Lessons in crisis

Now it is the Asians’ turn to tell the US and other Western nations “no bailouts” for failing or failed companies, please. Certainly, Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Moha-mad have plenty to gloat about if they wanted to. But they don’t need to. The facts speak for themselves — the Federal Reserve Board by bailing out American International Group contradicts US government’s own prescriptions to Asian during the financial crisis in the region in 1997. So far, there has been no criticism from Asian leaders who meekly accepted Western dictum at the time.

The criticism for AIG’s bailout came from other Americans. Don Boudreaux, a professor at George Mason University in Virginia, says “the Federal Reserve’s $85 billion loan to AIG, which comes in exchange for a huge stake in the company, turns the rules of capitalism upside down.”

He adds that “the basic tenets of capitalism are that you are free to take whatever risks you want as long as you are willing to bear the costs for those risks.” If it happens to individuals doing business in capitalist countries, corporations should get the same treatment in the interest of fairness. “If you have huge gains, great, you get the gains. But no one helps bail you out or subsidize you.”

So let us review what was said in 1997 to Asian economies. Bryan T. Johnson and John Sweeney writing for the Heritage Foundation said such bailouts will not help. They called “any bailout wasteful and will not work.” As far as I know at the time, the IMF bailed out countries — Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and South Korea, the world’s 11th-largest economy — not individual corporations.

Adding insult to injury they blamed the countries themselves for their financial problems. “Decades of onerous government regulation and corruption, restrictions on foreign capital and competition, a concentration of power in family-owned business groups with close ties to government, and closed financial systems have contributed to a weakening of economies some of whom were thought to be the next “Asian Tigers.”

Not content with blaming the Asians they were told to accept the “consequences of their own actions” instead of blaming it on “foreign causes such as international currency traders. (Mahathir and George Soros exchanged barbs during the crisis.)

It may be good to remind Western countries that they are not infallible. That is the lesson to learn from today’s financial crisis and I hope they would be gracious enough to eat humble pie. Indeed, Asians can just turn around all that was said to them then i.e. the corruption of governments and the lack of economic freedom, etc. etc.

The same goes for the bailout of AIG. It may buy time but nothing is failsafe at this point, even market driven solutions.

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Recently, I attended the opening of the Tomatis branch in Quezon City. Their first was in Alabang. This is a center founded on the principle of helping children with learning disabilities through a program of listening. The founder of the Tomatis Method was Dr. Alfred Tomatis, a French ear-nose-throat specialist in 1947. He discovered the interrelation between the ear and the voice and that listening problems are the root cause of many learning disabilities. Among those learning disabilities are auditory processing problems, dyspraxia, learning disabilities ADHD and those with sensory integration and motor skill difficulties. Before the Alabang center was opened, those who knew of Tomatis had to go abroad, until a group of enterprising young Filipinos brought it into the Philippines. I confess this is a nepotistic plug for my son, Alberto and his wife Joanne who co-founded the school with the Manosas and the Vecins.

But even more amazing was the Quezon City branch. It is housed in a building of integrated therapies which is the brainstorm of Mary Ann Cua. The entire building is devoted to “Quality Life Discoveries”. This is the first integrative rehabilitation center that offers holistic services for well and differently-abled. As Mary-Ann narrated to me she went all around the world to know of every therapy she could offer — aquatherapy, watsu, multisensory environments giger and rehabilitation, therasuit intensive exercise program, hyperbaroc oxygen therapy — everything necessary to bring a disabled child to become as close to normal as possible.

“It was because of my child,” she said. He was one of twins who survived when it seemed impossible to do so. She told the doctors, “Basta, do everything you have to do to make him live. And when he did live, she had to face the question of how she would continue the therapy to make him as normal as possible. That was what led her to look around the world for machines and therapies and put up a building that would house all of her search and research. It is an astounding feat.

The fact is the Quality of Life therapies could benefit adults as well. For example, the multisensory environment helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease or improve your memory in general. Quality of Life is located at 70, 20th Avenue, Project 4, Quezon City, tel. nos. 9127433 or 4916287.

A book or more precisely an author, Eckhart Tolle has taken thousands by storm with his books. His A New Earth Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose is an antidote to the grief and pain on the death of a loved one.

It is a spiritual guide and teaches on how to live in the now, not on what is past or what could be the future. But to be able to live in the now we must first learn how to transcend our ego-based consciousness. Moreover it is relevant to what is happening in the world. We talk of a changing world but we do not have a map on where it is going. Tolle offers that in his books, it is not just a personal journey but one that can finally end suffering and conflict in the world. His first book The Power of Now was the no. 1 in the New York Times Best Sellers list. It was also recommended by the Oprah Book Club. So when I asked my sister who gave it to me, she said it was all over the bookstores in the US.