Author: Joe Withrow

There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!

According to colonial records, this is what John Hancock said as he signed his name to America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Hancock is still famous today for his big, elegant signature. We still use his name and “signature” interchangeably.

But there’s a great deal about Hancock that modern history books gloss over. Since we’re talking all things American Independence this week, let’s go over Hancock’s story today. Consider it a smuggler’s guide to the American Revolution.

In colonial New England, Hancock was well-known as a cost-competitive wholesaler. He would source hard-to-find products and offer them for sale in Boston at a reasonable price.

One of Hancock’s most popular products was tea. That made him a direct competitor to the British East India Company. And the Company did not at all like competition.

Continue reading “A Smuggler’s Guide to the American Revolution”

So you see, while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he… The fact is, it wasn’t yours to give.

We talked about the Idea of America in honor of Independence Day yesterday. The idea is simple. You can be whoever you want to be in America. It’s the land of opportunity.

That opportunity only persists if individual liberty is respected, however. And as I alluded to yesterday, a century of public education has diminished our understanding of liberty in this country. The story of Colonel David Crockett’s time as Tennessee’s representative in Congress shines light on that fact…

Col. Crockett is better known as Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier in modern books and movies. But Crockett isn’t just a fictional character. He was a real person.

Crockett lived from 1786 to 1836. He was a colonel in the Tennessee militia. And he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1827. There, Crockett learned an important lesson on the nature of liberty and the role of government. That lesson comes to us from an account compiled by 19^th-century author Edward Ellis.

Continue reading “It wasn’t yours to give…”

“In the beginning, all the world was America.” -John Locke 

This is an interesting quote. And it speaks to a very important fact: America is not a nation. Not in the traditional sense of the word, anyway.

Instead, America is an idea. 

John Locke was a 17th-century English philosopher. He’s considered one of the most influential of Europe’s Enlightenment thinkers. 

Locke’s Two Treatises of Government were foundational to the early American political philosophy. The ideas Locke presented directly influenced the American founders. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton each said that Locke had an outsized impact on their thinking. 

And that’s key. America was conceived from thought. From an idea. That makes it fundamentally different. 

Continue reading “The Idea of America”

Good morning. My name is Colonel Fenton. I have been called on by Governor Gage…

The year was 1774. It was a beautiful summer day in New England. And like the weather, tensions between the British army and the Massachusetts colonists were running hot.

General Thomas Gage had just replaced Thomas Hutchinson as Governor of Massachusetts. His first order of business was to get Samuel Adams and his troublesome group known as the Sons of Liberty under control.

To do so, Gage dispatched Col. Fenton to deliver a personal message to Adams. That brings us back to the conversation held on Adams’ doorstep.

Col. Fenton:I have been called on by Governor Gage to assure you, Mr. Adams, that the governor has been empowered to confer upon you such benefits as would be satisfactory, upon the condition that you engage to cease in your opposition to the measures of the government. It is the Governor’s advice to you, Sir, not to incur the further displeasure of his majesty. Your conduct has been such as makes you liable to penalties of an Act of Henry VIII, by which persons can be sent to England for trial for treason, or misprison of treason, at the discretion of a governor of a province. But, BY CHANGING YOUR POLITICAL COURSE, you will not only receive great personal advantages but you will make your peace with the King.

It was a classic bribe wrapped in a threat.

Continue reading “The Hidden Story of American Independence”

The Austrian School of Economics is not based on a
fictitious homo economicus, but on people as they really are and as they
behave. It adequately takes into account the economically relevant aspects of
the real world and is consistent with the nature and psychology of human
action. In this way, it also corresponds to man’s common sense. 

This is how the Austrian Institute in Vienna describes the Austrian School of Economics. It cuts right to the heart of the matter – economics is simply the study of human action. The scientific term for this is praxeology.

That said, Austrian Economics is not contained within Austria. Its origins span the globe… as does its impact today. In fact, the Austrian school is far more prevalent in America than anywhere else on the planet right now.

Continue reading “Dead Economists Matter”

I’ve got just one question for you I can’t figure out – who is Frédéric Bastiat?

This is the question my local computer whiz posed to me over the weekend. My laptop crashed on me last week… and I asked this gentleman to take a look and let me know if it was salvageable.

As he was doing his analytics, he noticed that the name of the computer owner was Frédéric Bastiat. That’s what sparked the question. Since we’re talking economics this week, a discussion on Bastiat seems appropriate.

Frédéric Bastiat was a 19th century French economist. He lived from 1801 to 1850.

Bastiat was very much of the classical school. His work built upon that of Adam Smith – famed author of The Wealth of Nations in 1776.

Continue reading “Who is Frédéric Bastiat?”

I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do declare that said national emergency still continues to exist and pursuant to said section do hereby prohibit the hoarding gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations…

All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve Bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933.

This declaration was made in Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933.

In it, president Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) made private gold ownership illegal in the United States. And he required all Americans to turn in their gold in exchange for $20.67 per ounce.

Private gold ownership remained illegal in the U.S. until 1975. Since then Americans have been free to buy and sell gold coins and bars at will.

But the U.S. government has held onto all the gold it collected from Americans back in 1933. As it stands, the United States’ total gold reserve is officially 8,133.5 metric tons. That’s worth $506.3 billion at today’s gold price.

According to official central bank records, this is the largest stockpile of gold in the world. And that raises a question – why does the U.S. still hold all this gold?

Continue reading “Gold saves the day?”

Looking ahead, nearly all Committee participants view it as likely that some further rate increases will be appropriate this year…

That’s Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Jerome Powell speaking to the financial media earlier this month.

The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided to keep its target interest rate steady in their June meeting. But Powell didn’t want the market to get the wrong idea. The Fed won’t be cutting interest rates again any time soon.

In fact, Powell said that if the Fed does cut interest rates again in the future, those cuts will only be in proportion to a falling Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) print.

Powell explained that his Fed will keep the “real” interest rate steady. By this, Powell means that he intends to keep the Fed’s target rate a certain percentage above the rate of consumer price inflation.

This speaks to an important concept. Within a fiat monetary system – a system where governments and central banks can create money from nothing – nominal numbers don’t tell the real story. This is true when it comes to annual incomes, investment returns, and interest rates.

Continue reading “End of the Road”

We’ve been talking all things finance, investing, economics, and even moral philosophy this week – all snippets of a much longer discussion I had with Tain Nix on his Expat Phyles podcast.

That podcast is over an hour long though… and I know not everybody has that much time to spare. So I’d like to try something new today.

I’m experimenting with a video production platform that’s powered by artificial intelligence (AI). I used this platform to quickly condense our podcast discussion into a 5-minute segment of highlights. The AI decided which clips made the final cut. Here it is:

And as a reminder, you can access the full Expats Phyles podcast at the following links. See you again Monday afternoon!

Apple Podcast Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/joe-withrow-a-world-class-libertarian-analyst-talks/id1686906959?i=1000617572575

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ7qwTXTd0Y

-Joe Withrow

This is a situation where the narrative has made even institutional investors very wary… all of this is false. There’s this thing out there called reality. And there’s no way the world’s going to run on sunlight, solar panels, and wind power. It’s just not going to happen.

That’s my friend Tain Nix again. We were chatting on his Expat Phyles podcast last week and the conversation veered towards the investment markets. And we both agreed that energy is likely the biggest opportunity out there right now. At least when it comes to investing in the stock market. That’s thanks to the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) push of recent years.

It’s important to understand that the equity markets are constantly pricing every publicly traded stock out there based on the information that’s available. But every now and then external distortions cause the market to misprice assets. And that’s exactly what’s happened in the energy sector.

On one hand, the ESG narrative has pushed the idea that we need to put a damper on traditional energy production. As such, it’s been taboo to invest in traditional energy like oil & gas in certain circles.  

At the same time, there’s been a tremendous effort to keep a lid on the price oil and gas in recent years. 

Continue reading “The three investments poised to hit it big this decade…”