Some friends and co-workers spent their holidays at Rancho Santana in Nicaragua, where you can live like a king on a pauper’s salary. The beaches are among the best in the world, and the people are nuts for Americans. There is every amenity and consumer product, even better stuff than ...read more

Whether it's pirated software, poison-infused baby formula, cancer-causing drywall, luxury purses or fake medicines, if you need a knockoff, China has traditionally been the go-to country, with a counterfeiter always willing to oblige. Now, with precious metals prices on the cusp of possibly the biggest price explosion in centuries, fake gold ...read more

It's common knowledge that if a person has the wisdom and discipline to save for the future, then he or she can eventually enjoy a permanently higher standard of living. However, it's useful to look at a numerical example -- such as the one I detail in chapter 10 of ...read more

Last weekend, we bought some land. This flies against policy (our policy) of never buying anything except that which can be paid for at the time of purchase – and even though I know full-well that we won’t really own the land, just as we don’t really own the land we ...read more

Let us look at some awful analysis of gold, courtesy of Wells Fargo Bank. Perhaps channelling their inner Michael Pascoe, the bank’s analysts told clients, “Interest in gold investing has reached the level of a speculative bubble.” Having thus be-clowned themselves, they went on to elaborate: gold prices are volatile, gold ...read more

A regular Whiskey bar patron writes: I truly do enjoy your insights on the Whiskey & Gunpowder posts. These ideas are very much in tune with what is going on. But why do you and others insist that Social Security is somehow an entitlement? No matter what the immoral politicians did ...read more

The budget deal is all but done. Woohoo! Back to spending beyond our means again. Back to buying more iPads. Back to more public work projects. What a huge relief it is to get that silly spending cap out of the way. Or… is it? The deal making its way through congress would provide ...read more

Gas is still only $0.20 per gallon... [caption id="attachment_8999" align="aligncenter" width="503" caption="A gas station in Ashland, Oregon, May 2011"][/caption] ...If you pay with un-debased U.S. currency. One gas station in Ashland, Oregon, is accepting payment for gas in the old, un-debased version of the currency. The more prices change, the more they remain the ...read more

Wired Magazine this month offers a few pointers on how to disguise on your resume the fact that you have been fired. The main point is to come up with a negotiated settlement that has you resigning from your job. Many employers will go along with these because they fear ...read more

Gold and silver are strange things. They have been used for centuries as money and only in the last 40 years have they been shoved aside by the financial communists — yet they still exist as a free market monetary asset despite the force of all the government’s guns. The strange ...read more