Category: Z Legacy: Expat

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Vast business and investment opportunities in Mongolia

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

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The worst you can do in this country is make 28%

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.

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If the US goes, won’t the rest of the world be even worse?

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)

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We live in an economic dictatorship

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

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Cambodia– almost endless opportunities

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

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How’s this for social unrest?

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

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Thailand: Not letting a good crisis go to waste

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

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Health care costs got you down? Try internationalizing.

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

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How bankrupt governments will confiscate your gold

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

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How to explain Greece to a complete idiot / politician

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

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If you want more jobs, look to Steve Jobs

October 6, 2011 Hong Kong You’ve undoubtedly heard by now that Steve Jobs passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer; it’s been all over the news with wall-to-wall coverage, and iCandle vigils have sprung up all over the world. Jobs is being remembered as a pioneer, a technological revolutionary, a visionary. 

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Why you want to store gold overseas… and how

Reporting from Hong Kong It’s the Chung Yeung Festival holiday in Hong Kong today… it’s nothing but an excuse to go shopping (and sing Elvis tunes in public). Think Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving) in the US or Boxing Day in the UK on steroids. One of the big differences is that, aside

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