And you thought American elections were out of control

So here’s what is happening in the Philippines:

In the Presidential race, Bong is running against BongBong. Even more fun, Bong’s last name is Go, and BongBong is the son of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Oh, yeah, and there is a third major player in that race. They are running against former boxing great Manny Pacquiao. There are several other candidates as well. This match-up was precipitated by the fact that the current President, Duterte, is constitutionally forbidden to seek another term.

Now it turns kind of weird. Well, weirder. In the Philippines, the president and vice president are elected in separate contests. Duterte’s daughter unexpectedly filed to run for vice-president, even though the polls showed that she was the favorite to succeed her father in the #1 job. Meanwhile Duterte himself figured out that the constitution does not bar him from running for vice-president, so he also entered that race, thinking that his daughter would register for the presidential race. If his original plan had worked out, he could have ended up as her veep, with the family still firmly in control of the country, but because she decided to run for VP instead, Duterte was then slated to run against his daughter instead of with her. When he realized what had happened, he withdrew his VP bid and declared for the senate instead.

16 thoughts on “And you thought American elections were out of control

  1. At the rate I’m going, the likelihood of me getting it finished – it has nothing to do with Treasury financing – is about as likely as you having a Hamptons house to read it in.

  2. We can laugh at banana republic hijinks all we want, but we were not far from something similar (re: the Duterte thing) happening here.
    Had the orange toupee won a 2nd term you can rest assured we’d have seen some flavor of “hijinks” to install one of his two jackass sons, Beavis or Butthead, into some sort of inheritance-perpetuity office title. Around the ’23 timeframe or so.
    What? I dunno, crown prince of Alabama or some shit.

    1. You really think we’re out of those woods yet? Trump would have won last year but for his belittling and politicizing of that minor virus designed to “end Donald Trump’s streak of winning” (DJTjr). For ’24, he may well have an obedient Congress, both chambers, to go along whatever crap he wants to try, even with the VP option out, if he loses. And at this point, I’m thinking he doesn’t lose whoever his opponent is.

      1. Ouch. Gotta go all Don Covay on that one:
        “Have mercy, have mercy, Scoopy
        Have mercy, have mercy on we”.

      1. So 30 years at the treasury huh? I was pretty close. With your vast knowledge of history and probability a larger knowledge of economic theory, you chose to take your immense financial talents to the government sector? How is that different from: those who can’t do, teach? Maybe we should amend it to “those who can’t do, teach or work for the government”. I’ve proven myself where it counts: in the private sector. I came from nothing. I used my degrees for what they are, admission tickets to opportunity. You want to use them to smell your own farts, that’s fine. If I spent my entire life hiding in the government basements, I’d love to spew useless facts too. How else would I justify my life?

        1. In your case nothing seems to have come from nothing. In my case I came up with a proposal to change Treasury’s auction methodology, which I was put in charge of implementing, involving the method of allocating at the high rate or yield. From April 2002 through my retirement in August of the next year, it saved over a billion in principal, discount, and interest in Treasury financing costs. It got me a nifty $3000+ cash award and a spiffy mockup Treasury press release at my retirement party calling me the “One Billion Dollar Man”. It’s still in use. Since the savings factor is probably a relative constant (it’s arithmetic not math) and the amount of savings would increase relative to issue sizes (which have exploded), that savings number might be just a little bit bigger by now.
          The “economic theory” involved looking at a CMB auction with 10 bill offered and 10.256 actually issued and thinking that that was fucking sloppy (I always like to joke that Alan Simpson and I were the last two fiscal hawks in DC). Having access to every last bit of auction data back to ’29 (first bill auctions), it became obvious to me really fast that using a method of rounding to a whole number at the stop-out rather than using a whole number with decimals was the culprit. Apply .0101 to 50 bill (total bid at the high) as opposed to rounding up to .02 (the old way) Even a dunce like yourself might notice the difference. Now apply that to a 30-year with 60 coupons. Big bucks. If you are capable of so doing check out press releases from before and after 4-03 and maybe the Uniform Offering Circular too. I came up with this in the late 80s and it took until 2000 to get it approved. The people in Cash Forecasting and Debt Management at Main Treasury liked the slop over of excess issues even though it wasn’t guaranteed (we could offer 10 bill and actually end up issuing exactly that though it was rare) and fought it for years.
          Well that’s what I did, among other useful things. Obviously I’m biased, but I call that “do”. What in the fuck of value have you ever done? I’m guessing precious little in reality. BS artistry for sure just from what you put up here.
          Btw, corner window my last 12 years or so. Basement never, not even when I was a $7777 per annum grade 5 just out of college.
          Sorry for all the shop talk folks but it did seem relevant.

          1. You’re pissing into the wind, Bill. Like Dear Leader, he’s just going to keep moving the goal posts.

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