Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere… One if by land, and two if by sea, and on the opposite shore I will be…

We’re all familiar with that old poem about Paul Revere, aren’t we?

I remember it being part of the grade school social studies curriculum. We learned about how Revere rode around to warn the colonists near Boston of a pending attack from the British military.

That’s all I knew about Paul Revere. Until recently.

I spent some time researching the apprenticeship model in colonial America this month. And it turns out that Revere was one of the most successful businessmen in Boston.

Paul Revere’s father Apollos Rivoire emigrated to America from France in 1715. He was thirteen years old.

We don’t know much about his early life in the colonies. But Rivoire went on to open at silversmith shop in Boston. He produced fine silverware and glassware, metal surgical tools, and ornate decorations made of gold and silver. And of course he would take customized jobs on a commission basis as well.

Rivoire then took in his son Paul as an apprentice in 1748. Paul was just fourteen years old at the time… but he flourished.

Continue reading “What we can learn from Paul Revere today…”

Wait… my amount has doubled! Why did it go up so much??

My hairdresser was very surprised when she opened her Bitcoin wallet to receive my payment yesterday. In dollar terms, her wallet balance had nearly doubled since my last visit.

I’ve been paying for my haircuts with Bitcoin for a few years now. My hairdresser treats her Bitcoin wallet as a savings account – so she only checks it when I come in for another cut.

This is the first time she’s noticed a material jump in dollar value though. That’s largely because she’s built her balance up to the point where a Bitcoin price surge can move the needle.

Naturally, she wanted to know what happened. Why did this internet money thing that only one crazy guy seems to talk about skyrocket in dollar value?

My answer: Because they are printing trillions of dollars every year now… and Bitcoin is money that can’t be printed.

Bitcoin’s value proposition runs much deeper than that, of course. But I’ve found that the simple answer is often the best answer in short conversations. It’s the one that will stick.

We talked on Monday about America’s proud localist tradition. We’ve always maintained a spirit of self-reliance and rugged independence in this country.

That spirit may have dulled over the past 100 years or so… but it’s starting to reawaken. The seeds of a localist renaissance have already been sowed.

Continue reading “The Localist Renaissance”

Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small.

Americans use associations to give entertainment, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes. In this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools.

Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate. Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association.

That’s French ambassador Alexis de Tocqueville writing in the 1830s.

The French government commissioned de Tocqueville to travel to the United States. His job was to study American society and politics. And what he found amazed him…

Continue reading “America’s localist tradition…”

What we’re experiencing is the deindustrialization of the European economy and we’re concerned…

That’s what one of oil and gas giant Exxon’s top executives told the Financial Times in an interview published this week. It followed Exxon’s announcement that it will pull billions of dollars of investment out of Europe if the regulations around “climate change” don’t improve.

We’re talking energy this week. And when we left off yesterday we asked the question – why doesn’t the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement embrace clean energy technology like nuclear fission?

After all, nuclear is the most dense form of energy available to us today. Yet it produces little to no pollution. The emissions we see coming out of nuclear reactors are mostly steam.

Well, Exxon’s executive said the quiet part out loud.

The religion of ESG is not really about protecting the environment. It’s about deindustrialization.

Continue reading “The ESG Endgame”

Yesterday we talked about the inevitable end of the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement. It’s now upon us.

And there’s a tremendous opportunity here. 

As we discussed, nearly $2.2 trillion poured into the development of renewable energy over the last eight years. Solar and wind power were the major beneficiaries.

The problem is, these energy sources will never be able to power our electric grid. Because they are intermittent. They only produce power when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. 

So we are going to see an avalanche of investment shift back into traditional energy production in the years to come. And it’s already happening…

Continue reading “The Energy Renaissance”

Energy is the master economic resource.

We take it for granted… but nothing happens without energy. Everything we see in our modern world today – and everything we use on a daily basis – is only possible because of energy.

It’s a simple thing. But if we truly ponder this, it changes our perspective.

Last week we talked about building a robust asset portfolio for financial security. The concept is called asset allocation. The idea is to spread our savings across a range of asset classes in a strategic way.

As we discussed, a tactical stock portfolio is a key piece of the puzzle here. And this is where we can leverage energy as the master economic resource…

My philosophy when it comes to portfolio construction is this: I want a portion of my portfolio to have exposure to energy. And I want to own that energy in the most advantageous way I can. If we start there, all we need to do is figure out what form that energy should take.

Continue reading “The End of ESG”

Yesterday we examined the three weaknesses in the traditional retirement planning model.

In short, that approach pits us against the tax code… is vulnerable to inflation… and it forces us to choose between having assets or having income.

Today let’s talk about a more comprehensive approach – one that mitigates each of these weaknesses.

My philosophy is simple: Financial security first. Then financial independence.

I define financial security as the ability to weather any sudden change or emergency for an extended period of time in relative comfort.

It’s a simple concept. In mainstream circles, they would say it’s about “having money”.

That way if we were to lose our primary source of income or incur an unexpected large expense – we’re good. We have the resources we need to handle the issue without it disrupting our life.

But here’s the thing – we don’t want to have money. They are printing money by the trillions. It’s guaranteed to lose purchasing power year after year. Instead, we want to have assets.

Continue reading “Beyond Retirement”

The rules of money changed in 2022.

To illustrate this from a different angle, let’s assess how the “traditional” retirement planning model came to be…

Modern retirement planning has its roots in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974. That legislation created the Individual Retirement Account (IRA). Then supplemental legislation created the 401(k) and the SEP IRA for self-employed individuals in 1978.

ERISA marked a monumental change in the US.

Prior to this legislation, it was common for employers to provide employees with a lifetime pension plan. Companies would invest in this plan on behalf of their employees. Then they would make lifetime payments to each employee after they retired.

As such, the burden of retirement planning fell to corporations.

This gave rise to the “three-legged stool” principle. It said that a sound retirement consisted of three things:

• Social Security benefits
• Corporate pension payments
• Personal savings

ERISA changed everything. It shifted the responsibility for retirement planning from employers to employees.

Continue reading “The Three Weaknesses in Retirement Planning”

When we left off yesterday, we were examining the idea that the Age of Paper Wealth had a devastating impact on traditional American society.

As a reminder, the US government cut the dollar’s final link to gold in 1971. This removed all restrictions on creating new dollars at will.

It took most governments about a decade to realize this… but they’ve been printing money in greater and greater quantities since 1982. This drove interest rates down to zero… and it propelled the US stock market to all-time highs.

I call this period from 1982 to 2022 the Age of Paper Wealth. It certainly seemed like a prosperous period in American history – and for some it was. But the combination of artificially low interest rates and printed money financialized the American economy.

That is to say – we emphasized financial markets, financial institutions, and financial activity to the detriment of hands-on knowledge, skilled labor, the middle class, and traditional American values.

Today, very few people seem to know how to do anything with their hands. Myself included. Finance is all I’ve known. But I am making an effort to get better about this.

And look at what’s happened to our dollar…

Continue reading “The state of the American middle class”

Last week we looked at the strange de-banking trend and the history of our money.

In our brief history lesson, we noted how the dollar was not only backed by precious metals for most of its history – it was in fact defined as a specific amount of silver and later gold.

But everything changed in 1971. That’s when President Nixon cut the dollar’s last link to gold.

This thrust the world on a purely fiat monetary system controlled entirely by governments and central banks. Fiat is the Latin word for “let it be done”.

This is what gave rise to the Age of Paper Wealth I highlighted in my book Beyond the Nest Egg. Because the fiat system removed all restrictions on printing money.

It took most governments about a decade to realize this. But once they did, they didn’t look back…

Continue reading “What happened to our money?”