Can you imagine how much money would be lost if all economic activity was halted in Mexico City?

Mexico City is home to some 20 million people, and right now, it’s the epicenter of a swine flu outbreak that has countries all over the world ready to cut off access to the country and its pork industry.

At least 1,614 people in Mexico have been infected by the virus, and an estimated 103 have died, though at last count only 20 of them have been confirmed swine-flu deaths. But the Mexican government is taking no chances, and schools are closed until May 6, and even the bars and night clubs in the popular resort town of Puerto Vallarta have been ordered to close.

Mexico City might even halt all economic activity of the outbreak is not contained.

The airline and pork industries have been hit pretty hard, too, so traders and investors alike might want to keep an eye on these two industries as this story develops.

Yesterday, I told Taipan Insider readers that Argentina’s penion nationalization left much to be desired in the way of transparency. On Monday, a federal judge froze assets here in the U.S. in connection with the pension.

Read my full Taipan Insider article (available to all Taipan Publishing Group members) for all the details.

But that’s not the end of the nationalization trend.

Actually, it’s not the beginning either. The timeline can get a bit confusing, so try and stick with me…

On May 25, 2003, Nestor Kirchner was elected president of Argentina. He was elected by default, however… The main candidate, former President Carlos Menem, withdrew from the race for fear of a run-off election that he felt he could not win.

He was a popular president, though, with one of his notable acheivements being the renegotiation of Argentina’s massive debt from defaulted loans with the IMF. He successfully dropped the payback amount to about one-third of the original amount.

But in the background, President Kirchner was creating state-owned companies and nationalizing a number of industries: energy, railways, water companies, and telecoms.

The Economist wrote about him on August 10, 2006, “By founding state-owned enterprises and re-nationalising privatised ones he has expanded the executive’s power over employment and prices… His biggest triumph came on August 3rd, when Congress gave him authority to reallocate government spending as he sees fit.”

That’s in line with some of Kirchner’s closest allies, like Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, and Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela. Even the leftist Lula da Silva, president of Brazil has some nationalization tendencies. (Read my blog post from Nov. 12 for more info.)

So with so much of the countries infrastructure under the State’s belt, what’s left for private investors?

Not much, and dwindling everyday, it would seem.

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