Welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Today I want to tell you about the worst international trip that I myself have ever taken, which just so happens to have been my honeymoon, which just so happens to have been to the nation of Haiti.

And I want to draw from this trip for you some important lessons related to societies in general,

economics broadly, and personal finance.

Haiti has been in the news over the last, well really months,

but it really came to a boiling point over this past weekend.

As the nation's capital and indeed the country broadly has been

racked by violence extreme violence for months now and it has boiled over to the

point where over the weekend the United States of America

performed an emergency airlift to withdraw all non-essential personnel from the U.S. embassy.

The European Union has withdrawn all of its diplomats and it's so bad that the leader of the country

can't even get back into his own country because of the violence that ultimately shut down

the airport. Now all of this is ineffably sad but none of this is surprising. My first

experience with Haiti came on my honeymoon. Now before you think I'm the worst president in the world remember

that other great people have also taken their wives to Haiti for

a honeymoon after all former president Bill Clinton to Hillary

Clinton to Haiti on their honeymoon, but my story is not quite so

interesting as that.

When my wife and I were newly married, I was looking around trying to figure out where

would be an interesting place to go for a honeymoon.

And I was able to get a great deal on an all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic,

which is of course part of the island of Hispaniola.

And there are two nations that share that island you have the Dominican

...