In the morning I read the local English language newspaper. A few of the news items that I remember:
- inflation running high, the central government is determined to control inflation at around 13%, GDP growth at 6%. (At these rates, the economic growth is all eaten up by inflation!)
- the country is running trade deficit, with one of the main reason being large import of luxury goods.
- a luxury car deal was able to swindle a dozen of wealth people total US$24 million, then fled to the US. The swindle involved a bag of different tricks, like getting the customers to buy 11 expensive cars but convince the customer to leave behind the registration paper, so the deal can re-mortgage the cars; Or getting the landlord to provide the land and the paper, then he turned around to sell or mortgage the land; When the cheater ran away with his wife, to change lots of the money into diamonds.
The above stories just gave the impression that the country is growing fast economically, but the wealth gap is very large. So large that the importation of luxury goods, like imported cars, actually factored prominently in the trade figure.
Or the fact that while regular workers earn about US$200 per month, some people actually have millions lying around to be cheated by a perhaps very charismatic car dealer. This perhaps means there is really opportunities everywhere for the well connected. Some of the victims who got cheat was perhaps thinking that they were onto some incredible investment scheme - otherwise how do you explain people buying 11 expensive cars but leave them with the dealer.
Anyway, when I saw this picture my kid's taken on the street of HCM city, I couldn't help but relate this to the wealth gap I read about in the newspaper.
