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Whichever side you’re on, here’s a blog post that’s worth talking about.
A June 1, 2013 blog post written by Boom San Agustin, who is identified as the managing director of Our Knowledge Consulting Services (Asia) managing, attempts to answer this question: “Which Philippine president caused the downfall of the Philippine economy?”
Agustin wrote: “So, which president actually made us the ‘Sick Man of Asia’? I decided to take a look at one prominent analytic indicator…the Philippine peso-US dollar exchange rate. I particularly looked for the rise and fall of the Philippine peso from 1965 (the Year Ferdinand Marcos took office) to 2012. Luckily, I found a site (www.fxtop.com) that actually calculated for historical Foreign Exchange data.”
The answer seemed to surprise Agustin, who shared a chart of his findings.
“If you view the chart, you’ll notice that between 1970 and 1972, long before Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law; the Philippine peso plummeted by a staggering 40%. So, was this the start of our downfall? It would seem so. However, I’ll let you be the judge of that,” Agustin explained.
He went on to ponder, “Yet, a question still lingers in my mind. If Ferdinand Marcos did cause our downfall, why haven’t any of the other five presidents after him done anything to bring our economy up? In fact, they’ve brought it down even further.”
In closing, Agustin noted, “Yes, we’ve had a windfall in terms of foreign investments since early 2012; yet, somehow, it just doesn’t seem to be enough. P-Noy can’t afford to rest on his laurels right now. He’s got a great big mountain to climb.”
