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On September 4, 1993, President Bill Clinton spoke about the American Dream in a weekly radio address. He told his audience that “in America, the idea is that if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll be rewarded with a good life for yourself and a better chance for your children.”
Do you remember the first website you ever visited? I do. It was Yahoo! The year was 1995. Toy Story was the #1 movie in the world. The Oklahoma City bombings claimed the lives of 168 people. War and genocide raged in the ongoing Balkan conflict. America Online and Prodigy, both early Internet
Sometimes it strikes me as bizarre that in our modern, egalitarian society, we still award prizes to women who have the most artificially contrived beauty. Nevertheless, that is our reality. And so the big news from this week was the SNAFU at the Miss Universe pageant in which the host accidentally awarded the
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s seminal masterpiece Crime and Punishment is often thought of as one of the longest classics at more than 200,000 words. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016, which was signed into law on Friday, is nearly twice as long. In case you’re not familiar with the background, the author was once quite
“Christmas at my house is always at least six or seven times more pleasant than anywhere else. We start drinking early. And while everyone else is seeing only one Santa Claus, we’ll be seeing six or seven.’ – W.C. Fields. ‘Twas the hike before Christmas, and all over the shop Short end traders
The most hated man on the Internet was arrested yesterday. If you haven’t heard this story, his name is Martin Shkreli. He’s the guy who rose to infamy a few months ago when he increased the price of a life-saving medication by over 5,000%. Something tells me he’s not going to win any
When you think of the word ‘money’, the first thing to come to mind is probably those pieces of paper in your pocket. High school economics textbooks teach students that ‘money’ is a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a measure of account. And while all that fancy-sounding language may appropriately
Thousands of years ago in ancient city of Babylon, specially trained scribes gathered each day in the Temple of Marduk to record the day’s events. They used cuneiform writing instruments and clay tablets, over 1200 of which still survive today. These scribes kept excellent records, detailing astronomical observances and water levels of the
It started on December 8, 1931. Germany was in a world of pain at the time. They were still financially debilitated from having to make reparation payments after losing World War I, and had just barely recovered from one of the worst bouts of hyperinflation in recorded history. By the early 1930s, the
When I did the math in my head last week, I had to pull out my phone’s calculator just to make sure I hadn’t mentally misplaced the decimal point. It turns out I was right. My rental car in Cape Town would cost me just $8/day. And that included all the silly taxes
It was 1720, and Paris was completely mad. The city’s brand new stock exchange, located at the ultra-swanky Hotel de Soissons, swarmed with citizens of all stripes looking to get rich. Stocks were still a novel concept back then, and the allure of getting rich overnight was so appealing that people lined up
It’s time to get serious. One of the major themes of this daily e-letter is that major western governments are flat broke. This is not the first time that a major world power has gone bankrupt, and we need only to look to history to see the consequences. Thousands of years ago, as
One of the truest aphorisms in the world of investing is that Brazil is the country with the MOST potential… and always will be. There are few other countries on the planet blessed with such an abundance of resources—fertile land, plenty of water, a huge population, incalculable mineral and natural resource wealth, etc.
This is WAY beyond ‘if you see something, say something.’ In a series of pamphlets circulated among local governments in the United Kingdom, British parents are now being encouraged to spy on their own children, and to report any instances of possible ‘radicalization’. Of course this advice comes with a nifty set of
First things first: Congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg. And no, not for the obvious. The Zuckerbergs are brand new parents. And while that’s exciting, it’s far from unique. New babies are born every second. But what’s far from commonplace is that Mark Zuckerberg just screwed the US government out of billions of dollars of