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March 30, 2012 Santiago, Chile One the more interesting investments I’ve made over the last few years was buying a sizeable chunk of a successful baby products company; our products sell around the world and in top retailers like Target, Babies R Us, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. The managing partner forwarded me
It wasn’t too long ago that nearly every human being lived their entire lives without traveling more than 10-miles from home. For the small handful of people who actually did venture out, you could make it across the globe with no official documents whatsoever. This began to change rapidly in the 1920s. The
Gold Standard:Are there Currencies Backed by Gold? AUTHOR PUBLISHED If you’re here, you likely know your dollar, euro, or pound sterling is little more than paper (or digital) money… And you know, instinctively, that this is not a good situation for your hard-earned cash. Why? Because these currencies are not backed by a
March 27, 2012 Santiago, Chile As you may be aware, there were two reasonably strong earthquakes in central Chile over the weekend. I think we must have the kindest subscribers on the planet, because our customer service team had a flood of well-wishing emails and inquiries to make sure everything was OK. Most
March 26, 2012 London, England [Editor’s note: Tim Price, a frequent Sovereign Man contributor and Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management in London, is filling in for Simon today.] Acclaimed screenwriter William Goldman (The Princess Bride, among many others) famously began his autobiography with three telling words: “Nobody Knows Anything.” The same
March 22, 2012 Santiago, Chile If you’re a US taxpayer, you’ll want to heed the following before dropping off your 1040 this year. You see, in 2010, Congress and President Obama passed a series of new rules known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA. FATCA affects every US taxpayer who
March 21, 2012 Santiago, Chile This is something out of an Orwellian science fiction movie. The Italian tax authorities are now field testing a new system called ‘redditometro’, a database that automatically collects and analyzes taxpayers’ tax data vs. spending data based on automated collection of credit card and banking information. For example,
March 20, 2012 Santiago, Chile Quietly, and with little fanfare, President Obama signed a “National Defense Resources Preparedness” Executive Order on Friday. As the name suggests, the order intends to shore up the country’s national defense resources in advance of a national emergency. To be fair, this is not the first time that
March 19, 2012 Talca, Chile Here’s the scene. It was an overcast day in southern England last March. That is to say, a normal day in southern England. Attempting to retrieve something that had blown into the water, 41-year old Simon Burgess slipped and fell into a 3 1/2 foot-deep pond. He then
March 15, 2012 Santiago, Chile In advance of St. Patrick’s day coming up this weekend, I thought I’d spend some time today talking about the second best thing to come out of Ireland– its nationality law. There’s no insurance policy quite like having a second citizenship. Sure, it would be great if we
March 14, 2012 Manila, Philippines [Editor’s note: Sovereign Man Chief Investment Strategist Tim Staermose is filling in for Simon today.] Back in mid-December, I called buying platinum the “most obvious trade in precious metals.” I pointed out that it had fallen all the way to $1,440 per ounce and was selling for well
March 13, 2012 London, England [Editor’s note: Tim Price, a frequent Sovereign Man contributor and Director of Investment at PFP Wealth Management in London, is filling in for Simon today.] “Investors back historic Greek debt swap” – FT headline 9.3.2012. BANK, n. Bottomless cavity in the ground that sucks in money and the
March 12, 2012 Caracas, Venezuela Panama has become a popular place for expats to plant flags and diversify internationally. And with good reason– the country has had a lot to offer. But quite a bit has changed over the years, and I thought it important to spend a few minutes today reviewing some
March 8, 2012 Panama City, Panama I had dinner the other night with a bank executive in charge of government finance who told me that the aggregate spend of all the infrastructure projects in Panama totals more than $13 billion. This is roughly 50% of the entire Panamanian economy. The equivalent in the
March 8, 2012 Panama City, Panama I’ve been having breakfast at Cafe Manolo’s ever since I started coming to Panama, going on ten years now. They make the best ‘batido’ ever… it’s sort of like a milk shake crossed with a fruit smoothie. And it used to be ridiculously cheap. Not anymore. Economists
