Sovereign Man

On Sunday night, Brazil re-elected its left-wing president, Lula da Silva. On Monday morning the São Paulo stock market fell so hard at the open that the exchange halted trading for the first time since the pandemic. When trading resumed, Brazil’s stock market kept falling. It wasn’t a minor decline,... Read more

In the early morning hours of February 7, 1937, a young American named Stirling Dickinson got off a train in central Mexico and rode into San Miguel de Allende on a mule-drawn cart. He and a Princeton classmate were months into a trip around Mexico looking for a quiet place... Read more

One of the most humiliating episodes in Chinese history came in April 1895 after China lost the Sino-Japanese war. Japanese negotiators forced their Chinese counterparts to pay out the nose— one of the heaviest war indemnities of all time; it totaled 38 million British pounds, roughly three times what the... Read more

In July 1974, a former bond trader turned politician named William Simon boarded a private plane out of Andrews Air Force Base for a two-week tour of Europe and the Middle East. Simon had been Treasury Secretary for all of two months, and the government had a problem. Three years... Read more

On March 6, 2016, Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, turned up for the grand opening of a city that did not exist yet, two kilometers off the coast from Singapore. It was called Forest City, and the plan was enormous. One of the largest property developers in the world came... Read more

There’s a college degree that pays about $100,000 right out of school, which is pretty good money for a 22-year old. Within a few years, that pay could easily double. Yet hardly any young person wants the job. It’s not dangerous, it’s not dirty, and it doesn’t require superhuman work... Read more

On Friday afternoon the Treasury Department released its final numbers for fiscal year 2026, which just ended on September 30, and the results are pretty much what you’d expect: horrible, appalling, inexcusable. Treasury reported a total budget deficit of $2 trillion, $220 billion worse than the year before. And once... Read more

It was a good week to be on a government payroll and a bad one to be paying for it. Here are a few of the most absurd stories from the last several days in case you missed them. Too tired to go to work? The Australian government has your... Read more

For a lot of Americans, the beachfront condo has become unattainable. In Naples, Florida, the median beachfront condo on the market is listed at about $2 million. And that’s before factoring in condo fees and skyrocketing insurance costs. Now compare that to an apartment we found during research for members... Read more

In January 2021, two months before US inflation took off, a reporter asked Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell how much inflation the Fed was willing to tolerate. Powell acted like he’d never heard of inflation— like it was crazy to even ask. He dismissed the notion of inflation entirely and... Read more

In 1938 the airline business was brand new— only 35 years had passed since the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk. Hardly anyone had even seen an airplane. A coast-to-coast round trip cost about $260, half the price of a new car, so passengers were mostly very wealthy. The... Read more

The two most recent inflation reports both showed the same thing: prices in the US are 3.4% higher than they were a year ago. And the politicians could hardly contain themselves. After the first report, the White House’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, declared that inflation is “clearly decelerating.” After... Read more