More than 2.6 million jobs in the US disappeared in 2008 and around 11 million Americans are now unemployed, according to this news report. The grim scenario is not yet over as companies last week announced more than 126,000 job cuts worldwide in the coming months.
The Philippines is not also spared from the effects of this economic crisis. The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reported that since October 2008, a total of 23,485 Filipinos here and abroad have lost their jobs as a direct result of the global economic crisis.
126,000 more workers worldwide to lose jobs
More than 126,000 workers worldwide are expected to go unemployed in the next few months, based on several company announcements made last week alone.
We compiled news reports published on Yahoo News, Inquirer.net and Bloomberg from January 21 to 28 and summarized below the information about the jobs cuts companies are planning to implement as a result of the economic recession.
In just that one-week period, expected job layoffs, according to company announcements, totaled 126,000. That is a really scary figure but what’s more scary is the fact that these announcements were made in just the first month of the year. We’re almost certain more companies will announce layoffs in the coming months.
Brace yourselves.
List of biggest bankrupt companies in 2008
Aside from the words “subprime,” “financial recession,” and “job layoffs,” “bankruptcy” seems to be a popular, infamous word these days. Bankruptcy is simply the inability of an individual or company to pay its creditors. At present we hear news reports almost everyday about a certain company filing for bankruptcy.
What were the major bankruptcies in 2008? The list below identifies companies with the biggest assets involved in a bankruptcy filing last year.
Getting Philippine ePassport or Machine Readable Passports (MRP)
Maroon is the new green. For Philippine passports, that is.
The new maroon-colored passport is machine-readable, in compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s requirement. Green passports, however, will still be valid until their validity date according to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), but there might be a catch.
Read it here: Green passports OK until validity date but…
Asia Century affiliate program: Scam?
Last year we wrote about Asia Century, a Philippine-based “make money online” program similar to Google Adsense and Commission Junction. Affiliates of Asia Century get to earn whenever a click, lead, or sale was generated through his site.
But as shared by Paul of the blog www.paulandrewpisig.com, supposedly this was not the case.
Paul emailed us about Asia Century and how they are allegedly not paying him the earnings he had already earned. An excerpt of his letter goes:
Don’t fall for this Western Union scam
Suppose you receive an email from an unknown sender telling you an outrageously huge amount of cash is waiting to be picked up by you in Western Union, what do you do?
a. Pray and thank God for this windfall gain
b. Rush to a Western Union branch to pick up your money
c. Delete the email
If you answered letter c, congratulations! You won’t be victimized by these Western Union scammers.
Here’s a copy of the email I received yesterday about this Western Union scam, a variation of the infamous 419 or Nigerian scam.
PDIC updates on Rural Bank of Paranaque (RBoP)
PMT Forum member tacamonchi recently shared some useful updates about the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (PDIC) takeover of the Rural Bank of Paranaque (Banco Paranaque) in the thread Legacy Financial Group’s rural banks.
Early this week, he visited RBoP’s Ortigas branch and was able to talk to a Ms. Hermie from the PDIC who graciously answered all his questions. Here are what he have gathered from the conversation.
New Adsense format: Image Gallery ads
Update! Today, January 10, I saw a variation of this new Image Gallery ad format.
Instead of thumbnail images and left and right arrow buttons, the ad contains a prettier version of the left and right scrollbars and a Slideshow button that, well, plays a slideshow of the images being advertised.
Here’s a Youtube video of this new Adsense ad format in action.