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January 31, 2012 Nassau, Bahamas Wegelin & Co used to be Switzerland’s oldest private bank. Founded in 1741, they managed to survive every threat across three centuries: revolution, financial disaster, and war… from being invaded by Napoleon to the Sonderbundskrieg civil war to Adolf Hitler. Every threat except for one, that is: the
January 30, 2012 Nassau, Bahamas Here’s something unexpected. According to IMF data, the central bank of Kazakhstan recently purchased 3.1 metric tons of gold, increasing its reserves by 4.2%. In an even more stunning development, Mongolia’s central bank purchased 1.2 metric tons, increasing its reserves by a whopping 52%. To be fair, 4.3
January 27, 2012 Manila, Philippines [Editor’s note: Tim Staermose is filling in today while Simon is at the farm in Chile.] There is a delicious irony in the world of economic policy at the moment. Back in 1997 and 1998 I had a ringside seat to the Asian financial crisis from my trading
[Editor’s Note: Simon’s friend Craig Ballantyne is filling in today to talk about the importance of the internet in generating independent income] In the late 1970’s one of my best friends and his family escaped from Armenia, then under communist rule. In fact, his father bought their way to America via Italy, eventually
I woke up this morning to a flurry of emails– “Did you watch the State of the Union address last night?” I did not. Rather, I was busy sharing a delightful meal at one of my favorite restaurants with some close friends; I didn’t even know that the speech was going on yesterday.
January 24, 2012 Santiago, Chile Yesterday, Kentucky senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA in Nashville after refusing to be fondled by the airport agents. Paul has been a vocal enemy of the TSA, blasting the agency last year after agents conducted an invasive search of a 6-year old girl despite her
January 23, 2012 Santiago, Chile With over 150 million registered users, the file sharing site MegaUpload.com is one of the most popular on the Internet. At least, it was. The site has now been seized by the US government and its homepage converted to an FBI anti-piracy warning. Its founder, a high tech
January 20, 2012 Santiago, Chile Greetings once again. It’s another beautiful, sunny day in Chile today, and I’m about off to our farm south of town to spend a wonderful weekend with good food and great friends. Before I sign off for the week, though, there are a few questions I wanted to
As you’re probably aware, yesterday was the much ballyhooed blackout of several popular web sites in protest of new legislation that threatens the Internet as we know it. The United States Congress has teed up two separate bills which give government agencies sweeping new powers to punish millions of innocent users, criminalize harmless
[Editor’s note: Simon’s friend Tim Price is a delightfully witty fund manager in the UK, one of the few free-thinking individuals in all of institutional finance. His recent thoughts below on the euro debacle, gold, and hyperinflation are some of the best ever written on the topics.] “Under the circumstances, discussions with Greece and the official sector are
January 17, 2012 Santiago, Chile One of the most phenomenal human beings I’ve ever met hails from Harare, Zimbabwe of all places. His name is Time. That’s seriously his name. When you ask him about it, he shrugs, grins, and says, “My mom felt that she was in labor for way too long.” Time is a
January 16th, 2012 Manila, Philippines [Editor’s note: Tim Staermose is filling in for Simon today.] Reaction to my article last week about the strong economic picture, and business opportunities I see all around me here on the ground in The Philippines was overwhelming. Evidently there are some go-getters out there in this community
January 13, 2012 Manila, Philippines [Editor’s note: Tim Staermose is filling in today while Simon is down on the farm in Chile.] Amid all the doom and gloom in the world economy as insolvent western nations slowly suffocate under a mountain of debt, it’s easy to forget that there are places in the
January 11, 2012 Santiago, Chile Last week, the US government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), an agency of the US Treasury Department, published its 2011 annual report. There are a few numbers that are pretty startling. We’ve discussed before that FinCEN is the executive agency tasked with ensuring that every US banker is an
January 10, 2012 Santiago, Chile Nearly 10-years ago to the day, the government of Argentina collapsed. Beset by weighty deficit spending and a completely unrealistic currency peg to the US dollar, Argentina became the poster child for the golden rule of economics: ‘that which is unsustainable will not be sustained.’ It’s reversion to
