2019

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (December 1, 2019) The subject matter I’ve chosen for our December update is regrettable, but necessary.  It has to do with the rise of the so-called extreme or far-right wing political movement, which has become as threatening today as it was in the very early 1930s – and this in numerous countries all over the world.  The extreme or far-right ideology gave our world its bloodiest wars (World Wars One and Two) and a similar type of tribalism gave the world the so-called Middle or “Dark” Age after the fall of the old Western Roman Empire in the 5th Century A.D – 1000 years of near zero growth accompanied by drastic declines in living standards, health, affluence and urban development.  One dangerous individual in the USA seeks to unite modern day extreme or far-right wing political parties into something that would be a neo-fascist international.  His name is Steve Bannon.  The parties he backs (or seeks to infiltrate with like-minded extreme or far-right wing individuals) share a common and very disturbing thread which includes nationalism, xenophobia, exclusion of certain groups of people based upon race, religion, national origin and more. Where are these political parties located and what have they or some of their officials & supporters said in the recent past which is so disturbing? These political parties include the likes of the National Rally of France (successor to the National Front which once claimed that Adolf Hitler did not “do enough”), Fidesz of Hungary (a formerly centrist party which has supporters who want to arm their fellow Hungarians against the long time Roma or Sinti minority – once called gypsies), the Northern League & Five Star Movement of Italy (who legally persecuted people when in power in Rome for assisting migrants and…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (November 1, 2019) Last month’s blog strayed from the usual monthly topics by updating my readership with respect to new information on our own Borromeo family genealogy.  This month’s blog will discuss more information concerning the unmistakable emerging global demographic collapse (incredibly, it is actually gaining momentum) and the economic & financial ramifications emanating from this phenomenon. I believe that the Philippines is very well positioned for the near future, but then again, ALL population groups on earth regardless of nationality, race, region, affluence, faith, location, language (or whatever other criteria) are either in declining growth or in an outright decline.  We can extend this worrisome trend to much of the natural world as well – wild animals including mammals, birds (an alarming 30 percent decline since 1970), fish, pollinating insects and so forth.  The disturbing trend in the natural world is due to loss of habitat, deforestation, over-hunting, so called “sport” hunting which should cease outright, genetic modification, abuse of toxic chemicals and the massive pollution of the oceans, lakes and rivers especially with plastics. After the disaster of the Ferdinand Marcos years (1965 to 1986), the Philippines went from being the 2nd richest per capita nation in Asia after Japan to being among the poorest above countries such as those in Indo-China and Papua New Guinea.  The Philippines has made tremendous progress since 1986, seeing its per capita GDP rise from about USD $600 to USD $10,000 in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).  In spite of declining fertility rates, birth rates and smaller families, the Philippines continues to enjoy one of the most rapid population growth rates on earth – important to maintaining robust economic growth and in order to fund pension programs and other social programs.  The Philippines today has…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (October 1, 2019) The topic for the October 2019 has to do with our own Borromeo family in the Philippines.  Rusty, his wife Susie and I work together to run our two sites (the main site for the family plus the separate site dedicated to the monthly blog) as well as our 3 respective Facebook pages.  We’re connected to more than 3,600 individuals via Facebook, 67 percent of whom belong to the extended worldwide Borromeo family.  Add to this more than 1,400 people connected to us via Instagram (a Facebook subsidiary company) or via e-mail, 400 more individuals via LinkedIn and 100 plus people via Skype.  Our websites have received more than 1.5 million hits from visitors in 196 countries since we went live in November of 2006 (my nephew Matthew runs the technical side of these sites).  I’ve published 11 books since 2010, 3 of which are about Volkswagen, the car company based in Germany.  I am the number one community poster on the worldwide VW Facebook page, which has over 34 million followers. Now back to the important news regarding the Borromeo family.  Prior to the Second World War in the Philippines (December 1941 – September 1945), my maternal grandfather’s best friend and first degree cousin Marcial Borromeo y Guerrero completed a genealogy of the family which established that the first Borromeo in the Philippines settled in Cavite City on Luzon in 1744 by way of Canton (Guangzhou) in China.  Successive generations settled in Iloilo City (on Panay) in 1769, in Tanjay City on Negros in 1794 and finally in Cebu City in 1819.  The records of this genealogy were lost or destroyed during the violence of the Second World War, as was much else.  For example, both the ancestral homes of…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (September 1, 2019) The topic chosen for the September 2019 blog is due to a request from one of our readers, who asked that I comment on the subject of environmental degradation (climate change), specifically with respect to natural resources backing global currencies, credit and wealth – all of which equal global power.  His particular interest is in Bougainville Island (an autonomous region within the nation of Papua New Guinea), which is home to very large deposits of gold mine deposits.  This is of global importance due to the fact that precious metal assets (especially gold bullion) must ultimately back national currencies.  The largest untapped underground gold reserves in the world today are in 1) Grasberg (West Papua, Indonesia), 2) South Deep (near Johannesburg, South Africa), and in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. The USA has been the world’s number one economic, military and colonial power especially since the end of World War 2.  The dominance by the USA is basically a continuation of British world power which lasted from the time of the English & Dutch defeat of the Spanish naval Armada (in 1588) until the end of World War 2 when Germany & Japan had weakened England to the point where she could no longer be the number one power in the world (in 1945).  Spain and her Iberian neighbor Portugal emerged as Germanic states which overthrew the yoke of Islamic colonialism on the Iberian Peninsula in the 13th century A.D. to become world naval powers which initiated their own colonial domination over most of Latin America & the Caribbean, the southwestern USA, much of the Pacific (the Philippines, Guam and Micronesia) and parts of Africa. The ancient world witnessed the rise of numerous regional empires.  In the Americas, they included the Inca…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (August 1, 2019) The Dow Jones 30 Industrials stock market index reached a new nominal high value on July 3, 2019 – slightly surpassing the previous record from October of 2018.  Bitcoin rose by 75 percent in the month of June, has lost some value since then, but is up by a net 143 percent since July 2017. The topic of this month’s update is the rise of the so-called “far right” wing political parties across the world.  This phenomenon became especially noticeable after the recent June 2019 parliamentary elections in the European Union.  Such political groups have had tremendous difficulty in being elected to political bodies since the end of Second World War (1945), but they do exist throughout the world, and of late have had their greatest electoral successes since 1945.  The reason for their lack of success since 1945 is of course directly related to the cumulative horrors due to the scourge of “nationalism.”  Nationalism came to the forefront of geopolitics with the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815) and culminated in the horrors of two global world wars which laid waste to much of both Europe and Asia (1914-1945).  Today’s European Union is the fruit of negotiations between the “Benelux” governments of the Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg at that time domiciled in exile in London in the autumn of 1944.  The thinking was that nationalism (and the corporate entity of the “nation state”) had to be subverted in trans-national political organizations where people would live and work together in peace, prosperity and security.  Benelux was signed in 1944, came into effect as a customs union / free trade zone in 1948, and grew into the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, the European…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (July 1, 2019) The topic of this month’s financial blog is one dear to many people – the health (or lack thereof) of their own financial retirement.  The pension administrator of my own personal plan recently wrote about the situation not merely with respect to own plan, but for retirement in general in the USA and worldwide.  So this is a topic to which most of us can relate. The biggest challenge for retirement plans today is changing demographics.  Human populations in all countries on all continents are ageing.  In other words, the current human population demographic is older than it has ever been in recorded history.  One the one hand, we are living longer, but on the other hand, birth rates and female fertility rates have fallen to historical lows.  This phenomenon translates or can translate into an inverse (or upside down) population pyramid.  In other words, too many retired people (or economically inactive people) and not enough younger people (or people who should be economically active and contributing into to the common economic resource).  Needless to say, some countries look better and others look worse when it comes to this phenomenon. In financial terms, this phenomenon translates into a so-called “pension gap,” 75 percent of which is currently attributable to deficits in government-funded public sector pensions (such as social security) and in pension plans for public sector employees (such as national government employees, provincial or state government employees, local or municipal government employees, members of the military, law enforcement personnel, firefighting personnel and for employees of the public education system).  The 8 countries with the biggest “pension gaps” had a combined unfunded liability of USD $70 TRILLION in 2015, which is projected to balloon to an astounding USD $435 TRILLION by the…

Financial, Economic and Social Mood Update (June 1, 2019) Before proceeding to this month’s number one topic (China), I would like to say that the American policy of a global trade war must not be allowed to continue.  The combined worldwide cost of this insanity now stands at USD $33 TRILLION.  It is opposed internationally as well as by the leadership of the American business community.  The broader US equity market is flirting with a corrective bear market – it is down by a cumulative 12 percent in 8 months.  The European parliamentary election of last weekend confirms a disturbing long term trend since Europe commenced popular elections in 1979 – the main political groupings of Christian Democrats, Social Democrats (socialists), Free Democrats (liberals) and even the “new” left (communists) have seen their fortunes plummet.  The 2 groups which have gained since 1979 are the Greens (the environmentalists) but especially the far right wing (up from just 3 percent of the popular vote to an astounding 24 percent of the popular vote).  The far right wing plays upon issues such as immigration, fear, trade wars, old nationalism and divisiveness, but they offer no constructive alternatives for the future.  The mainstream parties of the postwar period (especially the Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Liberals) need to address these fears of the electorate, and in order to do so they need to backtrack on the centralization of power in Brussels and Strasbourg.  They need to direct today’s European Union (EU) to become more like the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – much like the EU used to be decades ago. CHINA An ongoing and very current topic in my monthly blog has been the subject of the evolving and changing balance of power in the world – in other words, the decline…