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July 17, 2014 Malaga, Spain Like a lot of kids who grew up in the 80s, my parents enrolled me in organized basketball when I was around 9 or 10 years old. We weren’t really any good… just a bunch of kids from the Nintendo generation who would have rather been playing Jordan
July 16, 2014 Malaga, Spain If you ever find yourself vacationing in the western Pacific, I highly recommend swinging by Yap Island, home of one of the most bizarre forms of money in history. Over a thousand years ago, natives would mine enormous chunks of limestone and carve them into gigantic circular discs.
July 15, 2014 Malaga, Spain Exactly 70 years ago to the day, hundreds of delegates from 44 nations were busy at work in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire creating a brand new financial system. World War II had just ended. Europe was in ruin. And since the US was simultaneously the largest economy in
July 14, 2014 Istanbul, Turkey It’s been over a year since the banking system in Cyprus officially went bust. On Friday, March 15, 2013, practically everyone in the country went to bed thinking that everything was just fine. Many had probably gone to the bank that very day to do business, or logged
July 10, 2014 En route to Batumi, Georgia The first recorded sovereign default was in the 4th century BC when ten Greek cities failed to honor loans from the temple of Delos. Most of the borrowers could not pay back what they owed and the temple took an 80% loss on its principal.
July 9, 2014 Erbil, Iraq It’s been nearly 1,000 years since Iraq had some positive momentum. Back then, Europe had plunged into the Dark Ages where intellectual and economic progress all but halted. Baghdad, on the other hand, was the most exciting, cosmopolitan city in the world. It was the capital of the
July 8, 2014 Erbil, Iraq More than eleven years ago, I was among tens of thousands of troops baking in the hot sun of the Kuwaiti desert waiting for George W. Bush to make his ‘decision’. Of course it was total baloney. The decision to invade Iraq had already been made. They just
July 7, 2014 London, England [Editor’s Note: Tim Price, frequent Sovereign Man contributor and Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management, is filling in today while Simon is traveling in Iraq.] Lord Overstone said it best. “No warning can save people determined to grow suddenly rich.” Case in point– CYNK Technology Corp, a
July 3, 2014 Kiev, Ukraine In the fall of 1239 AD, Batu Khan and his Golden Horde were making great progress in their rapid advance into Europe. The Mongol Empire was in the midst of global conquest, and Batu’s army had been devastating cities across the Russian plain. He stopped briefly after taking
July 2, 2014 Vienna, Austria There’s an old joke here that Austria is famous for two things: convincing the world that Adolf Hitler was German (he was Austrian); and convincing the world that Beethoven was Austrian (he was German). Frankly one of the things that Austria should be more famous for is its
July 1, 2014 Vienna, Austria If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive. This was how Dale Carnegie titled the first chapter of his 1936 personal development masterpiece—How to Win Friends and Influence People. Carnegie had sensible advice: if you want to keep people on your team, first and foremost
June 30, 2014 Rome, Italy As of today, I am $250,000 richer than I was last week. And thanks to the magic of economics, I didn’t even have to do anything. You see, following the lead of the Italian and British governments, I’ve taken the liberty of ‘rebasing’ my net worth. In their
June 30, 2014 London, England [Editor’s Note: This column was written by Tim Price, frequent Sovereign Man contributor and Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management in the UK] “We are currently on a journey to the outer reaches of the monetary universe,” write Ronni Stoeferle and Mark Valek in their latest, magisterial
June 25, 2014 Yangon, Myanmar Well, at least someone gets it. While just about every other central bank on the planet is giving everyone two thumbs up on the economy, the deputy chair of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (Lim Hng Kiang) said last night at a dinner that “an uneasy calm seems
June 24, 2014 Yangon, Myanmar When I was a kid, I had a 4800 baud modem. At the time, it was about the most whiz-bang rockin’ modem on the street, and everyone would coo over its blinding speed. If you’ve never heard the term ‘baud’ (i.e. you’re under 25 and have never known
