Sovereign Man

On July 1, 1862, with the Civil War still raging across America, US President Abraham Lincoln signed the “Pacific Railroad Act” into law to establish the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. Lincoln felt that the massive infrastructure project would be critical to support the war effort and stabilize the US economy.... Read more

Last summer, the Federal Reserve wanted you to believe that inflation was a thing of the past. Sure, just about every category of consumer goods had increased in price. Electricity rates had increased 5% year over year. Rent and housing costs were up 5%. Hospital care had become 6% more... Read more

In the more than four decades since the Department of Education was created in 1979, it has spent literally TRILLIONS of dollars, presumably to make America’s youth smarter and more competitive. But what’s been the result? Well, just take a look at the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) long-term... Read more

Politicians love creating new programs and agencies. But no one ever bothers to check if they actually work. There’s no accountability, no metrics, no plan—just endless bureaucratic expansion. Take Elizabeth Warren’s pet project, even before she was a Senator— the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren ensured the CFPB had less... Read more

Once again, the media missed the real story. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times, among many others, reported that consumer prices, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, rose 3% year-over-year. And everybody seems to accept that story, that annual inflation is now up to 3%. This is... Read more

We recently received a question from a reader asking for my thoughts on crypto. He said we’ve been talking about gold a lot lately, the gold price, and how the price could go a lot higher. Shouldn’t we hold the same views on crypto, given everything that has happened with... Read more

And almost on cue, gold is at another all time high today and rapidly closing in on $3,000 per troy ounce. It’s not hard to understand why. We’ve been talking about this for quite some time— foreign governments, central banks, and even some large foreign corporations now are trading their... Read more

In the year 1025, the Byzantine Empire stood at the height of its final golden age. Basil II had just died, leaving behind a vast and wealthy empire stretching from Southern Italy to Armenia. At the heart of its economy was the solidus, a gold coin that had served as... Read more

In the late 1990s, the Internet was brand new… and sizzling hot. And most people thought it would bring radical change to the world, practically overnight. This is a common theme with disruptive technology. Enthusiasts often overestimate the impact of new technology in the short run, and underestimate its impact... Read more

Well that was fast. The smoke had barely cleared on the opening salvo of the Great North American trade war, when all sides called a truce to talk out their differences. Just as we wrote yesterday, this is exactly what I was hoping would happen. In fact, in a Zoom... Read more

It was early spring in the year 1171 AD when Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos decided to go to war against his much smaller ally– Venice. And the historical record shows that it was a really bad idea. The Byzantine Empire was still a vast and powerful state by the... Read more

In a 2022 interview, then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg discussed how we was going to spend $1.2 trillion of taxpayer money from the recently passed infrastructure bill. “The main thing I’m thinking about,” he said, “is how do we make sure we take all this money— you know it’s $1.2 trillion—... Read more