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October 4, 2012 Santiago, Chile “Corruptissima republica plurimae leges. [The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the state.]” -Tacitus, the Annals ca. AD 69 The nature of what is ‘legal’ has become a truly bizarre concept these days. Developed nations of the west have hundreds of thousands of pages of rules, codes,
September 26, 2012 Hong Kong It’s now officially a 3-way race to the bottom between the dollar, the euro, and the yen. It started on September 6th with the ECB announcing a new, UNLIMITED bond-buying program. A week later, the US Federal Reserve officially announced QE3, another open-ended (de facto limitless) bond buying
September 24, 2012 London, England Never try to teach a pig to sing, advised Robert Heinlein. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig. Similarly, never try to convince a central banker that his policies are destructive. After five years of enduring crisis, market prices are no longer determined by the considered assessment of independent
August 31, 2012 Rome, Italy My 2-year old nephew in Australia loves getting postcards. He already associates me with frequent traveling. I’m referred to as “Tim Hong Kong jet plane.” So before leaving Italy today, after a fantastic week in the Umbrian countryside with our Total Access members, I set out to mail
August 28, 2012 Spoleto, Italy Jacques Wajsfelner of Weston, Massachusetts is a criminal mastermind. Big time. Like Lex Luthor. But rest easy, ladies and gentlemen, for this nefarious villain is about to face some serious jail time thanks to the courageous work of US government agents. You see, Mr. Wajsfelner was finally caught and convicted of
August 13, 2012 Ubud, Bali, Indonesia A sprawling archipelago of more than 14,000 islands, Indonesia is home to some of the most beautiful, exotic, and alluring places in the world. Yet it’s so huge… so diverse, with different languages, cultures, and religions, to even call Indonesia a single country demonstrates how antiquated the traditional concept of geography
I don’t get angry very often, but here’s something that managed to really push my buttons. Around America the same phenomena are occurring: In some of the nation’s poorest towns, it’s becoming illegal to be resilient. This is absurd! The people who need to harness the power of self-reliance the most are being denied
In 2007 John McAfee explained in Fast Company, “Success for me, is can you wake up in the morning and feel like a twelve year old?” However, that was right before he lost 95% of his net worth. He explains in Robert Frank’s book, The High-Beta Rich, that he was living through a second childhood, wasting money on
Did you know that, according to Capgemini and the Royal Bank of Canada’s latest World Wealth Report, there are now more millionaires in Asia than North America…? An estimated 3.37 million individuals in the Asia-Pacific region have a liquid net worth of over US$1 million. That compares to 3.35 million in North America. The same
July 25, 2012 London, England For the last two weeks here in the UK, TV stations have been running a documentary series called “Bank of Dave“, in which down-to-earth businessman Dave Fishwick attempts to establish his own bank. The premise sounds plausible: offer depositors 5% interest (as opposed to zero), and lend to
July 16, 2012 Hong Kong A few days ago in Indonesia’s Lampung province, I was following a sprightly Chinese woman, well into her 70s, as she showed me around her thriving home appliances and furniture shop. It was an amazing thing to see. The three-story shop-house was both the family home, and business premises. Yet every
June 29, 2012 Tel Aviv, Israel This week may very well go down as ‘connect the dots’ week. Things have been moving so quickly, so let’s step back briefly and review the big picture from the week’s events: 1) After weeks… months… even years of posturing and denial, Spain and Cyprus became the fourth and fifth
June 11, 2012 London It’s common in financial markets for investors to conflate what we call ‘volatility’ with what we term ‘risk’. They are not exactly the same thing. More specifically, volatility is an inevitable by-product of investing in a financial market. As JP Morgan (the man, not the bank) once said: markets
May 25, 2012 Yangon, Burma If you’re sick and tired of all the doom and gloom that pervades the US and Europe, and should your personal circumstances allow, I unreservedly recommend that you hop on a plane and go and check out Burma. This is a rare good news story, and it may very well
May 24, 2012 Lake Tahoe, USA Yesterday was my lucky day. While hiking in the middle of nowhere around Lake Tahoe, I literally stumbled onto a 1-ounce US silver eagle coin, 1996 issue. It was just lying there on the ground without a soul in sight. The coin was pretty muddy, but I managed to
