Swine Flu Touches Mexican and Egyptian Economies, Paying Chinese Workers to Smoke, and Ireland’s Horse Breeding Business

Here’s an idea for municipal governments struggling to raise enough revenues: make workers smoke, thereby driving up the amount taken in on local taxes on cigarettes. Well, a couple of days ago, one Chinese county announced it was going to do just that. So, we got our Beijing Correspondent Mary Kay Magistad on the line to talk about the edict as part of this week’s Global Economy Podcast. Of course, 10 minutes after I publish the podcast comes news that the order has now been rescinded. And so the lungs of a few million Chinese can rest a bit easier, although it’s unclear if the Chinese county has a back-up plan for staying out of the red. Staying on the public health and economics front, we spend the first part of the podcast looking at what effect swine flu might have on the Mexican economy, followed by news that Egyptians are fighting the spread of the disease by slaughtering their pigs. Many Egyptians depend on pigs to clean up waste, and for their economic livlihoods. It’s fair to say that some Egyptians did not take kindly to the government’s decision to kill their porkers, and therefore their incomes.

May Day (May 1) came and went, and with it, the usual spate of worker protests across Europe. This year, though, the protests were especially piquant, given the financial crisis and global recession. We’ll hear about the proletariat’s beef with the bankers. And we’ll follow with a report on world stock markets, which actually managed to show some signs of life (dare we say recovery) during the month of April.

President Obama today welcomed a US bankruptcy court’s approval of a “prompt sale process” for Chrysler. The buyer? Italian car-maker Fiat. Fiat’s CEO is Sergio Marchionne , and some reckon he just might be able to turn Chrysler around. After all, Fiat actually made money last year. Go figure.

And we end with something off a sad report. During Ireland’s boom years, the horse-breeding industry really took off in the Emerald Isle. Newly wealthy Irish, not the mention well-heeled foreigners, flocked to the country to buy premium horseflesh. But now, in hard times, the horses are the ones who are truly suffering, as some owners simply don’t have the cash to keep them fed.