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March 2, 2012 Santiago, Chile When I was a kid, I remember watching that Schoolhouse Rock cartoon about how a bill becomes a law. That single cartoon probably brainwashed three generations of children into believing in the checks and balances fantasy of the US federal government. The reality is what we see everywhere
Date: March 1, 2012 Reporting From: Santiago, Chile Earlier this week, the British government announced that Barclays PLC, one of Britain’s oldest and largest banks, was facing an $800 million penalty for engaging in a tax avoidance scheme. Barclays had been exploiting loopholes in legislation in order to avoid paying a higher tax
February 28, 2012 London, England [Editor’s note: Tim Price, a frequent Sovereign Man contributor and Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management in London, is filling in for Simon today.] In December last year, the poet Alice Oswald withdrew from the TS Eliot poetry prize on the grounds that the prize was being
February 27, 2012 Talca, Chile Banking privacy is dead. Completely, totally dead. Murdered, really. The US government is the assailant, and FATCA is the murder weapon. We’ve talked about this a few times before– FATCA is the heinously insidiously piece of legislation that the Honorable Barrack Hussein Obama passed into law in 2010
February 24, 2012 Santiago, Chile I want to start off today’s letter by thanking the 120+ folks who’ve made the journey down to Chile over the past two weekends to break bread on the farm. Last weekend’s event was a real delight, and I’m looking forward to tonight’s festivities with the new group.
February 22, 2012 Santiago, Chile “[T]he more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.” Benito Mussolini Grand Fascist Council Report, 1929 When I was a kid, the morning announcements at my taxpayer-funded public school dragged on for a good 15 or 20 minutes. They
February 14, 2012 Talca, Chile One of the local papers here in Chile ran an interesting story a few days ago about the number of young Spanish immigrants coming to Chile in search of work. Fed up with the ridiculously high unemployment rate in Spain, and tired of being shut out of every
February 13, 2012 London, England [Editor’s note: Professional money manager Tim Price is filling in for Simon today from London. His thoughts below on gold, bonds, and the false pretext of investing in equities is delightfully insightful.] For value investors of a certain age (e.g. mine), discovering that Warren Buffett could be wrong
February 10th, 2012 Santiago, Chile One of the greatest thinkers of all time was Austrian economic Friedrich Hayek, and his work The Road to Serfdom is an absolute must-read. Hayek’s writings are incredibly powerful in these times. In light of the countless recent examples of governments changing the rules whenever/wherever it suits them
February 9th, 2012 Santiago, Chile After more than a decade of year-over-year appreciation, many people are wondering if gold is just another bubble waiting to burst. No commodity or asset class in our historical record has ever shown such long-term growth, and consequently the “B-word” is being tossed around regularly in financial media.
January 30, 2012 Nassau, Bahamas Here’s something unexpected. According to IMF data, the central bank of Kazakhstan recently purchased 3.1 metric tons of gold, increasing its reserves by 4.2%. In an even more stunning development, Mongolia’s central bank purchased 1.2 metric tons, increasing its reserves by a whopping 52%. To be fair, 4.3
[Editor’s Note: Simon’s friend Craig Ballantyne is filling in today to talk about the importance of the internet in generating independent income] In the late 1970’s one of my best friends and his family escaped from Armenia, then under communist rule. In fact, his father bought their way to America via Italy, eventually
I woke up this morning to a flurry of emails– “Did you watch the State of the Union address last night?” I did not. Rather, I was busy sharing a delightful meal at one of my favorite restaurants with some close friends; I didn’t even know that the speech was going on yesterday.
January 23, 2012 Santiago, Chile With over 150 million registered users, the file sharing site MegaUpload.com is one of the most popular on the Internet. At least, it was. The site has now been seized by the US government and its homepage converted to an FBI anti-piracy warning. Its founder, a high tech
January 11, 2012 Santiago, Chile Last week, the US government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), an agency of the US Treasury Department, published its 2011 annual report. There are a few numbers that are pretty startling. We’ve discussed before that FinCEN is the executive agency tasked with ensuring that every US banker is an