A false dawn

April is the cruelest month - if you're an economist. Seriously, the dismal science has outdone itself in the past week. Here are some graphs charting the collapse in trade flows. (Bonus: here are some related statistics and graphs tracking the slowdown of bilateral US-UK trade). Here are some measuring the even faster disintegration of capital flows. Here are some which show that by every indicator, the global economy is tracking or doing worse than during the Great Depression. And here is the impossible (to paraphrase Felix Salmon) list of things we would need to do to avoid another Black Swan like this occuring in the future.

I am most troubled by the argument that current aggressive policy responses may eventually end the recession without addressing the fundamental problems which caused it in the first place. Green shoots? Try cold snap.

The Second Great Depression

Last October, we asked whether or not the world was heading for a Second Great Depression. Today a new piece by Messrs Eichengreen and O'Rourke addresses the question in much more detail. Their findings are sobering.

G20 deliverables

There's been some grumbling about how the G20 London Summit's deliverables are disappointing. Regardless, I feel like one substantial achievement has been underreported: the G20 pledged $250 billion in new trade financing to help plug a $300 billion worldwide gap. Trade finance isn't as sexy as financial regulation, new global reserve currencies or fiscal stimulus coordination, but it is absolutely essential to world commerce, the engine of economic growth. As an added bonus, it will disproportionately benefit developing nations.

The global tea party

Tea prices are about to jump...

to an all-time high after damage to production in the world's key exporting countries from simultaneous droughts...Dry weather has led to low yields in India, Kenya, and Sri Lanka. The output fall in the three countries, which account for half the world's exports, will exacerbate last year's market deficit.

Droughts, yes. But Kenya and Sri Lanka are also undergoing serious civil strife. I can't help but imagine that political unrest and violence have contributed to the price rise, either by disrupting supply and delivery chains or through the flight of foreign capital and investors that finance tea farming.

Tea, unlike opium, is not used to finance insurgencies. Maybe the governments, if they are strong or capable enough, should take this chance to encourage the farming of such a storied and legitimate crop. Tea has long been exposed to price fluctuations on the open market, like most commodities. But governments should be careful in the tide of rising protectionism to resist placing restrictions on the trade of tea and encourage its widespread promotion and consumption. Empires have been built on less.

(Photo from thebensteads)

Soft power vs. hard power

The fallacy of equating economic power with clout. Choice excerpts:

The US is the world’s pre-eminent military power, but the economic benefit of
that is hard to see...

In the modern world, there is no observable relationship
between size of country and its standard of living. Small and large countries
are found among the rich and among the poor...

Economic power is based on monopoly derived from being the only seller of a particular good or service, or on monopsony derived from being the only buyer. Such power is held by individuals and businesses, not by states. Dominance of an industry or activity is not the same as scale, though scale and dominance are loosely related. International trade is conducted by individuals and businesses, not governments, and it is individuals and businesses, not governments, that negotiate the division of the value added trade creates. The principal economic role of states is not to get in the way. They can impede the process of adding value through trade, protectionism or disruptive currency interventions. These actions damage their own businesses even more than they damage the businesses of other countries.

Big game hunting

* Trade posts represent solely my own opinions.

At a recent conference that I attended, one of the speakers borrowed a quote from Ike Eisenhower to great effect: “if a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.” It occurs to me that this sentiment directly applies to the politics of trade in the United States. The public is divided on whether trade is beneficial to the economy, the 111th Congress has already demonstrated protectionist instincts, and it is increasingly difficult to advocate openness as jobs are lost and the recession deepens. How should President Obama, who understands the benefits of trade, address these political realities?

Enlarge the problem substantially by negotiating a comprehensive free trade agreement with the European Union or Japan. First, such an agreement would have huge economic benefits: EU-US trade flows were worth more than $640 billion in 2008. Export-oriented industries on both sides could be counted on to exert a lot of political pressure for that kind of market access. Second, a USEUFTA would take a very long time to negotiate due to the complexity of the trade relationship and both sides’ preference for high-quality agreements. This would put trade on the backburner for at least several years, which would help diffuse political tensions and give the economy time to recover, thereby mitigating the political influence of import-exposed industries. Negotiating with the EU would eliminate the standards (labor, environmental or otherwise) problem.

There are serious drawbacks to such an approach, such as the fact that it shuts out China, India, Brazil and other developing countries (though if you believe in competitive liberalization, you might argue that this would spur further negotiations.) Perhaps most worrisome, by establishing a substantive parallel system, it could easily undermine the multilateral trading system and provide a final knockout blow to the Doha Round. That would be terrible.

Still, the Obama Administration made it clear in its 2009 trade policy agenda that it would seek more economically meaningful agreements. Indeed, in a lot of ways, it would be better to complete one really big one instead of many smaller ones. Perhaps it’s time for trade policy-makers to consider big game hunting.

Hidden gains from trade - St. Paddy's Day edition

This is a few days late, but I wrote this note to my colleagues earlier this week on St. Patrick's Day and thought I would share here:

The shamrock (three-leaf clover) is one of Ireland's most recognizable symbols. But demand for "Irish" shamrocks is now so great that the small island nation must import clover seeds from countries like New Zealand, India, and Germany. In 2007, Ireland imported nearly 200 metric tonnes of clover seeds worth $677,864.

Gains from trade, indeed.

Free trade petition

The Atlast Global Initiative for Free Trade, Peace and Prosperity has written a petition for free trade, to be unveiled on April 1st before the London Summit. My favorite part:

Trade’s most valuable product is peace. Trade promotes peace, in part, by uniting different peoples in a common culture of commerce – a daily process of learning others’ languages, social norms, laws, expectations, wants, and talents.

Trade promotes peace by encouraging people to build bonds of mutually beneficial cooperation. Just as trade unites the economic interests of Paris and Lyon, of Boston and Seattle, of Calcutta and Mumbai, trade also unites the economic interests of Paris and Portland, of Boston and Berlin, of Calcutta and Copenhagen – of the peoples of all nations who trade with other.

Feeding humanity

* Posts on agriculture represent my personal opinions on the subject.*

Yesterday, Rory made an important observation: the global food crisis isn’t over. Indeed, many of the long-term changes in global food supply and demand haven’t changed since last year’s price spikes. And as the world’s population continues to grow, finding a way to feed everyone will become an increasingly central challenge for humanity.

When it comes to the feasibility of significantly increased food production, I am no Malthusian. The great promise of genetically-modified crops, combined with current low levels of agricultural productivity in most of the developed world, suggest that current yields can be substantially increased. To this end, we should support programs that aim to increase productivity in the developing world through better rural infrastructure, mechanization of agriculture, increased fertilizer use, seed pilot programs, etc. We should also encourage biotechnology research and development in rich countries.

However, agricultural land, like any natural resource, is distributed unevenly. Some countries are better positioned to grow food than others. Because of this, we need to advocate strongly for total liberalization of international agricultural trade. This is the only way to ensure that every country, including those with poor resource endowments, has equal access to market-priced agricultural staples. Let’s not forget that a significant trigger of global food price spikes were temporary export controls enacted by major wheat and rice exporting countries. Improve agricultural productivity wherever possible and work simultaneously toward agricultural free trade.

But agricultural trade liberalization would require an unprecedented degree of global policy cooperation. I am particularly worried that the economic crisis will actually result in a breakdown of international cooperation, which could herald a significant domestic retrenchment of politics. History shows us that globalization is hardly the natural state of international affairs. However, some of the most dangerous problems that humanity faces, like climate change and food security, will require global solutions. If we can’t find a way to cooperate, our shared future will be bleak.

The food crisis never ended

Christopher Delgado, an agricultural policy advisor at the World Bank, recently said of the global food crisis, "The food crisis has not gone away...In fact, it is coming back."

Combing through the media, it would be easy to assume that the food crisis had long ago subsided as demand for imports, commodity prices and economic growth declined. However, risks to food security and the possibility of famine are still very high in many countries. While food commodity prices have fallen from their record highs in 2007, the US Department of Agriculture forecasts that they will remain above historical levels in 2009. The combination of rising food prices, economic contraction, export/price controls and tight trade credit exposes many vulnerable countries, particularly LDCs, to serious risks of famine, poor crop yields and higher prices coinciding with falling income. This doesn't even begin to include the impact on food production by drought, land degradation and other environmental conditions; the UN recently warned that global food production may fall 25% by 2050.

Given the still prevalent risks, it is disconcerting that less is being done to combat the problems directly. Further, certain policy responses to the financial and economic crises, such as looser monetary policy in the developed world, or expropriation in countries like Venezuela, risk stoking the rising food commodity prices. Which brings me to the real danger on the horizon (beyond, of course, the human cost): that the financial, economic and food crises will reinforce each other in a vicious cycle. A food crisis is a likely second-round affect of the financial and economic crises, which in itself breeds political and economic instability, undermining the recovery process and further destabilizing the global economy.

Policy responses to the financial and economic crises are understandably driven by the need for immediate action; to stop the bleeding, so to speak. But what if the very policies necessary to bring us out of this downward spiral only reinforce it in the medium-term?

(photo from snake.eyes' photostream)

Trade papers worth reading

Trade policy wonks have their hands full.

On Monday, the Obama administration released their 2009 Trade Policy Agenda, outlining their general strategy on trade for the next year. (Never mind that they don't have a USTR yet.) Unless you want to torture yourself, skip the 100+ page report on trade policy in 2008. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience. That said, it's definitely worth reading the five page summary on trade policy going forward at the beginning.

VoxEU has a phenomenal new e-book on the new "murky protectionism". It is absolutely fascinating reading all the way through, but at least have a look at the introduction. I'd write a much longer post on this if I could. Suffice to say that things have gotten worse since the G20 summit in November, and they could get much, much worse if things don't change.

Go check them out. I want a report on my desk by Monday morning at 8am.

New protectionism

This Vox EU piece on post-G20 summit protectionism sheds a lot of light on the current state of international trade. Two World Bank economists have tracked the implementation of 47 new protectionist measures since November. Most of these have had negligible effects on trade, but they're part of a worrying trend of domestic economic retrenchment, which spans agriculture, industry and finance. Also of particular note is a sharp increase in the number of anti-dumping cases.

Trade wars as a proxy for great power struggles?

The WTO can’t get no love. People criticize it for being slow, ineffectual, not comprehensive enough, too comprehensive, irrelevant, etc. Most of these arguments are as old as the GATT. If you have 3 hours, I’m happy to sit down over a few beers and hash them out again.

But every once and a while, you read something completely new. Enter Daniel Abebe. The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog is hosting a roundtable discussion on the future of the WTO this week, and Mr. Abebe contributes this fascinating thought experiment:

What does international relations theory tell us about these questions? ...With the end of the Cold War, the relative importance of realist concepts of security, survival and military power began to decline; the great powers all had nuclear arsenals, democracy was increasingly the preferred from of governance and globalization brought states together. Around the same time, the WTO came into existence and international trade, not naked security competition, became the prominent issue for some states in international politics... we should see great power competition to be increasingly focused on trade issues and, given the tentative claims here, we should see increasing gridlock in the WTO... the implication is that the WTO will be a venue for great power competition and struggle to generate compromises on trade issues and that changing the institutional rules is unlikely to address the underlying structural problem or variation in internal characteristics among the great powers.

I have a lot of problems with this analysis. Above all, it’s very hard to take a realist power framework and try to apply it to trade relations. Unlike traditional power struggles, trade is a positive sum game that’s underpinned by a robust international legal framework. Further, all of the major powers are still firmly committed to an open trading system and understand that constant sniping at each other will produce a worse outcome than cooperation.

I’m not suggesting that there’s no tension in global trade relationships. There’s a lot, and there have been some contentious, economically significant cases so far. But such tension is rooted much less in state-state power struggles than domestic political considerations. (Trade is a political economy issue, remember?) Countries generally bring cases in the WTO because they get complaints from domestic constituents.

Further, a brief look at the WTO’s dispute settlement understanding would suggest that the multilateral trading system makes for a pretty lousy venue for great power struggles. The Appellate Body can take years to deliver a ruling, which can then be appealed, thereby further dragging out the process. And if you’re economically powerful enough, you can ignore the AB’s rulings anyways: this has happened a number of times in post-Uruguay Round dispute settlement, and it would very likely be the case if the number of contentious cases increased. However, if all the major countries started ignoring most of the AB’s decisions, it would probably lose its credibility quickly. In short, concerted great power struggles would destroy the WTO.

Indeed, if the current crisis has shown us anything, it’s that the WTO is still remarkably fragile. The progressive rounds of trade liberalization over the past 60 years have been hard-won. The international community would do well to preserve and expand them. There's a lot of work to be done: tellingly, most of the new (post G-20 summit) protectionist measures don’t even violate obligations as they currently stand.

I think we’re a long way from trade wars supplanting real wars.

(photo from nomad photography’s photostream)

Protectionism coverage at the World Bank

Check out my new coverage on the rise of protectionism over at the World Bank's Youthink! blog.

Poland solves economic crisis by going back in time

Poland deserves some recognition: they brought us Lech Kaczyński (left) and Jarosław Kaczyński (right). In 2006, Lech, the president of Poland, appointed his twin brother Jaroslaw as Prime Minister. While dutifully manging the fragile coalition government and promoting a conservative Christian agenda, the duo became overnight YouTube sensations (as well as the butt end of a new wave of politically charged one-liners). In 2007, the Law and Justice party that was co-founded by the twins lost its majority in Parliament and Jaroslaw, became leader of the opposition. Lech will continue to serve his five-year term as President until 2010.

On February 10th, Poland set another precedent (unless you consider Medvedev Putin's twin) by announcing a solution to the country's currency problems. The economics minister, Waldemar Pawlak, announced that the Polish government will pass a law allowing companies to renegotiate currency option contracts established last year. Back then economists believed Poland's currency, the zloty, would continue to strengthen into 2009 and threaten Poland's export industry. These companies had the option of purchasing currency in advance at prices below the predicted value. Had the currency continued to appreciate, these companies would have been able to continue to sell products overseas at more competitive prices than the predicted exchange rate would allow. This was before the economic downturn. Now these companies are holding currency options priced well above the going rate. According to the Economist, the zloty has lost nearly 37% of it's value against the Euro since 2008 and led to cumulative losses estimated at $5 billion. Many of these companies face bankruptcy and or failure.

To solve this crisis, the Polish government is going to allow businesses to retroactively renegotiate or simply back out of their currency options. In this scenario, the burden of the currency decline will weigh more heavily upon banks and save many companies from catastrophe. Aside from the legal mess that this will create, the move is flat out sketchy business; not unlike appointing your own brother to a top political office. Laugh all you want, but these backwater politics just may stave off the collapse of the country's export industry.

Lech Kaczyński Photo via the President of the Republic of Poland
Jaroslaw Kaczyński Photo via the Chancellory of the Prime Minister

L’économie politique du Roquefort

*These observations on trade are strictly my own thoughts.

One final note on l’affaire Roquefort, in which outgoing-President Bush raised tariffs on imports of French Roquefort cheese to 300%. I have generally been disappointed by the quality of debate in the blogosphere on this issue. As I have argued many times on this blog, trade policy is not understood very well through the prism of either political science or economics. If you want to understand trade policy outcomes (not the underlying theory), it’s best to think in terms of political economy.

The Roquefort tariff was first addressed by FP Passport, whose analysis hinges on the likely political impact:

The last thing Obama wants right now is to get into a trade war with France over
a last-minute decision by his predecessor, particularly when he's looking for
French cooperation on far more pressing issues.

Turning to economics, after a first attempt, the Economist followed with a scathing post:

While the measure hurts producers (and consumers) of a large number of
scrumptious products, the greatest casualty is Roquefort cheese. Yes, while
Europeans will be relishing delicious bleu cheese, Americans can eat
hormone-injected beef with a side of stale freedom fries. The asymmetry of the
quality has predictably inspired ridicule for the duties in France.

Beyond that superficiality, the Roquefort duty in particular is poorly
targeted and hardly just. A village of 600 people will have to face the most
severe consequences of a single European anti-trade policy. The banning of the
cheese is a symbolic measure that will do little to affect France’s economy as a
whole. Instead, it serves to provoke Europe unnecessarily and to reinforce
accusations of American jingoism.

Both analyses are incomplete. Passport’s international politics framing would be a suitable analytical point for other issues, but trade policy rarely moves so fast, and it would be extremely unlikely for the US to hike tariffs for no reason. This is especially true given Mr. Bush’s predilection for free trade. The Economist correctly identifies that the tariffs were enacted as a WTO-legal retaliatory measure in response to the EU’s banning the import of American hormone-treated beef. But they are wrong to hastily conclude that the Roquefort tariff is “poorly targeted.” As I wrote recently, the WTO is in many ways a mercantilist institution, and retaliatory sanctions (tariffs) are the only punishment it can authorize in disputes. Countries which are given WTO permission to apply sanctions have an incentive to make them symbolic, painful or, if possible, both. In doing so, the offended country hopes to harness the affected domestic producers in the offending country to pressure their government to make the sanctions go away (ideally, by complying with the WTO ruling.)

For many reasons, I do not want to discuss the specifics of this particular tariff. But this is the best framework with which to view this issue. Essentially, it’s rigging a purposefully inefficient outcome with the hope of forcing a more efficient outcome (i.e. freer trade in both European cheese and American beef) than the previous equilibrium (free trade in European cheese only.) Juicy as it may be, I doubt we can draw many conclusions about Mr. Bush’s free trade record from this incident or tie it to France’s opposition to the Iraq War.

Alors...

Why we need the WTO

The World Trade Organization is an odd institution. Its mandate is to govern and expand the global trading system, but it relies on an inherently mercantilist logic to do so. During negotiating rounds, countries essentially barter over ‘concessions’; that is, access to their domestic markets. By the same token, if the WTO rules that one country has neglected its trade obligations to another country, the WTO can grant the offended country scope to apply retaliatory sanctions, which essentially amount to the revocation of the concessions discussed above. If you think about it, negotiating over market concessions and threatening to revoke them to enforce compliance only make sense if you view exports as good and imports as bad.

In truth, unilateral liberalization is probably the best economic policy decision a government can make, in terms of aggregate gain. But it is also an unlikely policy outcome for many governments: the short-term dislocation is too severe, and the political pressure or even civil unrest risks from well-organized domestic interests are too large. While perhaps less economically palatable, multilateral liberalization is far more politically feasible, precisely because many people do view trade as competition. This is why the WTO must use mercantilist logic to advance free trade, and it is also why the world needs the WTO. By binding our trade liberalizing commitments in international treaties, they become much more difficult to backtrack on. This is especially critical in countries with weaker governance structures. I was reminded of this simple but powerful fact today when I read a new study on voxeu.org, which finds that rigorous accession commitments matter when determining a country’s benefits from joining the WTO.

This is an important way to understand the WTO, and it gets to the heart of arguments about why the WTO’s legitimacy is more important than ever. In a sense, the WTO is a painstakingly-constructed barrier against protectionism. But if it loses its legitimacy as the arbiter of international trade, this 60+ year old barrier would weaken significantly.

With that in mind, what happens to the WTO’s authority if the Doha Round ever completely collapses? It’s worth remembering that Doha has ceased to be only about the deal that’s on the table. In a broader sense, it’s now also about whether the WTO can “deliver” on trade. If it can’t, then it’s hard to imagine a scenario where the organization doesn’t lose a good deal of legitimacy.

The WTO saves governments from their worst and most short-sighted impulses. In these turbulent times, I would argue that we need it to be as strong and vigorous a force as possible.

UPDATE: see this post from last summer on why the Doha Round matters. What I wrote then has gained an even greater sense of urgency since.

Bhagwati on Obama on trade

*This post on trade represents my personal opinions.

Sometimes, it feels like Mr. Obama’s honeymoon period is ending before he even takes office. In an op-ed published earlier this week, Jagdish Bhagwati absolutely savages Barack Obama on trade issues. I am a huge fan of Dr. Bhagwati. He is one of the greatest trade economists and one of the most unrepentant defenders of free, multilateral trade. His work has shaped my own views on trade more than any other single thinker.

Dr. Bhagwati chides Mr. Obama for his “eloquent silence on trade issues” and his tepid support of the Doha Round. He also criticizes the auto industry bailout (no disagreement here), which he believes will be WTO-incompatible, and dismisses Obama’s trade team as a pack of under-qualified, semi-protectionists.

His most interesting argument is against America’s bilateral/regional trade strategy. In Dr. Bhagwati’s eyes, powerful union lobbies and other political forces have produced a trade agenda in which the US negotiates standard-laden agreements with small, poor and comparatively weak countries. The standards, in areas such as environment and labor issues, effectively undermine the smaller partner’s areas of comparative advantage. He characterizes this “free but fair trade” and “an exercise in insidious protectionism that few recognise as such.” Ouch.

As an aside, I wonder how Dr. Bhagwati reconciles this novel argument with the fact that every single one of these bilateral agreements was negotiated by a Republican administration and narrowly passed in Congress by Republican legislators, over the vigorous opposition of Democrats and organized labor?

In any case, the economic logic of Dr. Bhagwati’s arguments cannot be ignored. The US, and the world, would best be served by the successful conclusion of the Doha Round. In terms of regional agreements, negotiating bilateral deals with small trade partners is an exercise in economic futility: any positive gain is a drop in the vast ocean that is the US GDP.

Trade, however, is as much a political issue as it is an economic one. This is unfortunate, but it isn’t very useful to assess trade issues without considering the political ramifications. Dr. Bhagwati acknowledges this: “history shows that the freeing of trade is nearly impossible to achieve in times of macroeconomic crisis.” In assessing where Mr. Obama will fall on trade, we need to examine the political/economic climate he inherits: an American public that is increasingly sceptical of the benefits of trade, an outdated suite of government programs to assist displaced workers, and one of the most vicious recessions in the postwar era. Paradoxically, if Mr. Obama pushes too hard on trade without recognizing these other challenges, he may risk further damaging the 70-year political consensus in the US that freer trade is a good thing. I was thinking out loud about this very issue earlier this week.

As is such, Dr. Bhagwati’s argument is strongest when he calls for more vocal leadership on the issue of trade. I do think that President Obama will need to work hard to resell trade to the American people, so I am bothered by his “eloquent silence.” I wish we had seen a stronger push for Doha last month from the Obama camp. Still, given the current political realities that affect trade, we need to give Mr. Obama more time before sounding the warning on his trade agenda.

South Korean trade politics: NOT for the faint of heart

Thought the West had a monopoly on contentious trade politics? Think again:

Opposition lawmakers ended their violent, 12-day siege of South Korea’s parliament Tuesday after successfully delaying a vote on a major U.S. free-trade deal. Democratic Party legislators had occupied the National Assembly since Dec. 26, fending off security guards who tried to drag them out by force last week. The sit-in ended after the ruling Grand National Party abandoned its bid to ram through the legislation before President-elect Barack Obama takes office Jan. 20. South Korea and the U.S. agreed to the landmark accord in 2007 to slash tariffs and other barriers to trade, but the deal sparked an outcry from farmers and labor, and Obama has hinted he will seek to renegotiate it. The deal would be the largest for the U.S. since the North American Free Trade Agreement more than a decade ago.

Of course, all this comes after the opposition tried to force their way into a barricaded room where the free trade agreement was being discussed using sledgehammers back in December. Yes, sledgehammers. Grand National Party members responded in kind, spraying fire extinguishers at the opposition party members. Yes, (sigh)... fire extinguishers. At least one person left the scene with blood streaming down their face.

Ridiculous as this all sounds, politics devolving into fisticuffs is not so unusual in South Korea. Still, it shows how contentious the domestic politics of trade can be on both sides of a proposed agreement. South Koreans are uncomfortable importing American beef, among other things. Americans are frustrated at South Korean quotas on imported autos, among other things.

It's all very unfortunate, because the KORUS FTA is the most economically-meaningful trade deal that the Bush administration managed to negotiate during its tenure. As it stands, you’re more likely to see another bench-clearing brawl in the South Korean National Assembly than this agreement get ratified in either country...

If you haven't seen Emily's excellent post yesterday about the riots in Greece, have a look for another dose of political violence.

(The picture above is from a 2004 brawl in the South Korea National Assembly, via Delaware Online. For the truly unbelievable pictures from the December battle, check out this New York Times article.)

Wishful thinking

Nancy Birdsall at the Center for Global Development, one of the few decent think tanks in DC, has produced her "policy wish list" for 2009. It's pretty predictable stuff and some of her wishes are stuff we here at zzzeitgeist have been advocating for some time, though her methods are not prescriptions we see too often. 

Everyone seems to support freer trade and increased development, but is it a good idea to avoid protectionism by offering "permanent duty-free, quota-free market access for the poorest countries" and embrace innovations such as cash on delivery aid? Foreign aid certainly needs to be modernized but Blattman does a better job of explaining why. It's hard to only give aid based on quotas when a country lacks the infrastructure necessary to reach said quotas. 

Too bad in this economic climate these wishes will remain just that.

BTW what's up with number 5?