HONDURAS: Flying Wildcatter

In a Tegucigalpa bank one morning last week, Joe Silverthorne grasped ten $1,000 bills in his fist, waved them jubilantly in the face of a friend. "You see these?" gloated the lean, pistol-packing Texan. "Well, when I get to Miami next month, I'm going to swap them for a $10,000 bill. I've never had a $10,000 bill, but I'm going to get one and wave it under the nose of every s.o.b. in Tegucigalpa."

The ten crisp bills represented part of the profits that have rolled into Silver-thorne's hands in the year that he...

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