A couple of interesting ideas there. Sweden indeed has that interesting finance minister causing a ruckus but I doubt if he can overcome decades of socialism in a short period of time. By being outside the euro, Sweden has at least managed to retain sovereignty over its finances and it will survive the euro demolition well. Its a really expensive place to operate (friends of mine have gold and rare earth interests there, and while the projects are of top quality, its about double the cost to drill than doing so in the USA. And dont buy a drink as the bill will give you a heart attack!) and there are the same entrenched social welfare costs that make Europe cripplingly expensive to operate in. And wealth taxes are prohibitive - lots of Swedes emigrated to avoid them. But yes, its a place I would invest in.
Brazil is an interesting place - all we ever hear is the good news about it but its actually very dangerous in the cities, comparitive to South Africa. It gets a premium rating and yes, the projects are pretty good (eg Beadell Resources). Its very correlated to world growth though, and I have seen the Bovespa take huge hits before in bear markets. I invest there, but with eyes wide open.
Cambodia I have never fallen in love with, found the people hard work when I visited (which was just to tourist destinations). I own Renaissance Minerals which did a deal there recently and which has held up reasonably well. Its certainly one of the growth areas of Asia and I have seen my partners in Malaysia invest there. Not a huge fan.
Burma is incredible. I went there in 2001 and it was like seeing Thailand in the 1950s - people were fantastic. I dont believe for a minute that the politics is resolved yet and everything takes forever to get moving, but the country has great resource endowment and one day it will be an Asian tiger. The Burmese are thoroughly sick of being exploited by the rest of Asia and I worry about future instability as a result. Seriously interesting place. Probably too early.
Hope that helps, would be interested in others opinions.
