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15.7 trillion new reasons to be concerned about the national debt

Last Friday, September 30th 2022 was the close of the Fiscal Year for the US federal government. If you’re not familiar with the term, the ‘Fiscal Year’ refers to the government’s official accounting period. It starts on October 1st and ends the following September 30th. And everything from the federal budget to the

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Greek Golden Visa price increase

Greek Golden Visa pricing to double as of May 2023 (in SOME areas)

As we’ve learned from recent history, deals as good as the Greek Golden Visa don’t tend to stick around for long. And sure enough, the program’s pricing will double to €500K in January 2023. Today, we take a closer look at the program, the recently announced changes, as well as why you may

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How to earn 9.62% during stagflation

It all started innocently enough. It was July 2, 1997, and the Prime Minister of Thailand had just announced that their currency– the Thai baht– would no longer be pegged to the US dollar. Big deal, right? It doesn’t seem like a boring press conference about an emerging market currency in Southeast Asia

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It’s a crazy world when Zimbabwe has the most stable currency

Robert Mugabe could have gone down in history with the same esteem and grandeur as  Nelson Mandela. Like Mandela, Mugabe was imprisoned for several years for being a prominent anti-colonialist leader in Zimbabwe— then called Rhodesia. Upon release from prison, and with a little help from the international community, Mugabe became Prime Minister

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Some clear thinking about Stagflation

Let’s not mince words: stagflation is here. Let’s also not overreact: the world is not coming to an end. And, like all things, there are both risks and rewards that will arise. First, what do we know? Historically high inflation is obvious. Plus many major economies around the world are already sputtering. Germany’s

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How to use technology, and not be used by it

Amazon’s Ring video doorbells likely form the largest private surveillance network the world has ever known. Millions of Americans allow Ring surveillance cameras to record and store video and audio of all activity at their front door. Ring maintains access to users’ unencrypted videos, and has admitted in the past that at least

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Future historians may call this the ‘Crisis of the 21st Century’

In the year 210 AD, after two decades of constant warfare, Roman Emperor Septimius Severus was finally satisfied: he had conquered nearly the entire known western world. This was the year that the Roman Empire reached its maximum territory– approximately 5 million square kilometers, stretching from Morocco to Georgia, from southern Scotland to

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The US is about to go full Louis XVI

On September 3, 1783, after nearly a year of excruciating back-and-forth negotiations, all sides had finally gathered together in Paris to sign a historic peace agreement. It was a pretty important peace deal. Because the Treaty of Paris, as it is now known, is what formally ended the American Revolution, and when Great

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The “experts” nail it again!

In March of 421 BC, after years of escalating conflict, Athens and Sparta finally decided to bury the hatchet and coexist peacefully together in the Mediterranean. The two powers had been at odds for decades. Athens had ballooned into a regional empire, and Sparta itself was a rising power. The two sides came

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US government to centrally manage innovation. It’s genius!

When news of Suleiman the Magnificent’s death on September 6, 1566 reached Europe, kings, queens, and clergy across the continent breathed a collective sigh of relief. Suleiman had reigned as the supreme leader of the Ottoman Empire for nearly 50 years, during which time he became one the most feared and powerful men

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“I have decided. . .”

In the year 1445 in the Spanish city of Valencia, a 14-year old boy named Rodrigo started his first job as the ‘sacristan’ of the local cathedral. Becoming sacristan was a pretty big responsibility, especially for a kid; Rodrigo was basically put in charge of the cathedral’s books, records, and high-value assets. But

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