Taoyuan Nights

You may be wondering if my claims about Taiwan’s economy falling into a deep, dark hole are just hyperbole.

Take a look at this and this!

Singapore’s economy shrank by 20% in the 3 months at the start of 2009, compared to the previous 3-month period; and it fell 11.5% year on year comapred with last year.

Wow! If that keeps up, they have a big problem. The US great depression also had average quarterly falls in GDP of only 10% year on year. Singapore is seeing twice that fall currently. Remember, for the first 6 months of last year, the crazy economic boom was still in full swing, so that average of 11.5% down over the last 12 months, is made up of 3 months of good, 3 months of OK, and 6 months of awful. Taiwan will be falling at this rate, too; there’s almost no other way the export math can add up.

Similarly, I don’t know how anyone could believe China’s official GDP figures, when things have become so bad that they have been locking people into factories to stop them rioting…

Singapore has decided to devalue their currency, but the problem is that everyone else is doing the same thing, so it won’t work very well. Further, if it does work, they will have hellish inflation to cope with.

The same bad news is coming to Taiwan. Taiwan isn’t special. There is no magical umbrella to shield it from what is coming. In fact, if anything, Taiwan is almost uniquely unprepared, having had no experience of such problems for 60 years…