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[Editor’s note: Michael O’Brian is a European private banker] One of the founding fathers of the United States famously remarked that death and taxes are the only certainties in life. And as tax day rolled around once again in the US, individuals the length and breadth of the country were participating in the
December 20, 2013 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile In investing, it’s often said that nothing goes up or down in a straight line. Stocks, bonds, commodities… they all go through periods of growth, correction, collapse, mania, etc. We’re seeing this right now with respect to a substantial decline in the nominal gold price after
October 30, 2013 Santiago, Chile [Editor’s note: Darren Kaiser, author of Sovereign Man’s Chile Property Investment Black Paper, is filling in today while Simon is en route to Asia.] Look around the world from an investment perspective these days, nothing seems particularly cheap. And finding safe places to park capital is a little
June 19, 2013 Bio Bio Region, Chile There are few investments out there that seem as obvious as freshwater. Think about it: generally speaking, there’s a fixed amount of the stuff based on current technology. Yet each day, demand from our rapidly increasing population, farming, and industrial use grows. And because it’s very
June 18, 2013 Bio Bio Region, Chile In the world of investing, there’s a lot to be said for buying undervalued assets. Occasionally the market provides some incredible opportunities to pick up high quality assets so cheap that, to paraphrase acclaimed investor Jim Rogers, all you have to do is walk over and
Reporting from Santiago, Chile Five-year plans in the Land of the Free? Apparently it’s not that far off from reality. Yesterday Senator Tom Harkin introduced S. 544, “a bill to require the President to develop a comprehensive national manufacturing strategy.” In effect, Senator Harkin wants the President to centrally plan the economy. Never
Reporting from Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile It’s a pretty sad state of affairs in the Land of the Free when they have to pass a law making it illegal for the government to assassinate its own citizens. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening. Late last week, US Senator Ted Cruz introduced Senate bill S.505,
Reporting from Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile Throughout history, bankrupt governments in decline almost ALWAYS fall back on a time-tested playbook. This includes imposing controls on EVERYTHING– wage and price controls, trade controls, capital controls, border controls, people controls. Everything. And this idea goes back to the dawn of human civilization. The Third Dynasty
February 4, 2013 Santiago, Chile Midway through the Super Bowl stadium blackout yesterday evening (which seems a convenient metaphor for the decline of the West… something ripped out of the pages of Atlas Shrugged), I briefly ducked out on my guests to check email and read the news. Some friends had jokingly sent
January 30, 2013 Central Chilean Coast [Editor’s note: Sovereign Man contributor Darren Kaiser of Chile-Farmland.com is filling in today while Simon is en route to Peru.] sov·er·eign·ty n. pl. ·ties 1. The quality of having independent authority over a certain geographic area. 2. A territory existing as an independent state. Human beings have always
January 22, 2013 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile The world learned on Sunday that PGA all-star Phil Mickelson is considering ‘drastic personal changes’ thanks to the pitiful direction of America’s tax policy. According to Mickelson: “If you add up all the federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social
Reporting from: Santiago, Chile Last week in the Land of the Free, a five-year-old girl in Pennsylvania was labeled a terrorist threat. Fortunately for the citizens of Northumberland County, local authorities managed to detain this nefarious kindergartener before she could exact her villainous deeds on thousands of innocents. Authorities were tipped off after
Location: Santiago, Chile Nearly three years ago, I wrote that Chile was ‘the new America’— free, civilized, open, and full of opportunity. After traveling and putting boots on the ground in over 100 countries, and having spent several years visiting Chile and watching it grow, I was convinced that the label was appropriate.
January 9, 2013 Sydney, Australia  [Editor’s note: Sovereign Man Chief Investment Strategist Tim Staermose is filling in for Simon today.] No matter where you live in the Western world right now, the sands of your local economic landscape are likely shifting. To gain your footing, it’s essential to learn classic arbitrage techniques.
Credit expansion, wrote the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, is not a nostrum to make people happy. “The boom it engenders must inevitably lead to a debacle and unhappiness.” That seems a pretty accurate summary of the current situation for the western economies: a debacle, and unhappiness. Von Mises also wrote that