Worldview Investing - Ruminations on the World Economy

                                                 Source: Shutterstock   History is rich with failed empires: the Roman Empire, the Inca Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Russian Empire, the British Empire. Though each stood  atop their world for a period, they all fell prey to the same cause. They became overextended and could no longer support the cost of their empire even after extracting tribute from their defeated enemies and colonies. Their end often came suddenly. The Decline of the American Empire      Today, the US struggles to maintain the empire status that it achieved following World War II. The US takes great pride in claiming that it is "The Indispensable Nation" that has not just the right to interject itself in other nations' business but the duty to do so. It maintains over one hundred military bases around the world and fancies itself to be the "World's Cop". Unlike early empires, i

      Our headline quote is often attributed to Mark Twain but he credited it to Benjamin Disraeli, a British Prime Minister of the late 1800's. Twain was observing that "statistics" are often used by unscrupulous people to tell a distorted, if not wholly false story.  Statistics are a legitimate scientific tool in the hands of an honest person. Unfortunately, they are easily subject to manipulation and outright falsification - often to serve political purposes. This can be done either by cherry-picking the data to be included (i.e., eliminating unfavorable data), or by manipulating the data to ostensibly support a misleading or utterly false conclusion.      In 1955 George Orwell published his famous dystopian novel,  1984 . Its pervasive theme is that citizens were subjected to a constant barrage of government propaganda such as "War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery." Propaganda is defined as " I nformation, especially of a biased or m

                                      SOURCE: NASA                                                                                                    T his is the Crab Nebula in the constellation Taurus. It is the remnant of a supernova event that was seen on earth in the year 1054. Amazingly, it was bright enough to be seen during the day. Because it is over 6,500 light years away, those on earth witnessed an event that had actually occurred thousands of years earlier. Supernovae result from the sudden collapse of a massive star that over time has consumed the majority of its "assets" (hydrogen) causing it to abruptly implode due to intense gravitational forces. As the core rapidly contracts it reaches a temperature of billions of degrees Celsius - causing it to explode.     This  recalls the exchange between two characters in Earnest Hemingway's, " The Sun Also Rises ." One asks, "How do you go bankrupt?" His friend replies, "Slowly, then sudden

       Source: Shutterstock     Warren Buffett is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is a legendary and revered investor who draws massive crowds to Berkshire's annual meetings. Buffett is noted for his investment mantra: "Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy".  His investment strategy has been to focus on established companies that come with large "moats" that make it difficult for others to compete with them. A former holding of his was Norfolk Southern Railroad. No one was going to build another transcontinental railroad any time soon. He has become very conservative in his investing. Hence, our reference to him raising the drawbridge over his moated investments.      He recently sold 116M shares of Apple stock raising Berkshire's cash hoard to an astonishing $189B. When asked why he was not reinvesting those funds he said that he  cannot find anything fairly valued that interests him. While he publi