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…
“The world consists of Yin and Yang, and understanding this is crucial for anyone seeking to navigate life’s complexities.” Life is complicated. It seems that just when we think we’ve figured something out, the game changes. In Marketland, this usually starts with recency bias: a form of cognitive reasoning that…
“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,…
“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…
When I was a college student at Indiana University in Bloomington, I often went to Collins Hall for lunch. Later I learned that Collins was where lived the infamous Jim Jones who led a mass suicide of 918 people in Guyana, on November 18, 1978. At his direction, followers in…
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…
I entered the dermatologist’s office with mild trepidation, having never had a total-body skin check before. Like many professional women here in Malaysia, the doctor was wearing a beige head covering, a tudong (Malay word for “cover”) with a matching jilbab (a long and loose-fit coat or outer garment). Her…
Merry Christmas! Today we celebrate a birthday in Bethlehem during the reign of King Herod. According to Matthew 2:1, some wise men from eastern lands arrived asking about the newborn king. They had seen his star and came to worship him. King Herod and everyone in Jerusalem was “deeply disturbed”…
I love epiphanies, and I’ve been having more of them lately. While everyone is talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI), I’ve been learning how to grow different strands of beneficial bacteria, to rebuild my gut microbiome from the damage of antibiotics (see the book Super Gut by William Davis). I’m also…
I have great respect for quotemasters and aphorists. People who make keen pithy observations with general truths have serious intellect, and a superior style in the art of communication. Slavery is not an easy topic to intellectualize, let alone aphorize. We like to think of ourselves as enlightened post-enslavement creatures,…
“Outstanding, sophisticated, and mesmerizing…a spiritual intrigue similar to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.” —ForeWord Reviews