Welcome back!
I owe the title of this piece to John Hempton, an Australian who writes the excellent Bronte Capital blog , who told me that the number of visits to his site increased a hundredfold when in 2008 he published a piece with the title “Hookers that cost too much, flash German cars and insolvent banks: an introduction to Swedbank’s Baltic homeland.” It was a long and complex analysis of sovereign risk and bank insolvency in the Baltic States, and ultimately fascinating, but he probably wouldn’t have snagged more than 50 readers without that title. Let’s see if it works for me.
Several years ago I was talking business with a Frenchman in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, and the topic turned to the very visible Chinese presence in the city, where they were building a soccer stadium, among other projects. He was one of those expatriates who has lived in a place for years and years, and knows everyone and everything. The Malagasy people were getting fed up, he said, with the Chinese taking over every economic activity in sight. Even the local bar girls – and Madagascar has some stunningly beautiful women – were now facing stiff competition from Chinese hookers. I didn’t undertake my own investigation, but I am not surprised. The Chinese, and, to a lesser degree, other Asians, are everywhere on the continent, and the people are not happy about it. [click to continue…]
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