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May 28, 2013 Sarasota, Florida, USA Last month at our event in Santiago, Ron Paul told me that he used to keep a sign on his desk during his time in Congress that read: “Don’t steal. The government hates competition.” These days, perhaps a more appropriate saying would be– “Don’t violate people’s civil
May 27, 2013 Dallas, Texas, USA Today is the Memorial Day holiday in the Land of the Free. Curiously, this is the day that the federal government sets aside for citizens to reflect on the sacrifices made by soldiers throughout history to ‘preserve our freedoms.’ At least, that’s what we’re told. We’re programmed
May 24, 2013 Dallas, Texas, USA Years ago as a young intelligence officer, I served a stint in Saudi Arabia running a team of counter-terrorism analysts and agents. We used to have regular “threat working groups,” a fancy way of saying we would get together at the US Embassy for meetings with the
May 23, 2013 Dallas, Texas, USA Last week when I arrived to Bangladesh, the immigration officials there were positively ecstatic to see a foreign tourist entering the country. I’ve also been to places in Africa and the South Pacific where you’re greeted upon arrival by dancing tribespeople singing songs of welcome. It’s not
May 22, 2013 London, England [Tim Price, frequent Sovereign Man contributor and Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management, is filling in for Simon today.] James Montier’s bible on behavioural finance, ‘Behavioural investing’, points out two recent discoveries by neuroscientists that have relevance to all investors: 1) We are hard-wired to think short-term,
Myanmar is among the hottest “frontier” investment markets today. The country is going from an authoritarian regime to democracy, from a conflict situation to a situation of relative peace, and, most importantly, from a closed economy of state-owned companies, to an open, free market economy. Such positive change all at once in one
May 20, 2013 Hong Kong In what may go down as one of the most obtusely out-of-touch policy memos ever written, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently released a paper entitled “Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security.” http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e.pdf For 171 pages, the paper argues for insect-based diets, explaining
May 17, 2013 Dhaka, Bangladesh Well, you have to admit one thing– the United States Senate certainly has its priorities straight. Early last week they passed S.743, the Marketplace Fairness Act. This bill requires US-based online merchants to charge, collect, report, and pay sales tax to the roughly 9,646 jurisdictions within the Land
May 16, 2013 Dhaka, Bangladesh As I’ve been traveling across Asia recently, one recurring theme I’ve been seeing are these constant headlines that ‘inflation is under control.’ Across the region, and in fact across the world, the official statistics tell us that inflation is moderate, so it’s OK to continue printing more money.
May 15, 2013 Dhaka, Bangladesh The only English word my taxi driver knew was “shit”. And perhaps, given the state of his vehicle and road conditions, it was the most appropriate. I lost count of the number of pedestrians we nearly mowed down on the way from the airport; it was difficult to
May 14, 2013 Manila, Philippines Some days one can’t help but look at the headlines and think of Ayn Rand. With all the destructive measures by desperate governments from Cyprus to Argentina, it seems sometimes like we’re reading from the pages of her seminal work, Atlas Shrugged. But what we’re seeing now seems
May 10, 2013 Singapore Each time I’m in Singapore, I’m continually impressed at the country’s extraordinary growth. Friends of mine tell me about their experiences growing up here in the 1940s and 1950s. The downtown area that is now covered with soaring towers of steel and glass were once repugnant cesspools devoid of
If I told you that your bank only held 1% of its customer deposits in reserve, would you feel that your money was safe? If I told you that the insurance fund which backed your bank deposit only had enough cash to bail out 0.35% of the banking system, would that make you
[Editor’s note: Tim Staermose, Sovereign Man’s Chief Investment Strategist, is filling in for Simon today from Hong Kong.] It took me two attempts. But, today I opened an account at the Bank of China. The reason? They’ll no longer buy gold bullion from you unless you bank with them. I wasn’t selling personally.
May 1, 2013 Bangkok, Thailand I really hate to be negative… but this is positively revolting. Disgusting. Indescribably offensive. In the Land of the Free recently, a California couple had their child kidnapped by the state. At gunpoint. It all started in mid-April when Anna and Alex Nikolayev took their 5-month old son