⌛ US Dollar vs Philippine Peso

That is a misconception at best, grossly offensive to the journalists and their families at worst. Over sixty photographers and reporters were killed in action in 2007 and much more than that wounded. I think your comment does a great disservice to those who time and time again stand in harms way with no way to fight back other than with a camera. Was Kenji Nagai faking when he was gunned down in cold blood in Myanmar, how about Gad Gross?

 

Peace Sign Vs Victory

I've always been under the impression that when you make the V sign with index and middle finger and display that with the back of your hand facing out (ie palm towards yourself) it means victory. Facing your palm outwards toward your intended audience while making a v sign means peace. I can't recollect which way Winston held his hand though.

 

The famous pic has him gesturing palm out. Typically, two fingers out, palm in is considred quite rude in the UK but I am not sure when that came into play and usually involves and upward arm swing but not always. That would have been a picture of Churchill indeed, kind of like Eisenhower flipping the bird.

I would say with the peace sign behind the hand it is easy to see Wretched's meaning. I was just trying to add why some were saying "Victory". :D

 

Hello. I'm joining the conversation a bit late and have some ramblings.
Peso vs. US Dollar
The peso is not gaining ground universally, it is the US dollar that is sinking. This is beneficial to US exporters and a bain to Filipino exporters and those sending money home to their families. Additionally, it creates defacto inflation in the Philippines. I don't see any policy changes in the Filipino government that would lead to a long-term strengthening of the peso. The US needs to get it's fiscal house in order to stop the slide but I've not seen any positive leadership there either. A Filipino exporter group has asked the PI government to step in and freeze the value of the peso at P45/US1. In the US a $9 trillion debt is intolerable but it's still rising. This makes potential investors in the dollar hold back or sell which drives the value of the dollar lower.
Low Housing Prices in the US
Low compared to what? Those of us who have owned our houses for several years are still ahead compared to what we paid. What happened was a large number of people thought they were going to get rich quick in an over-heated housing market. This includes lenders as well as borrowers (speculators). Greed drove this market to ridiculous levels of appreciation that any level headed investor saw as a crash in the making. What we have now is a very painful market adjustment. We need to let it happen so we can get back to a stable market. Anything else is delaying the inevitable.
America Bashing
There's certainly plenty of topics to bash on but it's also good to maintain perspective. Throughout history whichever society had the most power was the one described as being "evil" while other countries claimed virtue even if they were engaging in the same or similar behavior. Bottom line is; if there's something wrong in a country that allows free elections of it's leaders it's the voting public that must ultimately bear the responsibility. Rich countries have always run into the problem of being "too rich" and I think that's where the US is now. I also see a definite power shift occurring from west to east unless the West wakes up and finds a way to show some true leadership.

 

Timn8Ter...amen. This devaluation of the greenback, which I believe to be intentional, also has a positive effect of getting the Chinese to start spending in a very big way. I don't see alot of America Bashing actually but think its more of a psychological thing when people of a certain nation, in this case the States, hear someone of a different nationality critiquing some aspect of their governance or economy or policy. I rarely, rarely hear a nonAmerican saying anything critical about the States that Americans, including senior leaders , journalists , economists etc , don't say themselves. In all respects it's just people parroting what they hear from American sources. I see the same phenomenon on our Canadian newspaper boards. If any Canadian says anything negative, for example, about the American economy, it triggers this wave of patriotic reflexes on the part of American viewers and the original poster is accused of "AntiAmericanism". I made a point one day about the Iraq war being "all about oil'. Man did I get jumped on !! It didn't matter that Alan Greenspan had just made the exact same claim a few days earlier in an excerpt from his book or that I heard it straight from the mouth of Admiral William Crowe, Reagan's former CDS. Keep in mind as well that information in this world tends to flow out of the States, not into it, so what else are people going to talk about ? And since when does good news make it into the media ?

 

Interesting thing with China is that they do control the value of the yuan; it does not float with the exchange market. Therefore, when the dollar drops they just readjust the yuan. The US has been pressuring them to let the yuan float which they are not inclined to do. A falling dollar puts added pressure on China to change their monetary policy which for some, makes the falling dollar a positive.
Most of the comments critical of the US in this thread were not off the mark. There's always some that go too far, either to the offense or defense. To say that invading Iraq was about oil is not incorrect though it is more complicated. It was based on an ill-conceived plan to stabilize the Middle East ensuring the steady supply of oil. The problem is the assumption that the Iraqi culture is one that is ready to accept the burden of democracy. Please name one country that has been forced to accept democracy and succeeded without first having the cultural foundation to do so. Not possible, in my opinion.
I often wonder, and have written my Senator concerning the same thing; What if we had spent $1 trillion on developing alternatives to imported oil instead of invasion?

 

Every business journal that I read says China is about to embark on a massive spending spree. We (Canada) just passed a law forbidding state owned foreign companies from buying out Canuck corps....Specifically, we were afraid they'd buy out our entire resource sector. Certainly if the Phils has any resources to speak of, they better protect it. Thay have a trillion and a half greenbacks on reserve and with the value dropping, they are pretty hot to get rid of it any way they can.

Yes I agree with you entirely on the Iraq war thing. It is a mistake to assume that in everyone there is a westerner waiting to happen. I wonder if most of these people even want a democracy. Seems bizarre to us but I've done enough travelling to think of other countries as other planets. They are that far away from our way of thinking. The Philippines was the only exception and a really fantastic find for me after getting burned daily in Latin America.

 

There are several "soverign" investment firms, China having the largest, but also some in Russia, Singapore, and the oil producing countries. The China firm just purchased about 10 percent of CitiGroup which, because of the sub-prime mortgage debacle, has an undervalued stock price.
Foreign investment is not necessarily a bad thing (just look back to when the Dutch invested heavily in Great Britain). It depends on the circumstances in both countries. The real danger on the receiving end is being dependent on foreign investment. The danger on the sending side is relying on returns from foreign investment rather than investing in infrastructure. The Philippines, it seems to me, does rely heavily on foreign investment. The latest reports from the government about increased exports is a crock.

 

Interesting that the Philippine government counts nurses working abroad in Japan as an "export" I read recently in a newspaper.
If they are redefining the word export on a larger scale, then the 13 billion dollars flooding here anually from remitances is a healthy return from those human "exports". 10% of the PGNP.

 

Come on now. Don't you remember how media promoted the war? Don't you remember the embedded reporters like cheerleaders who never questioned where all that slam dunk information came from? You're talking Disney, Genreal Electric, Murdock and clan. These are the guys who run the media these days, and they're about as liberal as the third reich. As far as fake goes, do you realize how many reporters have been killed or wounded over there? Do you really think there aren't bullets flying, people screaming, etc.? I guess you don't believe we landed on the moon, either. The fact is that Americans aren't seeing enough of it, like the flag-draped coffins that they hide.