The Biden choice looks better and better. With Pakistan crumbling from within, our next President will have even more on his foreign policy plate than two wars and the Caucasus region conflict.

Tom Whipple has noted that Pakistan's textile industry, their primary export, has been crippled by persistent electrical shortages. They cannot afford the oil needed to power their economy and are at the mercy of the Saudi government, which has recently forgiven roughly half of Pakistan's oil debts.

Now Bloomberg notes that investors are shunning Pakistan and throwing the Pakistani rupee into turmoil:

    The ouster of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf was hailed by the government as a chance to turn around a crumbling economy that has left half the 168 million population short on food. Investors aren't convinced, and that means more declines for the rupee.

    "Inflation can only be beat by a cut in government spending, which means turning off the currency printing press," Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton in Singapore, who has about $200 million invested in Pakistan, said in an interview. "Stop spending. Stop wasting through corruption."

    The cost to protect the nation's sovereign bonds from default has almost tripled since October to the highest for government debt after Argentina. Foreign-exchange reserves have declined by more than half to $6.6 billion, enough to cover just three months of imports, according to Standard & Poor's. The United Nations World Food Programme said on June 11 that half the population was at risk of running short of food.