Monday, October 5, 2009

Back...exhausted

On the way to Argentina, a fire in the airplane forced an emergency landing in Cancun. After a 19 hour delay in Cancun where I got maybe 4 hours of sleep, we continued our journey and finally made it to Buenos Aires in the middle of the night and I got another 4 hours of sleep. After that, I was never able to catch up, and then hopped on the overnight home to find the flight from Dallas to Portland was cancelled. Sigh....

So I am too tired to think...or blog. Though the former is not always a conditions for the latter.

Try to get some energy tomorrow. Until then a random observation:

The one interesting difference in the talk at the conference this year relative to last was that last year it was all about how big the crisis was going to be, how long it was going to last, etc. This year is was all about lessons learned for economists and how these can be incorporated into economic theory. Just about everyone thinks the main crisis is over, BTW, but that the recovery will be long.

Oh and one other observation: when the host city for the 2016 Olympic Games was announced my Brazilians friends were bemused. They kinda like the idea or Brazil being chosen, but the reality of the diversion of public money and the inevitable corruption that would ensue was not worth it in their minds. Still it is a good time to be a Brazilian in Argentina: the footballing fortunes of the two countries are divergent and the World Cup and the Olympics are both going to go to Brazil in the near future. Brazil really has transcended the rest of South America and is poised to be the leader in the 21st century.

No comments: