Just a few days ago an event took place in Australia that received very little coverage. Fearing a run on a bank the Australian government guaranteed deposits up to $1 […]

What a week! It had everything. The Greek bond offering was oversubscribed four times while the Chinese bond auction failed! This is great, isn’t it? Greece is the new China. […]

I landed in St. Petersburg around midnight. Got into a taxi (an old Volga bought by the driver in former Eastern Germany when he was serving there on a special […]

In 1940, the then Soviet Union overthrew the governments of the Baltic nations (Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania), rigged the elections, and forced the newly “elected” governments to request admission into […]

The first part of the title above  – meaning “I came, I saw, I conquered” – was pronounced by Julius Caesar in 47 B.C. when he emerged victorious over Pharnaces, […]

More than twenty years ago, the late Samuel Huntington coined the phrase “Democracy’s Third Wave”. By that Huntington described the three phases/waves of democratic revolution that the world has experienced, […]

One of my favorite authors is Isaiah Berlin. I consider his anthology of essays by the title “The Proper Study of Mankind” as one of the finest books published in […]

By Thursday last week we felt that given the markets drop by 5% this year, it was time to put some money to work by investing into companies with strong […]

I did not expect the last commentary to start becoming a reality so soon. In that last commentary I explained that the emerging markets look like prime territory for a […]

As noted from these commentary pages before, I believe that we have entered into a watershed period that will determine if in about two-three years the global economic system collapses, […]