Vancouver House

Post by Bjarke Ingels (BIG).

Bjarke Ingles is one of the most innovative starchitects in urban design right now.  This blog previous wrote about him in this 2012 post.

Vancouver House

Iranian Presidential Elections

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left) and Hooshang Amirahmadi (right)

My graduate school advisor and professor of Urban Economics is running for President in Iran.  A revered political and international development consultant to leaders in Washington and in London, Professor Hooshang Amirahmadi always contended that a Western approach to governance could quickly turn around the fortunes of Iran and speedily increase its development.  Below is the economic platform Professor Amirahmadi presents to Iran.

Of all the issues Iranians confront in deciding their next president, the economy is the most imperative. With a high inflation rate, widespread unemployment, sluggish growth, low productivity, plummeting national currency, plunging industrial production, declining income, widening income gap, and growing poverty, hardly anyone in the country is immune from the dismal state of the economy. This is unfortunate since Iran is actually a wealthy country with vast natural resources, a highly-educated workforce, arable land, diverse climates, access to the strategic waterways, and many other favorable attributes.

The economic problems and the mismatch between Iran’s economic achievements and its rich resources are largely rooted in mismanagement and economic sanctions. These and other underlying causes are removable and thus the economic problems entirely solvable if the upcoming presidential election was to produce the right executive leadership. The next president must understand Iran’s economic predicament and its causes, comprehend the world economy, and be able to put an economic development plan for the nation and implement it using a skillful team of economists and international advisors.

As President of Iran, I will turn Iran’s economic plight around by formulating an economic plan based on three principles: economic productivity, export-led industrialization, and labor-market globalization. I will also immediately remove sanctions and mismanagement by resolving the nuclear dispute, normalizing relations with the West, resolving factional infighting and appointing a highly competent economic and international advisory team. These steps will help in opening the global economy to Iran and in establishing a stable economic policy, thus creating a climate of permanency and certainty for productive investments.

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Iranian Presidential Elections

Designing African Cities

Over the past few months, I have continually wrestled with many questions stemming from an expose on Norman Foster. Norman Foster, the mastermind behind the utopian technology showcase known as Masdar City, feels that his next life challenge rests in Africa, designing urban spaces for the populations that currently fill the world's slums.  A short excerpt (seen below) has repeatedly sent my mind imaging thousands of possibilities of future urban developments, however, I constantly come back to a single quandary: how to create a city in the developing world that largely consists of young, connected, unemployed masses.  This drastically differs from the Masdar model that includes self-driving cars for its wealthy residents.  Accepting demographic constraints as reality and not having false hopes for instant fixes, the true challenge of the 21st century will be to transform urban living for masses of the world population.

Masdar City (click to enlarge)
Source: NYTimes, 9/26/2010

The following are taken from J.M. Ledgard's Norman Foster's New World in Intelligent Life magazine, November/December 2012:

Africa's population will double to 2 billion before 2050. Its urban population will more than quadruple. There are unlikely to be enough jobs for young people to stave off populist unrest. Climate change is likely to jack up food prices and exacerbate water shortages...

[Norman Foster] oversaw a project with Sagoo and others to look more closely at the Dharavi slum in Mumbai. They discovered that what people there needed was horizontal space. "They needed to make and move their products across the ground floor of a dwelling. The other side of the dwelling was the railway line where the goods were displayed and sold. This community could easily subsist in a low-rise settlement, two, maybe three or even four storeys. What would never work would be to put one dwelling on another. It would offer an improved environment, but it would be impossible for them to bake bread to earn a livelihood, or to recycle waste." What is needed in African slums", Foster ventures, "is the industrialisation of units that provide the sanitation, kitchens, energy-harvesting, run-off of rainwater, and a proper infrastructure of drains and sewers. That would be transformational, but that's a very different approach to the design-profession response to wipe it clean and superimpose another order, which completely disregards the fact that, notwithstanding the horrific deprivation, there is an underlying social order and an organic response to needs."

Photo from Foster sponsored research of African cities

Foster emerged from Manchester on his own merits and is not inclined to socialism based on sentiment. Still, the cause of African future cities need not be philanthropy. There is plenty of money to be made from squatters. Most of the economic growth in the world in the coming years will be from the poorest bits of cities in the poorest countries. Companies such as Coca-Cola and Unilever expect their profits from these communities to swell. Nokia will rise or fall according to whether slum-dwellers continue to buy its low-end phones. There is money in Foster's idea of laying down grids, especially for cities yet to be built. And there is reason to be optimistic about new technologies, such as solar-panel roof sheeting, affordable windows, LED lighting, gargantuan rainwater tanks, and high-tech latrines that pay for themselves by filtering urine into water and microwaving excrement into fuel. Africa's dense gatherings of young people present a high degree of political risk, but they also create economic value.

2012 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship Winning Proposal
(click to enlarge)

"...in an African continent [says Foster] you are creating an urban infrastructure from scratch. So instead of thinking as in the past that you have one authority talking about pylons, another rail, another roads, why not bring those together with tremendous economy and elegance?...Olmsted laid out Central Park at the time when people were herding sheep, horses and carts. Now, bringing back a pedestrian-friendly experience, taking away the dependence on gasoline, why drive when you could walk, design with an understanding that these are very scarce commodities—Africa has that opportunity."

Update (2/18/2013):  It looks like others are reaching similar conclusions...see "These May Be The Least 'Livable' Cities, But They're the Future"

Designing African Cities

The Ambassador

This political documentary tops my list of films to watch.  Danish director Mads Brügger "attempts an even more complex and daring stunt by purchasing a Liberian diplomatic title and infiltrating one of the most dangerous places on Earth -- the Central African Republic (CAR) -- as an ersatz Ambassador. His purpose? To expose the illegal blood diamond trade -- and the corrupt world of CAR officials, bogus businessmen and shady European and Asian diplomats that it benefits." -- The Huffington Post

The Ambassador

"Most of the [new city Songdo] will be wired with digital synapses—from the trunk lines running beneath the streets to the filaments branching through the walls and fixtures. To what end? [Songdo's developer] Stan Gale and his partners at Cisco Systems aren’t sure, but imagine if a city operated like an iPhone—and they could sell apps for everyday life..." — Greg Lindsay, City-in-a-Box 11/26/2011

Going Mobile!

Just A Thought... is now available on your iPhone, Blackberry, and Droid.  The Beta Version has been a popular success with its easy to use format and stripped down set-up for quick on-the-go loading times.  The structure of the blog page makes it simple to browse, while switching back and forth between the home page bios and new posts is perfectly adapted to for smartphones.  The future is now, don't let it pass you by.  Come test out the new Just A Thought... on your smartphone today!

Explore the New Features:

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Going Mobile!

Medellín: The Past and the Future

Medellín is probably the most beautiful city I have ever seen in my life.  The open streets filled with shade covering green trees, cool the City of Eternal Spring.  Open faced restaurants, bars, and cafes invite suburb-like comfort in the middle of an urban area.  It's hard to imagine that ten years ago this was the capital of the Colombian drug wars.  Although hostels repeatedly warn not to have a false sense of security, the brand new metro, the clean sidewalks, and green trees mixed with stylish buildings easily demonstrate the feats overcome by a new Medellín.

However, I did take a Pablo Escobar Tour that visited his grave site and the site where the world once most wanted man was shot, while hearing a brief history of the rise and fall of the most infamous Colombian.  The tour culminated with a final stop at an old safe-house for the Don.  We saw a couple of his run-down incognito cars (the government seized the fancy ones) that were re-outfitted to drop blinding smoke from below the trunk for easy getaways.  We saw a desk that had a secret compartment to store over $4 million cash and a secret closet where Escobar hid, not from the government, but from the electric company.  And we saw recent bullet holes in a painting and through a window, from when rebels attempted to kidnap and hold Escobar's brother for ransom.

The highlight of the safe-house was the guided tour by Escobar's brother, Roberto, the financial head of the Medellín Cartel's operations in the 70's, 80's, and 90's.  Clearly cash-strapped himself (thus offering tours of his house/museum), Roberto told fascinating stories of an escape from prison.  Pablo Escobar had agreed to go to jail only if he could build his own prison "for fear of assassinations."  Escbar constructed a mansion atop a jungle filled hill, much like that of the safe-house we walked through.  We also heard stories of assassinations and of the "truly modest" lifestyle of the Escobars (which modestly included private jets, Ferrari and motorcycle collections, and personal zoos).  As we left and paid for the tour, it felt real strange giving money directly to the Escobar family.

 

After taking a tour given by a prominant figure from Medellín's yesterday, we encountered the optimistic progress of the city's amazing transformation.  Medellín's famed cable cars connect one of the poorest neighborhoods to the rest of the city.  Climbing the mountain in these ski lift gondolas, we watched the favelas pass by below: slums of run-down brick buildings with clothes hanging to dry on flat and tin roofs.  By the time we reached the Santo Domingo Savio Library stop (the cable car has stops like the train line it's connected to), colorful murals lined the city streets.  Instead of amateur gang inspired graffiti, public service messages encouraged youth to not rob others.  If people from the center of Medellín are afraid to come to the poorer barrios, these messages explained, they will cut off those barrios' connection to the commercial centers of the city.

 

A winning platform for the his reelection, the mayor used a Spanish grant to build a new library in the poorest barrio of the city.  Business leaders, still hurting from lingering violence, saw improving the incomes of those most vulnerable to thuggery as the only solution to expanding the economy of Medellín (after all other resolutions had been exhausted).  Going against the everlong worldwide trend to isolate the poor, Medellín's progressive library led to the construction of cable cars that run along the main metro.  It now hosts classes for kids, workshops for adults, a community museum with a photo exhibit "from the barrio for the barrio."  

 

Our group of Gringo tourists clearly felt put out of place by the curious eyes that followed us around this poor barrio, signalling the pride the barrio takes in having created its own commercial center; it does not revolve around tourism.  The barrio started to experience growth simply by increasing its connectivity.  When I poked my head into a small apartment where a family was watching the Colombia vs Bolivia fútbol game, they invited me in to sit down on the couch and have lunch with them.  When I later sat at a street-side bar to catch the second half of the game in front of a large big-screen, I did not feel like I was in the center of a favela.  The surrounding streets offered an air of hope in one of the poorest barrios in Medellín.  If only the rest of the world could begin to adopt creatively progressive measures (like a cheap gondola instead of a pricey metro), cities could incorporate people of all classes to combat yesterday's urban problems.

Medellín: The Past and the Future

Did Global Warming Cause the Arab Riots?

It’s no secret rising food and commodity prices have driven people in poor countries to desperation.  Dictators in place for thirty years are finally falling after a combination of missteps.  Following years of corruption and mismanagement, crumbling financial security is prompting traditional powers to eliminate costly subsidies on food and oil.  All the while, commodity prices are rising with the depletion of crops due to floods and droughts.  Reaching a tipping point with exorbitantly high prices for basic goods, desperate people are fighting back against the status quo.

Nobel Prize Winning
Economist Paul Krugman

Last month I discussed how rising food prices contributed to the riots in Tunisia, in Egypt, and in Bolivia.  I also explained how Iran successfully managed (at least for the time being) to divert attention away from the rising costs of basic goods.  Today Paul Krugman (the Nobel Prize winning economist and movie star extraordinaire in Get Him to the Greek) went one step further.  He asserted that global warming caused the recent unrest.

Most economists cite a number of factors contributing to rising commodity prices. Commodities began their steep rise with the 2008 boom coinciding precisely with the stock market’s collapse.  The financial crisis made government issued currencies less stable, thus commodities became coveted assets.  Around that same time, a large shift in investment directed capital towards emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China.  BRIC nations’ growth increased global demand for commodities as the countries became progressively wealthy and their purchasing power swelled.  And with recent floods and droughts, extreme weather destroyed crops in some of the biggest food producing nations, cutting world food supply and driving up prices.

Up until July, food prices were 

dipping while other commodities 

were on the rise.

Krugman’s assertion is that popular rationales relating to the financial crisis and the emergence of BRIC economies are misguided. Changes in wealth don’t affect the amount of food people eat (with the exception of extremely poor countries, ie, not BRIC nations, and with the other exception of meat consumption, ie, not wheat, corn, rice, or other grains).  Also, food prices, in relation to other non-food commodities, have grown slower than their counterparts from September 2008 to Summer 2010.  Petroleum products and precious metals witnessed steeper price rises than those of food experienced, which would indicate that food prices, relative to others, have not grown as fast as an economic crisis trigger would suggest.  The graph on the left shows 2010 commodity prices, with food well below the average in the first half of the year.

Krugman’s argument stems from the sudden rise of food prices in July 2010.  Russia, the world’s third biggest wheat exports, sold 63.7 million metric tons in international markets in 2009. This past summer, Russia experienced 100˚F temperatures for the first time in Moscow’s history.  In response to arid droughts, grain production in the former USSR dropped almost 40%.  China, the world’s largest producer of wheat, is “bracing for its worst drought in 200 years”.  This year, 12.75 million acres, or 37%, of its wheat fields have already been destroyed.  For the first time in the Communist Regime, China might have to import wheat from international markets.  Australia, Canada, India, and Brazil were all plagued with floods, contributing to the total wipeout of 20 million tons of global wheat production per month.  Accordingly, world food and commodity prices keep steadily rising.

Wheat prices skyrocketed in July 2010, just as 

Russia’s drought began.

Diversified world production (with crops grown on many different continents) and disaster-ready stockpile reserves all account for normal weather afflictions like isolated droughts or small river-caused floods.  Isolated cases, like the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, can stand alone.  But patterns of extreme weather, such as those in 2010, suggest a global trend.  2010 was the hottest year on Earth.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Earth’s temperature rose 1.22˚F higher than normal.  20% of the world’s landmass reached record high temperatures! As Krugman notes, “both droughts and floods are natural consequences of a warming world: droughts because it’s hotter, floods because warm oceans release more water vapor.” Droughts and floods kill crops and whither world food supply.  This new wave of extreme weather pushes commodity prices higher than ever.

Even though the current unrest is not as singly focused on global warming as Dr. Krugman suggests, extreme weather is driving up food and commodity prices to record highs.  Poor, hungry people in Tunisia and Egypt desperately fight against rising food prices.  Despite their lack of familiarity with the intricate workings of commodity exchanges, people taking to the streets directly feel the effects of expensive food in their wallets and stomachs.

Resistant business interests provide powerful lobbies against structural change driven by Global Warming environmental regulation.  They wholeheartedly attack the merits of climate change.  But when the status quo gets shaken with political upheaval, businesses, politicians, and the general public all take notice.  At this point, the new order in the Middle East might not be directly tied to climate change.  However, if food driven riots continue to manifest, food security will soon become too big a problem to ignore.

Did Global Warming Cause the Arab Riots?

Muhammad Yunus on Microcredit and Loan Sharks

Here's a follow up to November's microcredit post, written in response to Indian governors attacking microcredit and encouraging loan recipients to default on their payments:

"In the 1970s, when I began working here on what would eventually be called 'microcredit,' one of my goals was to eliminate the presence of loan sharks who grow rich by preying on the poor...At that time, I never imagined that one day microcredit would give rise to its own breed of loan sharks...

"Many lenders started looking for ways to make a profit on the loans by shifting from their status as nonprofit organizations to commercial enterprises...To ensure that the small loans would be profitable for their shareholders, such banks needed to raise interest rates and engage in aggressive marketing and loan collection...

"Credit programs that seek to profit from the suffering of the poor should not be described as 'microcredit,' and investors who own such programs should not be allowed to benefit from the trust and respect that microcredit banks have rightly earned."

-- Muhammad Yunus, founder of Microcredit and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, "Sacrificing Microcredit for Megaprofits," (1/14/2011)

Muhammad Yunus on Microcredit and Loan Sharks

International Space Station Photos taken by Astronaut Colonel Douglas H. Wheelock

The Discovery takes off on September 23rd, 2010 for a
three month stay at the International Space Station.

Hurricane Earl as seen from space.  As the astronaughts move through space at
5 miles/hour in respect to Earth, the sun rises and sets 16 times each day.

My favorite shot of the collection.  Astronaut works on repairs to the space station.

Europe at night.  Notice the fog over England and the bright lights centered in Paris.

In contrast, this is Egypt.  Notice the natural concentration of life around the
Nile River and Cairo as the Biblical river spills into the Mediterranean.
The desert is void while life huddles close to water sources.

This one isn't actually from the space station.  It's the map program (ArcGIS) that I'll
use in the future to plan cities, incorporating important factors like available water sources.
The screenshot is equally as telling as the photos of human settlements above.

For the full photo set from Colonel Wheelock's stay at the space station, click here.

International Space Station Photos taken by Astronaut Colonel Douglas H. Wheelock

King Abdullah Economic City



King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia



In Saudi Arabia, half the population is under the age of twenty.  In addition to foreseeable problems with the future labor force, an unbalanced demographic distribution has strong implications for regional stability.  Responsive Saudi Sheiks address both modernity and lopsided population growth with an ambitious regional project.  In a barren desert enclave on the edge of the Red Sea, the kingdom will construct a new urban development, outside the grasp of religious clerics, to spur economic progress.

King Abdullah Financial District as
designed by Henning Larsen Architects

Saudi Arabia announced the construction of a Chinese-style “economic zone,” King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC, pronounced “Cake”).  To attract investment and talent, security protocols, reminiscent of oil compounds, will insulate Western cultural freedoms (equal women’s rights, religious autonomy, foreigner land ownership, modern technology) within its borders etched in by high-speed expressways.  What appears to be the Sheik’s personal Dubai, this special zone will disburse and re-circulate the kingdom’s oil wealth throughout the country’s economy.

Beyond overcoming religious opposition in an Islamic territory, developing a city from scratch is as awe-inspiring as flying a rocket to the moon.  Line Thorup Schultz heads the Danish team from Henning Larsen Architects that won the contract to design the kingdom’s financial district.  Ms. Schultz integrated corporate towers, 400,000 residential apartments, houses, and villas, a co-ed university campus, four underground parking lots, a circling monorail, two kilometers of air-conditioned sidewalks, countless plazas, three mosques, and one of the world’s largest and most technologically advanced ports.  The goal of King Abdullah Economic City is to diversify Saudi Arabia’s petrol-dominated economy and to create over one million jobs when KAEC is fully completed.

Bill Ch'ng, Executive Director of Malaysia
Pacific Corp, showing off a 60,000 person
development within Iskandar Malaysia 

If KAEC is as successful as the Dubai sized dreams of the Sheiks, three more zones to fuel China-like economic growth are set to be build across the country by 2030.  Each new city will focus on either scientific research, heavy industry, or agriculture.  

KAEC represents the growing demand for regional planning avant-garde masterpieces in the new millennium.  Stemming from the success of China’s “special economic zones,” most notably the city of Shenzhen, countries eager to quickly develop have constructed (or began building) Duabi, Masdar City, and Iskandar Malaysia.  While the Middle East and Asia prepare for the 21^st century, if cities focused on economic growth keep flourishing, the urban and regional planning industry will follow suit with equally fast paced and elaborate expansion.  Castles-in-the-sky will continue to become world-changing realities.

Click links for further reading on King Abdullah Economic City, Masdar City, Shenzhen, or Iskandar Malaysia.


UPDATE: "According to World Bank estimates of 2007 there are more than 3,000 projects taking place in [Special Economic Zones] in 120 countries worldwide."  AND "According to the UN’s Population Division, by 2050 around 70% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas."  This is GREAT news for the planning industry!

King Abdullah Economic City

I'm On a Roll!

Earlier this week, The Economist posted an interactive US map, which separates states by categories such as unemployment and party affiliation. In September, I likewise compared two maps: one organized by state voting habits, the other organized by state poverty rates. The Economist publication reaffirms the roll I’ve been on this week. Three times after writing original analyses, influential new sources published similar reports. I proudly take this as confirmation that my ideas are on the right track.

Seeking to bank off the The Economist’s popularity and the striking resemblance between our two reports, in the online magazine’s comment section I linked my old post. Since yesterday, “Just a Thought…” welcomed HUNDREDS of new readers from 44 different countries!

I would personally like to thank all of my new visitors for stopping by and send a salute out to readers in the United States, Bolivia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Micronesia, Brazil, Spain, Hong Kong, France, Japan, Sweden, Italy, Australia, Iceland, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Pakistan, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Lithuania, Portugal, Argentina, Estonia, Egypt, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Vietnam, South Africa, Jordan, Colombia, Cambodia, New Zealand, Romania, Qatar, China, Mexico, and Iran.

Welcome to the development blog that tracks global inequality, US politics, international organizations, and personal experience in developing countries. Please add “Just a Thought…” to your regular reading lists, as we post new commentary every week.

I'm On a Roll!

Who spent the night smoking Cuban cigars and drinking Flor de Caña (the world’s best rum) with an ex-South American President?

Carlos Mesa (President of Bolivia: 17 October 2003 – 6 June 2005).

From what I understand, President Mesa was the Jimmy Carter of Bolivia – an impressively smart historian who was better served as a journalist than an ineffective politician. When I asked him what an idealistic, economic development specialist could do to change the world, he said, “Don’t be idealistic, it gets you nowhere. Concentrate on something small and build it up step by step.”

Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa is the first Latin American author to win the Nobel Prize since Gabriel García Márquez (1982) and Octavio Paz (1990). The Peruvian Vargas Llosa is famous for his exposures of Latin American structures of power and corruption. Here are reviews of two of his publications that I desperately want to get my hands on:

The Feast of the Goat
Mario Vargas Llosa, a former candidate for the presidency of Peru, is better placed than most novelists to write about the machinations of Latin American politics. In The Feast of the Goat he offers a vivid re-creation of the Dominican Republic during the final days of General Rafael Trujillo's insidious and evil regime. Told from several viewpoints, the book has three distinctive, alternating strands. There is Urania Cabral, the daughter of Trujillo's disgraced secretary of state, who has returned to Santo Domingo after more than 30 years. Now a successful New York lawyer, Urania has never forgiven her aging and paralyzed father, Agustín, for literally sacrificing her to the carnal despot in the hope of regaining his political post. Flipping back to May of 1961, there is a group of assassins, all equally scarred by Trujillo, waiting to gun the Generalissimo down. Finally there is an astonishing portrait of Trujillo--the Goat--and his grotesque coterie. Llosa depicts Trujillo as a villain of Shakespearean proportions. He is a preening, macho dandy who equates his own virility with the nation's health. An admirer of Hitler "not for his ideas but for the way he wore a uniform" (fittingly he equips his secret police force with a fleet of black Volkswagen Beetles), Trujillo even has his own Himler in Colonel Abbes Garcia, a vicious torturer with a predilection for the occult.

As the novel edges toward Trujillo's inevitable murder, Urania's story gets a bit lost in the action; the remaining narratives however, are rarely short of mesmerizing. Trujillo's death unleashes a new order, but not the one expected by the conspirators. Enslaved by the soul of the dead chief, neither they nor the Trujillo family--who embark on a hideous spree of bloody reprisals--are able to fill the void. Llosa has them all skillfully outmaneuvered by the puppet-president Joaquín Belaguer, a former poet who is the very antithesis of the machismo Goat. Savage, touching, and bleakly funny, this compelling book gives an all too human face to one of Latin America's most destructive tyrants. -- Amazon.com


The City and the Dogs
Translated to over 30 languages, this is perhaps Vargas Llosa’s most violent book. Set in a military school in Lima, where an unwritten code of survival of the fittest is imposed. Here, he focuses on the brutality of military life and the strong pyramidal hierarchy that mirrors Peruvian society, where violence, exploitation and human degradation are the guarantee so that each layer of the pyramid maintains its place. All the conflicts of Peruvian society arise with rage and impotence in this testimonial novel in which Vargas Llosa, paints a social and political picture. -- Amazon.com

Vargas Llosa

With Shoelace Robinson hurt, who's the new face of Michigan sports?

It looks like my hard work with Sports Marketing back in college is finally paying off. Apparently, the University of Michigan finally decided to use this beautiful face as its new poster boy for its Sports Marketing program. The school deftly waited until after they booted Loyd Carr and for Rich Rod to start winning before promoting this new look. A wise decision indeed. I'm liking this pizza delivery boy Athletic Director more and more.

I also want to give a shout out to Case for somehow finding the link to the Michigan Sports Marketing website.

With Shoelace Robinson hurt, who's the new face of Michigan sports?

The Bourne Identity

In an attempt to work out my visa situation and become a legally documented worker in Bolivia, I've encountered some interesting and shady practices. Most business transactions down here are lubricated with a little extra cash, but I actually met a guy who makes James Bond movies feel realistic.

I'm not part of any underground networks, but I was easily able to meet a guy offering to forge me a Bolivian birth certificate and passport. This guy was simple enough to find. I just responded to a newspaper ad for an agency that specializes in official documents. Mr. X claims that his documents will gain me LEGAL residency and nationality. He says that the documents are 100% real, they're just obtained in a sideways manner. He insists that I would have no need to worry, records in Bolivia aren't kept on computers or electronic networks. On top of this, Mr. X only charges $300 for these false, or ambiguously obtained, documents.

I'm not going to start preaching my ignorance to how things works with government officials in the Third World, as daily television reports always remind me of new scandals of politicians skimming money off the top of public funds. As amazing as it is that obtaining false documents would be so easy, I don't think I'm prepared for the undercover life of Jason Bourne and forged passports.

The Bourne Identity

“The leader’s main job is to make themselves obsolete.” -- Lao Tsu

I Am Officially an Illegal Alien!

Thanks to a job that hires employees under short term consulting contracts, the Ministry of Work won't grant me the proper documents that state that I'm a full time employee qualified for a work visa. Due to these complications, I have yet to change my official status as I watched my tourist visa expire over the weekend. I am now an illegal alien. My biggest worry now is how to get back home for Thanksgiving?

I Am Officially an Illegal Alien!

"Traders and financial engineers trade on every piece of data. Those that work from quantitative formulas that drive trades based on data input. Not a single one of them acts like a shareholder. And that is the reality of the stock market. The market is no longer driven by shareholders. The market is driven by formulas that drive trades...The stock market today is dominated by financial engineers and traders. Institutions who look for the loopholes and exploit them. Thats not a bad thing. There will always be loopholes, and they will always find them. But at least with the tax, when they do, we are protecting ourselves a little bit..."

"...Just as hackers search for and exploit operating system and application shortcomings, traders do the same thing. A hacker will tell you that they are serving a purpose by identifying the weak links in your system. A trader will tell you they deserve the pennies they are making on the trade because they provide liquidity to the market. The important issue is recognizing that Wall Street is no longer what it was designed to be. Wall Street was designed to be a market to which companies provide securities (stocks/bonds), from which they received capital that would help them start/grow/sell businesses. Investors made their money by recognizing value where others did not, or by simply committing to a company and growing with it as a shareholder, receiving dividends or appreciation in their holdings. What percentage of the market is driven by investors these days?"

-- Mark Cuban, Tax the Hell Out of Wall Street and Give It to Main Street and What Business is Wall Street In?

Seinfeld Quote of the Day

Costanza: Steven, nothing is higher than an architect.

Steven: I think I'd really like to be a city planner. Why limit myself to just one building when I can design a whole city?

For Video, Watch Here

Seinfeld Quote of the Day