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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
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
Over dinner with a friend in Busan, South Korea yesterday, the conversation turned to residency and second citizenships. My friend is a successful entrepreneur who’s lived in South Korea ever since I first met him in 1996. Right now, he has an investors’ visa. The requirements are simple; when he got his, an
[Editor’s note: Tim Staermose, Sovereign Man’s Chief Investment Strategist is filling in for Simon today from San Jose, Costa Rica.] It’s easy to see why people like Costa Rica so much. The country is gorgeous, and the climate can be excellent. There are plenty of cooling breezes to keep it comfortable year-round, despite
Yesterday I had the opportunity to break bread with a good friend of mine who is an alumnus of the Startup Chile entrepreneurship program. This is a really unique program that the government launched in 2010 at the behest of one of Chile’s leading entrepreneurs. In its first few months, Startup Chile brought
Reporting from Punta del Este, Uruguay “Charming” is, I believe, the word most often used to describe Uruguay. People tend to make a lot of parallels to the United States in the 1950s– a much slower pace of life, less government intrusion, and family focused. The capital city of Montevideo is notoriously sleepy
February 6, 2013 Santiago, Chile Chile is about to become the easiest place in the world to form a company and start a business. According to a new law that was recently passed, the Chilean government is slashing the bureaucracy associated with forming a company here to the absolute minimum. Currently, it takes
February 5, 2013 Santiago, Chile Exactly ten years ago to the day, I was in the Kuwaiti desert waiting for George W. Bush to ‘make his decision’. You may remember the circumstances. Ever since labeling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the ‘Axis of Evil’ in January 2002, the President had been gradually advocating
February 1, 2013 En route from Lima to Santiago Let’s end this week with something that we haven’t done in many, many moons: a Q&A. Each week, my staff receives hundreds of questions from the 100,000+ Notes from the Field readers… and given the utter insanity which pervades the West right now, it’s
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 29, 2013 Southern Ecuador You know you’re no longer living in a free country when the government tells you what you can and cannot put in your body. Or when an unelected board of bureaucrats and corporate insiders can confiscate the assets of hardworking small business owners. Yet these have become par
January 28, 2013 Isla Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands You know that saying people use all the time– “It’s a small world…” ? It’s really not. The world is huge. Really, really huge. This fact is continually impressed upon me as I travel. After nearly a decade of living nomadically and traveling to more
January 25, 2013 Guayaquil, Ecuador Early in the 4th century, Emperor Diocletian issued an infamous decree to control spiraling wages and prices in the rapidly deteriorating Roman Empire. As part of his edict, Diocletian commanded that any merchant or customer caught violating the new price structures would be put to death. This is
January 24, 2013 Santiago, Chile What would you do if you hit your breaking point… tomorrow? Where would you go? What would you do with your time and resources? It’s a great question worth asking. Some close friends of mine have been in town for the past few days escaping the northern winter
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 There’s a funny take on the Fiscal Cliff floating around the Internet that several of our keen subscribers have passed along. Like most things floating around the Internet, though, the details are inaccurate. So I’ve gone back and modified the parody with accurate numbers, and a bit more plot.
Location: Santiago, Chile Sometimes the writing on the wall seems painfully obvious. But occasionally it’s a good idea to step back and look at the big picture: The Land of the Free is set to impose fresh restrictions on firearm ownership… to include a ban on assault weapons, increased background checks, psychological screenings,
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.
Location: Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile I’m writing to you from the safest place in the world– a humble cabin in central Chile, nestled among 1,100 acres of some of the most productive farmland on the planet. From here, I grow my own organic food and raise my own livestock. I pump my own
Just a quick note today… a funny story to end the week. Like you probably do, my friend Larry keeps a large change bucket. Every night, he drops in a few coins that he might have picked up throughout the day… and gradually, it accumulates. Every now and again, Larry takes his change
January 10, 2013 Santiago, Chile Lately I’ve had a ton of friends and family writing me about visiting Chile. “We’re fed up with this place,” is how the emails usually start. People are hitting their breaking points and starting to consider their options abroad. There are a lot of fantastic places to be.
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.
January 8, 2012 Fundo Los Soberanos, Chile In 1687, English mathematician and natural philosopher Isaac Newton published a groundbreaking scientific work about the three basic axioms which govern the mechanics of the world around us. Today we call them the Laws of Motion. Colloquially, the first Law of Motion states that an object
January 7, 2013 Talca, Chile There are few original thinkers in professional finance. It’s much easier for an individual to step back and say, “Holy Meltdown, Batman, this system is deeply, woefully, fundamentally flawed…” I can see it, you can see it. But somehow, as soon as they put someone in charge of
January 4, 2013 Buenos Aires, Argentina Humbly I will ask you to please excuse the 48+ hour hiatus since we last spoke. I ate some tainted beef Tuesday evening that caused some of the worst food poisoning I’ve ever had in my life. It wasn’t pretty. Being sick is a funny thing… it
January 2, 2013 Buenos Aires, Argentina In Game Theory, there’s a famous hypothetical scenario called the Prisoner’s Dilemma in which two criminal suspects are apprehended by police and given a choice: stay silent, or rat out the other guy. But there is a catch. If both suspects stay silent, they both get off
December 27, 2012 Santiago, Chile Two interesting infographics were published recently that make it so easy to see the decline of the West, even a caveman can do it. The first is from the Brookings Institute, which has released an interactive map showing economic growth data for the largest 300 metropolitan areas in
December 20, 2012 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile Everyone has a catalyst. A breaking point where we finally say, “enough is enough” and finally begin to take action. Maybe it’s watching your beautiful daughter be sexually assaulted by government agents for having committed the crime of flying to Disney World. Or having some government
December 20, 2012 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile French actor Gerard Depardieu paid 85% of his income in taxes last year. He claims to have paid nearly $180 million in taxes over his 45-year career. With Francois Hollande’s latest round of tax increases in France, Depardieu has reached his breaking point. As you’ve probably
December 19, 2012 Sovereign Valley Farm, Chile I think we can all agree that a man walking in to an elementary school and opening fire is deeply, deeply horrific. And in the gut-wrenching social introspection that comes afterwards, the desire to ‘do something’ is understandable. These days, the role of government in the
In the days of ancient Rome when the republic was still a republic, Lucius Cassius, one of the city’s most venerated consuls, famously coined the phrase cui bono. It means As a benefit to whom?, and Lucius Cassius, inquisitive and analytical by nature, was always asking the question… whether he was investigating a
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
December 14, 2012 Santiago, Chile Many years ago, back when I was a fresh second lieutenant straight out of the academy, my battalion executive officer summoned me to his office one day saying that he had a ‘mission’ for me. I hurried over, wondering what this special mission might be. Several members of
December 10, 2012 London, England [Editor’s Note: Tim Price, Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management and frequent Sovereign Man contributor, is filling in for Simon today.] Clearly, investing is a probabilistic endeavour. There are no certainties to speak of. We can only operate on the basis of rational analysis and prudent, considered
December 10, 2012 São Paulo, Brazil Brazilians are the luckiest people on the planet. Aside from being blessed with great weather, gorgeous beaches, and beautiful people, their country is one of the few that can exist in a state of complete independence from the rest of the world. They have their own energy