[This article originally appeared in Liberty Watch magazine.]

[This article originally appeared in Liberty Watch magazine.]

Despite precious metals prices being on fire, attendance was light at the Hard Assets Investment Conference held Sept. 10 and 11 at Mandalay Bay. The usual graying and balding suspects were present, but, clearly, investing in commodities and natural resource mining stocks has not caught on with Generation X or Y or beyond.

[This article originally appeared in Liberty Watch magazine.]

Those who worship at the altar of Political Correctness and believe American public schools are doing just a dandy job of educating youth might want to consider the following: China graduated almost 200,000 engineers, 44 percent of the undergraduate degrees, in 1999, according to the National Science Foundation, and has plans to eventually graduate a million engineers each year.

[This article originally appeared in Liberty Watch magazine.]

Las Vegas is all about status. The average tourists come here to “get drunk and be somebody,” the country song explains. Those who move here quickly learn that success is often determined by who you know, or who you know who can put in a good word for you. And the rich and famous who come here to see and be seen wake up every day worrying about whether their adoring fans still think them worthy.

[This article originally appeared in Liberty Watch magazine.]

Not many people know anything about Boswell Land and Farming. The Boswell family likes it that way. The reclusive family is the world’s largest cotton and tomato grower, according to Yahoo Finance, growing and milling cotton on 150,000 acres in California and 50,000 acres in New South Wales, Australia.

[This article originally appeared in Liberty Watch magazine.]

[This article originally appeared in Liberty Watch magazine.]

While those who watch and follow the advice of CNBC’s Jim Cramer or the conventional Wall Street wisdom are being treated to agonizing stock market volatility, constant readers of Bill Bonner are sleeping soundly while the price of gold hovers near new highs.

There is no question that the War on Terror will last forever. Just like the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty. “War is the health of the state,” as Randolph Bourne famously said.

Imagine the irony. While my girl was attempting to become Shanghai Tang’s customer of the month, I noticed a Newslink bookstore in the SkyMart portion of the Hong Kong International Airport. The SkyMart could pass for any high-end mall in the U.S. — Cartier, Channel, Dior, Fendi, Gucci, Prada — you name it. Not the dreary trinket shops provided in U.S. airports. The first book I spotted had a picture of the adventure capitalist himself, Jim Rogers, on the cover of A Bull In China: Investing Profitably In The World’s Greatest Market.

Who knew that the express way to the Supreme Court would be through the left wing Princeton history department?