Today was the 6th worst stock market crash in history. It reminded me of the last time I was in Panama during what turned out to be the nadir of the Global Financial Crisis. My long time mentor and friend Sieg Pedde, a lifelong real estate investor who taught me a lot about investing in general had been working on a property development in Panama and I had decided to become a partner in it.

At the time the entire world was going berserk: stock markets had been tanking for a year, the global economy was threatening to grind to a halt, politicians were saying it could all end up with Martial Law and people were just generally freaking out. When I got to Panama I took a look out over the canal, and as far as I could see, all I could see were ships, freighters and supertankers….waiting to slip through the canal. I thought to myself “if this is the volume here during an all-time low in global shipping, this place has nothing to worry to about”.

After spending a week in the north, near Boquete where our development is, meeting the locals, including our local partners there, speaking with engineers, builders and laborers, I felt like I was in an island of sanity and calm. Everywhere else, the world was going off the rails, while there, sure things had slowed down, but it was no big deal. It was very relaxing, and even then, at the height of the crisis, Roca Milagro and Panama is the one investment I worry about the least. There’s a real community budding there, a nice mixture of international investor/partners and local partners. Boquete is the expat capital of Panama and being just outside of it makes for a lively mixture of personalities.

Fast forward to now, here we go again. Global Sovereign Debt Crisis and total panic. It seems serendipitous that a of couple days ago Sieg sent me the inaugural newsletter for our humble project: Roca Milagro: Living_in_Paradise . Every time the world financial system has a panic attack, I will always think of our own private “Galt’s Gulch” in Panama.

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