Pakistan: Pariah State to Investors

Written by David Frum on Tuesday May 10, 2011

Pakistani investors have shrugged off their government's reckless confrontation with the U.S., but foreign investors aren't so sanguine.

Domestic Pakistani investors have shrugged off their government's reckless courting of confrontation with the United States.

International investors are not so sanguine reports the FT:

If the US Department of State follows up on its pledge to pay $25m in reward money for information leading to the capture of Osama bin Laden, then perhaps somebody, somewhere, is in line for a mega-windfall, equivalent to more than half of the money foreign institutional investors have put into Pakistan’s stock market so far this year.

$50 million in equity investment in the first four months of 2011 for all of Pakistan?

In the depression year of 2009, Bangladesh - long thought of as the basketcase of Asia - attracted $700 million, down from over $1 billion before the global economic crisis began.

We are familiar with the problem of rogue states. Pakistan seems in danger of turning itself into a pariah state.