Tremors

After the 4.5 magnitude quake which rocked Aurora and Metro Manila over the weekend, a few tremors were felt today in Manila. I noticed that these tremors are starting to increase in frequency, not in strength. Philvocs should explain these things before the public to dispel fears of a big one coming. An email is circulating in the blogsphere about this prediction of a Brazilian "psychic" who recently predicted a big quake to hit the Philippines come 18 July 2008.

I am not big on predictions and I surely can't believe someone who predicts quakes. No one can do that except probably chickens or cats. Animals are known to feel these quakes.

I am more fearful about the economic quakes hitting us than real quakes. I mean, life is getting harder by the day due to the global slowdown.

Malacanang's economic advisers are on the right course with the Noah's Ark proposal. It seems that government is beginning to act like a Robin Hood, promising to give to the poor billions of pesos worth of VAT collections probably to prevent a spillage of dissent to the underground.

Government should realize that the prospect of riots is not far-fetched in the Philippines. It happened at EDSA dos and the May 1 rebellion. We saw the anger of the poor against this government before and without an outlet to vent their anger, disorganized violence could erupt anytime.

It already happened in Cavite, with thousands of angry families marching towards the NFA warehouse, demanding for more rice supplies. This is the fault of the current Secretary of Agriculture Art Yap. He's constantly giving us false info on the true status of our food security. IN this times of crisis, government should be more forthright to us. People would understand if we don't have enough food stocks. I mean, its quite evident that this administration has failed the people several times. And the people are not expecting that much from this administration anyway, so it's better to just tell people the truth instead of giving us false hopes.

I have some proposals to government to at least mitigate the effects of this impending disaster:

1. Government should increase the rate of excise tax especially on sin products.
2. Government should suspend VAT until January 2009.
3. Government should reclaim its stake on oil companies, instead of selling its stake on Petron to a tycoon. This is NOT the right time to sell oil stocks. I don't see any rationale behind this plan to sell.
4. Government should sell non-performing GOCC's now to generate revenues.