My friend, Stephanie, her neice, and her aunt, are picture above. The photo was taken in Villa del Prado, a northern suburb of Bogota, Colombia.

Notice the religious image in the mirror above Stephanie’s head. Can you tell which Christian sanctuary this image comes from?

Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Economic overview of Colombia coming soon.

A little more than a year ago, I began traveling around the Americas. My plan was to upload photos and videos regularly, both about my travels, and about my research on economics and society.

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On August 4th, 2006, I said goodbye to my family. We waved our goodbyes.

I was filled with excitement. I stopped often to take photos, and slept little.

I met all kinds of interesting people.

I met hobos and fairies and hippies.

I met beautiful women, and truckers, and more hippies.

I met Canadians, and more beautiful women.

I saw some amazing things.

I saw the incredible glaciers of Alaksa. I saw the Northern Lights. I watched evening fall over Bogota. Click on the photos to see a larger version.

I quickly became overwhelmed with the incredible quantity of information I was gathering.

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My hard drive was overflowing with photos.

It took much more time than anticipated to edit and upload photos and videos.

My primary interest in traveling the Americas was to collect information about local economies. I wanted to understand economic growth and its counterpart, poverty.

As an active member of the ONE Campaign, I made efforts to share information about the U.S.’s role in promoting world economic development. I gave out more than forty copies of the book, The End of Poverty, by Jeffrey Sachs.

But as I traveled, I became increasingly frustrated. Many people seemed confused as to my intentions regarding poverty efforts. And it was difficult to accurately convey my message.

My excitement about traveling was replaced by a nagging regret about my failure to accurately convey my thoughts about poverty and economics; only two of the forty recipients of The End of Poverty actually read it.

The End of Poverty is a highly technical treatise, written by a Harvard economist. With my experience in analyzing financial statements, I quickly absorbed the information in the book. But in most cases, the technical discussions went right over everybody’s heads. Few readers made it past the second chapter.

For a long time I puzzled over how to explain the basic principles of economic development. I neglected my blog for several months, though I continued to work on editing videos.

I ended up in Denver, where I picked up some work as a Construction Lender with my former employer, M&T Bank. My position with M&T has given me a unique perspective from which to observe the recent deterioration of the U.S. Housing Market.

In my capacity as a Banker, I have ongoing access to market reports, which provide detailed statistics and anlysis of regional and national economic data. Additionally, I have a ground-level view of difficulties in the mortgage industry. And I have further benefitted from various personal discussions with lenders, builders, and homeowners.

Above is a photo taken in Belleview, near Seattle, where I stopped during my travels to pay homage at the M&T Bank office (previously M&T Mortgage). I worked in this office from 2002 to 2003. When this photo was taken in 2006, I had no idea that I would be working in M&T’s Denver office during 2007.

All of the foregoing discussion brings me to my point. As much as I enjoy sharing photos and stories from my travels, the thing I really want to talk about is economics. My experience and research on this topic are extensive.

In upcoming posts, I will share economic research from my travels. I will give a brief but thorough overview of the economy of a sprawling metropolis with a population of more than 10 million.

I will give you a personal tour of this incredible city, and throughout the tour I will point out the causes and effects of economic development. I will also identify areas that are excluded from development and remain in conditions of abject poverty.

This is a city that few U.S. citizens have ever visited. The city is urban, modern and sophisticated.

The city is Bogota, Colombia. (Click on the photo to enlarge.)

I have begun working on uploading photos from earlier portions of my trip. Following are a couple of photos of volcanic lava flow which I saw last October:

The lava sends up a cloud of smoke as it destroys everything in its path.

Click on the photos above to see a larger version.

If you look closely you will make an interesting discovery.

What appears to be lava is not lava at all. It is something very different from lava.

I saw this “lava flow” last October while I was Bogota, Colombia. I have just finished cropping and uploading more than 200 photos from Colombia to my Flickr page. Click here to check them out.