UPDATED: Jan. 22, 2008 10:00 PMAn old man lay sleeping in a doorway on the streets in Yau Ma Tei. His hat fell off his face as I strode past. I saw years of suffering etched on his wrinkled face.
Just a few feet away cars whizzed by, horns blared and an endless stream of people pushed past one another. Colorful signs overlay the dark soot lining the walls of buildings. Vendors called out deals in Cantonese, a language still foreign, but more familiar to me.
News of the drop in the U.S. stock market last week seem distant here. The street vendors continue their business unaffected, at least for the moment.
When I received news of the drop, my mind immediately began to worry about the exchange rate.
But the effects of that drop can be felt even an ocean away.
Last Wednesday, Hong Kong stocks also plummeted the lowest since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Recent economic growth on mainland China may not be enough to prop up the Hong Kong economy if the U.S. goes into a recession, according to an article in the South China Morning Post.
But on Friday, Hong Kong Stocks made a rebound, while U.S. stocks continued to decline. (Read the New York Times story here.)
This trend turned out to only be temporary. While the U.S. market was closed in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday, Asian stocks began a downward turn supporting earlier claims that mainland China's economic strings cannot keep Hong Kong afloat in the face of a possible recession.
The New York Times reported the Federal Reserve made an emergency cut in the interest rate.
The article sites the drop in Asian markets as reason behind fears the U.S. stock will continue to plunge.
I read the South China Morning Post, an English Hong Kong newspaper, this morning. This article sites a possible recession in the U.S. as the reason behind the collapse of the Hong Kong stock market on Monday and Tuesday.
(Click here for a summary of world markets. The Poynter Institute offered the best synopsis of information on the global crash.)
With both newspapers pointing fingers at the other country, what is the real reason? Maybe a little bit of both tied together?
Amidst all the trading, worrying and speculating about the stock market, the old man on the street continues to search for a warm place to spend the night.
He knows nothing of the Hong Kong stock's plight. From his perch, the outlook always seems dim.
4 comments:
way to connect the humanitarian with the economist! wow jess! the idea that even though these money issues seem so important to all, there are those who have no money regardless of how the stock system is going. Thanks for remembering the poor for me.
Hey lady,
I exchanged for my subscription of the NYTimes for the Wall Street Journal this quarter, to try a different paper and writing style. Interestingly enough, the WSJ is looking more and more like USA Today after Murdock took over...
In last weeks January 16 paper there was an article titled, "The World Rides to Wall Street's Rescue". The basic idea was that investors from Asia (Japan, Korea) and the middle East (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) are actually buffering the credit/liquidity/stock crisis by investing capital. I was reminded of this when I read your entry.
It is becoming clearer to me all the time that the U.S. doesn't just have repercussions on the world; rather there is an interconnectivity of world economies today....that affects even the man on the street, with his hat tilted over his face.
Peace to you, dear friend.
Aleida
Looks like their market took another tumble today. Here's a quote from a story I found: ``Fear now rules the market.'' I guess that about sums it up, huh?
Thanks for the comment Aleida. I found this article from the New York Times very ineresting: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/business/22econ.html?hp.
We'll see within the next few weeks how large that buffer really is.
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