Jacob Mikanowski: prediction

Transcript context

…I looked at some data recently. The most rapidly growing economy in Eastern Europe is Poland — no surprise. But №2 is Albania. And the place is booming. What happened there? No one expected that. What have they done right? It struck me — I was in Albania. I really did a deep tour of Albania and the Albaniphone regions next to it last year. And you do feel that boom. You can feel there’s a lot of Gulf investment, Saudi investment. There’s a ton of road building. There’s a ton of, actually, really good cultural infrastructure being built. They’re doing a great job with museums and heritage. I was renting a car from somebody — a little Albanian car rental. The guy told me he spends six months in Albania; the other six months he goes to Great Britain. He works outside London as a programmer. He had programmed, he had designed, all his car rental agency’s programming. I think there’s an openness. I think you have return migration from Italy and Switzerland and the UK that’s doing well. There’s enormous untapped tourism potential, because it’s the last piece of European — really prime Mediterranean coastline that hasn’t been developed deeply, extensively. In a small country, I think that really matters. What else? I’m not sure. It’s under 3 million people, so small effects can have big consequences. Why are there so few Christian-Muslim problems in Albania relative to many other places in the world?…

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