Many Filipinos don’t know what to make of the current US financial crisis and how it will affect their lives. A lot of people don’t even know what happened, while an equal number of analysts can’t seem to look beyond their nose and always give the standard answers regarding the role of stock markets, banks and investments etc.
But if you have been watching Oprah, Tyra Banks and Suze Orman (CNBC) none of the current disaster would surprise you. Any perceptive viewer of the three ladies and their individual programs would have seen the crash coming months, if not a year ago!
For starters, Oprah and Tyra Banks started by “featuring” people with shopping problems, bad spending habits or what we call “shop-aholics”. They invited and interviewed individuals whose terrible shopping addictions were ruining their lives and their finances.
As a result, both programs (and probably the rest of the world) discovered that there was a serious problem concerning uncontrolled consumer spending in America. In most cases economists would love this problem but if the spending were not backed by the mighty dollar but by plastic, it would be a recipe for disaster. What many thought was an “individual problem” turned out to be a serious national issue.
They only needed Oprah and Tyra and media to legitimize it as a problem and not some incurable and contagious disease that would damn your soul for eternity. In a perverse way, it even became a celebrity issue!
Soon another set of lab rats became the focus of both shows; Americans “living the dream”.
These were people who bought into the idea (or the lie) that the American dream was to have all the trappings such as your own house full of all the creature comforts mostly electronic entertainment (designed and built overseas to be obsolete in less than five years), two to three cars mostly made overseas also designed to be a pain in the ass after five years, a vacation home that costs more to maintain because you’re only there three times a year.
Half of the crowd never made it past the two or three cars because they also had to save for a retirement fund (most of which will lose half their value very soon) and they also have to find a way to save for the college education of their children (which is probably the only selfless act we do in modern times).
As a consequence they moved up to another category of people; people with serious credit card and debt problems. People who had gone beyond their financial realities by having and using three even four credit cards in order to maintain a standard of living or a way of life. But they no longer have a life because now they are living the nightmare of people buried in debt.
Alongside the two internationally recognized celebrity talk show hosts I discovered Suze Orman who has her own show and has written one if not several books about money management, real investments for ordinary people (sadly most of it applies to the US money system).
Suze Orman is the equivalent of “Dear Abby” for finance and economics. She dishes out advise and put downs, for viewers brave enough to consult her about their money situation, things they want to buy but not sure if they can afford it, or about potential investments.
If you listen or read about what people want to do or have been doing, it is no surprise if the US has a financial crisis. Many of her viewers, callers or letter writers talk about making investments such as buying a house on loan while they still have other loans such as their college education, current mortgage, car payments etc!
So as you watch these programs, you discover that the problem started with “Stuff-itis” or greed and materialism. “Stuff-itis” would not have become such a problem if the banks had not let loose all those credit cards that made it so easy to buy the things you “covet”, which you don’t need and you can’t afford. (Yes it’s always our fault but they were the accomplice if not the masterminds!)
But to make matters worse, the “stuff” are now mostly made in China instead of “Proudly made in the USA” because the merchants believed it would give them the biggest profit to “take advantage” of cheap labor and make even bigger profits by selling the cheap stuff to addicted US shoppers.
So is it a surprise that the United States owes China billions of dollars, according to George W. Bush? Is it a surprise that the US who wants all of us to do our share to reduce global warming buys a disproportionate percentage of gas and oil and spends $700 billion a year from the Middle East, to stay warm, drive their cars and keep the jobs they have left? At least that’s what John McCain said.
And isn’t it ironic that they now need to spend the same amount ($700 billion) to bail themselves out of the financial crisis that started with people buying houses they could not really afford and lied just to get their loans, banks giving loans even to the least qualified because they figured they could always foreclose the property and fund managers spreading out the cash merely on the basis of the “right numbers” which were just imaginary figures power brokers threw around not realizing they were destroying lives, jobs and a country.
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Right now people are making a lot of predictions when the tremors or the shock will hit the Philippines. Truth be-told we’ve been living with our own version of a financial crisis for sometime already because of the same mistakes. But unlike Americans most of us are too proud or too embarrassed to admit just how deep we are in debt, in “stuff-itis” or “Living the Dream”.
We buy foreign made, so we have no jobs, so we send off Filipinos abroad. In our shame, we disguise them as “heroes”. At the rate they have come back in boxes we may soon have enough reason to put up their own “Libingan ng mga Bayaning OFW”.
Unfortunately other countries learn from their mistakes or do what needs to be done. Either the government does it or private individuals take it upon themselves. Between the Financial crisis and the China Milk crisis, we Filipinos have enough reason to love our own, buy our own, and invest in our own.
Referring to agriculture, a Boss once said as he grabbed a fistful of soil: “it is on our soil that we will stand or fall (Sa lupa tayo babangon o babagsak).”