Juanson World

I've been in Buenos Aires for 4 days now and I am enchanted once again by this beautiful city. I have eaten steak dinners at world-class restaurants, sat and people watched among throngs on sidewalk cafes, and partied until 7 am. I must say that the porteño lifestyle is quite enviable. However, I would say that a cabbie summed the Argentine paradox best when he told me, "We think we are a first-world country, yet we are nothing more than a banana republic."

Here's a good summary of Argentina's recent crisis by Dan Krishock, who is the managing editor of the Buenos Aires Herald, the English-language daily in BsAs which has been around since the 1870s.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentaries/commentary_text.php4?id=769〈=1&m=contributor

I met Dan today in the Herald offices, he has a pretty cool life story: he has been in Argentina for 10 years. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone, then worked for the Rockefeller Foundation after getting his MPP at the Kennedy School in 1991. We commiserated on our mutual distaste on the inefficiencies of the international development sector. Dan landed in BA and in journalism almost by accident, having met his wife, an Argentine, in Cambridge when she was in the Graduate School of Education. We'll see what's next for me.