MANILA, Philippines--If the world were a classroom, the present series of interrelated global crises would be final exams.

In the Philippines, a line drawn from the P628-million Bolante fertilizer scam to the failure of government’s rice self-sufficiency program makes its name, Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA for short, translated to Golden Abundant Harvest), richly ironic. Judge this line for yourself.

So was I only imagining that straight line landing on Mrs. Arroyo’s forehead the other day at the NBI? There, in full media glare, it seemed to join more creases on her brow in the extreme exasperation of her discovery that the agency she’d tasked to go after rice hoarders went after rice smugglers instead, wasting precious time neither she nor the hungry main objects of her rice ministrations could afford to waste. Was there more hush money to be made from smugglers than hoarders? I wondered.

It’s not easy being president of the Philippines these days, as factors beyond a Chief Executive’s control mature and converge with factors she could have controlled but didn’t until it was too late. But there’s consuelo de bobo, a fool’s consolation, to be had. Mrs. Arroyo is not alone in increasing unease on a seat of power while the global status quo drastically changes in multi-layered crisis. Call it extreme learning.

It centers on food, with the survival of both people and government on the line in the Philippines. In America at the opposite end of the industrial revolution, the struggle of millions to keep from losing homes bought on credit also redounds to survival.

“An accident waiting to happen” is how the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has described the so-called U.S. subprime mortgage crisis that brought this crisis about. Because it’s happening in the world’s largest economy, the size and speed of its impact has seen giants of global investment banking teetering, one already fallen, like a line of dominoes. This has in turn led to the present global credit crisis felt in ways large and small most everywhere on the planet.

This is how Paul Volcker, who preceded Alan Greenspan as chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describes a radically shifting a global landscape: “Any return to heavily regulated, bank-dominated, nationally insulated markets is pure nostalgia, not possible in the world of sophisticated financial techniques made possible by the wonders of electronic technology.”

Many are still analyzing how the bubble of this subprime mortgage crisis burst. Reduced to its essence, however, it goes home to an economic system built on credit, personal and institutional, ranging the gamut from individuals and households to global investment banks with formerly unassailable, now besmirched reputations.

The extreme learning this spectacle offers the planetary classroom is simple, however. It revolves around the faith of ordinary citizens in a financial system running on instant gratification on one hand and world-class greed running rampant in the absence of regulation on the other. Again, judge for yourself. Here’s the definition of subprime lending that the George W. Bush regime encouraged against all common sense, in much the same way it took America charging into Iraq five years ago.

Besides the horrific blood price, there’s another connecting line to be drawn between that wrongheaded foray into Iraq and the present devaluation of the formerly mighty U.S. dollar whose impact we all understand too well. Among those who saw this dollar devaluation coming was the international management consultant, Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar, who wrote in the website, Dissident Voice, back in May 2006:

“The current American deficit and its long-term financial obligations, if left unanswered, will sooner or later lead to either a marked increase in interest rate or a substantial devaluation of dollar. On one hand, a substantial increase in interest rates will lead to a major recession in the US that will be felt immediately around the world. On the other hand, a substantial devaluation will cause financial chaos in the world. What is needed is to seriously reconsider the international role of the dollar as the world currency. In other words we need a new Bretton Woods Agreement.”

If you’re too young to know about the historic Bretton Woods that set gold as a standard of value, but have the next 50 or 60 years to live on the planet, here’s a good primer. Here too is the rest of Dr. Bakhtiar’s analysis and its big picture of the U.S. economy painted brushstroke by brushstroke.

America is not the only economic giant in extreme learning, however. The other economy whose size and influence now straddles the planet is China’s, so large it’s on the way to becoming America’s largest creditor. “In 2000, China financed around 5% of the total amount of U.S. foreign debt. In 2005, China financed almost 20%. In ten years time China will hold more than 50% of U.S. foreign debt,” writes Mario Baldassarri, professor of political economy and Italy’s former Italian deputy minister of economy and finance. Here’s the rest of his fascinating comparison between the American and Chinese economies that also describe their respective cultures.

All that may be so, but as a new communist-led economic giant moves to the Beijing Olympics in a global coming-out party befitting its new economic status come August, China has meanwhile been stumbling badly in a face-off with the wholly different reality of Tibetan Buddhism.

The world recognizes Tibet’s rare spiritual achievements with reverence approaching awe. For Zhang Qingli, Tibet's Chinese Communist party boss, to call the leader of its sacred culture, the Dalai Lama, a "wolf in monk's robes, a devil with a human face, but the heart of a beast" – in the insular worldview and outdated language of Mao’s Cultural Revolution – is deeply embarrassing to none other than China itself.

No, it doesn’t seem as though anyone, large or small, is exempt from planetary final exams, where answers to life-and-death questions will determine the chances for survival and quality of life of those who survive its extreme learning.

Oh, and one more thing. The spiraling costs of food, fuel and most everything else are driving millions to the poor house now, but it’s global warming that will be ringing the bell to signal the end of exams, ready or not. Time to match extreme learning with extreme faith and ingenuity as though our lives depended on it. They do.

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