our total grade for the semester. Going in I was
quite concerned, since it had been an extremely long time since my last
definitional essay and even that was the only one I had written up to that
point.
The first problem I encountered was
choosing an organizational method for the paper: determining what I would
include, how it would connect, and what examples I would use. This obstacle
also included deciding on the length of my introduction. I decided to cut the
amount I had originally written in half. After eventually piecing together an
outline I was then greeted with the challenge of incorporating a visual element
into my paper so that it would use both written and visual communication
methods. I also had trouble deciding where to seek my sources and how they
could apply to the outline I had finally put together. I eventually resolved
all these problems and finally managed to create a paper I felt was ready to be
turned in.
Looking back at this assignment I greatly regret not
dedicating more time to editing and revision before turning it in as a final
draft. I should have gone into my instructor's office hours and had him look
over it, or had my English major friend review it before I decided it was
finished. All in all, I suppose it was a lesson in utilizing all the resources
one has available.
The next assignment I completed for my English course was a
rhetorical analysis of a documentary of our choice. My personal selection was a
documentary titled Koyaanisqatsi, a film without dialogue that stands as a
testimony to the slow deterioration of our world because of technology. This
assignment was yet another nerve-wracking one for me, since I had never written
a rhetorical analysis before, let alone been asked to critically analyze a
film. My first issue with this assignment was deciding what aspects of the
movie I wanted to focus on, since there were several different tropes and
canons to choose from. I also had to choose a way to organize the information
into my final paper. This paper also required a visual element like the last
piece recommended; however, the visual component was much more important in this
assignment. For this assignment I was much more thorough in my editing and
revision process and my final work reflects this. The finished paper was one of
the best pieces of writing I have ever completed, and I attribute that fact to
the extensive revision it saw before finish. I hope that I continue the writing
process I went through for this piece for all papers I am assigned in the
future. This project was quite
time-consuming yet in the end, quite enjoyable as well. I began the assignment
working with my group to select an event and make sure that we had all the
resources available so that we could attain the information necessary to
complete requirements. We encountered quite a few obstacles in the process of
initial documentation since our first event ended up getting canceled, and when
we found an alternative event it was too late to rent the same video camera
again. We were provided with another one by the parents of another of our group
members unfortunately, the camera's zoom was utterly worthless. We improvised
again, and this time I went back to my dorm to get my tape-recorder, which also
broke partway through the event and required some handling to fix. We
eventually managed to get pictures, quotations, and interviews of our event
despite the many things that decided to trip us up along the way.
The next problem involved the
remainder of the assignment, which was to create a poster on Adobe Photo shop.
It sounds perfectly simple unless you're like me and realized that you had
never used Photo shop before. This problem slowly amended itself the further I
got into the assignment and the more I grew accustomed to the concept of layers
and other basic Adobe concepts. After a few days I found that I actually
enjoyed using the program, but it took a while to get used to it. However,
after I finished my design I was quite pleased with the way it turned out. Next
came writing the presentation to give with the poster for the final part of the
assignment. This part of the project wasn't too difficult and I am also
satisfied with how that presentation came out. It was an all-around good
experience and eventually became my favorite English assignment of the
semester.
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