Opinion
THE marital woes of Com- contrary to what happened mission on Elections Chair- when we went to the Permaman Andres Bautista and his nent Court of Arbitration—is wife Patricia has far-reach- he not aware of this? What takes the cake insoing implications. It raises questions on the integrity far as Cayetano’s subserviof the 2016 national and lo- ence to China is concerned is cal elections. Now Chairman his behavior during the Asean Bautista faces the dilemma foreign ministers’ summit. He of resigning or suffering im- convinced our fellow Asean members to issue a tepid joint peachment. If I were given a chance to communique, very careful not advice Bautista, I would tell to offend China. Let me ask the Secretary: him to resign. I know how the impeachment process For what country is he now goes. It’s a political exercise. working? I can imagine the kind of *** questions that will be asked I have been saying all along of him and Tisha. Andy Bautista is a friend. that Customs Commissioner He was a classmate of my Nicanor Faeldon must resign son, Eric. I lauded his ap- for his failure to curb smugpointment, first as chairman gling in his agency. Worse, of the Presidential Commis- his fellow mutineers whom sion on Good Government he appointed to sensitive and then as chairman of the positions are said to be inCommission on Elections. I volved in the distribution of grease money want to be honest with by smugglers. him—I think Even his own men are runhe would be ning circles better off if Chairman around him! he resigned. This is what Of course, Bautista should the adminisr e s i g n a t i o n imagine what tration gets will not exfor appointing onerate him will happen if his a novato! from all the impeachment The House accusations committee inhis wife has case goes on vestigations thrown at trial. have shown him. But it Faeldon to be will show that for him, incompetent. being Come*** lec chairman is not the be-all I have often wondered and end-all. He would still have his self-respect. If he about tycoons —how do they were to be impeached, he spend all the money they have earned? Can they spend could be torn to pieces! Recall how it was with Su- that in a lifetime? In 100, 200 preme Court Chief Justice years? Are they doing it for their Renato Corona. He was impeached, tried and convicted children or grandchildren? for not revealing everything Is it for love of money or the in his Statement of Assets, Li- challenge of making money? abilities and Net Worth. My Some say that when busigulay, he died a broken man! nessmen put up companies, they feel obligated to their employees to continue mak*** When former Senator ing money. Also, because of Alan Peter Cayetano was ap- their corporate social responpointed by the President to sibility, they feel they must the Department of Foreign make more money. Some of our tycoons make Affairs, he knew his role as the country’s top diplomat. it a point to pay it forward. As such, he also knew that They contribute to the naas implementor of the coun- tion’s growth and become try’s foreign policy, he must nation builders. To me they always have the Philippines’ are the true heroes. interest, first and foremost, *** in his mind. On Sept. 25, the 365 Club, We heard Cayetano say that if we attempted to drill oil in founded in 1972 after the decthe South China Sea, there laration of martial law, will would be war. And then he celebrate its 45th anniversary echoed China’s line that there with breakfast for all its memwas no bullying and threaten- bers, courtesy of the Holiday ing. Cayetano’s words were Inn and Suites management.
Probing... From A4 basis of not properly declaring his assets as required by law of all government officials, in the case of the also-impeachable Bautista? Here I must declare that yesterday, I interviewed Kabayan party-list Rep. Harry Roque, who has filed a resolution calling for a House probe of Bautista, a call that has not been heeded by any of his 300 or so colleagues. Roque told me that his fellow lawmakers are apparently waiting for a signal from Duterte on whether or not to impeach Bautista; and since they have not gotten it, are taking their sweet time acting on his resolution. But I’m afraid that I have to debunk Roque’s theory, citing the Customs investigation as evidence. Why would both Houses of Congress, after all, consent to Trillanes’ dragging of Pulong Duterte’s name in the probe of Faeldon and his men but require signs from Malaca-
ñang if they can proceed with a similar action against Bautista? Why would Duterte’s directive in the matter of proceeding with the impeachment of Bautista, when Congress doesn’t care if the president’s son is accused of involvement in shipping illegal drugs through Customs? Is Congress Duterte’s lapdog when it comes to Bautista but free to do whatever it likes when investigating Customs anomalies? I don’t think so. In fact, I’m starting to believe that Congress simply doesn’t want Bautista to take a deep dive into what really happened in the May 2016 elections, because what he may come up with could really hurt them. I may be wrong, of course. But I simply cannot explain why hearsay will prevail in the investigation of Customs but hard documentary evidence against Bautista counts for nothing with our probe-happy lawmakers.
A5
mst.daydesk@gmail.com
Japan booming, now needs more immigrants
TO THE POINT EMIL P. JURADO
No choice but to resign
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2017
By Daniel Moss JAPAN has served its time as a symbol of economic failure. Its latest growth surge puts it in a welcome new role. The country’s demographics, according to conventional wisdom, are supposed to be bad for the economy. Instead, Japan unexpectedly shot to the top of Group of Seven club, with its gross domestic product notching four-percent annual growth last quarter. That easily outpaced the 2.6 percent recorded in the US during the same period. The biggest gains were in consumption and business spending, both essential ingredients in sustaining the nation’s expansion. The world’s third-largest economy, Japan could be in even better shape if Prime Minister Shinzo Abe could overcome ancient tradition and political opposition by welcoming large-scale immigration. To get a sense of the potential of a larger population,
take a look at the consumption figures. The GDP jump happened despite anemic increases in wages at the biggest employers, and despite the central bank’s continuing struggle to fully escape decades of either very low inflation or deflation. The increase in spending also defies demographic destiny. Japan’s population is aging and shrinking, having peaked in 2009. The prime-working-age population, people ages 15 to 64, peaked more than a decade earlier and is down about 13 percent since then. As I wrote earlier this month during a visit to Tokyo, something is going on that headline statistics don’t quite capture. Those same demographic challenges may soon start to overtly work in the economy’s favor. With unemployment down to 2.8 percent, companies are starting to recognize the need to lock in staff before the hiring pool disappears. And this means paying them more. It’s starting to happen slowly, and aggre-
gate wage numbers—gains of only about 0.6 percent— obscure the dynamic among part-time workers and small businesses. Pay rises at the former vastly outstrip what’s going on at big companies, admittedly from a lower base. Employers have known this crunch was coming for a while. This week’s GDP report suggests that it may have arrived. As Kathy Matsui, vice chair and chief Japan equity strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., told Bloomberg Television, domestic spending of the kind reported today couldn’t have happened without some wage growth. It’s not that Japan is the new boomtown. The growth seen last quarter may well be revised lower, and the past few decades have seen a few false dawns. The string of GDP increases, while it may tie for the longest since 2006, is only six quarters old. A potential increase in consumption tax could set the economy back, as it did
a few years ago. Regardless, the nation is no longer a poster child for economic failure. The International Monetary Fund acknowledged as much when it updated its global forecasts last month. The IMF said the global expansion is broadening beyond the US, with China, Europe and Japan carrying more of the load. The country’s demographic challenges are still huge. Ultimately, it needs to either embrace large-scale immigration as a solution to labor shortages or make greater use of robots. While immigrants are filling some low-end jobs, there’s very little political support for allowing much more. And to be fair to Abe, opposition to immigration long preceded his premiership. Robots and expanded artificial intelligence seem to be vastly more favored. That’s a pity. Imagine how much more vigor the current Japanese recovery would have if only there were more people around to buy more stuff. Bloomberg
How technology might get out of control By Mark Buchanan HUMANITY has a method for trying to prevent new technologies from getting out of hand: explore the possible negative consequences, involving all parties affected, and come to some agreement on ways to mitigate them. New research, though, suggests that the accelerating pace of change could soon render this approach ineffective. People use laws, social norms and international agreements to reap the benefits of technology while minimizing undesirable things like environmental damage. In aiming to find such rules of behavior, we often take inspiration from what game theorists call a Nash equilibrium, named after the mathematician and economist John Nash. In game theory, a Nash equilibrium is a set of strategies that, once discovered by a set of players, provides a stable fixed point at which no one has an incentive to depart from their current strategy. To reach such an equilib-
rium, the players need to understand the consequences of their own and others’ potential actions. During the Cold War, for example, peace among nuclear powers depended on the understanding the any attack would ensure everyone’s destruction. Similarly, from local regulations to international law, negotiations can be seen as a gradual exploration of all possible moves to find a stable framework of rules acceptable to everyone, and giving no one an incentive to cheat—because doing so would leave them worse off. But what if technology becomes so complex and starts evolving so rapidly that humans can’t imagine the consequences of some new action? This is the question that a pair of scientists—Dimitri Kusnezov of the National Nuclear Security Administration and Wendell Jones, recently retired from Sandia National Labs—explore in a recent paper. Their unsettling conclusion: The concept of strategic
equilibrium as an organizing principle may be nearly obsolete. Kusnezov and Jones derive insight from recent mathematical studies of games with many players and many possible choices of action. One basic finding is a sharp division into two types, stable and unstable. Below a certain level of complexity, the Nash equilibrium is useful in describing the likely outcomes. Beyond that lies a chaotic zone where players never manage to find stable and reliable strategies, but cope only by perpetually shifting their behaviors in a highly irregular way. What happens is essentially random and unpredictable. The authors argue that emerging technologies—especially computing, software and biotechnology such as gene editing—are much more likely to fall into the unstable category. In these areas, disruptions are becoming bigger and more frequent as costs fall and sharing platforms enable open innovation. Hence, such technologies
will evolve faster than regulatory frameworks—at least as traditionally conceived—can respond. What can we do? Kusnezov and Jones don’t have an easy answer. One clear implication is that it’s probably a mistake to copy techniques used for the more slowly evolving and less widely available technologies of the past. This is often the default approach, as illustrated by proposals to regulate gene editing techniques. Such efforts are probably doomed in a world where technologies develop thanks to the parallel efforts of a global population with diverse aims and interests. Perhaps future regulation will itself have to rely on emerging technologies, as some are already exploring for finance. We may be approaching a profound moment in history, when the guiding idea of strategic equilibrium on which we’ve relied for 75 years will run up against its limits. If so, regulation will become an entirely different game. Bloomberg
hancement of the Conditional Cash Transfer progam; and 10) honor contracts entered in accordance with law and in good faith. In his speech, outside of drugs and terrorism, Duterte spoke of two things of interest to business: promoting ease of doing business, and cutting red tape and corruption in government. And for the country’s future, the president wants more Filipinos in college—for free. For that, he needs P50 billion to fund free tuition in state colleges and universities. Of the P50 billion, he disclosed, Sonny Dominguez has raised P20 billion. Duterte gives cabinet secretaries one month to act on major projects and permits. He wants his secretaries to make it easy for businessmen to do business. He wants local governments not to delay issuance of business and other permits. For his part, Sonny Dominguez likes to talk about breakout growth under the Duterte administration. He notes that the economic strategy of President Duterte is bearing
fruit, with GDP (gross domestic product) growing 6.68 percent during his first three quarters, or “faster than [those of] all other administrations.” “In line with our commitment to promote rapid and inclusive growth, we plan to achieve quality GDP growth of 7 to 8 percent in the medium-term, and reduce poverty to 14 percent from 21.6 percent in 2015. By the time we step down, we envision the Philippine economy to be in high-middle income territory,” says Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno. Diokno says: “For quite some time now, the Philippines has enjoyed strong macroeconomic fundamentals that has enabled it to weather external headwinds. For one, our country is the fastest growing country in the fastest growing region in the world” with a growth rate of 6.9 percent in 2016, higher than countries such as China (6.7 percent) and Vietnam (6.2 percent). First quarter economic growth was also recorded at 6.4 percent, broadly in line with gov-
ernment’s full year target of 6.5 percent-7.5 percent GDP growth rate. Growth is expected to accelerate in the coming quarters backed by robust consumer spending and stronger government expenditures, among other growth drivers.” “Our first semester performance for 2017 also shows greater potential in achieving our target at the fiscal front. For one, our disbursement level is gaining momentum, as the department heads have learned already the ropes of implementing their programs and projects. National government spending recorded a robust 22.6 percent growth in June 2017, the highest posted so far this year,” the Budget chief says. “The administration’s political will is not just talk,” says Diokno. “We are really set on delivering on our promises, and based on this information, we can be optimistic that we will see our investments pay off sooner rather than later.”
Drugs... From A4 commander-in-chief said. So it seems Duterte has a better chance at turning around the Philippine economy than defeating illegal drugs or terrorism. To fulfill the dream of every Filipino, Duterte has a six-year time frame—2017 to 2022, actually, the last six months of 2016 up to the first six months of 2022 ending June 30, 2022, when the president’s term also ends. Duterte’s dream is what Socio-Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia calls the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) for 2017-2022, also known as the Ten-Point Socio-Economic Agenda or AmBisyon 2040. PDP has what are called ten actionable recommendations, which are: 1) tax reform; 2) a national ID system; 3) ease of doing business; 4) faster and cheaper internet and telecom services; 5) support for farmers; 6) responsible mining; 7) developing regional industries and work force; 8) improving the transport network nationwide; 9) en-
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