“No money, no honey, a wag once said. In the Philippines, no money means no food”
Many songs have been written about money. From a Motown hit, to an ABBA song, to that duet in the musical Cabaret whose lyrics went “Money, money, money makes the world go round…,” and even if the Beatles song says (money) “Can’t buy me love,” something our politicians and billionaires would sneer at because, the truth is, they keep buying “love.”
Reacting to my column last Jan. 13 about polymer banknotes and their being “anay-proof,” a friend called me to recount somebody’s experience with money.
As both its amount and provenance would raise eyebrows in the banking system, especially with strict Bangko Sentral and the Anti-Money Laundering Council, someone he knows who has bought several condominium units as investment, had a “wa-is” solution.
He does not rent out his condo units because he does not need to recover his investments, all financed by questionable transactions.
Instead, this friend of his filled his condominium units with chest freezers, and that is where he stores neatly bundled stacks of money. He locks up the freezers, and then locks up the condo, which is after all heavily secured as they are in posh locations in Makati and BGC.
And, no, the freezers are not plugged into the electric outlets. Neat? Termite-proof as well.
***
I wonder how much it costs us taxpayers to print money, as much of it does not circulate in the banking system and the economy, but is hidden in vaults, concrete bunkers (remember the story about Ampatuan money which was raided by law enforcers after the Maguindanao massacre?), basements, and. yes, freezers in condo units.
Probably because of this, the Bangko Sentral decided to shift to polymer, as it is supposed to last longer than paper money. Or as I mischievously wrote last Monday, so graft proceeds will be both BIR- and termite-proof.
Maybe the COA should investigate just how much the BSP has been spending to print money, whether paper or polymer, and even how often they have to re-print because most of the money is out of general circulation.
Remember what our economics teachers taught us about Money Supply and its Velocity being equal to Price and Transactions? What happens when money supply is constricted because it lies in vaults, freezers and basements, and, like Mona Lisa, “they just lie there, and they die there?”
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Have you seen how a local political kingpin whose family has lorded it over in his province for six decades and more has been showering his constituents with banknotes fired from a gold-plated toy gun?
So much money, and his grateful provincianos keep him and his brood in power. Oh well, he might get mad at me, for writing about a gold-plated toy gun. He might say it is pure gold, because, from what I heard, he has plenty of gold bars stacked up in his fortress.
Or this boxing champ who ran for high office while distributing thousand peso paper banknotes wherever he went prior to the official campaign period? Money may have bought him love, lots of it, but not the high office he aspired to.
Then there is this other political bigwig from a southern province who lost the elections after more than two decades of the dynasty he founded, because his opponent was a rich contractor who bought votes at 7,000 pesos apiece?
That contractor is now in the HoR, obviously milking the treasury through pork and other perks, to recoup his political investment.
And the dynast who lost? Well, he has fallen into bad times. He became the victim of an investment scam masterminded by wise financial crooks from Malaysia. But the money he supposedly lost is still mind-boggling, running into hundreds of millions of pesos.
***
Meanwhile, SWS reports that more than a quarter of Filipino families, 25.9 percent of some 24 million households, equivalent to some 30 million men, women and children, went hungry in the last quarter of 2024.
In the third quarter, it was 22.9 percent, and the 3 percent increase approximates the highest recorded since the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020. Year-on-year, we have had 5 consecutive quarters of rising hunger rates.
No money, no honey, a wag once said. In the Philippines, no money means no food.
Still, our rich politicians charge 20,000 per plate meals in BGC’s swankiest restaurants, or hie off to Tokyo for Peter Luger’s famous steaks, New York even, while many of our urban poor eat “pagpag” and those in the countryside subsist on “balinghoy.”
What was it F. Scott Fitzgerald said about the “rich (being) different from you and me”?
His setting was the US of A, when the robber barons controlled most wealth.
If he were in the Philippines, circa 2024, he would have been speechless.
