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Refugee Bonds: How Could This Idea Be Made to Work?
Gary N. Kleiman, a DC-based emerging market specialist and a columnist for my old haunt, Asia Times, has an idea for financing relief efforts for the global refugee crisis: sovereign refugee bonds. Obviously, the idea is still germinal. He writes about it here at Beyond Brics:
The plight of tens of thousands of Middle East refugees pouring daily into eastern and western Europe has prompted EU and UN emergency action to raise billions of dollars for unmet previous pledges as well the historic fresh influx. But the funding model that relies on governments supplemented by private donations has long been unable to keep pace with the global spread of internal and external displacement now affecting 60m people, 80 per cent in developing countries, according to the UN’s latest figures.
Financial markets, both debt and equity, could be mobilised for emerging economy frontline states to provide a new, long-term source for immediate infrastructure and social needs and future professional training and employment entry. Sovereign refugee bonds would be a logical start, building on existing investor local and foreign-currency portfolios across emerging market regions. Issues could carry partial guarantees from the World Bank and other development lenders, but more creditworthy governments are in a position to continue normal borrowing on commercial terms that could be discounted with a commitment to carefully track the proceeds for a range of refugee hosting and resettlement purposes.
The Syrian and Iraqi exodus to Europe opened a clear developed-emerging market and east-west split, as cash-strapped governments were unable to absorb asylum seekers without additional aid or special funding. Greece and then Hungary strained to handle the numbers, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban criticized the EU quota system that was agreed at Germany’s behest as a preliminary response. His stance may have been tinged with xenophobia, but with public debt at 80 per cent of GDP and foreign investors holding one-third of domestic state bonds, fiscal room to manoeuvre is limited. …
Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey have already absorbed millions of refugees from next-door conflicts under severe financial strains. Turkish officials reported spending $7.5bn to date directly from the budget, with the EU just recently offering cash assistance. …
Jordan depends on a combined $7bn in IMF and Gulf aid and the US has guaranteed a sovereign bond. … Lebanon’s debt burden is 140 per cent of GDP, and economic growth will only be 2 per cent this year. … Iraq had contemplated the traditional sovereign bond route for resources to handle a big internally displaced population, but abandoned plans with yield demands well above 10 per cent.
In north and sub-Saharan Africa, Tunisia is inundated with Libyan refugees and Kenya has taken them from Somalia and Sudan. In Asia, Rohingya boat people from Burma have fled to Malaysia and elsewhere; and in Latin America, Mexico is a way station for Central Americans escaping violence.
All these countries are included in emerging and frontier financial markets and structures could be found to tap global investors otherwise overlooked as a durable crisis funding solution. The refugee instruments could fit with World Bank and Islamic Development Bank plans to float their own special bonds for Middle East projects, and migration policy organisations and foundations have expressed interest in considering pilot issues. Middle and lower-income economies most affected, working with a dedicated task force of banks and fund managers, should pioneer landmark financial market approaches to meet the unprecedented tragedy.
Now my first reaction was, Whoa there, pardner, one global financial meltdown wasn’t enough for you? You want the World Bank and other development lenders to guarantee these financial instruments? Worked out great with those subprime mortgages, didn’t it?
I’m not at all into the idea of having these bonds guaranteed by a government entity. But what about the the idea of raising bonds — without that kind of a guarantee — to fund the construction of new cities with new infrastructure, private housing, private hospitals, and private schools? And why couldn’t the refugees themselves be the labor force that builds them? This would immediately begin integrating them into the workforce, and give them some choice about the kind of city and community they want to build. I doubt they’d be keen to build the sort of grim, socialist high-rises on the city outskirts into which previous waves of immigrants were stuffed in Europe by central planners. No one wanted to live in those; and they’re one of the reasons social integration was less successful than it could have been. New refugees, given an ownership stake in new construction, might build some lovely new cities and neighborhoods — even, perhaps, ones so attractive that native Europeans might want to live in them, too. They’d earn an income from working on these projects, and learn new job skills. Then, because they were employed, not taking handouts, they could afford to buy the houses they’d built and pay to use the schools and hospitals.
It seems as if the bonds would provide a reasonable rate of return for this kind of project over the years, doesn’t it?
What do you think? Could it work?
Published in Economics, General
Great concept! We can knock out a plan in a couple hours in the faculty lounge over a few bottles of chardonnay.
OK, snark aside, Google e.g. Zimbabwe IMF. Or World Bank and any ’emerging economy’ you care to explore. Finance is the least of the problems in development. Greece? Detroit?
Are the communities we are talking about funding with refugee bonds going to be democratically governed? Sunni or Shia? What about Sharia? What about the many refugees who are Christian and fleeing Muslim persecution? Are unions to be allowed to collectively bargain wages and conditions of employment? Who can get support without working? Does the Imam have to drive a back-hoe or do we build a mosque and put him on a stipend for pastoral duties preaching peace and brotherhood. Who are the police to be? Are criminals expelled? To where, home country or host country? And on, and on….
We are barely able to hold our on society together much less build utopias molded from the refugee flow into Europe or across our own southern border.
Yes. Thank you.
I love creating things. The western world needs to look at this as an opportunity. We need a global positive attitude.
We can make sure they are. We can insist on a lot human rights things in exchange for getting the startup organized.
Well, the bonds would be to build roads, sanitation, infrastructure, schools, housing, hospitals — the things you need in a city. It would pay for the material and the labor costs for the people who would build them — and those people would be the refugees. Who in the end would have the money to put down payments on those homes and pay tuition in those schools/health care costs in those hospitals. With the work experience they’d get they could go on to supervise/manage the construction of more cities like this. They could study medicine in those schools and work in other new hospitals … and pay down the investment on the initial loan, with interest, making it a reasonable investment vehicle.
Excellent questions for the nation startup committee to address. And all of those things can be handled. Because we know we need to do these things.
It’s just like building a company. It is exactly the same thing.
You just keep solving the problems.
OK, I want to be positive and I see away to do this. You are going to need expertise from people that know how to build a prosperous society and economy from practically nothing.
So we get the land, we get the refugees, we get a few hundred billion dollars and contract with the Israelis to run it.
Pilgrim: Are the communities we are talking about funding with refugee bonds going to be democratically governed?
I reckon they’d follow local laws about this, but the key is that they’d have to be given the right to work.
Again, they’d have to follow local laws. Refugees who want to be in Europe don’t come here to live under Sharia.
I don’t see why they wouldn’t benefit from the scheme as much as Muslims would. I’d be perfectly okay with it if they wanted to live in their own self-built cities; I’m not so politically correct as to say that Muslims and Christians must live side-by-side, particularly not if they have recent memories of persecution. Mind you, many Muslims and Christians did live side by side in Syria, 88 percent of the Syrian refugees here are fleeing Assad, not ISIS.
Perhaps, at some stage, why not?
I suppose that’s for them to decide: I’d have no problem if they wished to support their elderly relatives or the infirm among them. Certainly I think anyone able-bodied should work, not least because native populations here don’t wish to support them, and who can blame them?
If he wants a mosque, he or someone among them will have to build it. After that, if they want to support the mosque, they can do it from their own salaries.
I assume the usual authorities of the state. I don’t envision an entirely separate legal system. But I could imagine training some of them in national police academies to police their own communities, on the grounds that cops should come from the communities they police.
Perhaps there could be a period of x years during which that would be the penalty for (severe) criminal behavior; but after a period of hard work and law-abiding behavior, I think they should be allowed to become full citizens.
To the country they came from. I assume the fear of this would be quite a deterrent against criminal behavior and quite an incentive to learn quickly to become productive, law-abiding citizens.
I didn’t say Utopias, I said cities. People have been building cities for as long as there’ve been people; it doesn’t seem Utopian, it just seems like normal human behavior.
Perfect.
Yup.
:)
We have the engineering and technology knowledge to turn places that were once considered uninhabitable into livable places.
And we have the organizational knowledge to know how to set this up so that human rights are protected while people are free to worship God however they wish.
That’s the bottom line for me. Our knowledge can be used to help people.
Faith and optimism can solve almost any problem.
Sure, and that would probably be a really good way to introduce these people to the idea that Israelis don’t have horns and fangs and are in fact helpful people with useful skills. But basically, it doesn’t have to be Israelis; anyone who knows how to supervise and manage projects like this would be fine, and many Europeans would be thrilled to have those jobs. Ideally, the focus wouldn’t be on building, “cheap, temporary housing,” but on building places that really represent an integration of the best local architectural traditions and the best architectural traditions from their native countries — so building these cities could be a hugely creative undertaking, and the result could be a city that many native-born Europeans would love to live in, as opposed, as I said above, to the hideous housing projects they built on the outskirts of European cities in the 50s and 60s. I’m envisioning cities built to a human scale, with markets like Arab souks, houses, not apartments, that fit into the local architectural tradition but that add design elements from the places they come from; great Syrian/Ethiopian/Afghan restaurants, playgrounds for kids … and building these things will keep these young people too busy to get in trouble, earning their own money, and learning lots of new skills.
And the free market. That’s the magic ingredient. This is too big to solve with charity, but if you add that element — and allow these people to work — I see no reason to think it’s inherently implausible.
This thread is making me laugh. We sound like every meeting I’ve ever been to. :)
Peter O’Toole, my hero:
I think equity financing would be more suitable than debt financing for an endeavour with this kind of risk.
This idea seems to have a lot in common with charter / start-up cities.
Thanks TD. That link to the NYU Sterns Center and Paul Romer is much more interesting than my knee-jerk cynicism. Claire and Marci are in distinguished company and share a vision with much brighter people than me.
Yesterday it was war with Russia. Today it is fraudulent bond schemes to finance bringing in an obnoxiously hostile group of refugees to countries they will shortly want to destroy. This inspires talk about occupying parts of Montana with refugees, talk of what a wonderful place Liberia is, that Salt Lake City is built on the side of a mountain instead of being in a broad valley as it is, occupying Greek Islands with funding from Egyptian billionaires, aahahaahaah! As long as we are out of the reality box, let’s build that island in the Mediterranean conveniently off the coast of Syria. At the center of the Island we will put Claire Berlinski and then will stack refugees in spacious Cabrini Green like apartments. We will film the hilarity that ensues like a combination Truman Show/the Running Man (Woman) remake. By the way Claire, I would recommend that you cover up like a good German girl.
I understand you are saying I have my facts wrong.
That said, I’m not entirely wrong. I know there’s a valley there. But I saw the city at night, and the mountainside was all lit up. It looked pretty unbuildable to me. I think the Mormons did a remarkable thing.
And even though Liberia didn’t make it because of the Muslim madness that has swept Africa, it was not a bad idea to create a new country.
Everything that has ever been built had problems along with way.
I like this idea because I think the countries who are presently taking in the refugees are going to run out of charitable feelings pretty quickly. I just don’t think that refugee camps and moving millions of refugees into existing countries is a sustainable solution. I think they need their own country, complete with some of the things that enabled the United States to get on its feet such as clear property rights and religious freedom.
The bonds will be a waste until the refugee problem is solved. Keep in mind, the refugee problem is not the flood of refugees or the status/treatment of refugees in the receiving nations; the refugee problem is at the source: what it is that’s making these people leave their countries as refugees.
Until the problem is solved, the flood will only continue, to the detriment of the refugees and ultimately the deep damage to those receiving countries.
Eric Hines
We can agree Salt Lake City is in a beautiful setting and I did not want to take away from the impressive accomplishment of that settlement. I think you will find that Liberia was screwed up pretty quickly and without Muslims being involved. Forming new countries is not such an easy thing. There is something about the human resources from which you build that will cause either success or failure. The “accidents” of our history play a huge role in how we interpret the world and what our prospects are with regard to freedom.
By the way there is a fine book by Bernard DeVoto called The Year of Decision 1846. It weaves together the tales of the Mormon trek west, the Donner Party, the Mexican American War and Francis Parkman’s experiences.
If it’s cheaper than homegrown, sure.
The Navy is appropriate within our territorial waters, and of course there is extensive maritime law with respect to what that means.
Beyond that, I think a private security/defense model, presumably attached to some kind of insurance system, is appropriate. This is, of course, also historically precedented, by the security and defense approaches taken by the British East India Company, et al. I think it’s reasonable to imagine similar arrangements without the connection to colonization. It might look something like this.
No, but it’s an option if trading should become prohibitively expensive. My point was only that we are not necessarily dependent on the rest of the world. We merely choose to be.
No, but the US is rather uniquely poised in terms of geography, political history, ethnicity, and natural resources to be autarkic as a nation, although it would probably be most successfully so with a much stronger return to federalist principles. If the rest of the world went to hell for real, a robust “laboratories of democracy” US perspective might even regain some political appeal.
I’ve long been an advocate of a sell off. A lot of BLM land is leased to area farmers and ranchers, but when those leases expire I see no reason to renew. Let them buy it if they want it.
Sure, and I’ve got just the locales for this new infrastructure and housing:
East Hampton
Martha’s Vineyard
Malibu
Okay. Now I’m really interested in this country. I can’t blame the Muslims.
I remember reading about Charles Taylor and that he used to drive a cab in Boston. He went to Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts. The poster child of Boston-educated tyrants. :) I guess he’s in prison for the next 50 years. :)
I was saying that Liberia, like let’s say Mexico were off the rails with respect to self government fairly early in their history. Despite having a constitution similar to ours, something seemed to go wrong. I didn’t find that being caused by the modern Muslim percentage of the population as maybe MarciN said. Don’t get me wrong though, at 12% I am not surprised their is a significant negative effect. They can look forward to increasing levels of violence and mayhem if they will not protect themselves. Some places have the conditions of a civil war as part of the “accidents” of their history. What kind of civilization would bring those conditions onto themselves so thoughtlessly?
I am not advocating for waves of immigrants from Liberia or wherever all those young men are from that are flocking into Europe or from anywhere. By the way being African Christian is probably a huge disadvantage in a post-Christian America.
It is an interesting history. Sort of sad actually.
No more spouting off from memory here :) I shall look into this.
Thank you. :)
Next topic: How to convince the mice to put a bell on the cat, so they’ll know when it’s coming.
I feel like I should type approximately one billion exclamation points to give justice to my sense of stunned amazement that anyone could actually think this could work, given the particular species of primate presently occupying this planet, but I just don’t have time tonight.
One billion exclamation points is only one word, right?
Really Claire? I would assume a substantial minority — perhaps after a generation a majority — will want Sharia. WZB Berlin Social Science Center, one of the largest social science institutes in Europe, did a five year study of Moroccan and Turkish immigrants in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland and Sweden and determined:
“Almost 60 per cent agree that Muslims should return to the roots of Islam, 75 per cent think there is only one interpretation of the Koran possible to which every Muslim should stick and 65 per cent say that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live.”
Consider also:
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4092/europe-islamic-fundamentalism
FPO (2014): 43% of Islamic teachers in Austria openly advocate Sharia law over democracy.
2015 (Jyllands Posten): 77% of Muslims in Denmark believe the Quran’s instructions should be “fully applied.”
2015 (Jyllands Postn): Only 53% of Danish Muslims believe Danish law should be based on the consitution and not the Quran.
ICM Poll: 40% of British Muslims want Sharia in the UK.
NOP Research: 68% of British Muslims support the arrest and prosecution of anyone who insults Islam.
Many more facts could be cited.
Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western civilization.
So basically, you’re suggesting we impose a global boycott and siege upon ourselves. Basically. And saying that we could survive it — which we probably could — but I don’t think we’d like it, much.
Claire thinks further European integration, devolving power away from national authorities and toward Brussels, is the key to assimilation and prosperity, touting a paper by Uli Spech who invokes postmodernist Richard Rorty as an inspiration.
By contrast:
“The European values that require Europe to commit suicide are about ideology, not language, culture or nationhood. But the incoming migrants don’t share that ideology. They have their own Islamic values.
Why should 23-year-old Mohammed work for four decades so that Hans or Fritz across the way can retire at 61 and lie on a beach in Mallorca? The idea that Mohammed would ever want to do such a thing out of love for Europe was a silly fantasy that European governments fed their worried citizens.
Mohammed doesn’t share European values. Nor are they likely to take hold of him no matter how often the aging teachers, who hope he gets a job and subsidizes their retirement, try to drill them into his head.
Europeans expect Mohammed to become a Swede or a German as if he were some child they had adopted from an exotic country and raised as their own, and work to subsidize their European values.
The Muslim migrants are meant to be the retirement plan for an aging Europe. They’re supposed to keep its ramshackle collection of economic policies, its welfare states and social programs rolling along.”
But they’re more like a final solution.”