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It was early spring in the year 1171 AD when Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos decided to go to war against his much smaller ally– Venice. And the historical record shows that it was a really bad idea. The Byzantine Empire was still a vast and powerful state by the late 12th century.
In a 2022 interview, then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg discussed how we was going to spend $1.2 trillion of taxpayer money from the recently passed infrastructure bill. “The main thing I’m thinking about,” he said, “is how do we make sure we take all this money— you know it’s $1.2 trillion— and actually deliver
It was known as the “Timber Famine” in 18th-century Great Britain. And it was no exaggeration to say that it was a national crisis: Britain was running out of wood. The first major reason was population growth; wood was the major material and fuel source of the era, used for cooking, heating, and
Herbert Hoover was an unstoppable force in 1928. The Roaring Twenties were in full swing. Prosperity (it seemed) was everywhere. The stock market was soaring. People were making money hand over fist. And Hoover was the ‘status quo’ Presidential candidate that year. In other words, a vote for Hoover was a vote for
When the Founding Fathers put the finishing touches on the Constitution in late September of 1787, they probably had no idea whether or not it would be formally adopted by the states. There had been intense debate. Criticism. Dissent. And so the ratification of the Constitution was by no means guaranteed. Delaware became
Bank of America released its quarterly earnings report this morning, bright and early at 6:45am. And according to their newest financial statements, the bank is currently sitting on a whopping $112 BILLION in net unrealized bond losses. To say this is atrocious would be a massive understatement. Yet Bank of America had the
In 1913, 24-year-old Charlie Chaplin arrived in Los Angeles, drawn by an offer from Keystone Film Company. Coming from a poverty-stricken childhood in London and a successful vaudeville career, Chaplin found in Los Angeles a place of limitless potential. The city was largely undeveloped, surrounded by orange groves, open fields and dirt roads
The summer of 64 AD was a hot one in ancient Rome, and the evening of July 18th was especially warm. The air was dry, and harsh winds blew fiercely throughout the city. So, when a fire broke out that night in the Cirus Maximus district, weather conditions were perfect for a major
In the calendar year of 2024, the government racked up a $1.74 trillion deficit. But the national debt actually increased by an even higher $2.23 trillion from January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024. That’s a lot of money spent for a Congress that never even passed a budget! The entire year, Congress
In the year 500 AD, just a few decades after the fall of Western roman empire, the standard of living for a typical European peasant was pretty grim. Squalid hovels. No sanitation. Short life expectancy. Even food was by no means guaranteed. If you go forward in time, even 1,000 years, the standard
The year was 1901, and it was pretty much a who’s who of American business and finance at the time. Andrew Carnegie. JP Morgan. Charles M. Schwab. Elbert Gary (namesake of the city Gary, Indiana). It would be as if Elon Musk, Billy Gates, and Carl Icahn all got together on a new
If you’re looking for an easy example of almost everything wrong with this government, let me introduce Exhibit A: It started almost exactly a year ago. It was January 2, 2024, and we wrote to you about a new law that had just taken effect called the Corporate Transparency Act, or the CTA.
Marco Polo never actually set foot on Japanese soil. But that didn’t stop him from writing the most wildly exaggerated tales about the immense, incredible wealth of Japan– which he called Cipangu. Supposedly Marco Polo had spoken to merchants and traders who’d been there, but it’s entirely possible he made it all up—typical
If you examine the anatomy of a crisis, it seems like almost all of the big ones start with a completely false belief system. “Two weeks to stop the spread”. “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.” “We’ll be greeted as liberators.” “The debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves.” One of
As the 1800s came to a close and the world propelled itself full of innovation and optimism into the 20th century, there was perhaps nowhere else on the planet more admired and envied (except for the United States) than Argentina. In fact, just like America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Argentina
