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There was a time, centuries ago, that France was the dominant superpower in the world. They had it all. Overseas colonies. An enormous military. Social welfare programs like public hospitals and beautiful monuments. Most of it was financed by debt. France, like most superpowers before (and after), felt entitled to overspend as much
The last several days in Venezuela have been absolutely mind-blowing. Pretty much all the stories you’ve heard are true– countless people eating out of garbage cans, the appalling shortages of basic staples like food, medicine, and even soap… and the lines. Oh boy, the lines. The longest lines I saw, in fact, were
The gunfire on the streets near my hotel started around 9pm last night. The sound is unmistakable, especially at night on an otherwise quiet city street. I had recently returned to the hotel after a few evening meetings. And coming back after dark it was as if they had rolled the sidewalks up
Late yesterday afternoon the federal government of the United States announced that the national debt had finally breached the inevitable $20 trillion mark. This was a long time coming. It should have happened back in March, except that a new debt ceiling was put in place, freezing the national debt. For the last
There may perhaps be no other group of investors that’s more DESPERATE today than pension funds. Pensions, of course, are the giant funds responsible for paying out retirement benefits to workers. The idea is that both the employer and the employee typically contribute a set percentage of the employee’s salary throughout his or
I’ve probably consumed more airline food than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s not great for my health. But it comes with the territory. Over the past decade, I’ve hit nearly every country on the planet, sometimes traveling 250+ days per year. I travel for business: Sovereign Man’s entire premise, when I started it
In the late 1760s and early 1770s, the government of France was in a deep panic. They had recently suffered a disastrous and costly defeat in the Seven Years War, and the national budget was a complete mess. France had spent most of the previous century as the world’s dominant superpower, and the
Sometimes you have to marvel at the absurdity of the financial universe in which we live. On one side of the Atlantic, we have the United States of America, which triggered yet another debt ceiling disaster last Thursday when the US government’s maximum allowable debt reset to just over $20 trillion. Of course,
Last night a good friend of mine came over for dinner. He’s originally from Poland, and growing up there he heard a lot of bizarre stories about what it was like during the Nazi invasion and World War II. In 1939, even as 1.5 million German soldiers prepared to invade, the general mood
Today I’m going to introduce you to my friend Ben, easily one of the most unique, intelligent people I know. I first met Ben at my summer Liberty and Entrepreneurship camp several years ago. He had recently dropped out of Harvard after winning the prestigious Peter Thiel fellowship, which has an incredibly competitive
It happened again– another spying scandal in the Land of the Free. Yesterday Wikileaks released 8,761 CIA documents detailing the agency’s hacking of smart phones, routers, computers, and even televisions. These files reveal that the CIA can and has hacked devices that were supposedly secure– iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. The documents further
[Editor’s note: This letter was written by Tim Price, manager of the VT Price Value Fund and frequent Sovereign Man contributor.] It was at the height of the dot-com bubble in 1999 that The Onion famously satirized the epically irrational stock market: “Anabaena, a photosynthesizing, nitrogen-fixing algae with 1999 revenues estimated at $0
A few weeks ago, one of our Europe-based Total Access members reached out to ask us about a bank account he was considering for his new business. This is important stuff. As I’ve written before, most people spend more time thinking about what they’re going to have for dinner than even considering whether
Probably around the time I was 12 years old, my parents opened up a bank account on my behalf. Decades later, even though 99% of my assets are outside of the United States, I still maintain a small balance at that bank. I appear to be suffering from some sort of bizarre financial
[Editor’s Note: Peter K, the chief analyst of Sovereign Man’s private investment division, is filling in for Simon today.] I’m visiting my brother in Indonesia right now. Being a good host, he was fixing us vodka martinis, when he realized he ran out of olives. Both of his drivers had finished for the
