One of my favorite dinners is bar-b-q baby-back ribs. As much as I like all things pork, I find that it is the sauce that really makes the ribs experience. We like our home-made rib sauce so much, we joke that you could cover an old leather shoe in it and still find it tasty. [...]

In obvious juxtaposition to the previous article, here is a “pick-me-up”. Why I am so optimistic on the Brazilian economy:

First, an education:

The country’s land mass is approx 90% the area of the USA (big) – 3.1M sq mi (Brazil) vs 3.5M sq mi (USA).
Population: almost 200M people. (5th most populous country)
Language: Portuguese
Main religion: catholic (almost [...]

Those that had invested in Russia over the past 10 years have ridden an even larger roller coaster than what we’ve experienced here in the US. Here is a snapshot of the broad Russian stock market index over the past 13 years or so:

stock market index value 67 in March 1996
540 in Oct 1997 (you [...]