It may not be the preferred measure by economists and policy makers, but the Canadian government has noticed an interesting trend among organized crime groups -- they, too, are ditching the dollar:

The weakened US dollar has fallen out of favor with organized crime groups to pay for drug shipments or to settle scores, a Canadian government report said Friday. And if the greenback continues its slide in 2008, as expected, more and more criminals are likely to exchange euros for illicit goods, said Criminal Intelligence Service Canada in its annual report.

The report also cites increasing incidence of "environmental crime" -- groups developing "underground markets for electronic waste and scarce natural resources." If nothing else, Canadian organized crime seems to be ahead of the curve. Money laundering and racketeering sound so 20th century.

Say it ain't so:

Ireland's drinks industry is suffering from withdrawal with pubs closing at the rate of one a day, as the party years of the Celtic Tiger boom become a blurred memory. The economic downturn allied to a changing drinking culture has led to 400 pubs closing over the past year, according to Michael Patten, chairman of the drinks industry representative body.

(Hat tip: Passport reader Eric Jon Magnuson)

In light of today's news about the financial shock and awe that international investors are raining down upon Russia's markets, Dan Drezner highlights this bit from our recent Seven Questions interview with the very smart Clifford Kupchan:

As far as portfolio investors and the Russian stock market are concerned, the main tipping point was the four days following July 24, when TNK-BP's Robert Dudley left the country, and shortly after that, Putin went after the steel company Mechal and took about $6 billion off its capitalization. Those behaviors really rattled investors and caused a steep dip in the Russian stock market. The war’s effect has been less dramatic.

More broadly, I think Russia as an island of stability and a safe haven from the credit crunch—that perception of Russia is on life support. Essentially over. There’s been four reasons: TNK-BP, Mechal, the Russian government’s willingness to use administrative means to break up cartels and implement de facto price controls (which means there's more strategic risk in consumer sectors as well as strategic sectors), and fourth is the war. When you add those four together, the investment climate has taken a real, real hit over the last month.

As the always-insightful Peter Baker noted yesterday, many of those hardest hit by the recent decline in Russia's stock market index have close ties to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Call it karma.

Daniel Gross tries to explain why Maine lobster is getting less expensive while other foods are doing the opposite:

At root, the global forces that are driving up the price of food don't significantly affect the vacation lobster business in Maine. Commercial and consumer demand doesn't vary much for off-the-boat lobster. Sure, many lobsters are sold to processing plants. But unlike other seafood products—think of canned tuna, or clam sauce, or frozen fish fillets—lobster is not produced or marketed on a mass global scale, which also means there are no speculators trying to make a killing on lobster futures. The fact that people are eating more and better in China and India isn't much boosting the demand for lobsters from Maine. Even in the United States, lobster remains to a large degree a regional product. [...]

With demand down, and with distributors facing higher costs, there has been significant pressure on lobster producers to keep costs low.

Isn't this analysis too complicated? Isn't Maine lobster simply a luxury good, the price of which falls when times get tough and demand -- primarily from the United States and Canada -- drops? That's what one ShopRite owner thinks:

The price has come down, but more important, what I'm hearing is, the supply side to supermarket retailers is better because tourist consumption is down in Maine," he said. "So there's been more consistent supply."

(Hat tip: Tyler Cowen)

MARWAN NAAMANI/AFP/Getty Images

Think the declining dollar is a bane for American consumers but a boon for everyone else? Think again. Even in Dubai, where glitz and glamorous construction continues unabated and soveriegn wealth funds prowl international markets, the consequences are showing up where you wouldn't expect:

Taxi drivers have become more fractious as fines for bad driving or declining to pick up passengers have eaten into pay packets that have also been eroded by the weakness of the United Arab Emirates dollar-pegged dirham against currencies in their home countries.

Dubai is now in talks with Pakistan after attempting to deport some 50 drivers who went on strike last month. The drivers were fed up with increased regulations and the rising cost of living, which the declining dirham doesn't help.

But the systemic problems caused by the dollar's slide aren't going to be so easy to whisk away. The emirate's record-setting growth is fueling inflation, and the weakened dirham is making imports more expensive. Despite speculation late last year that the UAE would drop the dollar, nothing seems to have changed since February, when the central banks of the Gulf Arab countries restated their commitment to the greenback. We'll see how long they can hold out.

What do you do if you're a growing, quasi-capitalist dictatorship and you're confronted by the specter of rising prices?

If you're Vietnam, you simply outlaw them:

Vietnam announced tough measures to contain rampant inflation on Monday, warning companies they could be prosecuted for passing on higher commodity costs to customers.

The government will prosecute or revoke the licences of companies that increase the prices of goods without sufficient justification, part of a plan to freeze prices for the rest of the year on goods ranging from coal to public transport.

At 27 percent, Vietnam suffers from the highest rate of inflation in Asia. But simply banning it isn't going to work -- it will just create shortages and black markets -- and moreover it sends the wrong signal about the country's direction. It seems Vietnam's rulers still have a lot to learn about this whole capitalism thing.

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A food porter carries a basket on his head at Kawran Bazaar, a sprawling, 24-hour complex of wholesale food markets in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Kawran Bazaar, which really comes to life after midnight, is the entry point for much of the food in the Bangladeshi capital. According to a recent World Bank study, Bangladesh is among at least 33 countries that are at risk of serious political unrest if food and fuel prices keep rising. Bangladesh is currently one of the world's poorest countries, where nearly 40 percent of the 144 million population survive on less than a dollar a day and on average spend 80 percent of their income on food.

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Tuesday's collapse in negotiations in the Doha trade talks was not a complete surprise, yet seemed to amplify the dour mood recently regarding the global economy. As always is the case with trade talks, there were winners and there will be losers.

Despite arguments from some development groups that no deal was better than the one on the table, the Financial Times reports today that poorest countries are the big losers from the breakdown in talks:

The impact of failure is going to be substantial," said Uhuru Kenyatta, Kenya's trade minister. "It's always the poorest of the poor who carry the biggest burden."

Among the hardest hit are African cotton farmers, who had hoped for a cut in U.S. cotton subsidies, as well as a contingent of banana-exporting countries hoping for a cut in tariffs from the EU. On the other hand, a rival banana bunch from West Africa, the Caribbean, and the Canary Islands pay no EU import tariff and are happy to see the competition miss out on a deal.

Other winners include, of course, developed-country agriculture interests, who remain shielded against foreign competition by a phalanx of tariffs and subsidies. Some farmers in the United States, however, as well as those in the developing world, will miss out on new markets for their products.

That said, before the recent talks began, some poor countries expressed concern that trade liberalization would open markets too quickly. All in all, the cost to the global economy from the Doha round's demise is hard to quantify and, in the end, not all that large. It's not like trade is going to suddenly dry up. But the talks' failure definitely doesn't do much to improve the mood.

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Speaking of cars, if you thought India's Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car at $2,500, sounded too good to be true, you may have been right:

Malhotra is having second thoughts. He's done the math and realized that once taxes and insurance costs are added, the price of the entry-level Nano rises to just over $3,000. For an extra $500, he says, he could buy a decent used car with a more powerful engine and air conditioning, which the Nano won't have.

To make things worse, rising global steel prices and a recent flood at the Tata factory in East Bengal are slicing the company's profit margin razor thin. Given that increasing the price isn't really an option since the price is the whole point, the ambitious project's prospects look dim.

Maybe Thomas Friedman didn't have to worry after all.

Osama bin Laden once said that his goal is "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." Maybe he should have gotten into the mortgage business instead of becoming a terrorist.

Zubin Jelveh blogs a new IMF working paper by Hui Tong and Shang-Jin Wei, who look at the responses by economic forecasters and consumers to 9/11 vs. their reactions to the subprime mortgage crisis. As you can see, everybody pretty much shrugged off 9/11 (at least when it comes to the economy; emotional grief is, of course, beyond measure) after about six months, but subprime has brought a steady decline in confidence:

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Finally, a political indicator I can get behind. Coca-Cola sales are a key signal of peace and prosperity in Africa, according to an intriguing theory from Jonathan Ledgard, The Economist's Africa correspondent.

Africans buy more than 36 billion bottles of Coca-Cola each year, and the price is low enough that many even in the most impoverished villages can afford a bottle now and then. Folks love their Coca-Cola: As the largest private employer on the continent, Coca-Cola is so entrenched in hearts that people go to the grave with the stuff. And since Coca-Cola tracks its sales and distribution in Africa down to the most minute details, any swift drops in sales or problems in the distribution chain can point to real-time economic hardship and instability.

In other words, if Coke sales drop off swiftly and suddently in parts of, say, Kenya, there is a good chance that either the area has become too dangerous for deliverymen to make their rounds or that something catastrophic is happening to people's incomes. Either way, bad news.

Having been raised on Coca-Cola myself, this seems intuitive. In the O'Hara household, drinking the last Coke without picking up another 12-pack was tantamount to a declaration of war.

Zimbabwe's plan to combat the hyperinflation that has reached more than 2.2 million percent? Knock off the zeroes:

This time, we will make sure that those zeroes that would come knocking on the governor's window will not return,” [Reserve Bank Governor Gideon] Gono was quoted as saying on Saturday in a speech to farmers. [...] Even state media reported Mr Gono's comments "drew laughter" from his audience.

The governor is expected to chop three or six zeroes from the currency, following a three-zero cut in 2006.

iStockphoto.com

A few weeks back, I blogged a Times of India story about how China's construction boom was driving up iron prices, resulting in widespread theft of manhole covers in Mumbai.

Now, the New York Times is reporting that the epidemic of manhole theft is spreading throughout the United States as well. In Philadelphia alone, 2,500 covers have been stolen in the last year, costing the city at least $300,000. Widespread manhole-cover theft has also been reported in Long Beach, Cleveland, Memphis, Miami, and Milwaukee. Some cities are now switching to plastic covers or welding down the metal ones.

Police are trying to crack down on junkyards, but as one North Philadelphia scrap metal collector reports, the demand curve is not in their favor:

These guys here," Mr. Sergeant said, pointing at one scrap yard, "They’d buy a police cruiser and melt it down if we brought it in. The prices for metal are just that good these days."

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It was only a matter of time before the declining dollar affected the world of sport. In years past, the Europe's prime basketball talent bolted across the pond for the superior pay and play of the NBA. Now, the trend appears to be heading in the opposite direction, thanks to the rising euro and an influx of Russian investment in the European league. Suddenly, playing in Europe doesn't sound like such a bad idea after all.

Former New Jersey Net Bostjan Nachbar (above left, with Dallas's Dirk Nowitzki) is the latest player to spurn the NBA and sign a more lucrative contract with a European team, which pays in the much more attractive euro, and often tax-free:

The NBA had better be careful," Nachbar said. "European teams are offering a lot of money. It's much more, considering there are no taxes, than what I could make signing for the midlevel exception."

Once confined to players with previous overseas experience, the trend is spreading to home-grown Americans, too. Highly rated high schooler Brandon Jennings, struggling with academic issues, shocked the college basketball world by opting to play in Europe instead of attending school. And Atlanta's Josh Childress, unhappy with the state of contract negotiations with the Hawks, is weighing an offer to play in Greece.

Although the NBA, already cultivating the Chinese market, has been eyeing European expansion, I don't think this is exactly what Commissioner David Stern had in mind.

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As dreams of a gas-tax holiday died in Congress amid concerns of lost jobs for transport and construction, lawmakers in the Ivory Coast are paying for a reduction in fuel costs out of their own pockets. Both government ministers and managers of state-owned companies will see their paychecks halved to pay for a 10-percent cut in fuel prices, Prime Minister Guillaume Soro says:

Having heard the people's cry from the heart, the government has decided to cut the price of fuel," Mr Soro said.

A noble effort on its face, yes, this political stunt could actually be double trouble for the people of Ivory Coast. We've expressed our skepticism toward "gas-tax holidays" before, but lowering government officials' pay can also prove problematic, making ministers more susceptible to the ubiquitous temptation of corruption.

Of course, people prefer rising stock prices to declining ones. Wouldn't it be wonderful if shares never fell? But such actions call into question the claim that ours is a free-market system. More and more, our version of free markets holds that they are free only when asset values rise. When they fall, the markets must be managed.

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Scrap metal is piled up at a metal recycling facility on July 17 in Chicago, Illinois. With scrap metal prices near historic highs, many communities are experiencing an increase in thefts of metal including cemetery ornaments, plumbing pipe, gutters, and even manhole covers.

The Rolls-Royce brand is most firmly associated with ultra-luxury cars, but its engineering wing, Rolls-Royce plc, is also actually the second-largest maker of airplane engines in the world. Now, the company is diversifying even further, with plans to set up a full-fledged nuclear division to "manufacture equipment and provide advice to governments on their atomic energy programs."

Rolls-Royce has been supplying safety instrumentation and control technology to France's nuclear reactors for some time now, and it also has nuclear clients in the United States, China, and the Czech Republic -- creating a separate nuclear division is likely part marketing and part expansion. Since the company projects an almost 70 percent increase in the value of the civil nuclear industry by 2023, it's no surprise that it would try to leverage its unique skills and experience to cash in on the purported "nuclear renaissance."

It is surprising that the article explicitly mentions decommissioning (of aging nuclear plants) and cleanup (of plants and other nuclear sites) as potential moneymakers. Companies that deal in nuclear reactors and related products usually focus on the potential for profit in new nuclear plants and a large expansion in the use of nuclear power. Decommissioning and cleanup will become increasingly prominent issues as the world's current nuclear fleet ages, and often responsibility for such problems is laid at the government's doorstep.

Hopefully, more private entities will see fit to focus on concerns like these in the future -- and if we must have new nuclear power plants, we might as well make them Rolls-Royces.

Having apparently run out of farms to subsidize, the EU is sending some spare 1 billion Euros to Africa to help farmers there cope with food shortages and rising prices. The funds were an unused portion of the EU's agriculture budget, which is worth about 120 billion euros -- more than 40 percent of the EU's annual expenditures.

European Commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberge says the "crisis" in food supply helped spur the EU into action:

There's a fairly broad consensus on the need to act here, given the crisis which is taking place," he said. "In the Commission's opinion, this is the most efficient and most rapid instrument that could be used."

Pardon my cynicsm, but wouldn't the best thing for African farmers be for the EU to eliminate its 120 billion in farm subsidies altogether?

UPDATE: My colleague Preeti reminds me that at least the EU is finally spending more on economic growth and employment programs than farm subsidies:

America's finest news source nails it:

WASHINGTON—A panel of top business leaders testified before Congress about the worsening recession Monday, demanding the government provide Americans with a new irresponsible and largely illusory economic bubble in which to invest.

For more sober thoughts on the financial crisis, check out FP's Seven Questions with William Poole. A recently retired president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Poole has been more prescient than most about America's current economic predicament.