People always ask me if they should buy gold. I always tell them it’s overvalued, but I’ve been saying that for years. Gold keeps going up in price for no good reason. That’s how bubbles are. It may be obvious that an asset (Beanie Babies, tech stocks, residential real estate) is overvalued, but the price… [Read More]
Blog
Category: Emerging Markets
Liberia: The House at Sugar Beach
Liberia is fascinating. The country was founded by Americans and is the only American colonial nation where resettlement was involved – there was never an effort to encourage Americans to move to the Philippines or Puerto Rico. Liberia (literally, “Land of Freedom”) was founded in 1822 by American abolitionists who thought it would be great… [Read More]
The Middle East after the Arab Spring
In October, I attended a panel presentation on the Middle East after the Arab Spring at Chicago Ideas Week. You can see a video of the discussion; I had some thoughts on it from an investment perspective. It was a strong group of speakers: Bobby Ghosh of Time International, Eric Davis of Rutgers University, Rula… [Read More]
Guinea: Buried Secrets
Guinea, which is next to Guinea-Bissau (which itself has been known simply as Guinea at times, just to keep us all confused), is a former French colony with a population of 11 million people who have a per-capita GDP of $1100. Obviously, it’s a very poor country, but it sits on what may be phenomenal… [Read More]
Thomas Friedman discovers consignment stores
Oh, what do we do with Thomas Friedman? The naif let loose in the big scary world? Last Sunday, he wrote about an amazing new factor in the global economy: people selling used clothing! How he missed eBay, I’ll never know, let alone the world of consignment stores and high-end charity thrift stores. This isn’t… [Read More]
