Simon Black
sovereignman.com
Simon Black, as James Hickman is more commonly known, is the founder of Sovereign Man. He is an international investor, entrepreneur and a free man. His daily e-letter, Notes from the Field, draws on his life, business and travel experiences to help readers gain more freedom, more opportunity and more prosperity.
As longtime readers know, I’ve been a tremendous fan of Lee’s since I was a small child. He was wise beyond his years and packed a great deal into his short life.
I put one of his quotes up on our former office’s walls in Santiago. It reads:
To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.
This idea is especially apt for the times we live in.
It’s easy to be incredibly frustrated about the state of the world right now.
The ‘experts’ in charge – whether in the media, Federal Reserve, tech companies, etc – have led us astray and allowed devastating consequences to take root. Witness massive inflation, the conflict in Europe, the fracturing of society along ideological, medical and skin color lines, the debacle in Afghanistan…
These were all engineered by the ‘experts’ in charge, and none more so than the response to Covid-1984, which brought the global economy to its knees.
People traditionally placed great trust in experts.
In the United States, the media once held a place of great esteem; CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite was often cited as “the most trusted man in America”.
And although healthy skepticism always has existed about the government, I recall a time when people largely thought that it had their best interests at heart.
I’d venture that none of this is true any longer. Trust in media, business and especially government has dramatically eroded over the past two years.
If someone is deigned to be an ‘expert’ these days, the antennae go on high alert.
For example, we start today’s podcast discussion with a Tale of Two Headlines, in which we present to you side-by-side the headlines by both Bloomberg and CNBC.
One says one thing, and the other the opposite, both conclusions undergirded by ‘experts’.
This gives us a great indication of the prowess of so-called experts, especially when it comes to their handling of the economy (or lack thereof).
Today we also talk about where things are likely going in the economy, how we ended up here and, most importantly, how to keep a clear and rational outlook.
It’s irritating and sometimes exasperating to see where the experts have led us all.
But it’s important to remember that the world is not coming to an end.
For anyone who has the courage and discipline to embrace it, there’s an abundance of opportunity out there. For more on this, we invite you to listen to today’s discussion.