IN late September and early October, many middle-class communities across the country were giddily discussing one thing that was not about the usual suspects: politics, sports, entertainment or the launch of a new technology product. It was rather about a bond offering from a property developer on a hotel-building spree overseas that carried an unprecedented 8-percent return a year. A recently retired overseas Filipino worker (OFW) couple — he, in the Middle East; she, in the Czech Republic — kept gushing about the 8-percent yearly return from the bond offeror as we were swapping boars (their Anglo-Nubian for my Boer) at their farm-cum-retirement place on Oct. 1.

If you were there and were observant enough, you would have known outright where the couple's giddiness was coming from.

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