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On May 28, 1816, Thomas Jefferson penned a letter to his friend John Taylor deeply criticizing the use of debt to fund a government’s excessive operations: “[T]he principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale,” Public debt is a
September 25, 2015 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile A few days ago a young entrepreneur came to me with her big idea for a business. This happens a lot, sometimes even 3-4 times per week. And while our selection rate is very low, I pay attention to each and every pitch in our effort
September 22, 2015 Victoria, Chile About ten days ago, I had the pleasure of going through final procedures to obtain my permanent residency permit here in Chile. Sitting in the waiting lounge of the Civil Registry office in downtown Santiago, I found myself struck by the mix of people. Many of them were
September 16, 2015 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile Six months ago, on March 16, 2015, the government of the United States of America once again reached its statutory debt limit. In other words, the Land of the Free had maxed out its credit card and was legally barred from borrowing a penny more. That’s
September 15, 2015 Cauquenes, Chile Seven years ago on September 15, 2008, one of the oldest investment banks in America filed for bankruptcy. Lehman Brothers had been started a family of German entrepreneurs who had recently emigrated to the United States in the mid-1800s. They started as just a simple general store in
September 14, 2015 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile Every few centuries a new technology is invented and adopted that fundamentally changes everything about how a society is structured and organized. The Agricultural Revolution allowed early humankind to stop being nomadic hunters and establish the roots of civilization in a single location. The invention of
September 10, 2015 Santiago, Chile Yesterday was a pretty big day. First (and perhaps most importantly) my post-Italy no carb detox came to an end. Hooray for that. Second, I signed the papers and closed on a new apartment here in Santiago. It’s a great time to be buying in Chile for anyone
September 8, 2015 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile By late 2002, the national currency of Brazil (known as the “real”) was practically in free fall. In barely six weeks the real had lost nearly a quarter of its value, and in mid-October 2002, the real hit its weakest level in history at 4 per
On June 3, 2010 Joe’s life changed forever when he stepped on an IED in Afghanistan. As a grunt Soldier deployed with the 82nd Airborne, Joe became one of the all too many people to lose a limb and nearly his life fighting in a pointless conflict. I told you a little about
September 4, 2015 Dubrovnik, Croatia In an article that first appeared in Fortune magazine on December 10, 2001, Warren Buffett penned a great letter about falling prices: “When hamburgers go down in price, we sing the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ in the Buffett household. When hamburgers go up in price, we weep. For most people,
September 3, 2015 Dubrovnik, Croatia For much of the 9th century, the Byzantine Empire was on the defensive, fending off one invasion after another. That all changed on today’s date, September 3rd in the year 863, when three Byzantine armies massed together to crush Arab invaders. This was exactly the decisive victory that
September 2, 2015 Vienna, Austria Recently I wrote to you explaining why I’d just purchased shares of Royal Dutch Shell. Shell is a giant in the oil industry that’s been in businesses for more than a century. And while I almost never buy stocks, they were practically giving this one away. When I
September 1, 2015 Spoleto, Italy In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published his truly revolutionary work, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. For centuries prior, humanity had held the Ptolemaic belief that the Earth was the center of the universe. Copernicus shattered that belief, demonstrating mathematically that it was the sun at the center of
Spoleto, Italy August 31, 2015 If you’ve ever picked up a copy of The Economist magazine, you’ve probably heard of the Big Mac Index. This is an interesting tool where a bunch of reporters from around the world are forced to go into McDonalds and find out the price of a Big Mac
Spoleto, Italy August 28, 2015 Charles Dickens opened his 1859 masterpiece A Tale of Two Cities with one of the most famous introductions in literary history: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… “ This line is notoriously incomprehensible to high school students around the world. But as
