Ang Mahiwagang Investment Strategy

After his 2 days on the witness stand, one has to wonder if this Corona is the least bit intelligent, that is, he kept portraying himself like he's stupid.

First off, his Tagalog just sound somewhat crude, which doesn’t help in making him look smart.

Then, it seems he can’t understand the senators’ questions as he doesn’t answer any question posted to him in a straight forward manner. (That is, he kept talking about his grandchild or daughter, or frugality, or lack of aircon or maid or some other similar drama). 

He says he doesn’t know what debit, credit and assets means.

He doesn’t know how to file his SALN.

He thinks just because his accounts are in dollars, he doesn't need to report them (or consider them assets). 

He doesn’t even know that he should eat lunch or at the very least drink coke or chew a candy for his long standing diabetic condition.  Either that, or he believed he could just walkaway from the senate and casually runaway just like that after his opening statement, which too sounds equally dumb.

He believes that USD hoarding is great investment strategy.

This list can go on… But I’m just saying that you start to wonder, if all these things are true and he is not perjuring himself over there, then well, the alternative is that he might actually just be DUMB. 

After his whole brouhaha last Tuesday about his seriously preposterous investment strategy that involves hoarding USD since the late 60s, I already started to wonder about his intelligence. Since, I must admit I’ve never heard of Corona until he was appointed by GMA to the Supreme Court. I've never really had much interest in him (why would I?) so I actually didn’t know much about his bio. So, I looked him up, I googled him. 

Turns out, he was a consistent honor student, went to Ateneo de Manila University (given he was just on a general studies course), was the editor in chief of Guidon, went to Ateneo Law school, ranked 25^th on his bar exams, and even went to Harvard. He actually was a tax lawyer for SGV and also went to Ateneo for MBA (minus his thesis).

So, hey, his credentials don’t seem like the credentials of an utterly dumb person, not one who won’t be able to understand basic accounting terms or principles since he did MBA and practiced tax law. I even heard from some anchor that he taught banking law or something like that. So, how can this person honestly declare that he doesn’t know what debit, credit or an asset is when a normal management university student already knows what these terms are.

Corona's credentials aren't even those of a person who would think HOARDING DOLLARS in his saving account for years would seem like a good idea. I mean, really?! I can’t help but wince, every time he says it, that this is the reason why he has so much USD in his bank accounts, that he has been keeping small portions of his salary for 40 years and converting them to dollars and just putting them in his bank accounts. (See, now I still feel like wincing.)  

First, it’s a really really really bad investment strategy and second, it’s not a particularly plausible explanation for the amount of USD that he has.

I think these 2 segments from ANC's Business Nightly program are good supplements to why his so called investment strategy is not exactly feasible or sound:  

Off the top of my head, here are some of the reasons why Corona's so called dollar investment strategy claims are just preposterous: 

Even if the USD has gained multiple times since the rate has been 2:1, there was no way that a college level Corona would even be able to predict that it will become 43:1 40 years after.

The FX rates fluctuate all the time. There was the Asian financial crisis and the time when the FX rate hit 50 and everyone converted only to have it drop to the 40s range – a lot of the people I know got burned at that time. These occurrences alone would make any person wary of converting all his money to dollars. In the recent years alone, the Peso has become stronger and the current global financial crisis hasn’t made anyone confident about the US market, the US banks or the US dollars for that matter.

Why would someone that smart just keep all his cash in USD and just keep it liquid in his bank account?

Add to all this the interest rates are so low these days, peso current account don’t even give you 1% anymore, the USD interest rates are likewise very low. Why would you dump your money in a sad savings account or even in a time deposit these days? Since he has the position and the connections, certainly he would have a lot of friends and resources to point him to a better investment pool. These days the stock market is doing so well, for example. Are you telling me he would rather just let his USD sleep there in his bank account just like that? 

Which brings me to my point, the thing is: If he isn’t truly dumb, then he wasn’t being honest. And if he is actually incredibly smart, as his bio says he is, then it follows that he was perjuring himself on the witness stand this entire time. 

Which is it, do you think?