At the center of Sovereign Man’s core ethos is the indisputable view that the United States is in decline. I take absolutely zero pleasure in writing that statement. But it’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to objectively appraise the bountiful evidence at hand and not reach the same conclusion. Consider the following: US government finances are appallingly bad. The national debt exceeds 100% of GDP, annual deficits run into the trillions of dollars with no end in sight, and major...

In 1898, a Polish author named Jan Bloch published a 3,000+ page volume on modern warfare entitled Future War and its Economic Consequences. Bloch had studied military technology and saw the rapid pace with which destructive new weapons and munitions were being developed. And he came to the conclusion that the next war would be absolutely devastating. Bloch predicted, in fact, that the days of classical warfare-- cavalry charges and large troop movements on an open battlefield-- were...

Throughout history, whenever there has been a major shift in the world, it has usually been accompanied by a single iconic event that is associated with that change. For example, historians often point to 476 AD as the year that the Western Roman Empire fell, when Odoacer and his barbarians forced the abdication of the Emperor Romulus Augustus— even though it was obvious that Rome was in decline way before 476. People also often associate the start of the Great Depression with the stock...

Last June, during the European Central Bank forum, the host asked the chairman of the Federal Reserve about inflation. The Fed Chairman responded, “I think we now understand better how little we understand about inflation.” “Uh, that’s not very reassuring,” the host chuckled. Talk about an understatement. It’s downright terrifying. This is the Fed Chairman— the High Priest of finance— who has the power to control virtually everything in the economy. He can conjure trillions of...

Two weeks ago, I told you that the US government had just published its annual financial report. The government by its own admission lost $4.1 TRILLION in FY 2022. And this is 34% worse than the the previous year’s $3.1 trillion loss. And the rest of the financial report only gets worse from there... They describe Social Security’s extreme insolvency, projecting total unfunded liabilities of the program to be $76 trillion. And they forecast that US government debt will one day...

Imagine if Elon Musk stood up one day and told the world, “My #1 goal is for Tesla stock to lose 2% of its value every year.” First of all, people would probably rightfully conclude that Elon had finally lost his mind. And second, everyone would dump the stock. Who would possibly want to own an asset where the management is TRYING to lose 2% every year? Yet that’s precisely the stated goal of the people who manage our currencies. They tell us flat out that they WANT 2% inflation, i.e. they...

There’s hardly anything that POTUS loves to brag about more than his ‘economic success’. He is, after all, a self-proclaimed “capitalist”. Even in last week’s State of the Union address, he boldly claimed that he “cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion-- the largest deficit reduction in American history.” And he’s made that same assertion over and over and over again. Unfortunately it’s a complete lie. And just yesterday the Treasury Department released financial documents proving...

Most people have a peasant mentality. Throughout human history, in fact, the vast majority of people never thought much beyond their tiny village, let alone traveled. But there have always been some people who have had the intellectual courage and curiosity to think far beyond their own borders. And they’ve often been richly rewarded for it. Adopting a global mindset essentially means thinking about the entire world when considering your options. And more options is almost always more...

Gold is really an amazing metal when you think about it. It doesn’t corrode. Coins buried underground or sunk at the bottom of the ocean for hundreds of years are routinely pulled up and brushed off, and they’re good as new. This strength and durability is precisely what makes gold so interesting as an inflation hedge. It undoubtedly takes a lot of work to produce a gold coin or bar-- so much labor, energy, technology, etc. A gold coin essentially represents all of the work… all...

As a member of the Boards of Directors of several companies, I regularly attend board meetings to help oversee and guide businesses. One company in our portfolio is run by some very sharp and talented young guys who have created one of the first metaverse advertising companies. It’s growing rapidly, and they’re even expanding into video games now. In a recent board meeting, the management team was telling me about their ‘KPIs’ for this year; KPI stands for ‘key performance indicator’,...

On January 24, 1971, a Swiss-German university professor managed to raise money from the European Commission to fund his new idea— he wanted to start a business conference that would become a major global brand. He secured the funding and held the first conference the following month in the tiny Swiss town of Davos; it was a smashing success— more than 400 executives attended. The following year, the President of Luxembourg was a featured speaker. And for decades since, attending the...

By the third century AD, it was hard to imagine Rome being in worse condition. Historians literally refer to this period in Roman history as the Crisis of the Third Century. And it was brutal. Roman citizens couldn’t believe what they were experiencing... it was incomprehensible to them that their fatherland had become so weakened. Inflation was running rampant. The Empire was stuck in a quagmire of foreign wars and had suffered some humiliating defeats. Rome experienced multiple bad...

By the turn of the 18th century, Great Britain was well on its way to becoming the dominant naval power of Europe. Brits had come to understand that a strong navy and merchant fleet were necessary to grow powerful and prosperous as a nation. And a mythology was already building around the Royal Navy. However all was not rainbows and buttercups. In 1796, the Royal Navy lost control of the Mediterranean. And in 1797, despite several victories, including repelling a French invasion of the...

On December 10, 1896, in the picturesque seaside town of San Remo, Italy, the famed Swedish chemist breathed his last breath after suffering a devastating stroke, and died. Nobel was an incredibly wealthy man at the time of his death, and most of his wealth had been placed in a trust. (In doing this, Nobel managed to sidestep Sweden’s gargantuan inheritance tax that had been in place since 1884, AND the Kingdom of Italy’s estate tax.) Nobel’s death is commemorated every year on...

On the 21st of February, 1978, workers for the state-owned electrical company in Mexico City, Mexico were digging in a neighborhood near city center to bury some cables. After digging about two meters below the street’s surface, they hit a large rock that their equipment could not penetrate. As they dug further, around the rock, they discovered it wasn’t natural… but instead a large stone disk that was at least hundreds of years old. Archaeologists uncovered the rest. And it turned out...

You’ve probably been following the news that FTX, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, is in hot water. And frankly that characterization is an insult to hot water. FTX has already filed for bankruptcy. Potentially $10 billion or more of customer money is at risk. The new CEO states that the company’s internal controls were “a complete failure”. And the company’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, has proven himself to be, at a minimum, an irresponsible, reckless child, if not...

More than 3,000 years ago, between the 12th and 13th centuries BC, the legendary king of Ithaca, Odysseus, set sail from the ancient city of Troy to begin the journey home. The stories of the Trojan War, and of Odysseus’s voyage home, have been passed down to us in the form of epic poetry from Homer. Most of it is pure fiction. But like modern film, TV, and ‘true crime’ podcasts that abuse dramatic license to entertain their audiences, Homer’s epics may in fact be “based on a true...

Today’s podcast starts off in the year 1175 BC, where the legendary Pharaoh Ramses III was readying himself for battle against one of the most mysterious enemies in all of human history. Ramses was literally fighting for the survival of his kingdom, and for all Egyptian civilization. And fortunately for Egypt, he won. But it came at a great price. Ramses’ treasury was depleted from costly battles (not to mention the vast numbers of expensive monuments and temples that he built). And so...

First, I am really grateful for all the well-wishes and congratulations we received on the birth of my son. He’s doing great, and I’m over the moon. I decided to record a podcast about the experience-- why my wife and I decided to have our first child here last year, as well as our second child this year, and tell you how great the experience was. Naturally, though, we start with a historical perspective. Today’s episode begins in ancient India with one of the most famous figures in...

We start our podcast today more than 2,500 years ago at a time when the dominant superpower in the western world was the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. Their civilization had reached an unfathomable level of wealth and sophistication; historical records show that, at peak, the Persian treasury had more than $300 BILLION in savings (in today’s money). They had an intricate road network, a highly-functioning postal system, impressive engineering works, and had even invented a crude form of...

In the mid 1400s, the head of the Byzantine Empire was a career politician with decades of experience who most people thought would be a capable leader. Instead, through a series of hilariously terrible decisions, he managed to take his already weak empire off the cliff, and into the dustbin of history, in just a few short years. And one of the ways he did that was by deliberately giving up the most strategic resource his empire possessed. We’re seeing a similar story play out...

Lately we’ve been led astray over and over again by supposed ‘experts’ with decades of experience who can’t seem to stop making colossal mistakes. But I’m not just talking about individuals. I’m talking about institutions too. And one institution in particular that’s been an abject failure lately has been the central bank. That includes the Federal Reserve in the United States, the Bank of England in the UK, and more. The Federal Reserve, for example, despite its leaders’ decades of...

John Adams famous wrote to his wife Abigail in the year 1780: “I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. . . in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, and music. . .” So that their children can major in gender studies and waste their lives on Tik Tok. OK so I added that last part myself. But I believe the quote most accurately sums up the natural decline of empire. When enough time passes, a dominant...

In the year 1566, at the end of the reign of the legendary Suleiman the Magnificent, his Ottoman Empire was the world’s dominant superpower. Ottoman territory extend across three continents over nearly 2.3 million square kilometers. Its military was powerful… and feared. The economy was strong and the treasury plentiful. But in time that changed. Subsequent Ottoman rulers became complacent. The government became bureaucratic. The military became softer. Society became decadent. As a...