I promised you some pictures of Santiago, and here they are. Yesterday was a busy day, touring the winery, finding dinner, and preparing to leave the financial capital of Chile…

Which is why I’m writing you from the picturesque, bucolic town of Pucon.

This town has only about 10,000 residents, but this number can swell to well over 80,000 during peak seasons, like skiing in winter. So tourism is a big part of the economy in this region. Continue Reading »

Members of APEC, Asian-Pacifice Economic Cooperation, ended their annual summits today in Lima, Peru. One of the main topics, besides the economic crisis, was free trade.

(By the way, APEC consists of member economies like China, Vietnam, the U.S., Canada, Russia, Peru, and Chile, among others.)

Free trade is a hot topic right now, with the dreaded “P” word floating about: protectionism. Protectionism is when governments restrict or restrain international trade. Most times the intent is to protect local markets from competition.

Like if the U.S. government says a tomato farmer in Mexico can no longer export his product to the States because its so much cheaper compared to an American farmer’s product.

The 21 leaders meeting in Lima have agreed to “avoid protectionist measures and keep trade free despite the economic climate,” reports the BBC. The members signed a final declaration backing free trade on Monday.

Free trade is only part of the equation, though, and governments have also agreed to support economic stimulus plans that will boost spending.

In fact, the APEC member governments are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on ways to stop the economic crisis, says the International Herald Tribune. Not all the cards are on the table, though, and there hasn’t been a clear-cut plan held up for the public’s eye. Not yet, anyway.

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The world’s head was spinning faster than Linda Blair’s; its markets falling quicker than a dead body off the Jersey bridge; the wailing was louder than Jamie Lee Curtis’s famous screams in Halloween.

Look at the carnage since August 4:

Dow down 15%
Nasdaq down 23%
FTSE down 13%
DAX down 17%

But to ulitmate lows? Let’s look again:

Dow down 31%
Nasdaq down 35%
FTSE down 32%
DAX down 37%

Asian markets were hit even harder: The Nikkei has dropped 30% since August 4, but had dropped as far as 47% at its ultimate lows. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong was the worst performer of major, though. It has fallen an amazing 36% since August 4, and a whopping 53% at its ultimate lows.

Not even India’s Bombay exchange has fallen as far as the Hang Seng.

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Consolidation comes in many forms… Buying up assets or operations, buying stakes in operations or companies, merging operations, takeovers, the list goes on and on.

But one thing that has started gaining interest in the mainstream media is exchange consolidation.

Remember last summer when the Chicago Merchantile Exchange bought the Chicago Board of Trade? Or when the Group decided to by Nymex the following March for $11 billion? Or when NYSE Euronext bid for AMEX? When Nasdaq wanted to buy London and the OMX?

These merging markets offer considerable cost savings, a uniform platform, and an ease of cross-transactions that could ultimately create a “flat world” of international trading.

This behavior is starting to trickle into emerging markets as regional stock exchanges gain market capitalization and foreign interest. For example, Wiener Börse, operator of the Vienna stock market, just announced that it would buy the majority stake in the Prague Stock Exchange.

The deal is worth about $264 million, and Wiener Börse beat out other regional rivals, like Deutsche Boerse and the OMX Nordic Exchange. The Warsaw Exchange, Wiener Börse’s main competitor, was kept out of the bidding process because it’s a state-owned business.

But this isn’t the first market Vienna’s gotten its paws on…

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