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In 1988, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico named Joseph Tainter published a book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Now, “collapse” is a strong word that conjures images of apocalyptic scenarios… Mad Max or Hunger Games drama. But that’s not what Tainter intended. He uses the term ‘collapse’
On May 28, 2021, a female student was in her school’s bathroom in Loudoun County, Virginia, when another classmate— a boy who identified as a girl— walked in. School policy allowed students to use whichever bathroom matched their gender identity on any given day. So the boy who identified as a girl proceeded
We’ve been extremely consistent—practically shouting from the rooftops over the last year—that there was an absolutely outrageous investment trend that was going to make people who were paying attention a lot of money… and it wasn’t going to last. What we’ve been saying over and over is that gold’s bull run was just
On July 9, 1807, after Napoleon’s crushing victory over an entire coalition of European nations, the King of Prussia was forced to sign the Treaty of Tilsit, formally putting an end to the conflict. The peace treaty was devastating for the Prussians; they were forced to pay heavy tribute and war reparations to
It wasn’t even twelve months ago that America’ political, economic, and cultural tectonic plates started to shift—finally in a positive direction. Joe Biden’s deteriorating mental condition was put on display for the world to see in his one and only Presidential debate; at the time this looked like the final nail in the
It turns out that “Liberty and Justice for all” might just still exist in the Land of the Free. While most of the news yesterday was focused on the nuclear Twitter war between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in favor of common sense. The story began
Last week when I wrote about America’s new stablecoin legislation (bizarrely called the “GENIUS Act”), a number of readers wrote in asking me to clarify a comment that I made about the Bitcoin company ‘Strategy’, i.e. formerly MicroStrategy. I explained in the article that I am pro-crypto and have been since the early
Jamie Dimon is one of America’s most prominent and successful CEOs; he built JP Morgan Chase into a $4 trillion juggernaut, so it’s fair to say that he understands global finance in a way that most people– and most politicians– do not. On Friday, Dimon sat down for a 30+ minute live interview
Peter Schiff isn’t just my partner at Schiff Sovereign– we’ve been close friends for many years. And we generally see eye-to-eye on most things going on in the world. But one area where we disagree is crypto. Not to put words in his mouth, but Peter is pretty vocal in his criticism of
Germany’s “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismark didn’t pass the world’s first modern Social Security system out of the kindness of his heart. The year was 1889, and Bismark was fighting hard against the rising tide of socialism; the second volume of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital had been published just a few years earlier
On August 24 in the year 410 AD, a large army of Visigoths entered the city of Rome and rampaged through the streets for three full days. They ransacked public buildings. They destroyed monuments. They looted wealthy homes. And they stole just about anything and everything that wasn’t nailed down. Only some churches
Last week I wrote an article about the bizarre US tax liabilities of Leo XIV, the new American Pope. The basic idea that, as a US citizen, the Pope is required to file and pay US taxes on his worldwide income… even though he is a head of state, and even though he
Well, that was fast. It only took five days after Moody’s downgrade of the US government’s sovereign credit rating for investors to throw a fit. The result was yesterday’s meltdown trifecta in which ALL three major markets– US stocks, US bonds, and the US dollar– lost significant value. I wrote about this extensively
In the year 1980, a young computer science grad student from the University of Washington named Burrell “Bud” Tribble accepted a job at a hot tech startup you might have heard of: it’s called Apple. Tribble went to work directly for Steve Jobs on Apple’s most ambitious project at the time– the Macintosh.
Nearly 2,000 years ago around the year 75 AD, the Greco-Roman historian Plutarch sat down to write his most ambitious work yet– a collection of biographies of the 48 most famous and influential figures of antiquity. It was called Parallel Lives, and this two-volume series covered everyone from the mythical founders of Rome
