Emmanuel of IPE Zone points the massive outflow of portfolio investments from the Philippines this month. He hearkens it to the Asian financial crisis of 1997. To 'counter' the net exit of hot money, the Filipino Diaspora tops last year's first quarter record by 14.5 percent. It is amazing to me how the multitude of Filipinos labouring overseas - unnamed and unmobilised, can nevertheless mount a unified response. Imagine the thousands of phone calls from family coursing through networks of telecommunications all over the globe. A mother complaining about the soaring prices of food at the palengke. A brother asking his kuya to send 10 percent more for his tuition this June. Buffeted by formless enemies, the Diaspora, just as formless, comes to the rescue.
For a backgrounder on the 21st century's 'Casino Capitalism', read:
Taming Capitalism
Dependency, Debt and the End of Resistance
Also, Kenneth Surin's explanation, written a decade ago, is just as salient today.
"Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we therefore take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face "No admittance except on business." Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit making (Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. 1.)"
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