Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity believed two dilapidated buildings in New York would be ideal shelters for the city’s homeless. The city actually agreed with them and offered to sell the building for one dollar each. Yet two years later, the shelter remained unfinished and Mother Teresa’s nuns gave up in despair. New York’s bureaucracy caused...Read More
One of the oft-cited reasons for investing in commodities is that they have historical returns comparable to stocks while having a low correlation to the stock market. The problem is that this statement is patently false.Read More
Long-time readers have heard me comment on the work of George Friedman, the founder of the Austin-based geopolitical forecasting firm Stratfor. I consider Friedman to be one of the insightful thinkers in the field today, and I wrote a lengthy, highly-complimentary review of his The Next 100 Years.Today, I’m going to take a look at Friedman’s...Read More
The rating agency lowered Japan to “AA-,” citing Tokyo’s lack of a coherent strategy for dealing with its soaring debt, which now stands at 200% of GDP.Read More
