SOME bankers would consider adjustments to the phaseout of Libor less a labor of love, as the end of the 34-year-old financial tool brings additional tasks the sector must undertake.

“The most important number in finance will disappear in 2021,” lawyer Russell Stanley Geronimo wrote in an opinion piece for the BusinessMirror. (See, “Is the Philippines ready for the 2021 Libor phaseout?” August 17, 2020)

“The London Interbank Offer Rate (Libor), which is an interbank interest rate at which banks on the London money market are willing to lend to one another, will soon be phased out.”

By 2022, the banking industry will be introduced to a new benchmark for borrowing costs.

The projection models on the course of the Covid-19 pandemic have been about as inaccurate as those used for global warming and “famine-from-overpopulation.” But that is the problem with trying to draw conclusions when there are too many variables and oftentimes agenda-driven data interpretation.

Today’s podcast puts a spotlight on young entrepreneur Jhoana Paula Tuazon and ‘Lil Chef Bakery, an online food business she started with her sister Portia.

‘Lil Chef Bakery, which sells palm-sized cookies and Basque-burnt cheesecakes, is homage to Portia who has been baking since grade school. She was dubbed ‘Lil Chef’ by their parents and, hence, they called their online business so.

BusinessMirror reporter Jasper Emmanuel Arcalas interviewed Paula on how she and her sister began ‘Lil Chef Bakery. 

MOTHER Nature—if President Trump’s “kung-fu” virus allegation is disbelieved—could be a bitch, sometimes.

She made that point in 2020.

The year had a lot of “should haves” and “could haves,” according to Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua.

While it is an inaccurate translation from the original Latin, we use the term “quid pro quo” in English to describe “I give, so that you may give” or “You do this and I will do that.”

But in a nation, we actually expect the government or state to “give” first and there is not necessarily anything wrong with that.

Today’s podcast puts a spotlight on young entrepreneur Elisse Perez and her online food business Baon PH, which provides affordable packed meals, or baon, with a choice of weekly or daily subscription.

BusinessMirror reporter Jasper Emmanuel Arcalas interviewed Elisse on how she helped her mother bring online a catering business that had schools and offices as clientele before lockdowns were imposed.

FIVE decades since the The Beatles advised people “to carry that weight” in 1969, the Philippines’s debt burden stood at P7.73 trillion ($159.34 billion) as of end-2019. The dollar amount was equivalent to the budget deficit the US addressed nearly two decades ago.

While the Fab Four wasn’t referring to anything, much more debt, the burden of borrowings were carried long and will be carried long according to people BusinessMirror talked to amid and even after the Covid-19 pandemic and the Duterte administration.