Friday Post - Migrants and bankers

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Migrants - The current situation is bad because rather than deal with the situation in an organized manner, creating processing centers and spreading that population out across multiple countries, migrants are crammed into camps with poor conditions and treated like criminals. Their only offense is wanting a little safety and maybe a shot at a better life. Rewind to the days of the end of the Vietnam war when those who helped the U.S. fight the North Vietnamese were airlifted to safety, brought to the U.S. and Canada and neatly spread out across cities and towns. Done so well that nobody realized that 450,000 were settled here. No town or city can handle the influx of tens of thousands of people all at once yet that's what we're seeing in Italy and Greece. That's also not to mention the refugee camps in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. The problem as I see it is that they're trying to deal with the symptoms and not the problem which is political instability and war. And this has to be a drag on the world economies. The arms dealers, bankers and morticians may be doing well, not so much for the rest of us. There has to be a breaking point. 

There is the issue of China which for the moment is desperately trying to pump up a slowing economy. But there are other factors at issue. Mainly they followed the U.S. lead of allowing their investors to borrow money to invest in the stock market. All went well until their economy slowed and values fell. Add to that the loosening of real estate regulations that permitted the ownership of second homes and just like the U.S. market when the bubble burst prices fell. In a feeble attempt to pump up the market the Chinese government lowered interest rates. It's worked for a brief while but even that ploy is set to fail. A small snippet from a Chinese analyst today gave credence to what the future may bring. The government is buying stocks to try and keep the markets high. “If the government sustains buying there are terribly negative consequences, such as impact to [People’s Bank of China’s] credibility and yuan credibility…Any bank can create money out of thin air, which is why confidence is so important,” said Cui. “So if they keep printing money to buy high valued stocks, it will damage yuan credibility.”

Wall Street would have you believe that this was just a minor glitch, a temporary correction but the fundamentals say otherwise. And this isn't happening in just China but other countries as well as others devalue their currency to make their products more attractive. But I don't see a rush to buy more stuff. While there may be pockets of building in some cities this isn't a broad based boom like after past recessions.

Bank fails later
No fails this week