Less than a week after I was born, Nixon ended the Bretton Woods International Monetary System, whereby the dollar was backed by gold. Watch his speech televised on August 15, 1971, or read it here. Otherwise referred to as the “Nixon Shock Speech” or the “Bretton Woods Speech,” Nixon outlined…
“Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”—John F. Kennedy I’m back! My boys are settled into college, and I’m still struggling with elbow tendinosis and SI joint pain. So I’ve had to quit the gym and stopped running for now. Instead, I’ve been walking…
“Old Heraclitus, who was indeed a very great sage, discovered the most marvelous of all psychological laws: the regulative function of opposites. He called it enantiodromia, a running contrariwise, by which he meant that sooner or later everything runs into its opposite.” –Carl Jung There’s nothing more fun than discovering!…
The global monetary system is a big blobby glob of sticky goo that somehow keeps on slugging along through endless waste and war. But stop what you’re doing and listen. Chirp, chirp, chirp…peep, peep, peep…chitter, chitter, twitter, twitter, TWEET! On April 30, Fortune published an article: Why Japan’s currency is…
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…
“If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” —Isaac Newton In February, we saw something extraordinary—the price of gold was near all-time record highs, and the gold and silver miners were more oversold than ever before in history. There’s never…
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…
A few days ago, I saw a troop of monkeys meandering through the resort where I was staying in Langkawi. The resort was rather isolated and the food wasn’t super, but there were monkeys all over the grounds, and they weren’t afraid of us humans. Once in a while, I…
I opened my eyes, lifted the shade, and squinted out the window. A big, radiant sun was rising over a pristine white-washed city, surrounded by an army of idled cargo ships awaiting their call of duty. After seventeen straight hours of feeling like a canned sardine in my economy airplane…
I was looking into media psychology when my research led me to James F. Tracy, an ex-tenured Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He was fired in 2016 after accusing the government of hiring crisis actors for an incident that he didn’t think was real….
“Outstanding, sophisticated, and mesmerizing…a spiritual intrigue similar to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.” —ForeWord Reviews
