Aquino Faces Test With Typhoon Haiyan

The agenda for the second-half of Benigno Aquino's presidency is devastatingly clear. In the first three years of his term, the Filipino leader attracted remarkable investment-grade ratings for the onetime Sick Man of Asia. He raised taxes to increase revenues and stabilize the national balance sheet. He won global accolades for jailing his predecessor, Gloria Arroyo, and going after the corruption that has made the Philippines a third-rail country for overseas investors. He even took on the powerful Catholic Church by providing free contraceptives to slow population growth.

Those successes seem like a distant memory today as the Philippines counts its dead. Super Typhoon Haiyan may have killed as many as 10,000 people in the Philippines after floods and winds knocked down buildings and destroyed an airport. The recovery effort will be long, painful, and expensive. Haiyan's total economic impact may reach $14 billion, with only about $2 billion of that insured. That's serious money in a $250 billion economy where a quarter of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day.