I received many replies from willing young ladies but I was unable to find a building on the Spratly Islands, as I have to be outside the jurisdiction of the Philippines. I have been offered a place in Darfur but it is too dangerous, so I must reluctantly abandon the idea and think of something else.

My wife read last week's article and I expected her to go mad, but she showed no reaction. I said, "How do you manage to exhibit such self-control?" She replied, "I go and clean the toilet." I asked, "How does that help?" She said smiling, "I use your toothbrush."

An old farmer went to town to see a movie. The ticket agent said, "What's that on your shoulder?" "Oh, that's my pet rooster. Wherever, I go, he goes." "I am sorry, sir, but we can't allow animals in the theater." The farmer stuffed the rooster down his pants, bought a ticket and sat down next to two old ladies. The movie started and the rooster began to squirm so the farmer undid his fly. "Marge," whispered Carol. "I think the guy next to me is a pervert." "What makes you think so?” asked Marge. "He undid his pants and has his thing out." "Well, don't worry about it. At our age, we have seen everything." "I thought so, too," said Carol, "but this one is eating my popcorn."

The Pope visited a synagogue in America and declared that he liked Jews. Orange jews, lemon jews and calamansi jews.

The government will appoint a czar for rice and a czardine for fish. I went into a fast-food joint and ordered “manok” [chicken] with toppings. The waitress gave me a generous helping of chicken and sprinkled rice on it.

As diesel reached a new high, a driver wrote, "The truck stops here."

Three nurses and a doctor in Cebu City videotaped an operation on a patient's rectum and posted it on YouTube. Angry relatives broke into the operating rooms and wrecked 'em. My jokes have now reached the bottom.

* * *

Wall Street had a strong recovery despite bad news from banks and mixed news from industrials. The worst results were announced by Citigroup, which wrote off another $5 billion and further job cuts of 9,000 in addition to the 4,200 already announced. Wachovia's earnings per share plummeted from $1.20 to $0.20; the company cut its dividend and said it was raising $7 billion through a share sale to maintain its capital adequacy ratio. The stock dropped eight percent, and the Federal Reserve said, “We will ‘watch over ya." Bear Stearns profits plunged 79 percent from $548 million to $110 million and the shares traded at $10, compared with $150 a year ago. JPMorgan intends to lay off 4,500 office workers.

US housing starts have dropped to close to a 17-year low, and rapidly increasing foreclosures are pushing down property values by adding to the glut of unsold homes. In view of the deteriorating economy, the Fed is expected to cut rates to 2 percent on April 30. This is in spite of increasing inflation due to oil prices reaching a record $117 a barrel plus an increase in food prices. The Producer Price Index jumped by a totally unexpected 1.1 percent, which means that companies will shortly be increasing prices or cutting back on jobs to preserve profit margins. Consumer prices gained 0.3 percent, not too bad.

Every time Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks, he gets more bearish. He has at last agreed that the economy has deteriorated to such an extent that a recession is now possible. Hitherto, he has refused to mention the dreaded "R" word. He made it abundantly clear that rate cuts alone could not solve the problem and that Congress would have to act quickly in order to prevent a wave of foreclosures. The stimulus package would undoubtedly help, if paid promptly, but careful legislation would be needed to protect innocent buyers from the ravages of adjustable mortgage rates and longer-term legislation would have to be agreed on a bipartisan basis.

One good piece of news is that Bernanke and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, agree that businesses are in far better shape than they were in the two previous contractions. Non-financial companies have stashed away more than $500 billion in cash, reduced short-term debt and cut inventories to a low level, leaving themselves in a stronger position to weather a slowdown or recession. Bernanke said, "We still have what at the moment at least, appears to be a reasonably good economy, as distinct from finance." Greenspan described it as a "tug-of-war between healthy non-financial companies on the one hand and the crippled credit-market and housing industry on the other."

With the bank results out of the way, we will have two weeks of results from industrials. Some will be bad like Nokia and LG Philips but others will be good like IBM (up 26 percent) and Google. Analysts were convinced that the 800-pound gorilla was going to slow down but instead, it produced profits 30-percent higher and shared revenue up 42 percent. The shares jumped 20 percent to $540, its best one-day gain ever. The mood of Wall Street has brightened and several pundits are forecasting that this is the bottom. I think they are premature and should wait for the second quarter results.

China continues to take all the right measures to engineer a slowdown and a soft landing. They are allowing the currency to appreciate 1 percent a month, not to please America but to reduce the embarrassing monthly budget surpluses. They will raise rates several times this year as they did last year and they continue to increase bank deposits, thereby taking liquidity out of the system. They are monitoring price increases of food, discouraging investment in factories and real estate development and building mini-cities near rural areas to bring a higher living standard to the countryside. In fact, farmers have done very well this year but it might not be repeated. Growth slowed from 11.4 percent to 10.6 percent in the first quarter.

The Philippine stock market has not performed well and even large gains on Wall Street have comparatively little effect on it. Gross turnover on the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has fallen from P6 billion last year to only P2 billion, and almost half of this are cross sales that are largely internal foreign transactions, so net turnover has dropped to P1 billion. Foreign selling has started up again due to an increase in inflation to 6.4 percent. UBS predicts an increase in inflation from 5.3 percent to 6.7 percent this year with 8 percent likely in the next few months. Bonds have dropped and yields are rising again. The Treasury is having difficulty selling even five-year bonds at higher yields and First Philippine Holdings has issued P4.3 billion of preferred shares giving a gross return of 8.7 percent. Six months ago, such a high return would have been unthinkable.

I saw in Monday's paper that ATN has started shipping a week earlier than scheduled—a good sign. The first consignment of 10,000 tons is being loaded and buyers are vying with each other to get the high-grade manganese ore, the best in Asia. They are all willing to send their own trucks to pick it up from the site and this saves ATN a lot of money and the need to purchase additional trucks. There is no problem with this company, as there is a big demand for high-grade manganese, an essential ingredient in strengthening steel.

Previous columns:

Bearbull finds religion – 2008/04/14
Massive rice in food prices – 2008/04/08
An interesting stock – 2008/04/01
A holiday to remimbi – 2008/03/26
JP Morgan acquires Bear Stearns for $2 a share– 2008/03/18