If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no need for tinkers. —Unknown So I’m binge watching The Gilded Age, a great show on HBO Max. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it refers to the economic boom between 1865 (end of the Civil War) and the turn…
“The largest opportunities arise out of the largest gaps between perception and reality, expectations and reality, like where we are right now.” —Simon Mikhailovich Do you see what Trump sees in Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal? Born in Queens, New York, by a successful real estate developer, Trump has…
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand exponential growth.” —Albert Bartlett, a physicist On Friday, I drove an hour north to pick up my boys from college for winter break. When I arrived, they were still packing. Amazed by how much stuff they were bringing…
“It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” —Mark Twain When I went to visit my grandma as a young teenager, I remember showing off what I thought were my amazing superwoman skills. If you think I do…
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” —Henry David Thoreau I woke up Wednesday morning to a message in my inbox from Dr. Toby Rogers on the difficult conversation we need to have with each other. In this post,…
“Gold—what can it not do, and undo?” – William Shakespeare I grew up in the 1970s and 80s. My dad was an environmental scientist with an obsession for gold. After he saw Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) with Henry Ford, he got himself an Indiana Jones hat, a bullwhip,…
“No State shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”—The U.S. Constitution (Article 1: Section 10, Clause 1) Our Founding Fathers—Franklin (1706-1790), Washington (1732-1799), Adams (1735-1826), Jefferson (1743-1826), Madison (1751-1836), and Hamilton (1755-1804)—didn’t trust the States. They didn’t trust the national government either, which…
“Gold is money. Everything else is credit.” —J.P. Morgan Last week, I had the opportunity to listen to a Steve St. Angelo interview, and it occurred to me that at some point in recent history, we edited reality and formed a new story that we then mistook for truth. Steve…
When I lived in Italy, my colleague used to point out a town to me that didn’t use money. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the town, but it was on the way to Castiglione della Pescaia from our home in Badia a Passignano. It was quaint, small, and…
It was my last night in Malaysia, on the way back from dinner. I stopped to get some fruit and a fresh coconut across the street from the hotel. While waiting for the salesman to harvest it for me, I couldn’t help but notice the contrast. To my left was…
“Outstanding, sophisticated, and mesmerizing…a spiritual intrigue similar to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.” —ForeWord Reviews