“Give me control over a nation’s currency, and I care not who makes its laws.” — Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744–1812) A few years ago, my furnace went out on Christmas Eve. Last week, my water heater went kaput on the eve of Thanksgiving. Unlike the furnace, which took a good four…
“I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.” —Mother Teresa The BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, was a success. It was by far the largest event that Russia has hosted in years, attended by more than two dozen nations, including…
There are so many things happening right now, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to cover in this post, but let’s begin with the most fundamental principle in international law: Pacta Sunt Servanda. It’s Latin for “agreements must be kept,” which is one of the oldest moral and…
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…
“Outstanding, sophisticated, and mesmerizing…a spiritual intrigue similar to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.” —ForeWord Reviews