Category: Trends & News

I have a pretty bad travel habit of always waiting until the last minute to head to the airport. Some people like to get to the airport three hours early. I’m not one of those people. In fact, when I flew to Bogota a few weeks ago from Santiago, I arrived to the

Last week Credit Suisse released its annual Global Wealth Report. The big headline grabber was their analysis showing that the top 1% of people now own 50% of the world’s wealth. That is true and rather astonishing. However, the report had another finding that was even more astonishing and largely overlooked. What they

When I was a kid, I used to proudly wear around a T-shirt explaining different economic systems using ‘two cows’ as a metaphor. It started off like this: Socialism: You have two cows. Give one to your neighbor. Then Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and gives you some milk.

The Road to Ruin, as they say, is paved with good intentions. So I suppose the road to hell is paved in the best of intentions. And that’s how most laws often start: with the BEST of intentions. That was certainly the case when Barack Obama signed the HIRE Act into law in 2011.

When I was a kid growing up in the early 80s, the United States was the undisputed dominant superpower in the world. The US dollar was awe-inspiring; on a trade-weighted basis, the dollar index was at an all-time high, and had never been as strong ever before… or since. And the dollar’s strength

In 49 BC, a defiant Julius Caesar stood in front of his army at the River Rubicon and made the biggest decision of his life. It was strictly forbidden by Roman law for a general lead his army out of its province and into Rome. And the Rubicon marked the boundary. “Alea iacta

Forget Norway. Japan. Iceland. Switzerland. Or any of the other places around the world that are notorious for being painful on the wallet. Venezuela is now the most expensive country in the world, hands down. To give you an idea, the cost of a 15-minute taxi ride to the beach yesterday afternoon totaled

Just in case anyone still foolishly believes that there’s a shred of decency left in the ‘justice’ system in the Land of the Free, I would humbly present exhibit A: Edward Snowden. In a recent interview with the BBC, Edward Snowden disclosed that he has offered numerous times to the US government to

Last night after a flurry of legal meetings and property tours throughout the day, I had drinks with a Canadian real estate developer who set up shop here in Medellin a few years ago. He told me a great story about his family background– he comes from a long line of real estate

Yesterday the leading presidential candidate in the Land of the Free released his tax plan in the Wall Street Journal. And the Donald certainly did not disappoint his supporters. His tax plan is bold, aiming to drastically simplify the tax code and reduce the number of individual income tax brackets down to four.

Nearly four months ago on June 2nd, something very unusual happened in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The price of propane actually became negative, hitting an unbelievable -0.625 cents per gallon. It’s hard to believe that the price of a productive commodity could become so beat down by the market that producers would practically have

On May 28, 1816, Thomas Jefferson penned a letter to his friend John Taylor deeply criticizing the use of debt to fund a government’s excessive operations: “[T]he principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale,” Public debt is a

September 22, 2015 Victoria, Chile About ten days ago, I had the pleasure of going through final procedures to obtain my permanent residency permit here in Chile. Sitting in the waiting lounge of the Civil Registry office in downtown Santiago, I found myself struck by the mix of people. Many of them were