On the First of May in the year 1716, a swashbuckling Scottish entrepreneur was making this pitch of his lifetime to the head of the French government in Paris. The entrepreneur’s name was John Law. By all accounts he was incredibly charismatic and had a flamboyant, larger than life personality. He was something like Adam Neumann, formerly of … [Read more...]
My Personal Story From the Collapse of The Soviet Union
When I was a kid growing up in the Soviet Union, it was essentially forbidden to make a better life for yourself. You couldn’t just decide to go back to school, start a business, or switch careers to a thriving new industry. And it didn’t matter how hard you worked-- you were most likely NEVER going to be promoted. All the top jobs in the Soviet … [Read more...]
The Bolsheviks Aren’t Coming. They’re Already Here.
The average Westerner who hasn’t traveled very much believes Moscow to be a cold, bleak, desolate capital city that’s filled with Stalinist-era architecture and a population that lives in utter misery. But the reality of this place is nearly the complete opposite. Moscow is a bright, beautiful, cosmopolitan city. I’ve always found Moscow to … [Read more...]
The Return of The Inquisition
In 279 BC, the vast army of King Pyrrhus of Epirus was met by Roman forces at the Battle of Asculum in southern Italy, in what would be one of the costliest military engagements of ancient history. Pyrrhus fancied himself the second coming of Alexander the Great and believed that he was a descendant of Achilles. Many of his peers and … [Read more...]
“If You Can Keep it…”
On September 17, 1787 on the final day of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was approached by a woman as he walked out of Independence Hall. “Well Doctor, what have we got-- a republic, or a monarchy?” she asked. It was a burning question on everyone’s mind: what form of government would the Constitutional … [Read more...]
Millennials: Read This….
Every year the Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse publishes a detailed report about Global Wealth. And while drawing conclusions about ‘wealth’ (i.e. ‘net worth’) for the world’s 7.6 billion people is far from an exact science, the report routinely offers some interesting insights and trends. This year’s report was just released this … [Read more...]
This New Bubble Is Even Bigger Than the Subprime Fiasco
In 1988, a bank called Guardian Savings and Loan made financial history by issuing the first ever “subprime” mortgage bond. The idea was revolutionary. The bank essentially took all the mortgages they had loaned to borrowers with bad credit, and pooled everything together into a giant bond that they could then sell to other banks and … [Read more...]
Privacy is No Longer a Western Value
The Most Shocking Revelation from the CIA Spying Scandal It happened again-- another spying scandal in the Land of the Free. Yesterday Wikileaks released 8,761 CIA documents detailing the agency’s hacking of smart phones, routers, computers, and even televisions. These files reveal that the CIA can and has hacked devices that were supposedly … [Read more...]
Is America Still the Land of Opportunity?
Last week during a long overdue vacation, a close friend of mine recommended reading the autobiography of Rich DeVos called Simply Rich. DeVos is a billionaire entrepreneur who started countless ventures during his nine decades on this earth. Back in the 1946, for example, DeVos started an airline... virtually overnight. He just bought an … [Read more...]
The Coming Crackdown on Free Speech
It’s amazing what can happen in a week. Before this publication went on hiatus last week, one of the last letters I wrote to you in 2016 was about the National Defense Authorization Act and its treasure trove of freedom-killing provisions. Section 1287, for example, creates a new agency called the “Global Engagement Center”, aka Ministry of … [Read more...]
