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It was barely a week ago that the federal government estimated it would borrow $3.7 trillion this fiscal year due to all the Covid bailouts. Then, only a few days later, the Treasury Department updated the estimate and announced they would in fact be borrowing $4.5 trillion this fiscal year. That’s an increase
At precisely 4pm on Friday October 17, 1975, New York City’s government would have a $453 million in debt to repay. But literally the night before, the city’s government had only $34 million on hand. It was the makings of an epic financial crisis: the wealthiest city in the world was about to
Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, your finances, and your prosperity… and on occasion, poetic justice. “No whites allowed” safe space for employees of Oregon county Do you know what’s been missing from
More than 4,000 years ago, the city of Kanesh was quickly becoming an important commercial trading hub within the ancient Assyrian Empire. Kanesh was located in the dead center of modern day Turkey, so it was perfectly situated on the route between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and between Europe and Asia
The first time I was sent to the gas chamber was in late July 1996. I’m not being dramatic– that’s literally what they called it. I was 17 years old… a brand new cadet at West Point undergoing my first summer of basic training. It’s affectionately known as ‘Beast Barracks’, and one of
Thousands of years ago in 458 BC, Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus was hard at work behind his plow on the family farm when a group of Roman Senators showed up with urgent news. A foreign enemy called the Acqui had vanquished one of Rome’s armies and was rapidly approaching the city. The Republic was
For this week’s round-up of articles, we’re taking a look at some of the things the government thinks should be banned in response to coronavirus. WHO urges governments to ban alcohol during lockdown Last week we talked about how the World Health Organization was coming for your sick family members. This week, they
In the early 1530s, a Spanish conquistador named Diego de Ordaz was exploring modern-day Venezuela when he first heard rumors of a nearby City of Gold. Ordaz thought he was about to hit the jackpot. And he wasted no time ordering expeditions of the area to find this city– what eventually became known
Nearly seven centuries ago in the mid-1300s, the first major outbreak of the Bubonic Plague forced Europeans into some of the harshest social distancing measures in history. As Boccacio wrote in The Decameron in 1353, the hysteria was so extreme that “brother abandoned brother. . . fathers and mothers refused to see and
Well this is starting to become a trend. Over the past few weeks, state governments across the Land of the Free have been feverishly proposing new legislation that will virtually guarantee the entire insurance industry is wiped out. The root of the issue has to do with something called business interruption insurance. Business
For this week’s round-up of articles, we noticed a theme: the most alarming articles are about governments going over-the-top, grabbing powers in the name of stopping the Coronavirus. Here are some examples that we found absurd, and downright creepy: WHO officials says next step could be separating families A World Health Organization official
Earlier this week we talked about why the economic consequences of this pandemic could last a lot longer than what a lot of people expect. Now, I say all of this from a position of complete ignorance and uncertainty. Nobody knows what’s going to happen next, or how long this pandemic will last.
The big story over the last few days has been ‘reopening the economy’. And that’s certainly a nice idea. Countless people have been living in despair over the last month, and the prospect of everything going back to normal soon feels really great. I certainly hope for the best. But a couple of
By the mid-6th century BC, Darius the Great was ‘King of Kings’, ruling over the vast Achaemenid Empire. By that time, gold and silver had already been in use by earlier civilizations for thousands of years. There are cuneiform tablets that are nearly 4,000 years old from ancient Sumeria which record commercial transactions
In the words of Rahm Emanuel, former Chief of Staff to Barack Obama, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” Emanuel first said this during the 2008/2009 financial crisis… meaning that politicians can use a crisis as an opportunity to push through radical ideas that would otherwise never be accepted. Late last
