Thursday, July 23, 2009

Diaspora Bonds

Why should the Diaspora help to finance those who might be the main cause for them being an involuntary Diaspora?

Diaspora, because of the different risk perspectives on their home country, requires often higher interests in order to buy the bonds than those offered by international capital markets

Why should the Diaspora who is already sacrificing and remitting so much have to invest in securities that might not be the best suited for their personal risk profile? And which might in some cases precisely involve diversifying away as much as possible from their land of origin.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Honduran migrant workers should have their own tea-party… No remittances without representation!

In the case of Honduras the remittances signify 25% of the GDP of Honduras. If we assume that the migrant workers remit 20% of what they earn we can then calculate that their gross earnings represents 122% of Honduras GDP. And so, if we divide the 122% by the net 75.5% GDP that was produced domestically in Honduras, then we have that the Honduran migrant workers outside Honduras produce a bit more than 1.6 times what is produced in Honduras.

In other words it is the Honduras migrant workers that with immense sacrifices carry their poor homeland on their shoulder but yet no one asks their opinions in relation to the recent events in Honduras.

Shame on all the Hondurans back home, the minimum one could expect in such circumstances is that the migrant workers would have at least 30 percent of the seats in the Honduras Congress.

Shame on all the Honduras delegations that go abroad to discuss the problems of Honduras with foreign NGOs, Government, UN, OAS and what have you, instead of speaking first and foremost with their own people.

Compared to what the Honduran migrant workers send home, the EU, Alba, World Bank and all other possible donors together are small fry!

Giving the Honduran migrants real political voice in their country that would indeed merit a change in its constitution; not what zelaya had in mind which was just of personal interest to him to his boss chávez and all other that pinned their hopes on being able to pull off an eternal reelection.

Sincerely what could zelaya have been thinking! Adding to the woes of so many of his fellow countrymen sacrificing themselves abroad an anti-US chávez inspired act?

El Universal, “Los Hondureños sombra”