Secretive friends

As Iranian President Ahmadinejad began a South American tour and arrived in Caracas today, the Spanish newspaper El Pais wondered what the flight between Caracas, Damascus and Tehran is. At least a weird strategy from the Venezuelan state company Conviasa, which confessed it was an economical nonsense. The airline only serves seven international destinations including neighbors Port of Spain, Saint Vincent, Grenada or Dominica.

Fatal tension

Very few other places in the world face such a potential tension as Colombia and Venezuela. An old border conflict, two completely different political regimes, stories of rebels and paramilitaries, drug traffic… It is even a miracle if the situation has not degenerated more. Another case has inflamed the tensions. Eight Colombians (and also one Peruvian and one Venezuelan) have been killed in Venezuela. Nobody knows who they are, who killed them and how they have been killed.

And the winner of the crisis is…

It seems to be the confirmation that the international crisis will hit the most fragile economies. Again and again. And the confirmation comes from the study of… a financial organization ! It is a very interesting study that the analysts of UBS just published. The report talks about the prices and earnings in the biggest cities in the world. Those days the only statistics that the media have highlighted is the “big mac stat”, i.e. how long people have to work to buy a Big Mac. Good standard but it is not the only one in the study.