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August 22, 2012 San Marino They call it “The Most Serene Republic of San Marino”. That’s actually the official name. And with good reason… because it’s easily one of the most ideal places on the planet to be. Perched atop limestone cliffs overlooking the Adriatic coastline, San Marino is the oldest surviving sovereign state in the
August 17, 2012 Carthage, Tunisia Banking tycoon Baron Rothschild is credited with saying that ‘the time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.’ Rothschild took his own advice, making a fortune buying deeply undervalued assets following Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Tunisia’s uprising was some 18-months ago, so it hardly qualifies as blood
August 16, 2012 Carthage, Tunisia Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has made an admirable habit of enraging western governments over the last few years, particularly the United States. Most notably, his release of classified diplomatic documents in 2010 proved ruthlessly embarrassing, shining a spotlight on the absurd, petty little world of international relations. Ever since, the US
August 15, 2012 Tunis, Tunisia rev-o-lu-tion (n) 1. a forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system. 2. the single completion of an orbit or rotation. On the morning of December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi started his workday like any other. The 26-year old street merchant laid out the day’s
August 14, 2012 Somewhere beneath the English Channel I’m writing this letter to you whilst throttling at a high rate of speed somewhere beneath the English Channel en route to Paris. My ultimate destination is actually Tunisia, where I will spend the next few days on the ground checking out how the country has fared since
August 8, 2012 Oxford, England I’ve noticed something strange over the past few weeks, maybe you have too. It seems that every ‘contrarian’ website out there has joined together to collectively bash the Olympics and anyone who tunes in to watch. This seems nuts. Nobody should feel guilty for wanting to see athletes in peak condition push
August 7, 2012 Oxford, England Last Friday, US Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced HR 6357, a bill which aims to ‘prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens’ by the federal government. In other words, in the Land of the Free, they need to pass a law to prevent the government from indiscriminately murdering its own citizens. Now
August 6, 2012 London, England At one point during lunch today at an infamously spicy Sichuan restaurant in London’s Soho district, my colleague turned to me and said, “You know, it’s shocking to me that there hasn’t been a single instance anywhere in the world of a banker getting beaten to death by
August 3, 2012 Bergen, Norway I was sitting across from an impossibly blonde account executive this afternoon when I heard three words I never thought I’d hear at a foreign bank. “Are you Greek,” she asked me with a bit of a smile… me: “Uh, no. I have a US passport, among others…”
August 2, 2012 Bergen, Norway High up above Scandinavia about 75 degrees north latitude is an obscure archipelago that few people in the world know about, and even fewer have been to. It’s called Svalbard, population ~3,000. And while the islands are technically part of Norway, they come with some incredibly unique benefits
August 1, 2012 Bergen, Norway Ah, Norway. Government-loving statists love to hold this place up as a shining example that big government and high taxes are good. Free education. Free healthcare. “Happy” people. Yes, Norway is certainly one of the wealthiest countries in the world on the basis of GDP per capita… and
July 31, 2012 Bergen, Norway Every summer, my colleagues and I invite young people from all over the world for an intensive 4-day workshop about freedom and entrepreneurship. This year’s workshop just concluded yesterday afternoon, and it was, without doubt, the best one ever. 58 students attended from countries as diverse as Tajikistan,
July 25, 2012 Trakai, Lithuania We’ve spoken before about the importance of a second passport. It is, in short, one of the best insurance policies you can have. If you only have one passport, you become trapped by a single government– a government that has the power to tax you into the poorhouse,
July 24, 2012 Vilnius, Lithuania Paul Krugman, one of America’s most decorated faux-scientists, recently told an audience that what’s happening in the world right now is “dramatically, painfully a confirmation that a broadly demand-side Keynesian view of the world is appropriate…” The intellectual dishonesty which oozes from this statement is astounding. Apparently on
July 23, 2012 Kiev, Ukraine No doubt, Eastern Europe is a part of the world where people are accustomed to being abused by politicians. After decades of Soviet Rule, the cultures in places like Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Belarus, etc. have been inculcated with a strong mistrust of government. All government. One obvious sign
