I got chatting with a young doorman at the Intercontinental Hotel. Turns out he was from Kazakhstan. You don’t meet many people from Kazakhstan, so I had a long talk with him. He has an economics degree from a Kazakhstan university, is over here doing his Master’s. I had a vague idea that things were going to pot in those old Soviet Central Asian republics since the USSR broke up. No, he said, things in Kazakhstan are tickety-boo, the economy humming along nicely. They’re even reclaiming the Aral Sea (which has been drying up for decades). There’s a bit of an immigration problem (sigh) with Chinese coming over the border, in fact. So there’s your investment tip for today: invest in Kazakhstan. This guy was intelligent, well-informed, and patriotic–he’s going home when he’s got his Master’s.