Month: May 2012

May 21, 2012 Los Angeles, USA I had the privilege of seeing Roger Waters perform ‘The Wall’ to a live crowd of over 40,000 fans at the LA Coliseum on Saturday night– the second time I’ve seen the show on this tour. It was an amazing production– I wholeheartedly recommend the experience as

May 17, 2012 Undisclosed Location, United States I’ve been in the US for a little more than 24-hours. And having flipped through the TV channels trying to figure out what useless drivel big media is passing off as ‘news’, I realized that I’m going to vomit if I hear the word “fair” one

May 15, 2012 Santiago, Chile Over the weekend, I had the privilege of breaking bread with our workers at the farm in celebration of the phenomenal harvest season we’ve had. And a celebration it was– everything from the blueberry harvest in December all the way up to the wine grape harvest that just ended, this season

May 14, 2012 London, England Imagine you are one of two people playing Monopoly. While you follow the rules religiously, the other player, who also happens to be the banker, does not. He routinely appropriates properties. If he doesn’t like the score on the dice, he simply changes them. He continually takes as much money from the

May 11, 2012 Undisclosed location Former US Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann receives the Sovereign Man dumbest person of the week award for obtaining… then almost immediately renouncing… Swiss citizenship. I’ll explain: Bachmann’s husband is a Swiss national; they’ve been married since 1978, and as a result, Bachmann eventually became qualified for Swiss

May 10, 2012 Florianopolis, Brazil Brazil is undoubtedly a land of superlatives. One may easily defend that it is the most beautiful country in the world, or claim that Brazilians are the friendliest people in the world. And yes, even the most attractive. Economically, the story is the same; at $2.4 trillion, Brazil’s

May 9, 2012 Sao Paulo, Brazil When most people think of Brazil, it’s the incredible beaches that come to mind. Or the crazy parties of Carnival. Or the spectacular vistas and great weather. Or how indescribably gorgeous (and welcoming) the locals are. But here’s a little known fact, and it’s something that sets

May 8, 2012 Jakarta, Indonesia If you swallow the line parroted by the mass media in the West (my adopted country of Australia being the prime offender), you’d think Indonesia was a strict Islamic state where terrorists run around bombing nightclubs frequented by tourists. And you probably have a mental image of an

May 7, 2012 Asuncion, Paraguay Long-time readers know that I’m unabashedly bullish on agriculture. The supply and demand fundamentals for food speak for themselves, but let’s briefly review: On the demand side: 1) World population isn’t getting any smaller for now. Even some of the most Malthusian models show a continued rise in global population for the

May 3, 2012 Hong Kong One of the most important habits of highly successful investors is that, when market conditions call for it, they have the ability to sit on their butts and do absolutely nothing. Great investors wait patiently for the next slam-dunk opportunity to present itself.  They do not jeopardize their capital in half-baked ideas,

May 2, 2012 Santiago, Chile Stephen King (yes, that Stephen King) is fired up. Angry. Furious. Why? Because he doesn’t get to pay enough income tax. It’s not enough that King could simply write a check, voluntarily, to the government. He wants to make sure that -everyone- is forcibly coerced under threat of

May 1, 2012 Santiago, Chile Friedrich von Hayek, a major figure in the Austrian school of economics, wrote in his seminal work the Road to Serfdom, “By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.” It’s hard