Market Chaos In North Korea: Currency Crisis Devastates Trade
September 2nd, 2025
Via Daily NK, an article on how a currency crisis is devastating North Korean trade: A wave of inflation is crushing North Korean markets as exchange rates soar and the local currency plummets. The dollar’s value has jumped 20-30% virtually overnight, throwing market merchants into turmoil. Yet instead of giving traders more freedom to adapt, authorities are tightening their grip on market activities. […]
Read more »Tiny Caribbean Island Makes Millions From Its Web Address
September 2nd, 2025
Via BBC, a look at how sheer luck made this tiny Caribbean island millions from its web address: Back in the 1980s when the internet was still in its infancy, countries were being handed their own unique website addresses to navigate this nascent new online world. Such as .us for the US or .uk for […]
Read more »Trump’s Congo Gamble: Critical Minerals and a Dangerous New Bargain
August 31st, 2025
Via The Africa Report, a report on the Trump administration’s controversial agreement with Kinshasa, tying US access to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) mineral reserves to expanded security assistance in the east, a region convulsed by conflict with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels: The minerals that will power the world’s green transition could trap the Democratic […]
Read more »Airlines Now Pay The Taliban $700 A Flight—Their New Cash Cow For ‘Safe Passage’ Over Afghanistan
August 31st, 2025
Via View from the Wing, a look at how airlines now pay for ‘safe passage’ over Afghanistan: Russian airspace has been off-limits to most Western carriers since the start of the Ukraine war. For U.S. airlines that means a much less direct route, longer flight times and more fuel burn. Large swaths of the Middle […]
Read more »North Korea’s Processed Goods Push Meets China’s Cold Market Reality
August 31st, 2025
Via The Diplomat, a report on how Chinese traders want North Korean companies to continue to export raw materials, which conflicts with the North Korean regime’s policy of exporting processed goods: As North Korea seeks to develop its economy by exporting more processed goods, Chinese buyers still prefer raw materials, putting North Korean traders in a pickle. “Trading companies that work with China in […]
Read more »North Korea’s Glossy New Surface: Apps, Beaches and a Fake Starbucks
August 25th, 2025
Courtesy of the New York Times, a report on some videos taken by visitors to North Korea provide a rare glimpse of how it’s mimicking the consumerism of the outside world: North Korea is taking inspiration from the West. In Pyongyang, elites drink coffee at a fake Starbucks and pay by mobile phone. About 100 […]
Read more »Focusing primarily on The New Seven Sisters - the largely state owned petroleum companies from the emerging world that have become key players in the oil & gas industry as identified by Carola Hoyos, Chief Energy Correspondent for The Financial Times - but spanning other nascent opportunities around the globe that may hold potential in the years ahead, Wildcats & Black Sheep is a place for the adventurous to contemplate & evaluate the emerging markets of tomorrow.