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Last week the FDIC released its annual financial statements, giving the public a glimpse into the financial condition of the organization responsible for backing up the entire US banking system. The numbers are pretty incredible. The FDIC maintains the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF), which is the emergency stash for nearly all bank deposits
Years ago back in my days at the academy and in the military, I used to hear this phrase “freedom isn’t free” over and over again. It was almost a sort of motto for a lot of military units– a self-motivating expression that freedom came at a price, and it was our solemn
This is starting to become very concerning. The momentum to “ban cash”, and in particular high denomination notes like the 500 euro and $100 bills, is seriously picking up steam. On Monday the European Central Bank President emphatically disclosed that he is strongly considering phasing out the 500 euro note. Yesterday, former US
According to financial research firm ICI, total retirement assets in the Land of the Free now exceed $23 trillion. $7.3 trillion of that is held in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). That’s an appetizing figure, especially for a government that just passed $19 trillion in debt and is in pressing need of new funding
Earlier this week the State Department released its latest statistics for people who have renounced their US citizenship. 2015 was another record year, with 4,279 people divorcing themselves from the US government and heading to greener pastures elsewhere. This was the third year in a row that broke the previous year’s record, showing
[Editor’s note: Our Chief Investment Strategist Tim Staermose is filling in for Simon today from Yangon, Myanmar.] Since so much of Asia is on holiday for the Lunar New Year, I decided to travel to Myanmar to check out how the economy is developing. Myanmar was once the wealthiest economy in Southeast Asia.
In 578 AD, a Korean immigrant named Shigemitsu Kongo made his way to Japan at the invitation of the royal family. Buddhism was on the rise in Japan at the time; though it had only been introduced a few decades prior, the Empress consort had been actively encouraging the adoption of Buddhism across
Thirteen years ago my life changed forever. Colin Powell, then US Secretary of State and the most credible person in George W. Bush’s cabinet, made the case for war in Iraq on February 5, 2003. As a young military intelligence officer at the time, watching from a makeshift army base in Kuwait not far
It’s news that seems ripped from the pages of The Onion. Or perhaps Atlas Shrugged. But incredibly enough it’s actually true: earlier this week, Congress proposed a new law authorizing the US Postal Service to provide banking and financial services. It’s called the “Providing Opportunities for Savings, Transactions, and Lending” Act, abbreviated as…
Even before his coronation in 1626, King Charles I of England was almost bankrupt. His predecessors King James and Queen Elizabeth had run the royal treasury down to almost nothing. Costly war and military folly had taken its toll. The crown had simply wasted far too much money, and brought in too little.
In case you missed it, yesterday we alerted you that the United States government has now officially accumulated $19 trillion in debt. This time it took them just 427 days of printing to pile on this last trillion dollars, compared to the over 75,000 days it took to rack up the first trillion
On October 22, 1981, the national debt in the United States of America hit $1 trillion for the first time in history. It had taken the US federal government over two centuries to reach that mark. And in that period, America had won its independence and built a nation from scratch. How Much
Let’s take a moment to compare the world today to before the Global Financial Crisis struck roughly eight years ago. In this short period of time, US federal government debt has DOUBLED. The Federal Reserve now holds $2.4 trillion of that debt, up from $479 billion. Interest rates, which were between 2-4%, are
On August 24 in the year 79 AD, one of the most famous natural disasters in history struck the Ancient Roman city of Pompeii, and its surrounding area. We have an eye-witness account from Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, whose letter to Roman historian Tacitus vividly describes how the eruption of Mount Vesuvius rained
In 2014, the Journal of Neuroscience published the results of a unique study that probed deep into human emotion. Two Dutch scientists had conducted an experiment in which they exposed test subjects to a wide range of scenarios to evoke some of the most primal human emotions– joy, anger, etc. Subjects were hooked
