Via The Gates Foundation, a very interesting commentary in his 2014 annual letter on the world’s “poor” nations: POOR COUNTRIES ARE DOOMED TO STAY POOR I’ve heard this myth stated about lots of places, but most often about Africa. A quick Web search will turn up dozens of headlines and book titles such as ‘How […]
Read more »Via Asia Confidential, an interesting article on frontier markets and Vietnam in particular: People go to a retail store searching for bargains. If an item is priced at a 50% discount, they might buy it or search a nearby store or online to see if they can get it even cheaper. If a store has […]
Read more »Via Foreign Policy, an interesting look at the rapid interest in MINTS: The BRIC countries, the original four mega economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China added South Africa around the time of the last World Cup to its group of developing economic giants. The original four economies and its later partner were seen by […]
Read more »Via his blog, Mark Mobius’ views on many emerging economies for 2014 and beyond: As we embark upon a new year, the Templeton Emerging Markets Group believes 2014 could be an important year for many emerging markets, possibly establishing trends that could play out through much of the remainder of the decade. In particular, Chinese […]
Read more »Via Foreign Policy, a detailed look at the Mekong River region: Trade flows: borders converging on the Mekong River Mainland Southeast Asia — long fought over and controlled by outside powers, from the colonial era through the Cold War — is finally fending for itself, and then some. Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, which were once […]
Read more »Via Ozy, an interesting look at Colombia: Ten years ago, the world had written Colombia off as a tangled wreckage of drug cartels, Marxist guerrillas and paramilitary death squads, where violence was the norm and hope was for the naïve. But now many Colombians are dreaming of what only a few years ago seemed unthinkable […]
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