The Curious Tale Of The World-Beating Somali Shilling
June 13th, 2015
Courtesy of The Financial Times, an interesting article on the Somali shilling: Here’s a pecuniary peculiarity to rival Bitcoin – the world strongest currency over the past 12 months belongs to a small, war-torn African state without foreign currency reserves or any discernible monetary policy and a central bank of only three years’ standing. Yet […]
Read more »How Corruption Helped North Korea
June 13th, 2015
Via the Carnegie Endowment, an interesting look at the role that corruption may have played in helping North Korea: “Nobody stole under Stalin,” many old-timers in the former Soviet Union like to say. Many North Koreans who remember the reign of Kim Il-sung—known as “The Great Leader,” “Sun of the Nation,” and “Generalissimo”—felt the same […]
Read more »There’s An App For That … In Myanmar
June 2nd, 2015
Via The Diplomat, an interesting report on Myanmar developers who are capitalizing on a growing demand for local mobile apps: In 2004, the same year Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates, an 18-year-old in Yangon was hard at work on Myanmar’s first smartphone app. Their lives couldn’t have been more different. While […]
Read more »Bolivia’s Economic Growth
June 2nd, 2015
Via The World Folio, an interesting look at Bolivia’s economic growth: Bolivia has made more economic progress since President Evo Morales took office in 2006 than in all the preceding 180 years, and not just thanks to the nationalization of its extensive oil and gas resources. Despite the collapse in world hydrocarbon prices, the economy […]
Read more »Chinese Railway Diplomacy: Fostering Regional Change With Global Implications
May 26th, 2015
Courtesy of STRATFOR (subscription required), a very interesting look at China’s railway diplomacy One of the highlights of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to Latin America has been the continued discussion of a proposed transcontinental railway linking the east coast ports of Brazil to the west coast ports of Peru. The ambitious project, which in earlier […]
Read more »Pakistan’s Balochistan Natural Gas Reserves
May 20th, 2015
Via Global Voices online, an interesting look at Balochistan’s natural gas potential: Balochistan is the most underdeveloped province of Pakistan, and Dera Bugti is one of the most underdeveloped parts of this province. In Dera Bugti is located Sui, the area which has come to be the backbone of Pakistan’s economy. Natural gas was discovered at Sui […]
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.