If we can turn around the tide at the next Presidential elections, I believe there is a very bright future ahead of us. If not, I am afraid we are in for an even bumpier road.

Continue Reading: Ziad K Abdelnour

By Ziad K Abdelnour

Some people criticize the injection of politics into economic discussions. But economic historians tell us that economists used to understand and accept that economics is wholly interrelated with politics, and that politics affects our economy. They note that modern economists have artificially tried to somehow separate the two, like Descartes tried to separate the mind from the body. Indeed, the father of modern economics – Adam Smith – talked a lot about politics in relation to economics.

If mainstream (“neoclassical”) economists think that politics is an irrelevant and separate topic, it may be because they are using wholly discredited models or that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Continue Reading: Economics and Politics

I believe each one of us has a financial genius in him/her that is asleep and just waiting to be awakened. It lies asleep because our culture has educated us into believing the wrong things about money. We’re taught to be employees and work for money rather than to be entrepreneurs and investors and have money work for us. We’re taught to not worry about our financial future because our company or the government will do that for us.

I also believe the best revenge against liberals and corporate bosses idiots is “obscene wealth”.

The message about money we’re taught from a young age is work hard, earn money, spend it, and when we run short, borrow some more. Unfortunately, 90 percent of the Western world subscribes to the above dogma, simply because it’s easier to find a job and work for money than to make your own way and build your own wealth.

But to those who want to buck the trend, I have 10 ways to awaken your financial genius which I’ll share with you over the next couple months.

Continue Reading: Ziad K Abdelnour

The mission of the Financial Policy Council Inc. (FPC), a research think tank and educational institution, is to formulate and promote sound public policy based on the principles of free enterprise and wealth creation as envisioned by the ideals of the American Founding Fathers.
Our goal is to ensure that America, the land of opportunity where freedom and prosperity have flourished, is not derailed by poorly formulated and reactive economic, fiscal and tax policy. In addition, our goal is to retain and reclaim America’s leading role in the global economic community.

By Ziad K Abdelnour

Though the defense industry has to sooner than later develop creative strategies and business models or risk catastrophic failure, we at Blackhawk Partners believe that despite a challenging environment, strong fundamentals in the defense and most importantly cyber security industry and unmanned aviation continue to offer some highly attractive investment opportunities.

We believe the industry’s fate largely depends on Pentagon’s decisions on how it will modernize U.S. forces to confront future threats. In its Cold War heyday, the Pentagon was the leading developer of cutting-edge technology and still commands the world’s most advanced military force. But at the same time, it has created self-defeating mechanisms that quash innovation and fail to capitalize on available opportunities. The United States is still way ahead of competitors in areas such as fighter aircraft and submarines. But there are segments of the weapons market such as ballistic missiles and cruise missiles where other people are doing quite well compared to us.

Continue Reading: On the Challenges and Opportunities We See in the Defense Industry

1) “Is the American Political System the latest Bubble?”

The best way to look at this, I think, is that there’s a spectrum of default severities. At one end, you have the outright repudiation of sovereign debt, a la Ecuador in 2008; at the other end, you have the sequester, which involves telling a large number of government employees that the resources which were promised them will not, in fact, arrive.

Right now, we’ve already reached the point at which the government has broken very important promises indeed: We promised to pay hundreds of thousands of government employees a certain amount on certain dates, in return for their honest work. We have broken that promise. By Treasury’s own definition, it’s reasonable to say that we have already defaulted: surely, by any sensible conception, the salaries of government employees constitute “legal obligations of the US”

2) Making the Capital Markets Smarter – Some Food For Thought

A very simple measure of this is simply the high degree of localization of investment. Ghemawat in World 3.0 tracks liquidity and global flow of venture capital and estimates that the lion’s share of investment happens within 20 miles or so of the investor. This happens because the investors mitigate the risks of their own limited knowledge by only investing in companies that set up shop locally, down the street. To get the money, entrepreneurs flood to the location of the money rather than the location of the markets/problems to be solved.