News about Mexico and the Peso and the American Elections Impact on such matters

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  Mexico is never quite what it might seem to be.  Then, on the other hand, newcomers will frequently say, "It's a lot like America in a lot of ways."   True enough.  Gravity functions frequently.  The sun usually comes up somewhere east of here.  Logic in terms of politics and cultural movement is totally out of whack.

     We recall that the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, recently invited the two candidates with the most probability of victory in the coming election for the Presidency of the United States of America to be his and Mexico's guests.  To be clear, he invited Trump and Frumpie.  

       The handlers for Frumpie wisely decided to follow the advice of her advisors, the ex-Mrs. Wiener and the Planned Parenthood Board of Directors,  to avoid going to Mexico.   This would  avoid the necessity of exposing her to seas and oceans of funny-looking little brown people who might come close enough to her to be seen....or worse....(shudder) touched.  Would the HOA at Chappaqua even let her back into that Island of Normalcy should that have happened?

     Trump apparently overrode his advisors and decided to do AirTrump 007 to Mexico City.

Clinton Digs in Chapeau

  Amazingly he actually acquitted himself pretty well, at least for the American audience.   He had already committed the offense of saying anything, after having declared, officially, that he was going to be, officially, a Republican.  In spite of the fact that he his not a Republican, and because of  the fact that he is running as a Republican, anything he does or says will be carpet-bombed by the American Obsolete Obsolete Media and much of the Mexican and International Press.

     But, strangely enough, this is and is not about the Clintons.  Or the Trumps.  The problem begins when the people in Mexico hear and see that Donald Trump landed in Mexico, talked with the President, and left without being arrested, held for three days, and then deported as an undesirable.

     He opened a topic with extremely harsh and pointless words that were not accurate, although they had an element of truth, and Tom'd to the crowds who know nothing about our historical and present day entanglements with Mexico but who know that they don't like any of it (Mexico or Mexicans).   These are the people who gave us Trump in the primary.   These are the people who are correct about their topic but who are not correct, wholly correct, or anything near correct about said topic.

     Hillary is happy to have "them" come over from wherever and procreate so as to make more dependent people who will forever be able to elect enlighten'd people such as Shiela Jackson Lee, the Castro Brothers (the ones from San Antonio), and Harry Reid.  But to conviviate or come within touching range?   ( n-e-v-e-r )

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The OROGs and other frequent visitors will remember the MITOFSKY Poll that we posted a couple or three days back:

Driving through this gate requires

seasoned professionals.  Do

not try this at home. Or at

this home (or else).

     One can notice that there is a decidedly pro-Hillary response to the MITOFSKY Poll.  We lament to say that this is not an error of intent such as many of the polls taken during these hours in Gringolandia.   The sympathies and the wishes and the  good feelings of many Mexicans during these days lie with the the ''nice lady from the North who wants to give us things and everything.''

     On the one hand, they voted in their present President who was a mediocre, at best, as Governor of the State of Mexico during his political formative years.   He was mainly known for being a pretty boy and he had a second wife who WAS a beauty queen of antiquity....(Mon Dieu! -  plus de 40 annes!!??).  She is also a revered relic of the industry of the Mexican Telenovela (Soap Operas).
   The electorate threw over the PAN female candidate because she looked like a "cara de changa" (monkey face) or whatever.    In Republican Democracy one must trust the "will of the electorate".   The only other choice was A.M. Lopez Obrador (AMLO) whose idea of solving the problems of Mexico was to tax the rich at 90% and nationalise your great-grandmother's mustache comb.
     We learned quickly why the Mexicans prevented women from voting until 1952. At this point, we can prove by testimony under oath that not one woman voted for Pena Nieto anywhere in Mexico or the known Universe, during this or any other century.

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     So now we enter into the true meat of this matter.   Mexico has at its Central Banking helm the very best "gnomes del Banco de Mexico" and Latin America.  The board of governors of the Bank of Mexico truly are better than our "Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America".   They wait for our Dumboes to receive orders from the Wizard of Whatever in Switzerland or Yellowknife, and then they adjust to make a counter-punch.

     The number one objective is almost always to keep the value of the peso at some point of advantage in relation to the American dollar.   This is a tactic of countries with a complex tourism industry and with a major league, value-added, industrial export business.  Some countries have a trifecta, with a huge agricultural sector that also exports billions of dollars of high-quality fresh vegetables, fruit, and things like mangoes and avocados.

     In the above paragraph, of course, we have identified Mexico, tied for 10th place with Canada and Texas in terms of Gross National Product on Planet Earth.

     So here we are again.  The supposedly sophisticated and super-powerful super power-house United States entering into a quarrel....disagreement....with a neighbour about something that neither has been willing to discuss for the past 40 years.   I know, for instance, that the Tratado de Libre Commercio (NAFTA) has nothing to do with the "loss of jobs" in the United States.  We know, as citizens of Hidalgo County, Texas, that the increase of the population of McAllen, Texas from 32,000 to 140,000 from 1960 to 2015  came from the Maquiladora industries in Reynosa and other places on the nearby frontier.

     We know that for all that comes across the border from Mexico in the tractor-trailer rigs....thousands per day...from Brownsville to San Diego, California, there are a similar numbers going South.   Mexico sends Ford Escorts and various types of Volkswagens and a score of other types of vehicles north, and the Gringos send Caterpillars, Cadillacs, and other costly things.   Twice a day, huge long trains cross at Brownsville....connecting Houston with Monterrey....and they lug their mile-long cargoes for supplying the heavy industry in the industrial hub of all Northern Mexico, the Monterrey metroplex.  The engines chug up the face of the Sierra Madre Oriental towards the Saltillo metroplex and its automotive industry. Then they go back to Texas and points north beyond that, waving at the fellows driving the trains that are heading into Mexico....twice a day....both ways....every day....8 days per week, 400 days per year.  It is an amazing excercise in  industry.

     These activities in and along the Frontier, here and in Laredo, Eagle Pass, and El Paso, and elsewhere in Arizona and California, billions of dollars moved by tractor-trailer and rail to and from the United States and Mexico.  They continue moving even as these letters appear upon the screen.

     Mr. Trump has painted himself into a corner, due to his familiarity and comfortability with union labour, by castigating the productiveness of the North American Free Trade Agreement / Tratado de Libre Comercio.  The union workers want high wages and little work and protection from being harassed for pilfering tools and "grabbies" from the assembly line.   They also want to have perpetual displacement compensation as well as permanent disability payments and somebody to blame for the "dis-employment".  This is all understandable.

     The industrial and auto workers in the North who "lost" their jobs and who really wanted to work,  went South.  The others who felt that  there had to be some reward and compensation for having been a "slave" for 40 years and receiving the abuse of the bossmen, stayed in their neighbourhoods and blamed Mexico and rich people.    But, there comes a time when even General Motors has to act as if it is broke so that it, too, can receive free money from Father Obamaham.

       But no one wants to point out that paying a person 76 dollars an hour (wages, health and life insurance, SS, and other benefits) for bolting a bumper onto a GM Slothmobile or Volt cannot be sustained.   Solyndra, anyone?

     All of the posturing...and wall-building threats....and hypernationalism will yield nothing but misery for both sides. The careful, yet somewhat threatening, observations of the Gnomes of the Banco de Mexico, and certain well-placed advisories in the Mexican press aimed at the "investing community" indicate that the Banco de Mexico is willing to let the peso slide down in value, at least for the moment.   They are suggesting that their Florence Nightingale  (Hillary) is in bad health and has other "issues" and if she loses the election, Mexico might have to put up with the blustering demagogue, which is their typification of Trump.

     Their reaction is sophomoric at best.   It is a reaction to a person who is sophomoric at best.  And in the shadows lurks something worse, and the people of Mexico are self-deluded into thinking that she gives half-a-snit about Mexico or the Mexicans.....much less the Americans.

We include the analysis, built around Carlos Loret de Mola's (one of Mexico's most admired and accurate economic analysts)  thoughts and deductions concerning why the Mexican Peso has sagged so quickly during the past few weeks.   We hope that we have, in our way, cleared things up a bit.

EL GRINGO VIEJO

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(sourced from Associated Press)

     The Mexican currency reached the psychological barrier of 20 pesos per dollar, and analysts and commentators cited the role of the U.S. presidential campaign.     Banamex, one of Mexico's largest banks, listed the peso at 19.96, and other banks and exchange houses listed it even higher.

     A Banco Base analysis said the strength of Republican candidate Donald Trump influenced the peso's decline.   "The possibility that Donald Trump could win the Nov. 8 elections has made financial markets nervous and that has been especially reflected in the Mexican peso," the bank said. Trump has been critical of Mexico and the trade agreements that give it access to the U.S. market. The U.S. has an outsize influence on Mexico's economy, buying about 80 percent of Mexico's exports.

     Newspaper columnist Carlos Loret de Mola said Clinton's health problems are key.  "Speculation broke out against the Mexican currency last week due to the poor health of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton," Loret de Mola wrote in the newspaper El Universal.  Clinton had to leave a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony early, and later revealed she had pneumonia.

     Mexico's Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment on the U.S. campaign's effect on the country's currency.     Oil prices were once cited in the peso's decline, but they have risen somewhat from this year's earlier lows. Concerns about a possible interest rate hike in the United States have also been a long-term drag on the peso.

     The peso has dropped almost 17 percent in value in the last year.

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El Gringo Viejo