Sovereign Man

[Editor’s note: This letter was written by Schiff Sovereign’s CEO, Viktorija, who is originally from Lithuania but lives in Mexico.] We were sitting in the eighth row when it happened: the slap heard ‘round the stadium. Tessa Blanchard’s opponent smacked her across the chest so hard that the sound— a... Read more

When the euro launched on January 1, 1999, it was sold as the future. It would be a single currency to knit Europe together — to wipe out the exchange-rate friction between member states, complete the continent’s single market, and bind a dozen squabbling nations into one economic bloc with... Read more

Boris Bazhanov was a good Communist. Like many young people in the early 1900s who came from a prominent Russian family (his father was a successful physician), Boris developed a sense of guilt… almost remorse for the ‘privilege’ that he had enjoyed in his youth. He was 16 when the... Read more

It was September 2006— roughly two years before the 2008 financial crisis annihilated much of the global economy. But Greece was already in deep trouble. Unemployment was hovering around 9%. Youth unemployment was a staggering 25%. And government finances were in the toilet, with official debt-to-GDP at 100% and annual... Read more

Every year around this time, a silent killer sneaks its way onto European shores and slaughters people by the tens of thousands. Last year, it killed more people in just three months than the number of civilians killed in the war in Ukraine all year. It killed three times as... Read more

Opening a bank account in the Land of the Free today feels like applying for a top secret security clearance. Banks often require multiple forms of ID, proof of address, proof of employment, plus detailed explanations of where your money came from, what you plan to do with it, and... Read more

There are pools of capital in the world so large that they cannot be parked just anywhere. Pension funds, foreign governments and central banks, giant commercial banks— they are collectively sitting on tens of trillions of dollars worth of capital that they have to invest in a safe, stable asset.... Read more

This week the British Broadcasting Corporation flew halfway to find a sad story that it could blame on (1) America and (2) climate change. Their drama opens in Afghanistan’s Ghor province, where fathers line up before dawn at a dusty square hoping to find a day’s work. One man weeps... Read more

[Editor’s note: This letter was written by Schiff Sovereign’s CEO, Viktorija, who is originally from Lithuania but lives in Mexico.] I’ve landed in a lot of cities. Most of them take a day or two before they show you who they really are. Monterrey, Mexico showed me in about fifteen... Read more

America was at the top of the world in 1955. World War II had been over for ten years. Soldiers had come home to GI Bill mortgages in brand-new suburbs. Detroit was building cars faster than anywhere else on the planet. And the economy was booming— in fact that year... Read more

Almost ten years ago to the day, I woke up in my hotel room in Bangkok and flipped on the TV; it was late, late in the evening in the UK, and the BBC News was broadcasting live coverage of the Brexit vote. As the results slowly trickled in and... Read more

Emmanuel Saez is an expert. A PhD economist from UC Berkeley, Saez has devoted his entire career to diligent research in a complex and dynamic field. He has numerous publications and citations under his belt, and his “h-index” (which tracks research productivity) is off the charts. So when Saez came... Read more