Category: International Diversification Strategies

On March 20, 1602, after a few years of painstaking negotiations, a deal was struck amid the cobblestone streets and legendary waterways of Amsterdam that changed the world of finance forever. The Dutch Republic (as it was known back then) was already a major economic power in the early 1600s; Dutch merchants boasted

On a routine day in the winter of 1993, workers at the Chehrabad salt mine in the Zanjan Province of Iran discovered a remarkably preserved corpse dating back to 300 AD. He apparently died in a salt mining accident in the early 300s. But the salt had kept the man’s body largely intact.

Almost two decades ago, I walked into a coin shop in Florida to buy my very first piece of silver. I was in my mid-20s at the time and just starting to teach myself about financial history, the national debt, and central banking. It was early in my education. But I had already

By the summer of 1812, Napoleon still thought of himself as nearly invincible. He had conquered nearly all of Europe with relative ease and brought the continent’s remaining rulers under his control. He had personally lost just a single battle. And his chief nemesis, Great Britain, had just been dragged into a new

Imagine that a couple weeks ago, on a cool October day, you were suddenly transported to a small mountain town celebrating Oktoberfest. You see red-roofed, wood-frame homes plastered against the nearby mountains, and the quaint downtown is filled with microbreweries and pastry shops offering apple strudel. You distinctly hear a group of blond-haired

Public Law 93-373 was supposed to be so boring that Congress didn’t even bother to give it a name. You know how most laws passed by Congress have some fancy name– like the “Inflation Reduction Act” or the “USA PATRIOT Act” or some such nonsense? Well, on November 7, 1973, US Senator James

Sigrid Paul was living in East Berlin in 1961 when she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. Unfortunately, though, her son was born with major health problems… and Sigrid had to seek out the best possible medical care to treat him. This was more than fifteen years after World War II, and

Yesterday I wrote a comprehensive explanation of the extreme fiscal catastrophe that the US faces thanks to the federal government’s relentless spending addiction. I wrote, for example, that the US national debt is now $33.6 trillion… and it has increased more than HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS just so far this MONTH. Astonishing. And

One of the many Orwellian habits of politicians is give cute acronyms to their idiotic legislation. The CARES Act from 2020, for example, stood for “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security”. The CARES Act was one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in US history; it paid people to stay home and

When Julius Caesar first crossed the English channel and invaded Great Britain in 55 BC, he thought it was primitive, barbaric, and uncivilized… especially when compared to the splendor of Rome. But Caesar knew it had potential. He wrote to his colleagues back in Rome that Britannia had vast minerals, timber, and livestock,

By the late 1800s, the South Pacific island chain of Samoa faced an existential crisis. After squabbles between German, British, and American forces over the previous decades, Germany had taken the western islands of Samoa, and asserted its unpopular control over the people. The eastern islands, however, were controlled by the United States