The Economic Toll of the Swine Flu Scare

May 7, 2009
Please Distribute Widely

Dear Colleague,

The mass media panic has lessened as the world begins to realize that the swine flu scare was not as catastrophic as originally implied. But for those in Mexico City – which is seen as the hardest hit by the virus – the worst is still yet to come, in the form of economic devastation. Government decrees that closed small businesses for two weeks have set a catastrophic chain of economic harms in motion. After a speaking tour in the US, Narco News Publisher Al Giordano now reports from Mexico City:

“What has been set in motion is a regional economic crash that will of course hit hardest upon those without any savings at all (a majority, here). I saw something similar happen in Lower Manhattan in the wake of September 11, 2001: so many mom-and-pop restaurants and stores, and citizen tenants, made no income for various weeks as everything under Fourteenth Street had been shut down by writ. The renters could not pay rent, and landlords used their nonpayment as the trigger to evict them. They are now replaced with Starbucks and Walgreen's and other chain stories, and a more upper class population paying higher rents where the workers used to live. As in New York, everything that was wonderful about Mexico City may be about to go under, or at least enough of it to permanently damage its best people-centered qualities.

“On the other hand, it may come true that chilangos, what residents of Mexico City call themselves, prove more feisty and organized than New Yorkers had been eight years ago, and an interesting push back against such destruction by the twin horsemen of market and panic may be the next chapter in this saga...”

Read the rest of the essay and other news from Latin America online at Narco News:

http://www.narconews.com

From somewhere in a country called América,

David B. Briones
Webmaster
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com
webmaster@narconewscom

Narco News is supported by:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 241
Natick, MA 01760
http://www.authenticjournalism.org

The Fund receives online donations at this web page:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Apply for your co-publisher's account, here:

http://www.narconews.com/copublisher/application.php

Subscribe for free alerts of new reports:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconews

Suscribete gratis para alertas de nuevos reportajes en espanol:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconewsandes

Inscreva-se para alertas gratuitos de reportagens do ultimo minuto em
portugues brasileiro:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconewsbrasil

ENDS

© Scoop Media