He calls the "headline statistics" trumpeted by the administration "good" but meaningless, since "everybody is feeling lousy."

"The anecdotal feedback from the business community, from small traders to large corporations, show that it has been a joyless Christmas, a joyless economy," observed Roxas.

These are harsh words from a moderate politician and former trade secretary, and one can anticipate government economists immediately responding that the feedback is "anecdotal" and therefore not "general" anyway. This could mean that government economists (and various high officials) do not feel the economic pinch.

That’s the reason that in the announced revamp of the Cabinet, the economists will be retained. But will it matter at all if they are replaced or retained? The real malady — not only economic but political — lies in the structures of power.

However, that kind of conclusion carries the analysis too far — dangerously. No one is in the mood to go back to basics: How power is used and how wealth is acquired in this society. Or worse, how they are explained.

For example, Secretary Bunye blithely announced that the choice of a new Cabinet will be based on public interest. Never circumspect about connotation, he is practically saying that the choice of past Cabinet members was based on something other than the public interest. This is as exasperating as Malacañang’s insistence on economic good times against the ground feeling of hard times.

There’s no question that President Arroyo is an indefatigable micro-manager. Her Cabinet feels this and the public knows it through the indefatigable propaganda machine. But the apparatchiks are complaining, just like "Garci," that nobody outside the charmed circles (or maybe even within) seems to believe them.

Of course, when things go badly, most presidential supporters are ready to blame it on the Cabinet and the bureaucracy. But the question is who picks the Cabinet and who commands the bureaucracy?

That’s why a micro-manager naturally gets the brickbats as well as the bouquets.