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September 3, 2015 Dubrovnik, Croatia For much of the 9th century, the Byzantine Empire was on the defensive, fending off one invasion after another. That all changed on today’s date, September 3rd in the year 863, when three Byzantine armies massed together to crush Arab invaders. This was exactly the decisive victory that
September 2, 2015 Vienna, Austria Recently I wrote to you explaining why I’d just purchased shares of Royal Dutch Shell. Shell is a giant in the oil industry that’s been in businesses for more than a century. And while I almost never buy stocks, they were practically giving this one away. When I
September 1, 2015 Spoleto, Italy In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published his truly revolutionary work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. For centuries prior, humanity had held the Ptolemaic belief that the Earth was the center of the universe. Copernicus shattered that belief, demonstrating mathematically that it was the sun at the center of
Spoleto, Italy August 31, 2015 If you’ve ever picked up a copy of The Economist magazine, you’ve probably heard of the Big Mac Index. This is an interesting tool where a bunch of reporters from around the world are forced to go into McDonalds and find out the price of a Big Mac
Spoleto, Italy August 28, 2015 Charles Dickens opened his 1859 masterpiece A Tale of Two Cities with one of the most famous introductions in literary history: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… “ This line is notoriously incomprehensible to high school students around the world. But as
August 26, 2015 Spoleto, Italy It couldn’t be any more beautiful here. Every year we descend upon the Umbrian countryside here in Italy, about 2 hours northeast of Rome for a retreat. It’s a time and place reserved to foster relationships with friends, colleagues, and members of our Sovereign Man community, where three
August 21, 2015 Rome, Italy For at least the last decade, China has been positioning the renminbi to take over as the world’s reserve currency. Over the years they’ve gradually established credibility for the currency on world markets, and have begun strategically chipping away at the institutions cementing the US dollar’s dominance. This
August 20, 2015 Rome, Italy If I wrote down the term ‘imaginary number’, you’d probably think I was talking about some central bank economic forecast or government budget projection. But in mathematical parlance, an imaginary number is defined as the square root of a negative number. You know that the square root of
Paris, France August 19, 2015 Earlier today I had a great meeting with a government minister in Antigua, who’d phoned to update me on their economic citizenship program. If you’re not familiar, an economic citizenship is a legal process backed by formal legislation whereby an investor can make a large donation or investment
August 17, 2015 Paris, France Deep within one of the darkened parking garages of Terminal 1 at Charles de Gaulle airport, there’s an attractive young French girl who’s desperately trying to manage an entire fleet of rental cars by herself. She’s basically the only person working the garage for one of the major
August 12, 2015 Istanbul, Turkey As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” (… to which George W. Bush famously added after flubbing the aphorism on live TV, “can’t fool me again!”) For months, despite every shred of data pointing to a weaker economy, China’s
August 11, 2015 Istanbul, Turkey When I was a kid, I ‘accidentally’ lit my parent’s living room carpet on fire. A friend of theirs had been over the night before and left his cigarette lighter on the coffee table. And as I had never seen such magical technology before as instant fire at
July 31, 2015 Lausanne, Switzerland On June 6, 1932, President Herbert Hoover imposed the first ever national gasoline tax in the United States, initially set at 1 cent per gallon. It was a major success for the federal government; the tax on gasoline alone was responsible for over 15% of their 1933 tax
July 30, 2015 Lausanne, Switzerland Usain Bolt has got nothing on Leonidas of Rhodos. Born nearly 2,000 years ago, Leonidas holds the record as the greatest sprinter of all time, winning more Olympic titles than anyone else in human history. At four straight Olympic games, Leonidas dominated all three sprinting events– the Stadion
July 29, 2015 Aritzo, Sardinia, Italy On January 31, 1940, the very first Social Security check ever delivered went to Ms. Ida May Fuller, a former legal secretary who had recently retired. Ms. Fuller had spent just three years paying into the system, contributing a total of $24.75 to Social Security. Yet her