Global Economic Crisis still at upper echelons

Arriving back home it seems that the big topic of international news is the Global Economic Crisis. From what I observe locally, it is still felt mainly at the upper echelons and has not yet had a major impact on the ordinary citizen.

Last July I sat next to a lady on the plane who works for her government’s central bank in the second of my worlds. She was on her way home from a meeting in Europe of global banking and finance leaders. She said it looks like the US is undergoing a severe financial crisis and said that it will strongly affect her country too.

The government had recently decreased its subsidy of fuel thus increasing the price at the pump. Naturally the citizens were upset as all other prices can be expected to increase too. But what the citizens don’t understand is that they have the cheapest gasoline and diesel prices in the region. When I arrived in the river town I saw a line several blocks long of trucks and buses waiting to fill up on diesel. The driver of the car I was in said he had waited half a day to fill the tank with regular gasoline just 2 days ago. He also said that cooking gas was hard to find. This on an island which has its own oil wells! I suspect that savvy merchants have filled up some tankers on the side and are busy selling it to neighboring countries. After all it’s win-win for everybody but the ordinary citizen.

The last two months I was again in the second of my worlds. Everything seemed normal as far as ordinary citizens selling and buying. We heard in the news about a “global economic crisis” but it didn’t seem to affect the month of fasting shopping boom.

The main topic of local concern was the constant power outages. People grumbled at the power company’s (government owned) lack of planning. They complained that they wait until the coal is all gone and then run out and try to buy a little more, just like people running out of toothpaste run out to a neighborhood shop and buy a little more.

But actually, I suspect the problem with the coal is the same as the problem with the gasoline. Sellers make more profit selling shiploads of coal to neighboring countries.

By the end of October the news was more sobering. Copra (dried unprocessed coconut) prices had dropped overnight from $64/ton to $10.75. For the people I was working with copra is their livlihood. Their villages are split between those who own coconut groves and those who harvest, they split the selling price half and half. Since the price of copra has been so good in recent years, people don’t have gardens anymore. In addition, they said that because it has been raining so much the past year that it would be hard to start a garden because they couldn’t burn it off, and clearing the overgrown land by hand would be very difficult. They were quite glum that day. But they were a bit happier when the price came back up to $32 a few days later.

One man who heads a large project sponsored by a development bank found out that they had just cut the funding by 10%. He worried that he will have a big problem to deal with because people will be angry. They will feel tht the jobs and income have already been promised and won’t take kindly to suddenly having it cut by 10%.

I recently arrived back here in the third of my worlds. Here too we hear of the Global Economic Crisis. Prices have been increasing slowly for a long time. The rice crisis seems to be over for now. In fact, amazingly, the price of public transportation actually decreased a little since the price of oil fell!

People here are used to crises. So people do believe it when they are told there will be a crisis. We had the Asian Economic Crisis a few years back, El Ninyo droughts, rice crisis, local currency devaluations, etc. The wealthy may be panicking but for the ordinary citizen there is nothing you can do about it other than try to cut back on spending and ride it out, praying that you don't lose your job. The malls are decorated for Christmas, but things do seem a bit subdued compared to previous years and the mayor is warning that the economic crisis will be severe by January.