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November 1, 2011 Fukushima, Japan I had to come see for myself. What does the worst radiation and natural disaster in history look like? Chaos. Devastation. Cataclysm. Right? Actually… none of the above. Fukushima and the surrounding prefecture is as quaint and picturesque as ever. Eight months on, there are hardly any signs
Date: October 28, 2011 Reporting From: Tokyo, Japan I can’t begin to describe how excited I am to be visiting Tokyo while the Japanese yen is at its all-time, historic high. My timing couldn’t possibly be worse. For reasons that are completely incomprehensible, the yen is still viewed as a stable ‘safe haven’ currency
October 27, 2011 Shanghai, China I’ve spent the last few days at a Chinese offshore strategies symposium here in Shanghai as a guest of the conference organizer. It’s been a fabulous event, full of camaraderie and relationship building, all set in one of the Pudong district’s finest hotels. But beneath the overall good
October 26, 2011 Shanghai, China Stunned. That probably best describes the mood of China’s vast pool of property owners. For the last few years, anyone with as much as a taxi driver’s salary has been speculating in the real estate market, scooping up off-plan properties at terms that would make a Countrywide mortgage
October 25, 2011 Ulan Bator, Mongolia Chinggis Khan has been gone for centuries, but his spirit undoubtedly lives on in Mongolia. Empire-building is in the cultural DNA here. Mongolians know that they’re sitting on trillions of dollars worth of valuable resources, and that the economy is undergoing a rapid transformation. You can see
October 24, 2011 Ulan Bator, Mongolia “As rich as a Mongolian.” Get used to hearing that expression, because it will have entered our lexicon in 10-years time. I’ll explain– Mongolia is a sizeable country blessed with unimaginable resource wealth. It almost seems that just about every other Tuesday brings another major resource discovery.
October 21, 2011 Ulan Bator, Mongolia Today was one of those days when the PT lifestyle was… less than glamorous. It took nearly 24-hours of travel dealing with weather delays, in-flight diversions, and mind-numbing airline incompetency… but I’ve finally arrived to Mongolia. As I write this, it’s a balmy -7 Celsius (19F)
Date: October 20, 2011 Reporting From: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada [Editor’s note: Tim Staermose is filling in for Simon Black today.] You can hardly go a day without hearing about a new protest… hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of people marching in the streets railing against various policies. They want answers. They
If you’re an eager expat looking for inexpensive adventure and opportunity, you might want to think about Cambodia. I’ll run down a few of the highlights– First, it’s important to get a clear understanding of where you’re starting from. Cambodia is an incredibly poor country. Like much of Southeast Asia, it’s had an
October 18, 2011 Phnom Penh, Cambodia In his seminal work The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer recounts how the struggling Weimar Republic printed its way out of reparation debt from World War I. Out-of-control printing caused the German mark to fall from 75 per dollar in 1921, to more
October 14, 2011 Pattaya, Thailand We recently received a note from a German journalist writing for a national paper there. He asked, “Simon, German politicians swear to support the well-being of the German people. Given this, what would you advise the German government about the euro– keep saving it? Or let everything fail
October 13, 2011 Pattaya, Thailand Parts of Thailand have experienced terrible flooding lately, and much of the country’s production shut down as a result. Thailand makes everything from tire factories to hard disk drives to rice… and given the slowdown in the economy, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Not to
October 12, 2011 Pattaya, Thailand If you’ve followed this letter for any length of time, you know that I hardly spend any time in the United States. Sure I visit friends and family from time to time, but professionally I’m much more interested in what’s happening outside of North America. You might be
About two weeks ago, GoldMoney sent out an apologetic email to all of its Dutch customers. The email explained how the Dutch financial regulator (AFM) considered GoldMoney to be in violation of various licensing rules and compliance requirements. Among other things, AFM indicated that GoldMoney was selling ‘investment objects’ without a license… something
October 10, 2011 Bangkok, Thailand Let’s pretend for a moment that Greece is a human being. I’ll call him George. George is a hairdresser and makes $40,000 per year. George has limited assets. He has zero savings, no precious metals, and is way underwater on his mortgage. His credit card debt is over
