Australia is known as the “Lucky Country” since it hasn’t had a recession for the highest number of years. In addition the country is also lucky because it is blessed with rich natural resources. Some of the other countries without recessions in many years are shown in the chart below:
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Source: RFE/RL
It is interesting that India is the next top country with no recessions since 1996.
The Shanghai Composite is leading global indices this year with a jump of over 21% so far. India is up by over 5% while Brazil has increased by a decent 12% year-to-date. In developed Europe, DAX is up by over 10%. It remains to be see if the rest of the year adds more returns to global markets or they where they will end by December.
Below are some interesting reads for this weekend:
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Prague, Czech Republic
One of the scariest roads in the world is the road from Kallikratis to Frangokastello in the island of Crete, Greece. The below video of this road going downward was shot by Dave Wood:
Source: Dave Wood via Crete Blog
The periodic table of elements was invented by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869. At that time the table had 64 elements. Since then many elements have been discovered and added to the table. The following infographic shows the evolution of the periodic table:
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Source: RFE/RL