May 21, 2013 Hong Kong [Editor’s note: Sovereign Man’s Chief Investment Strategist Tim Staermose is filling in today while Simon is en route to the United States.] Myanmar is among the hottest “frontier” investment markets today. The country is going from an authoritarian regime to democracy, from a conflict situation to a situation of relative [...]
May 20, 2013 Hong Kong In what may go down as one of the most obtusely out-of-touch policy memos ever written, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently released a paper entitled “Edible Insects: Future Prospects for Food and Feed Security.” http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e.pdf For 171 pages, the paper argues for insect-based diets, explaining why governments [...]
May 17, 2013 Dhaka, Bangladesh Well, you have to admit one thing– the United States Senate certainly has its priorities straight. Early last week they passed S.743, the Marketplace Fairness Act. This bill requires US-based online merchants to charge, collect, report, and pay sales tax to the roughly 9,646 jurisdictions within the Land of the [...]
NEWSFLASH: In another demonstration that the United States is no longer the Land of the Free, the Department of Homeland Security has just seized the US bank accounts belonging to Mt. Gox, the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange. This certainly underscores the importance, once again, of diversifying internationally. The Department of Homeland Security issued a seizure [...]
May 16, 2013 Dhaka, Bangladesh As I’ve been traveling across Asia recently, one recurring theme I’ve been seeing are these constant headlines that ‘inflation is under control.’ Across the region, and in fact across the world, the official statistics tell us that inflation is moderate, so it’s OK to continue printing more money. Aside from [...]
May 15, 2013 Dhaka, Bangladesh The only English word my taxi driver knew was “shit”. And perhaps, given the state of his vehicle and road conditions, it was the most appropriate. I lost count of the number of pedestrians we nearly mowed down on the way from the airport; it was difficult to see anyhow– [...]
May 14, 2013 Manila, Philippines Some days one can’t help but look at the headlines and think of Ayn Rand. With all the destructive measures by desperate governments from Cyprus to Argentina, it seems sometimes like we’re reading from the pages of her seminal work, Atlas Shrugged. But what we’re seeing now seems to have [...]
May 10, 2013 Singapore Each time I’m in Singapore, I’m continually impressed at the country’s extraordinary growth. Friends of mine tell me about their experiences growing up here in the 1940s and 1950s. The downtown area that is now covered with soaring towers of steel and glass were once repugnant cesspools devoid of running water [...]
If I told you that your bank only held 1% of its customer deposits in reserve, would you feel that your money was safe? If I told you that the insurance fund which backed your bank deposit only had enough cash to bail out 0.35% of the banking system, would that make you feel any [...]
May 8, 2013 Singapore The worldwide movement to tax, confiscate, and regulate everything imaginable turned a new page earlier this week when the “Marketplace Fairness Act” passed in the US Senate. The bill still needs to clear the House of Representatives. But its fundamental purpose, enforcing state sales tax for online transactions, is almost guaranteed. [...]
Reporting from Hanoi, Vietnam I’m not much of a fiction reader, but about two years ago a friend turned me on to a couple of books by Daniel Suarez– Daemon, and its sequel Freedom. I won’t ruin the plot, but it’s an excellent story with gripping insights into what the future could look like after [...]
[Editor’s note: Tim Staermose, Sovereign Man’s Chief Investment Strategist, is filling in for Simon today from Hong Kong.] It took me two attempts. But, today I opened an account at the Bank of China. The reason? They’ll no longer buy gold bullion from you unless you bank with them. I wasn’t selling personally. But, an [...]
May 2, 2013 en route to Hanoi The world is truly an enormous place… and, despite the dearth of good news and positive trends out there, I still see a lot of amazing opportunities in my travels. But it’s really important to remain grounded about the challenges that face us. As I pen this letter [...]
May 1, 2013 Bangkok, Thailand I really hate to be negative… but this is positively revolting. Disgusting. Indescribably offensive. In the Land of the Free recently, a California couple had their child kidnapped by the state. At gunpoint. It all started in mid-April when Anna and Alex Nikolayev took their 5-month old son Sammy to [...]
April 29, 2013 Bangkok, Thailand ABN Amro, the Dutch state-owned banking giant, recently revised its global macro and gold outlook, forecasting a $1,300 gold price by the end of this year. Moreover, the bank forecasts $1,000 gold by December 2014, and $800 gold in 2015. Why? “The authorities — especially in Europe — have acted [...]
April 26, 2013 Koh Samui, Thailand The flight from Penang to Koh Samui is quick. And it’s incredibly cheap. Unlike their Western counterparts, Asian discount air carriers actually walk the walk. You can zip around the region for flights often costing just $50 to 100. And it’s well worth it, there is much to see [...]
April 25, 2013 George Town, Penang, Malaysia Though few people have heard of Penang today, it once ranked among the most opulent destinations in the world. Ceded to the British East India Company in 1786, Penang was a critical trading hub for European imperialists; it thrived as a free port along critical eastern trade routes [...]
April 24, 2013 George Town, Penang, Malaysia When you’ve got a guy like Senator John McCain who says “The battlefield is the United States of America,” it tells you that almost nothing is safe in the Land of the Free. Whatever remains of civil liberties is going to feel the full brunt of the state’s [...]
April 23, 2013 Phnom Penh, Cambodia Surprise, surprise… the completely insolvent US government has yet another idea to raise revenue in the Land of the Free: a new tax! The Marketplace Fairness Act was introduced some time ago, and we’ve discussed it before. But it’s now being rushed through Congress as quickly as possible. It’s [...]
April 22, 2013 Phnom Penh, Cambodia In the killing fields outside of Phnom Penh, you can still see bone fragments protruding from the ground. It’s harrowing to say the least. Roughly two million people were wantonly massacred in the 1970s under the rule of Pol Pot, decimating not only the population but also the nation’s [...]
April 19, 2013 Jakarta, Indonesia Whoever said “it’s a small world” never flew across the Pacific. The flight from Santiago to Sydney is a mind-numbing 14 hours. And then it’s another 8 to Jakarta. Yet along the way are vast stretches of civilizations, resources, and amazing opportunities. No, the world is a wonderfully massive place. [...]
April 18, 2013 Jakarta, Indonesia In the first century AD, the Roman Empire was up to its eyeballs in domestic terrorism. The biggest threat was a tiny Judaic sect known as the Zealots who routinely conducted public attacks, even against other Jews who didn’t agree with their views. This is actually where the word [...]
Reporting from Sydney, Australia Switzerland is the place that has traditionally stood above all the rest in its reputation for financial stability. Why? Because the currency was well-managed, the banking system was sound, and the country had a long tradition of treating capital well. Over the last few years, however, these advantages have collapsed. Switzerland [...]
April 15, 2013 Sydney, Australia Somewhere, Paul Krugman is smiling. The Nobel Prize winning economist, whose brilliant ideas include: spending your way out of recession borrowing your way out of debt conjuring unprecedented amounts of currency out of thin air without consequence staging a false flag alien invasion of planet Earth is perhaps most famous [...]
[Editor's note: Tim Staermose, Sovereign Man's Chief Investment Strategist, is filling in for Simon today from Bay of Islands, New Zealand.] The wealthy have been diversifying internationally for centuries. Baron de Rothschild famously sent four of his five sons to different points of the compass: one to London, one to Paris, one to Naples, and [...]
April 11, 2013 London, England [Editor's note: Tim Price, Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management and frequent Sovereign Man contributor is filling in while Simon is viewing agricultural property today.] These are certainly days of miracle and wonder. Well, of absurd and extraordinary financial experimentation, at any rate. Last week, for example, saw the Bank of [...]
April 10, 2013 Santiago, Chile A few days ago, Italian authorities stopped a man who was making his way across the border into Switzerland with his wife and three children. They searched his car and found, literally, a ton of gold bars hidden in a floorboard storage compartment. Needless to say, the gold was confiscated, [...]
Though Australia’s national balance sheet is comparatively quite strong, the government has been running at a net deficit for years… and they’re under intense pressure to balance the budget. The good news is that Australia now has a goodly number of investor-friendly immigration programs designed to bring productive foreigners into the country, similar to the [...]
Have you ever done something really stupid, just because you were in love? Something you look back on and cringe, thinking “why on earth did I do that?” Of course. Who hasn’t? Fear. Love. Panic. Exuberance. Jealousy. Desire. These emotions have tremendous influence over human behavior. And when they kick in, they skew our judgment [...]
Secret. Dirty. Sham. Shadowy. Illicit. Fake. Covert. Questionable. These are typically the words used to describe the world of offshore asset protection in mainstream media. The classic presumption is that if you go offshore– foreign bank account, overseas safety deposit box, foreign trust, foreign corporation, etc.– then you MUST be doing something wrong. This is [...]
As mentioned yesterday about our recent Offshore Tactics Workshop it was easily the most exhausting yet exhilarating thing I’ve done. I’ve now retreated from the bustle of the big city to my Sovereign Valley farm for some rest and reflection, and yesterday I had the pleasure of hosting Peter Schiff and his wife for the [...]
Historic is the only word I think you could use to describe it. Just imagine the scene: Ron Paul, Jim Rogers, Nigel Farage, Jim Rickards, and Peter Schiff, all on stage at the same time, Saturday night, in Santiago, Chile. This was so fantastical that when we posted the photo of the group on our [...]
Being a sovereign man is not just about diversifying and internationalizing your assets across national borders. It’s as much about your mindset and the way you view the world and the events that are happening around you. Your worldview is heavily dependent on the knowledge and ideas that you are exposed to, but as demonstrated [...]
[Editor’s note: Sovereign Man’s resident Chilean property guru, Darren Kaiser, is filling in for Simon today.] As a property investor and speculator, I’m always studying trends and looking for anomalies. Learning about the history of a place, how it came to be as it is today, and then making predictions about what it will be [...]
Reporting from Santiago, Chile One would think that certain truths are obvious by now. It should be obvious, for example, that there are consequences to living beyond your means. It should be obvious that there are consequences to a long history of spending unsustainably and accumulating mountains of debt. And it should be obvious that [...]