Vietnamese Drug Gangs.

In my previous post about incarceration rates for different nationaliities, the Vietnamese were at the top of the list, which was somewhat surprising, to me at least. In the comments 'NW London Cynic' points out that it is because of the involvement of Vietnamese gangs in running cannabis farms. Doing a google news search on "Vietnamese" & "Cannabis" seems to confirm that with citizens of the country being sentenced for running cannabis factories in Bradford, Reading, Croydon, Ely, Norwich, and Keighly:

This cannabis factory — found in an upmarket Keighley suburb — was among several operated by a trio of Vietnamese drug producers.

Hard to believe isn't it- there is such a thing as an upmarkey Keighly suburb!

Now That's What I Call "Moral Hazard"!

There has been a lot of talk about how the US bailout of the financial sector might remove the "moral hazard" for mismanaging the institutions in question. Did our system ever have any real moral hazard to begin with though? Compare the West to the East, in this case Vietnam:

There cannot be many places in the world where you can get shot for losing money on a foreign exchange deal, but Vietnam is one of them.

That is the situation potentially facing Nguyen Thi Quynh Van.

Until March this year, she was the deputy head of trade financing at a branch of one of Vietnam's biggest state-owned banks in the port city of Hai Phong.

Now she is under arrest, having been charged with "losing state resources through economic mismanagement" - a crime that carries the death penalty in Vietnam.

If "losing state resources through economic mismanagement" is a capital offence we ought to send Gordon Brown over to Vietnam right away.


ps. In case you are wondering, I don't think they did execute her. I wouldn't make light of it they had killed her. Probably.