Jose Ceralde
11 Dec 2007

 

 

Mr. Ramos,

You go from Mr. K’s view in your posted article about his criticism of the dollar being unpegged from the gold to find its open market value.

Then in your latest posting, you go to the extreme with Mr. Soros the king of currency speculators who find all sorts of ways to find weakness in the market using his almighty dollar.

Here is one article from AsiaWeek about your new idol, ” In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish ASEAN for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Later, he called Soros a moron. Thai nationals have called Soros “an economic war criminal” who “sucks the blood from the people”.

So which view do you want to enlighten us now the first or the second?

The Philippines with its rising Peso should read up what happen to the almighty Yen. In 1990 a collapse in Japanese real estate caused a 50% fall in the Tokyo stock market and 15 years of economic stagnation … the strong Japanese yen played in bringing down Japan’s stock market and red-hot economy. After the Plaza Accord in 1985, Tokyo stopped suppressing the yen and it rose 80% versus the dollar within three years … The Japanese Nikkei 225 peaked at 38,915 on the last trading day of 1989. Today it is at 16,500, still down 57.6%, almost 18 years later.

What is the parallel here is the Philippine real estate market is hot with OFW and Filipinos worldwide pouring in their dollars.

The Peso strengthens and the government is cheering on. But like Japan our exports might collapse with countries not able to adjust to our Peso new found value and buy alternative products.

Look at the average OFW with his contract income of 350 dollars, do you think he/she could still pay his home that jumps 50 dollars with the peso appreciation?