08-01 Freedom of the Press
By Peter BullochIn Turkey it is illegal to insult Turkey. In Poland it is a criminal offense to slander the good name of the Polish nation. In America President Trump condemned the media as the “enemy of the people”. Each of above actions weaken the freedoms we cherish.I remember investing in a Turkish ETF a…
08-02 Population
By John BullochThe Trump presidency is chaotic. The US seems to be a nation on magic mushrooms. Good things happening? Sure. But his presidency has nothing to do with anything really. The United States is just a strong economy. And the future is even better. It’s the growth of its population. That is the real…
08-03 Democratic Decay
By Peter BullochCan you imagine running for high office? Now that US political nastiness is the new normal you’d need skin like a rhino to survive. And what’s the prize? Just asking this question is awful. We should treasure our cherished democracy but we don’t.When I was a child I remember that my father would…
08-04 Water
By John BullochSomething like 3.4 million people, mostly children, die each year of water borne diseases. And something like a billion people on this earth do not have access to safe drinking water.Do people in the more affluent Western societies care? And are their governments driven to do something about it? Well they will as…
08-05 Environmental Damage
By John BullochChoosing between economic development or the environment is one of those dangerous challenges. Challenges where you are dealing with winners and losers no matter what you decide to do.I lived with a great “us vs them” story back in 1975 when I was attending the International Symposium on Small Business in Tokyo. It…
08-06 Poverty
By John Bulloch For as long as I can remember, international aid agencies have been asking us to donate to families of naked black African children with flies on their eyes. Are things any better for these children? Why should you and I care about poverty?Well it does not look like things are getting better….
08-07 Debt
By John BullochAn Irish great-grandmother was raised in what was called the Poor House because her father was sent to Debtors Prison when his business when bankrupt. There was greater sympathy towards debt and bankruptcy during my father’s time because he lived through the depression when suffering and hardship was everywhere. Mother said she always…
08-08 Climate Threats
By John BullochThe US needs a peace agreement with North Korea for many reasons. Of course, their nuclear capability is the big threat. But the US also needs to free up about 25,000 armed services personnel for action in areas where new threats are developing. And the big threat is climate change because it’s making…
08-09 America First
By John BullochIt is the summer of 1940, and my mother is laughing with a group of ladies who were on their way to Buffalo to buy nylon stockings. Something that was being used for parachutes in Canada, because Canada was at war and the US was not.The laughing was about one of those Buffalo…
08-10 Vaccines
By John BullochIt was 1909. My grandmother came home from work to collect her three year-old boy from a nursery, only to discover that he and five others had died of diphtheria and all had been buried in an unmarked grave. A story that haunted me all my life. Years later my mother hired private…
08-11 Addiction
By Peter BullochRecreational drugs seemed to hit this part of the world when I entered University. My three older brothers never experienced them. I was surrounded by everything from the gentle Mescaline to the wild LSD. I tried them all and loved them all.Enjoying recreational drugs is pretty hard to sustain. It doesn’t take long…