Trends & News

Hot off the presses: The Board of Trustees for the Social Security and Medicare programs in the United States just released their annual report a few minutes ago.

And if you want to read all of its gory detail, check it out for yourself here.

Both of these programs are massively and terminally underfunded. And not by a little bit.

The Board of Trustees itself calculates Social Security’s long-term shortfall at a mind boggling $43+[...]

Each Friday we highlight a number of important, and often bizarre stories from around the world that my team and I are closely following:

Cory Booker introduces reparations bill

Get ready for a slippery slope, because because Cory Booker just introduced a reparations bill in Congress.

The 2020 Presidential contender said, “this bill is a way of addressing head-on the persistence of racism, white supremacy, and implicit racial bias in our country... and propose solutions[...]

If you’re a big fan of shows like Narcos, Stranger Things, House of Cards, or Orange is the New Black, you might want to think about sending a fruit basket to anyone you know who is a Netflix shareholder.

Netflix reported its quarterly earnings again yesterday afternoon. And, as expected, the company is losing a metric truckload.

According to its own financial statements, Netflix burned nearly half a billion dollars in the last quarter. That’s[...]

By the time Alexander the Great and his Macedonian army conquered the city of Samarkand in 329 BC, the city had already existed for centuries.

Samarkand had been a prominent, vibrant regional capital in the Persian Empire prior to the Macedonians’ arrival.

And under Alexander the city flourished even more. He declared it one of the most majestic places he had ever been, and the city served as a critical outpost for his conquests in[...]

Each Friday we highlight a number of important, and often bizarre stories from around the world that my team and I are closely following:

Elizabeth Warren wants to destroy centuries of legal standards

To take your freedom requires more evidence than to take your money. For now.

Criminal convictions depend on the accused being guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. Civil convictions depend only on a preponderance of evidence pointing to guilt.

But Senator Elizabeth Warren[...]

A few months ago, I wrote to you about how New York City wants to tax people who own second homes there.

They call it a pied-a-terre tax, and the geniuses behind it believe that it will help plug the city’s $1 billion budget shortfall.

Bill de Blasio himself, the mayor of New York City, has voiced his enthusiasm in soaking the rich.

Hedge fund manager Ken Griffin became one of the primary victims of[...]

Last week I told you that the US government recently reported a negative net worth of MINUS $75 TRILLION.

That’s not a type-o. According to the Treasury Department’s annual financial report for Fiscal Year 2018 (which they just published last week), the US government is hopelessly bankrupt.

Now, I’m not talking about this trying to stoke fear and panic.

Quite the opposite-- I’m hoping that this conversation results in calm optimism. But the point is[...]

Each Friday we highlight a number of important, and often bizarre stories from around the world that my team and I are closely following:

What age do you identify as?

It happens way too often here at Sovereign Man… we joke around about the next outlandish demands of Social Justice Warriors. And then it happens.

This time the Journal of Medical Ethics published a paper arguing that if you don’t feel your “chronological” age, you[...]

Usually around the middle of February each year, the US Treasury Department releases an annual report of the federal government’s financial condition.

It’s called the Financial Report of the US Government... and it looks a lot like an annual report that you might see filed by a big company like Apple or Facebook.

Except that, unlike Apple and Facebook, the US government’s annual report is absolutely gruesome.

This year’s report is no exception, save for[...]

My grandfather was just a toddler when soldiers came home from World War One in 1918.

They brought the deadly Spanish Flu with them, which killed well over 50 million worldwide.

As a young adult, my grandfather struggled through the Great Depression with the rest of the world.

And just as things started looking up, World War II broke out.

Lucky for me, he survived it all.

After the war, my grandfather took a job[...]

In the spring of 1692, an energetic young Scotsman named John Campbell started a new business in central London.

Campbell was a goldsmith, and his business sold jewelry and other crafted metals like plates and silverware.

But Campbell’s new company had another business line as well: banking. And the company he started eventually became Coutts & Co., a bank that still exists today in the UK.

Since the dawn of the Bronze Age thousands of[...]

Texas tries to pass a law to legalize lemonade stands run by children

Maximilian Bern had saved up 100,000 German marks for what should have been a modest, but comfortable retirement.

But in 1923, he withdrew every last cent, and spent it all on one purchase: a subway ticket.

He rode around his city one last time before returning home, and locking himself in his home, where he died.

He didn’t kill himself. He starved to death… simply because he could no longer afford food. A single egg[...]

The City of Chicago Paid $113 million in police misconduct cases last[...]

Every week in Notes, we highlight the most important things happening around the world that can impact your wealth and your freedom.

But there are so many more things happening than we’re able to cover in these pages. So, we’re trying something new today.

Once a week, we’re planning to share a collection of stories we think are important, scary, amusing or maybe all of the above.

You can find the first edition below. We’ve[...]

Turns out Congressmen make a lot of money…

A study found that while the average American’s net worth increased 3.7% per year between 2004-2012, members of Congress averaged 15.4% annual gains.

That high level of pay means half the members of Congress are millionaires today… and continue to collect their $174,000 annual salary.

Of course it’s you, the taxpayer, paying that cushy salary.

But did you know the taxpayer also foots the bill for insane[...]

Here’s an economics lesson you won’t get in college.

What happened to college tuition costs after the federal government started handing out student loan aid in 1965?

For a typical loan, you need collateral… i.e. the bank takes your house if you don’t pay the mortgage. But with government-backed student loans, no collateral is required to borrow vast sums of money.

With little potential downside, the number of people willing to take on student debt[...]

By the year 1380, the Hundred Years' War between England and France had already been raging for decades.

And the war wasn’t going very well for England.

France had managed to recapture most of the territories they had lost early in the war; meanwhile French naval fleets were ravaging the coastline of southern England and destroying English commercial vessels.

To make matters worse, England had recently been devastated by the Bubonic Plague, which killed nearly[...]

In 1986, Peter Munk bought a gold mine in northeastern Nevada for $62 million.

The mine was only producing 40,000 ounces of gold a year back then (around $16 million annually) … and the sellers believed the land held 600,000 ounces easily minable gold.

But those estimates were woefully short.

By 1992, the mine yielded 1.1 million ounces of gold. Today, the mine, known as Goldstrike, is the richest mine in North America –[...]

On October 31, 1517, an obscure German theology professor put the finishing touches on a paper he had written about the current state of the Catholic Church, and sent it off to Archbishop Albert of Brandenberg for review.

The professor’s letter was polite and professional, with a formal tone that one might find in a modern academic work. It could hardly be described as revolutionary.

Yet within a few years, the professor would find himself[...]

"Sometimes [two and two are four], Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

One of the key themes from George Orwell’s dystopic novel 1984 is that the Party can do and say whatever it wants.

And more importantly, you must believe it, with all your heart. No matter how absurd.

That’s doublethink. It is[...]

Amazon made big headlines yesterday when it announced it was walking away from its plan to build a new headquarters in New York City.

The company was under intense pressure from the media and politicians who were angered that New York City’s local government was giving away too many tax incentives, purportedly worth around $1.5 billion.

(Including the state government, the total tax break was around $2.8 billion.)

People had some ridiculous idea that NYC[...]

Things keep getting worse for pensions…

If you’ve read Notes recently, you know the pension fund crisis is one of our major themes. Simply put, these giant pools of capital responsible for paying out retirement benefits to workers are BROKE.

According to the World Economic Forum, pension funds around the world are short around $70 TRILLION. State, federal and local pensions in the US are $7 trillion short… and a recent report by Boston College[...]

Mexico is in the midst of a crisis again.

And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with the border wall that caused the US government to be hopelessly deadlocked for more than a month.

Or the economy. Or murders and violence. Or drug trafficking. Or bird flu.

Nope. Mexico is battling an enormous problem with its oil pipelines.

In a way that almost sounds ridiculous.

But oil thieves have been drilling holes in[...]