Sonntag, 31. Mai 2009

Mexico

Lately, just about everything seems to be going wrong for Mexico:

- It started with collapsing oil revenues. Not only did the oil price collapse (an event that will probably be temporary), but much more worryingly, oilfield output is declining at ever steeper rates.

- Exports to the US have fallen sharply, and workers' homeward remittances are also dropping.

- American multinationals have slashed their investment budgets, and are repatriating as many profits as they can to strengthen their balance-sheets.

- Escalating gang warfare among drug traffickers has claimed 6,200 lives last year, and some cities (most notably Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, where 1,800 people have been killed since January 2008) are so unsafe that thousands of troups have been moved in, and nobody dares to venture outdoors after nightfall.

- And if all this wasn't already enough, swine flu shut down Mexico City for several weeks, and has caused the country's tourism industry to collapse. As of late May, occupancy rates in major tourist destinations are still down by more than half compared to last year, even though prices have been slashed by 50 % and more.

Latest forecasts now project 2009 GDP to drop by 8.5 %.

Edit: According to latest news, the US now insists that US citizens travelling to and from Mexico carry a passport. This is expected to deal a further blow to the economies of border towns such as Ciudad Juarez, as most Americans don't even have a passport.

8 Kommentare:

  1. Hi,

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  2. That's the second time I get a SPAM-comment exactly like this one. Don't know what they want to achieve with this kind of spamming...

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  3. The rationale behind this kind of linkspam is usually to optimize the search engine rating of the spammer's website, increase its number of visitors or spread malware to people who click on these links by accident or out of curiosity:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_spam

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  4. Third spam comment just came in. All of them are identical, except for the websites they link to.

    The annoying thing is that Blogger doesn't allow me to delete comments once they are published, so if this doesn't stop soon, it may force me to switch to moderated comments.

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  5. I noticed similar stuff on another blog a few days ago. Just ignore it, if you ask me. Comment moderation sucks.

    Mike

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  6. SPAMs will also hurt your PageRank. I'd rather opt for moderated comments or switch to wordpress.com. There you can delete comments any time.

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  7. Today's FTD also has a downbeat article on Mexico's economy:

    http://www.ftd.de/boersen_maerkte/aktien/anleihen_devisen/:Abh%E4ngigkeit-von-USA-Investoren-misstrauen-Mexiko/521659.html

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