Infotheque Network

The demonstrators have no clear leader. Many say Twitter posts and Facebook groups brought them to the streets of Mexico's capital and cities around the country.
With presidential elections less than six weeks away, they are protesting media coverage of the campaign and criticizing the candidate widely seen as the front-runner.
Local media reports have described it as "the Mexican Spring," drawing a comparison with massive protests pushing for political change in the Middle East.
The surge of student activism has drawn attention at a key time during campaigning in the politically polarized country, where security concerns and economic problems have been top issues for candidates vying for the presidency.
"It was about time that Mexico woke up, that it stopped watching television," said Leonardo Mata, a student at Mexico City's Metropolitan Autonomous University who joined thousands marching in the capital on Wednesday.

The Mexican authorities say they have stopped a plot by a criminal gang organization to smuggle one of the sons of Libya's ex-leader Col Muammar Gaddafi into the country. Saadi Gaddafi has been under house arrest in the West African state of Niger since he fled Libya in September. His lawyer, Nick Kaufman, denied Mr Gaddafi had ever tried to flout a UN travel ban and escape. Mexican officials say the plot came to light through intelligence reports.
It involved buying a number of properties in Mexico, including one near the resort of Puerto Vallarta, using false names and documents, they said.

Mexican Interior Secretary Alejandro Poire said the plan involved a criminal ring "of international dimensions," but it was uncovered in September before it could be carried out. The ring involved people from several different countries, including Mexico, Denmark and Canada, Mr Poire told a news conference in Mexico City.

No wonder with that kind of prison crime rates soring and the bd guys give a @#$&, they are just limited in their movement, that's all. What a joke.....
Police in Acapulco in south-west Mexico have found inmates in possession of 100 flat screen televisions, as well as DVD players, fighting roosters and two sacks of cannabis.
They said they also found 25 women living in the men's section of the prison - six were inmates, while 19 were described as illegal residents and alleged in media reports to be prostitutes.

Superman, Spiderman, Fantastics 4, Batman & Robin, all together... outlaws, got tired of the Zetas and they are now hunting them until extinction, they started in Veracruz, they were good people, victims of the Zetas, got tired, got trained, they respect what the Marines and government are doing, but is not enough, that why they raised, they want Mexico to be a better country, they are proud to be Mexicans and the are willing to prove that Zetas are not invincible.
They apologized to the president, to the civilians, and the ask for understanding of the people, all the want is Mexico a better place to live on.

The extraordinary Mexican migration that delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: unheralded changes in Mexico that have made staying home more attractive.

A growing body of evidence suggests that a mix of developments — expanding economic and educational opportunities, rising border crime and shrinking families — are suppressing illegal traffic as much as economic slowdowns or immigrant crackdowns in the United States.

Here in the red-earth highlands of Jalisco, one of Mexico’s top three states for emigration over the past century, a new dynamic has emerged. For a typical rural family like the Orozcos, heading to El Norte without papers is no longer an inevitable rite of passage. Instead, their homes are filling up with returning relatives; older brothers who once crossed illegally are awaiting visas; and the youngest Orozcos are staying put.

“I’m not going to go to the States because I’m more concerned with my studies,” said Angel Orozco, 18. Indeed, at the new technological institute where he is earning a degree in industrial engineering, all the students in a recent class said they were better educated than their parents — and that they planned to stay in Mexico rather than go to the United States.

Douglas S. Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton, an extensive, long-term survey in Mexican emigration hubs, said his research showed that interest in heading to the United States for the first time had fallen to its lowest level since at least the 1950s. “No one wants to hear it, but the flow has already stopped,” Mr. Massey said, referring to illegal traffic. “For the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative.”

The decline in illegal immigration, from a country responsible for roughly 6 of every 10 illegal immigrants in the United States, is stark. The Mexican census recently discovered four million more people in Mexico than had been projected, which officials attributed to a sharp decline in emigration.

American census figures analyzed by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center also show that the illegal Mexican population in the United States has shrunk and that fewer than 100,000 illegal border-crossers and visa-violators from Mexico settled in the United States in 2010, down from about 525,000 annually from 2000 to 2004. Although some advocates for more limited immigration argue that the Pew studies offer estimates that do not include short-term migrants, most experts agree that far fewer illegal immigrants have been arriving in recent years.

The question is why. Experts and American politicians from both parties have generally looked inward, arguing about the success or failure of the buildup of border enforcement and tougher laws limiting illegal immigrants’ rights — like those recently passed in Alabama and Arizona. Deportations have reached record highs as total border apprehensions and apprehensions of Mexicans have fallen by more than 70 percent since 2000.

But Mexican immigration has always been defined by both the push (from Mexico) and the pull (of the United States). The decision to leave home involves a comparison, a wrenching cost-benefit analysis, and just as a Mexican baby boom and economic crises kicked off the emigration waves in the 1980s and ’90s, research now shows that the easing of demographic and economic pressures is helping keep departures in check.

In simple terms, Mexican families are smaller than they had once been. The pool of likely migrants is shrinking. Despite the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, birth control efforts have pushed down the fertility rate to about 2 children per woman from 6.8 in 1970, according to government figures. So while Mexico added about one million new potential job seekers annually in the 1990s, since 2007 that figure has fallen to an average of 800,000, according to government birth records. By 2030, it is expected to drop to 300,000.

Even in larger families like the Orozcos’ — Angel is the 9th of 10 children — the migration calculation has changed. Crossing “mojado,” wet or illegally, has become more expensive and more dangerous, particularly with drug cartels dominating the border. At the same time, educational and employment opportunities have greatly expanded in Mexico. Per capita gross domestic product and family income have each jumped more than 45 percent since 2000, according to one prominent economist, Roberto Newell. Despite all the depictions of Mexico as “nearly a failed state,” he argued, “the conventional wisdom is wrong.”

A significant expansion of legal immigration — aided by American consular officials — is also under way. Congress may be debating immigration reform, but in Mexico, visas without a Congressionally mandated cap on how many people can enter have increased from 2006 to 2010, compared with the previous five years.

State Department figures show that Mexicans who have become American citizens have legally brought in 64 percent more immediate relatives, 220,500 from 2006 through 2010, compared with the figures for the previous five years. Tourist visas are also being granted at higher rates of around 89 percent, up from 67 percent, while American farmers have legally hired 75 percent more temporary workers since 2006.

Edward McKeon, the top American official for consular affairs in Mexico, said he had focused on making legal passage to the United States easier in an effort to prevent people from giving up and going illegally. He has even helped those who were previously illegal overcome bans on entering the United States.

“If people are trying to do the right thing,” Mr. McKeon said, “we need to send the signal that we’ll reward them.”

Read the complete report here... at New York Times

The launch this week of a comprehensive official database of drug-related killings around Mexico provides a new insight into the complexity of the conflict with criminal groups that traffic drugs into the United States. Until now, the public relied mostly on tallies elaborated by national media outlets or on sporadic - and sometimes confusing - figures released by different government institutions.
Many in Mexico have therefore welcomed the publication of a unified set of data that for the first time includes not only fallen gang members, but also police, soldiers and innocent civilians killed in the fight against the cartels.
However, that positive development has been overshadowed by the grim scenario that the figures depict - and some complain that they only show one, even if the most tragic, aspect of the conflict.

According to the new database, the total number of people killed in the conflict between December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon came into power, and the end of 2010, stands at 34,612. Last year was by far the bloodiest since Mr Calderon launched his head-on military confrontation with the cartels, with 15,273 deaths. President Calderon said the database would "strengthen transparency and accountability".

"In the federal government, we are aware of the need for this struggle [against organized crime] to be carried out with openness towards society," he added.
At least 89% of the fatalities are suspected gang members killed in turf wars between the different organizations that compete for control of trafficking routes into the US. The government argues that this shows the cartels are feeling the heat of the government's crackdown. But critics say it demonstrates that Mr Calderon's strategy, instead of controlling the violence, has actually fueled it.
Mexican officials have repeatedly said that the overall per capita murder rate in Mexico (including those not related to the drugs conflict) is lower than rates in other Latin American countries like Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.

Total number of victims in drug-related violence in Mexico, per year

• December 2006: 62
• 2007: 2,826
• 2008: 6,837
• 2009: 9,614
• 2010: 15,273

Source: Mexican Presidency

The newly-released statistics paint a complex security scenario in some parts of Mexico.
Take, for instance, the northern state of Chihuahua, on the border with the US. Officials point out that violence is confined to specific areas
In 2007, there were 244 drug-related deaths. The same figure for 2010 was of 4,427 victims - it grew by an astonishing 1,800%.
The state is home to Ciudad Juarez - the city across the border from El Paso, Texas - where 6,437 people have lost their lives in drug-related violence since late 2006.
That one city of less than 1.5 million people was the location for more than 18% of the total number of deaths nationwide in the same period.

Other badly affected regions were Tamaulipas, in the north-east of the country and also close to the border with the US, and Sinaloa, on the Pacific Coast and home to Mexico's most wanted drug baron, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
Meanwhile, in states like Tlaxcala, only 13 people have been killed in the conflict since 2006; in Yucatan, the total figure is 26.

This is a point that the Mexican government seems keen to highlight - the violence is confined to very specific areas and other regions are almost completely spared from the killings. In fact, 70% of the homicides, the database shows, have taken place in only 85 of the 2,500 municipalities around Mexico

The rising number of deaths related to the drugs conflict is accompanied by some high-profile murders that, according to experts, have contributed to the visibility of the violence. At least 12 mayors were killed by alleged gang members in 2010, while in the first two weeks of 2011, two more died in incidents related to the drugs conflict. The government says it is making progress in the fight against organized crime

The killing of at least nine local journalists at the hands of criminal groups last year also made Mexico one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a reporter. The government, on the other hand, has statistics at hand that show the inroads it has made in the battle against organized crime.

From a list of 37 "wanted" drug barons issued by the government in March 2009, 17 were captured or killed by government forces - including Arturo Beltran Leyva, head of the Beltran Leyva cartel, in December 2009 - while two were killed in clashes between criminal groups.

Security forces have confiscated almost 100,000 weapons from the cartels, while the value of the seized narcotics amounts to more than $10bn (£6.3bn).
The authorities say they are purging corrupt local police forces and they are also hitting the cartels where it hurts them most: their finances.

Government security spokesman Alejandro Poire points out that the number of drug-related murders decreased by about 10% in the last quarter of 2010, and officials hope this will become a long-term trend.

But as the country gears up for a presidential election next year, the drugs conflict seems set to dominate the political agenda.

Many Mexicans now seem used to living in fear. The daily news of beheading, executions and mass killings by criminal groups seems to have taken a toll on Mexicans' perception of security.
In a recent nationwide survey by the National Statistics Bureau, more than 70% of respondents said they felt the overall security situation had worsened in 2010 compared to the previous year. More than 30% believed the situation would get worse in 2011.

Meanwhile, 41% admitted they did not feel safe to walk alone between 4pm and 7pm in the area where they lived. That is what some in Mexico think is the most worrying aspect of the conflict - the fact that many citizens now seem used to living in fear.

The report/content originates from Julian Miglierini BBC News, Mexico City and the original can be found on the BBC website

College student named police chief in Mexico; no one else applied. A town near drug cartel capital Juarez, Mexico, had just one applicant for police chief after a spate of killings of public officials in drug-related violence.
So now the new chief in Guadalupe, a town of 10,000 residents near the Texas border, is 20-year-old college criminology major Marisol Valles García.
Public officials have increasingly become the targets of assassination as Mexican cartels try to tighten their grasp on the country. Just this year, 11 Mexican mayors have been slain, including the former mayor of Guadalupe, who was killed in June. In the small town, "police officers and security agents have been killed, some of them beheaded," according to the AFP.
Valles tells a local paper that she took the job to help the town's people become less fearful. "Afraid? Everyone is afraid and it's very natural. What motivates me here is
that the project [to make the community safer] is very good and can do a lot for my town. I know that we are going to change and remove this," she said.

One Mexican criminology professor told the Arizona Republic that getting elected to public office in Mexico "is like winning a tiger in a raffle."

"Before, it used to be an attractive job, living on the public payroll," said Dante Haro of the University of Guadalajara. "Now being a town mayor is very difficult, not just because of the economic problems but also this issue of obedience to organized crime."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said recently that Mexico is "looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago," when drug lords had a chokehold on many public officials.

A young Guadalupe citizen complained to Valles, "We are spending a great part of our lives locked up inside our homes," according to a Spanish-language paper. Valles responded that she wants to encourage more events for young people in the town.

The whole report can be found here...
Image credits: NorteDigital.mx

This is all about the US economy - what's the connection to Baja and Mexico?? Well, is their not the saying: "If the American economy coughs the Mexican economy has a flu" or such?? Woth all the positive thinking and hopes: does not look so good at all to the editor. Look at the whole picture.... Does a 20% occupation around xmas at one of the main resort areas in Mexico, Loscabos ring a bell?? How long will the living in self denial within the Baja business people continue until they think of plan "B" ??? One is wondering when observing some of the actions that are going on within some industry. Noticeable in the so called 'luxury" real estate industry...
The US Commerce Department said Thursday durable goods orders, excluding transportation, slipped 0.6 percent last month, but overall orders jumped as civilian aircraft bookings surged 126 percent. Separately, the number of people filing initial claims for jobless aid rose for a second straight week last week, topping analysts' expectations, although the figures were likely affected by snowstorms that blanketed parts of the country. "Rising jobless claims and weaker orders suggest the economy is retrenching in the first half of the first quarter," said Chris Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York. Still, he said the data did not suggest the start of a "double dip" recession. "Some back-and-fill is standard operating procedure in recoveries," Low said.
The weak reports and threats from rating agencies to downgrade Greece's sovereign debt pulled U.S. stocks down. Prices for U.S. government debt soared, while the dollar neared a nine-month high against the euro.
The data, coming in the wake of reports showing a drop in consumer confidence and a plunge in new home sales to a record low in January, supported views economic growth would slow in the first quarter after a brisk 5.7 percent pace in the October-December period.
"The fourth quarter was supported by a swing in inventories. That adds to growth, but it's not something that can be sustained over time," said Andrew Gledhill, an economist at Moody's Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
"First quarter (growth) will be more dependent on how the U.S. consumer is doing and what kind of production levels manufacturing is doing. It's more the underlying economy, less the kind of temporary technical factors."
The economy resumed growth in the second half of 2009 after the worst downturn since the 1930s. However, employment is lagging the recovery and weekly jobless claims have failed to hold retreats made since mid-November.
The latest report from the Labor Department Thursday showed first-time filings for state unemployment benefits rose to 496,000 last week from 474,000 a week earlier. An analyst with the department said snowstorms may have kept some workers sidelined and could have delayed the processing of claims, leading to the unexpectedly large spike.
While economists remained optimistic the economy would start to create jobs in the first half of the year, they worried the continued rise in jobless filings could be a sign of a shift in the downward trend that layoffs had displayed. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke also acknowledged the harsh weather could negatively impact employment data, but he said he expected the effects to be temporary.
"We will have to be particularly careful about not over interpreting the data," he told a congressional committee. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, payrolls have dropped every month, except in November last year when employers added 64,000 jobs.
Durable goods orders, excluding transport, were pulled down last month by the biggest decline in a year in orders for machinery. Economists had expected a 1 percent gain. Disappointment was tempered by an upward revision that showed non-transport orders increased 2 percent in December.
In January, motor vehicles and parts orders saw their largest fall in eight months, and a closely watched gauge of business spending dropped 2.9 percent after a 3.3 percent rise in December.
Shipments, which go into the calculation of GDP, slipped 0.2 percent. They rose 2.4 percent in December.
Some analysts drew comfort from gains in some categories, in particular large orders for computers and electronic products, which they said pointed to increased business investment in equipment and software.
"Unfilled orders increased for the first time since September 2008 and inventories did not fall for the first time since December 2008," said Tony Crescenzi, portfolio manager at PIMCO in Newport Beach, California. "In this context these data are not as bearish for the economy as the core data suggest."
Durable goods inventories were flat last month after easing 0.2 percent in December. Unfilled orders rose 0.1 percent, snapping a record 15 straight months of decline.

Nestle, the world's biggest food group, said on Saturday it will invest 5 billion pesos ($390 million) in Mexico over the next three years to increase coffee processing capacity, part of a $1 billion expansion plan. "The majority of these 5 billion pesos will be invested in the Nescafe instant coffee processing plant," Nestle said in a statement, adding that the investment would increase capacity by 40 percent at the factory in Toluca near Mexico City. Mexico, a major world coffee producer, has struggled to improve the quality of its beans in recent years but is positioning itself as a processor of coffee to serve U.S. and European markets. Nestle said it planned to invest $1 billion in Mexico between 2008 and 2012.
Source credits: Reuters.com

If you’re looking for ground zero in America’s longest and deepest recession, El Centro in southern California appears on first glance to fit the bill. The unemployment rate here and for the whole of Imperial County hit 30.1 percent in September, the highest rate in the United States. Locals say there is no denying that El Centro has suffered as a result of the recession and that jobs are more scarce in an area where agriculture is the backbone of the community and forms 25 percent of the local economy.
El Centro city manager Ruben Duran say the jobless numbers don’t tell the full story. Duran points to the fact that back in March 2006 unemployment in Imperial County fell to 12.2 percent and the number of employed people in this county of around 160,000 totaled 54,057.
But when unemployment hit 30.1 percent – well over double the rate in March 2006 — the number of employed workers slid less than 1 percent, to 53,734. City revenue from taxes is only down about 10 percent this year, Duran said, which also does not tally with the sharp rise in the jobless rate. “Yes, there has been hardship and suffering here,” Duran said. “But where did all those extra unemployed people come from if the number of people in work has barely fallen?”
Drive around El Centro, a city of some 48,000, and it does not feel like some of America’s long-suffering communities like Flint, Michigan, where collapsing auto sales amid the recession have led to an unemployment rate of 15.8 percent. Whereas Flint is dealing with shuttered businesses and abandoned homes, relatively few stores have closed in El Centro.
Duran said the key to understanding the local economy and El Centro’s high jobless rate lies just across the border in the city of Mexicali, a city of more than 1 million people. “The border bleeds both ways,” he said. “Many people who live here work in Mexicali. The trouble with the statistics is they stop at the border and don’t take into account the role a major city across the border plays in our economy.”

Workers have staged protests in several Mexican cities against a government decision to dissolve a state-run energy distribution firm. The powerful Electrical Workers' Union declared a state of emergency after federal police seized the offices of Luz y Fuerza del Centro on Sunday. The government accuses the firm of wasting billions of dollars on inflated salaries and pensions for employees.
Unions have called for larger demonstrations for later in the week. The Mexican government says that spending at the company, which has about 40,000 employees and 25 million customers, was increasingly outpacing sales. The firm faced an "unsustainable financial situation", President Felipe Calderon said.

Bottomless barrel
The union has called for a mass protest in Mexico City on Thursday. Its general secretary, Martin Esparza, said it could attract as many as 100,000 people. However, the main employers' organization, Coparmex, has welcomed the government's decision to take charge. Its president,

Ricardo Gonzalez, described the company as "a bottomless barrel". Mexico is trying to cut public spending to offset falling oil revenues. The Federal Electricity Commission, a state-run utility that provides electricity across the rest of the country, is to provide services to Luz y Fuerza's customers. The firm's costs between 2003 and 2008 were 433bn pesos (£20.6bn; $32.5bn) while its sales were 236bn pesos, the government said. Mr Calderon said the utility company could not continue to be funded without increasing electricity rates or taxes. "That would be unfair particularly when our country is going through tough economic times," he said.

Mexico's tourism sector has weathered fierce hurricanes and raging drug gang battles, but the H1N1 outbreak could spur the biggest collapse in international visits in decades. Tourism Minister Rodolfo Elizondo says it could take until December for the flow of foreign tourists to recover, wiping out the key summer season when millions of Americans and Europeans traditionally escape to Mexican beaches. "The summer for foreign tourism is obviously lost," said Miguel Torruco, head of the National Tourism Confederation, or CNT, which represents small- and medium-sized companies.

Mexico is considered the epicenter of a flu outbreak that has spread to dozens of countries. Initial cases were linked to visits to Mexico, one of the world's top 10 destinations. The drop in tourism will be sorely felt as a drop in U.S. demand for Mexican manufactured goods has pushed Mexico into its most severe recession since a 1995 financial crisis. Tourism is one of Mexico's top sources of foreign currency, accounting for about 8 percent of the economy. The sector employs about 2 million people across the country. As the government moved to shut down much of public life in late April and early May, foreign tourists rushed to leave and international flights into Mexico arrived almost empty.

But tourism woes look set to last long enough to dent an economy already seen shrinking around 5 percent this year. Elizondo has estimated revenue from foreign tourists could drop by nearly a third this year, costing the industry some $4 billion -- the biggest drop on record, according to government data going back to 1980. The government has offered more than $2 billion in tax breaks and financing to businesses hit by the flu crisis. But the CNET's Amerigo said that without more drastic support measures, some 300,000 jobs could be lost this year.

"Tourist destinations are safe in Mexico," Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said recently. "People can come back with peace of mind because we are monitoring this very intensely." The CNT's Torruco says Mexico has to put money behind that message. "We have to start preparing a campaign to reposition the tourism sector and the image of Mexico abroad that will require unprecedented resources," he said.

Analysis by Michael O'Boyle and Jason Lange - Thomson Reuters

Economist Nouriel Roubini who rose to prominence for predicting the global credit crisis, tore down the "green shoots" theory that a rebound is imminent, saying there was a significant risk of a "double-dip" recession where the economy expands slightly only to begin contracting again.
There is no real need to discuss the statements made in regards the economy and the publisher here thinks also that at a slow pace the message arrived with the "established elite" at Baja - there is a slight time delay yet predictions made and that proof to be true in the rest of the economic world also arrive at Baja. Just take a day or 2 and drive around. How many of the highly hailed "luxury developments" in the world are on hold or progress at a very slow pace?? How come?? If the crisis has no impact here at Baja and the economic drifts that do touch about almost every person one way or the other don't apply to Baja California why is there struggle??

According to a analysis published today at Reuters will luxury goods providers (high end market) have a dim outlook for the near future and need to brace themselves for at least two more years of pain, with big-ticket items suffering most. Luxury goods executives told the Reuters Global Luxury Summit this week they were doing their best to preserve cash and cut costs and cutting advertising. It will probably take longer than first thought to reverse negative trends as consumers feel uncomfortable spending high amounts of money while thousands are losing their jobs and the economic future remains uncertain! "I think the crisis is very deep," said Lamborghini Chief Executive Stephan Winkelmann, adding the sports car maker had cut production by 30 percent this year. "A lot of companies are going out of business," he said. Global luxury goods sales are set to drop by at least 10 percent this year and remain sluggish in 2010, industry experts and analysts predict. Consultants Bain & Co do not see a full recovery before 2012.

The longer term prospects of the luxury industry remain attractive as the number of affluent buyers is set to rise further and several regions such as central Asia, Siberia, Latin America and India have not yet been fully tapped. But this is unlikely to be enough to make up for the pain in established markets, especially as the slowdown is forcing luxury groups to hold back investments in the newer frontiers. "Emerging markets growth is likely to contribute the bulk of future luxury goods market growth but it is not likely to offset the impact of lower macro-economic growth in the next 5-10 years and bring us back to luxury goods market growth of the past 5-10 years," Bernstein Research said in a note.

The global economic crisis could change the entire landscape of the luxury goods industry. Bill McComb says “the world has changed and it’s not going back to business as usual.” Watch the video below and listen to what McComb described as the “new normal” .

What will be the impact of this general drift be on Baja California?? Baja Infotheque Network just likes to remind at the many so called "high-end" developments all along the Baja peninsula, many of them on hold or progressing very slow since no investors are willing to spend money right now and the developers them self don't have the means to finish the projects out of their own pockets. Is that all so bad?? We don't think so - it's gonna be more like a natural cleansing, the good ones - preparing themselves since the bubble-burst last fall for what is now is emerging as in the report stated by analysts. Analysts that have no interest on certain areas on the globe or certain market to be "bad" or "good" but plain and simple work on their analysis by facts given

U.S. home prices fell 18.7 percent on year in March - Prices of U.S. single-family homes in March fell 18.7 percent from a year earlier, while prices in the first quarter dropped at a record pace, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released on Tuesday. On a month-over-month basis, the index of 20 metropolitan areas fell 2.2 percent in March from February, S&P said in a statement. Price drops on both a month-over-month and year-over-year basis were worse than expectations based on a Reuters survey of economists.

The composite index of 10 metropolitan areas declined 2.1 percent in March from February for a 18.6 percent year-over-year drop. Declines in residential real estate continued at a steady pace into March.

For many potential interested people to invest in Mexico another reason to reconsider. And many do so!! In conjunction with the economic report and the blow the Mexican economy will have to stand down the road - Swin Flu and other media boosted negative news and what their impact will be are not even considered in mid-term at the economic outlook. In addition is the prediction by many recommended international economists at the most "murky" and a long time away. maybe some of the so called "Baja Economic Specialists" should orientate their predictions little bit at "real" marketing- and economic advisers.

Mexico's economy shrank 8.2 percent in the first quarter, even before the swine flu stalled commerce, and appears headed for its biggest contraction since the Tequila Crisis stalled growth in 1995. The decline was led by a 13.8 percent plunge in manufacturing activity, followed by a 7.7 percent drop in construction compared to the same quarter of 2008, the national statistics agency announced Wednesday. Economists at Grupo Financiero Banamex, one of Mexico's biggest banks, had predicted a 7.7 percent contraction overall.

Finance Minister Agustin Carstens declared Mexico in recession on May 7, predicting its economy would shrink by 4.1 percent this year.The Central Bank forecasts a 4.8 percent contraction, while Banamex expects negative growth of 5.2 percent. Mexico has been pummeled as U.S. economic woes drive down exports, foreign investment, tourism and money sent home by migrants, four main pillars of Mexico's $1 trillion economy.

The global economic crisis has also choked credit for Mexican companies and consumers, all but ending a half-decade explosion in lending. And the crisis weakened currencies across emerging markets, sending Mexico's peso tumbling by as much as a third against the U.S. dollar and costing local companies steep losses on derivatives bets on the peso.

Read more on this report here...

The United States risks a Japan-style lost decade of growth if it does not take aggressive action to stimulate its economy and clean up its banking system, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said on Monday. "We're doing half-measures that help the economy limp along without fully recovering, and we're having measures that help the banks survive without really thriving," Krugman said. "We're doing what the Japanese did in the nineties," he told a small group of reporters during a visit to Beijing. He said it was not clear that China would suffer sub-par growth as a consequence of the fallout of the present crisis. "I'm mostly worried that the U.S. and the euro zone will have Japanese-type lost decades," he said. Krugman said he expected little or no employment growth this year or next in the United States, where the jobless rate in April hit a 25-year high of 8.9 percent. "A second stimulus is becoming clearly urgent. They need a very, very strong stimulus," said Krugman, a Princeton University professor and a New York Times columnist.

He said stress tests carried out on 19 leading U.S. banks had bought time for the administration of Barack Obama, but they had not answered the key question of whether the banks have enough capital to fulfill their key role in the economy.

"It's clear the administration won't take radical action to strengthen the banks any time soon," he said. To have done so would have meant temporarily nationalizing Citigroup and, perhaps, Bank of America, he said. Krugman gave credit to China for vigorously implementing its own economic stimulus plan but said he had detected no commitment by Beijing to switch to a domestic demand-driven growth model that would reduce its excess savings. "It's very hard to see how the world has a full recovery if China continues to run current account surpluses of 10 percent of GDP," he said. If China's big external surpluses persist alongside high U.S. unemployment and low European growth, political friction will ensue. "Something will have to give, and it won't be pretty."
Krugman said China should not be in a rush to make the yuan, or renminbi (RMB), fully convertible or to liberalize its capital account; countries at a similar stage of development that have scrapped capital controls have run into trouble, he noted. "I'm not sure we're talking about a full-floating RMB," Krugman said. "But an appreciation of the RMB, though it's not what China wants to hear right now, is going to be necessary."

Global Crisis Weighs on Outlook for Mexico - a economic health check by Sergio Negrete Cardenas, IMF Survey online
Since September 2008, financial markets in emerging markets, including Mexico, have been disrupted by shortages of liquidity, and a pull back by foreign investors leading to substantial asset price drops. Credit growth in Mexico has also decelerated markedly. The abrupt currency depreciation in October last year resulted in sharp losses for some Mexican companies on foreign currency derivative positions. The weakening outlook for U.S. activity, remittances, and international oil prices all weigh on prospects for Mexico. Growth has begun to decelerate as the U.S. has slowed sharply and consumer confidence in Mexico has weakened. Real GDP growth is projected at minus 0.3 percent in 2009 with a gradual pick-up in 2010 to annual average growth of 2.1 percent. Headline inflation reached almost 6.5 percent year-over-year by end-December—above the 3 percent target—mainly pushed up by external supply shocks. However, inflation is expected to fall towards the target over the next year in the face of a widening output gap.
While Mexico is in a much stronger position today than it was just ten years ago, the global financial crisis has worsened the near-term economic outlook, the IMF found in its latest assessment of the country’s economy. Mexico’s economy is slowing down sharply because of the country’s close links to the U.S. economy. A decline in remittances and lower international oil prices (Mexico is a major exporter of oil) are also weighing on the country’s prospects. But, thanks to good economic management, Mexico has room to implement policies to offset the impact of the economic downturn.

Mexico has made significant improvements to its macroeconomic policies over the past decade. Fiscal and monetary policies are conducted in the context of rules-based frameworks which have supported important gains in policy credibility. Public, corporate, and banking sector balance sheets have also been strengthened, and a more flexible exchange rate system has reduced vulnerabilities.
But Mexico is by no means immune from the crisis. The economy is decelerating rapidly in the face of the global crisis. This reflects especially Mexico's close links with a U.S. economy in recession. Other factors, such as declining remittances and lower international oil prices, are also having an impact on growth. As a result, a sharp slowdown is expected for 2009—with GDP likely to contract more than the -0.3 percent projected in early January 2009—followed by a gradual pickup in 2010.
Now ones can read this and it - somewhat - it reads ok for Mexico comparing to other nations outlook - on the other hand we got senor Slim, and this Mexican telecommunications tycoon - the third-richest man in the world, worth some 35 billion dollars according to Forbes' most recent list - said Mexico's economy was on the brink of collapse. "I do not want to be alarmist, but we have to get ready to look ahead and not look at the consequences afterward and cry" Slim said in February.