...You think your economy is in trouble?

Economies evolve in much the same way that other things do: most start out with a very large agrarian sectors, then industrialize and build cars and trucks for example, and then move on to higher value added service industries (like engineering, software.) Vietnam is at the moment moving from an agrarian to an industrialized economy. All you have to do is drive outside of the city and get lost in the massive and dismal industrial parks packed with processing plants, textile plants, chip plants and so on to know that. Lines of weary workers file in and out as shifts change, heading back to the little towns that sprout up around the factories.

So now that all of the countries that Vietnam sells things to are going into the tank (like the US for example), Vietnam is starting to feel the pain as well. Exports are dropping, GDP is slowing, interest rates are being cut, people are losing jobs, banks are seeing loan portfolios sour and so on. As at home, for the super-rich, this is a great time: buying distressed companies and assets at fire sale prices, which will only help stuff the coffers on the next up turn. For the rest, the decline in the prices of food that is grown here, such as rice, cashews, coffee and sugar, mean that those on the lower part of the income ladder - i.e. farmers in the agricultural sector and workers in the industrial sector - are going to struggle for awhile.