The Expat Files

- How high gas prices and the financial crisis are affecting wealthy Latins- the shame of it all! They’re actually being reduced to laying off bodyguards (how demeaning) - The early warning signs of a great shopping mall and retail crash. - Who owns a disproportionate number of retail businesses and sweatshops? You’ll never guess (hint, if you speak a Chinese dialect or Korean, you can write your own ticket down here). - How to make an honest to goodness 1st World salary working for someone else (but it ain’t easy). A word about those high-paying executive and hi-tech 3rd World jobs listed in the back of the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, etc. - Poor but fat; a sad Latin American irony. Probably the two worst 1st World exports to LA - obesity and diabetes. - Why mayonnaise is the national Latin salsa, and margarine the national spread. Very unhealthy, yet they slather them on practically everything (like Americans and their ketchup). - How and why the Latins switched from healthy natural coconut oil to cheap (and unhealthy) refined palm and corn oil (and now down here everything is infused with it).