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The American geopolitical strategist and historian Hal Brands recently penned a column for Bloomberg entitled U.S. Can’t Let Russia Get a Sphere of Influence. The view that the US can’t let Russia get a sphere of influence is nothing new but based on the ill-conceived Wolfowitz Doctrine, which makes it clear that “the price of world peace is the…
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility,” wrote the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud. Being a strong supporter of free markets and a protagonist of the capitalistic system, Feud’s observation should cause me great discomfort. But then I think…
In early February, the Indian government announced that the “melody queen” Lata Mangeshkar had died at the age of 92 in a Mumbai hospital, and that there would be two-day mourning. The cultural icon, fondly referred to as Didi (elder sister), and known as the “Nightingale of India” had a career that spanned seven decades. The reason I am bringing…
Last month’s report concluded that, “by holding an overweight position in resource and precious metals, Hong Kong shares and value stocks around the world, I am taking the view that going forward these positions will outperform growth and perceived growth stocks such as FAANG, and related companies, semiconductors, social media, cloud computing,…
Friedrich von Hayek who maintained that, “[Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most power-hungry and unscrupulous.” Looking at current leaders in our Western democracies, it seems to me that Hayek forgot to add to seizing…
I grew up in a strict family and social environment in the 1950s and 1960s. But life became freer as time went by. Part of this increase in freedom had to do with studying in London in the late sixties (a swinging place at the time), and then working in New York, and after 1973 in Hong Kong, which although not a democracy was nonetheless one of the…
Josh Hammer, the Newsweek Opinion Editor, recently penned a brief essay entitled The American Ruling Class Reaches Its Inflection Point. According to Hammer, the late, great intellectual Angelo Codevilla (1943 – 2021), wrote in the American Spectator “America's Ruling Class,” a rare essay that was, in retrospect, so prescient as to be outright…
In 2020, the South African government in its ultimate wisdom decided to outlaw the sale of tobacco in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus. I am not sure what the ban on smoking or for that matter on drinking had to do with the coronavirus but this was what the SA government decided at the time. Smokers quickly found other ways to source…
The US and specifically the CIA began to train and support the Afghan Mujahideen already in the late 1970s and, as US support grew, it actually was largely responsible for creating the Taliban that would later turn against the United States. As we know, government interventions lead to unintended political, social and economic consequences. Pepe…
The US and specifically the CIA began to train and support the Afghan Mujahideen already in the late 1970s and, as US support grew, it actually was largely responsible for creating the Taliban that would later turn against the United States. As we know, government interventions lead to unintended political, social and economic consequences. Pepe…
Marc Faber