The English word ‘bank’ meaning a depository and lending institution, derives from the Italian word ‘banca’, or ‘bench.’ This belies the origins of modern finance in Renaissance Italy, where deals initially struck at coffee house benches evolved into the great trading and banking houses of the Medicis, where double-entry book keeping enabled the matching of…
The Changing World Order – Why Nations Succeed and Fail
Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has written several books on the world of investing and the economy in general based on his years of experience as manager of the world’s largest hedge fund. In the latest of his ‘Principles’ series, Dalio applies his quantitative approach of macro investing to analyzing countries, seeking to identify…
2022 Year in Review
Stagflation. Fuel Prices. Shortages. Political Turmoil. War in Europe. Roe V. Wade. Crypto Collapse. Counter-counter culture. Most years have one or two seminal, defining events that set the societal zeitgeist, but in 2022 so many events vied for attention that most people had to take time not only to revaluate what it means for the…
The World for Sale – Commodity Trading in Uncertain Times
The exchange of goods and services has existed since the earliest forms of civilization, from simple barter arrangements at the local town square to Phoenician traders navigating the Mediterranean with goods from Europe and North Africa. Today, however, the scope of exchange is truly massive, with online commerce coming to dominate nearly all segments of…
Suburban Redevelopment – The Growth Ponzi Scheme
Ever since the Great Recession and financial crisis of the late 2000s, the American economic model of building large suburban housing developments with cheap credit and sometimes even cheaper building materials and standards has been called into question. Setting aside all the jobs generated in construction, banking, and other financial intermediation, municipal governments also depend…
Zeihan – After Dark – the Collapse of Globalization
In the world of geopolitics, there are those that decide, and those that recommend. While it is debatable who wields more actual power, it is clear that the number of advisers, consultants, analysts, strategists and self-appointed experts clearly outweighs that of the policy makers. Peter Zeihan, a unique blend of the recommender class, has made…
Unfriendly Fire – a History of False Flags
According to the BBC, “a false flag is a political or military action carried out with the intention of blaming an opponent for it. Nations have often done this by staging a real or simulated attack on their own side and saying the enemy did it, as a pretext for going to war. The term…
Cadillac Desert – The American West and Its Disappearing Water
Prior to 1900, the western United States comprised less than 5% of the country’s total population. By 2000, that number had quadrupled to over 20%, and was on track to continue growing as a percentage of the total until only recently, where the southern states have begun outpacing it in term of number of people…
Assassination – After Dark
With the alleged assassination of Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri by US forces and the shooting of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the past few weeks, conspiracy theories abound as to the motives behind potential realignment in global politics and the media news cycle. Also in the news is economist Jeffrey Sachs making…
Exxon Mobil – Peak Oil and its Consequences
Since the industrial revolution and the advent of fossil fuels in place of manual labor powering nearly all aspects of civilization from agriculture to transportation to manufacturing, human productivity and population have exploded, going from under 1 billion in 1750 to a projected population of 10 billion in 2100. In the 20th century, oil became…
Sunset of the Ottomans
From the 14th through the early 20th century, the Middle East consisted of a hybrid civilization composed of various tribes and peoples stretching from the Balkans down through the Arabian Peninsula under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire. To its promoters, Constantinople administered a multicultural society that balanced ethnic and religious differences into a harmonious…
The Rise of Goldman Sachs
As a $60 billion a year investment bank engaged in market making and asset management for equities, fixed income, commodity and derivative securities for large institutional clients, Goldman Sachs, having been founded in 1869, is arguably the world’s most recognizable name on Wall Street. Known for attracting some of the best financial talent, it is…
Myth of the 20th Century 