Streetwise.

(From BusinessWorld (Philippines))

Byline: Carol Pagaduan-Araullo

Weeks after President Arroyo made the uncharacteristically forthright pronouncement that the government was broke (i.e. in a fiscal crisis), after UP economists issued a paper purporting to give the real score on deficits and the public debt, a plethora of "solutions" have been offered. This, alongside the increasingly doomsday scenarios by Mrs. Arroyo's finance managers that the public is being made to feel increasingly anxious about.

On Malacanang's part, the approach has been to heap the blame on everyone except the President, call on everyone to implement austerity measures except the President, railroad the new regressive tax measures in Congress worth P80 billion that will then be entrusted to the President to solve the crisis that she, in her first three years in office, had the biggest hand in exacerbating and triggering in the first place.

Mrs. Arroyo's spin masters must be chortling with glee on how they …