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April 13, 2011 Santiago, Chile Recently, a small town accountant tipped off the IRS that his employer was shorting the government on taxes. He was rewarded with a big fat check for $4.5 million (minus a 28% federal tax withholding, of course). I’m sure the government thinks this reward is money well spent–
April 12, 2011 Vina del Mar, Chile Did you ever see Minority Report? It’s one of Steven Spielberg’s often forgotten about movies based on the short story by Philip K. Dick. In the movie, pre-couch Tom Cruise plays a police officer in the year 2054 who works for the highly specialized ‘pre-crime’ division.
April 11, 2011 Manila, Philippines Tim Staermose here, Simon’s tied up today looking for property on the Chilean countryside. Nine years ago I gave up my six-figure salary, bonuses and perks, and resigned from my job at Lehman Brothers in Hong Kong. I could see we were on the cusp of a massive
April 7, 2011 Santiago, Chile Earlier this week, I wrote to you about my observations on the ground here in South America– I’m seeing an influx of foreigners from China in Santiago. As I reported, many are here doing business related to Chile’s vast deposits of lithium and copper, while others are here
April 1, 2011 Santiago, Chile It crossed my mind today, on April Fool’s Day, to post a subject line like “Bernanke resigns” or “OECD to dissolve itself”. Alas, the best jokes are sometimes just too cruel. Politicians, central bankers, and their NGO cohorts are, in fact, the true April fools, and they’re hardly
March 31, 2011 Santiago, Chile It’s nice to be back in Chile. This is a country that I have come to love and appreciate over the last several years, not only for its incredible beauty and highly civilized culture, but also for the massive opportunities that await energetic, professional, creative individuals. Foreigners are
March 29, 2011 Undisclosed location Sticker shock in grocery store checkout lines and gas pumps around the western world is starting to set in. At this point, you have to be living under a rock to not notice that prices of goods and services around the world are increasing substantially. Much of the
March 28, 2011 Phoenix, Arizona, USA I had a really great weekend. Ernest Hancock, the of the libertarian radio show ‘Declare your Independence’ invited me to his 50th birthday party at his home in Phoenix after our interview on Friday; I happily accepted and hopped a flight. I’ve met few people in my
March 24, 2011 Denver, Colorado, USA Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) is easy one of the most brilliantly comical movies of all time. One of my favorite scenes is the fight between Arthur and the Black Knight, the one in which Arthur handily dismembers his adversary in combat. It’s become the
March 22, 2011 Denver, Colorado, USA Have you ever seen the devastation from a BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile? It’s beyond description. Standing in the impact area, it’s as if nothing has ever existed there before. It’s naive to think that something with so much destructive power is unlikely to cause ‘collateral damage.’ I
March 21, 2011 Denver, Colorado, USA The United States Department of Justice delivered a very clear and unfortunate message on Friday: “Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism. While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as
March 18, 2011 Denver, Colorado, USA There are a few rules that I rarely break. One rule is that once I travel to the United States and go through the pain and scare tactics of US Border Protection, I stick around for a couple of weeks visiting family and friends in order to
Given that the entire planet is fixated on a nuclear disaster in the world’s 3rd largest economy, or the goings-on in Muslim nations yearning to breathe free, it seems logical that Miniplenty’s latest newspeak releases went largely unnoticed. According to Miniplenty, the all item inflation index for consumers rose at a 0.5% monthly
March 11, 2011 Denver, Colorado, USA Watching the events unfold in Japan and Libya has probably given a lot of people reason to consider their own safety, wherever they live. “What if that happened where I live?” is a perfectly natural question to ask when faced with wall-to-wall coverage of horrible devastation. It’s
March 15, 2011 Dallas, Texas, USA It’s no secret that the United States government owes a pretty penny to foreigners. Certainly, what America owes to foreigners pales in comparison to what it owes to Ben Bernanke… but still, $4.45 trillion is no small number, even in these crazy times when terms like “kajillion
