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The construction of extensive railways, however, and particularly the consolidation of small, experimental lines into large systems, dates from the days of the discovery of gold in California.
Because America is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. We have the world's largest reserves of natural gas, and the world's most sophisticated production and storage facilities, by a wide margin.
The fear is that if the dollar falls below 50% of the currency basket held by commercial and central banks and insurance companies, there may be a democratization of the way currencies are priced.
Many of the railroad evils were inherent in the situation; they were explained by the fact that both managers and public were dealing with a new agency whose laws they did not completely understand
Many of the railroad evils were inherent in the situation; they were explained by the fact that both managers and public were dealing with a new agency whose laws they did not completely understand.
As you know, the United States has been a net debtor to the world each year since 1976, I believe. We've put a huge amount of dollars out into the world and those dollars have to be recycled in some way.
When you're dealing with a bankrupt sovereign - like the U.S. government - you're dealing with a very powerful wounded bear. You have to be very careful because you can't know what the beast is going to do.
Learn something that is valuable to others. Learn everything about it. Then maximize your earning from that knowledge. And then start your own business. That is what you have to do if you want to become very wealthy.
Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed.
The close relationship between railroad expansion and the genera development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads.
You see this in the oil industry time and time again. Fears that we've found the last oil, that we're going to run out, pop up constantly. And soon afterward, because the price goes up, huge new reservoirs are discovered.
The States which form the northern border of the United States westward from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast include an area several times larger than France and could contain ten Englands and still have room to spare.
I think what's happened to America, in a cultural sense, is we stopped getting richer as a country in the early 1970s, but we haven't adjusted our consumption patterns in any way, shape or form to meet the realities of the new lower income.
I've been buying real estate because it's an asset I can control, that I could finance extremely cheaply if I chose to. I do not choose to; I buy my real estate in cash. I'm not interested in making money on it. I just want to keep my money safe.
You can tax the rich to pay for current spending. You can even tax them very heavily. But when the rich look forward for decades and see nothing but increasing taxes, debts, and government control of their businesses and assets - they will leave.
There is a tremendous amount of oil in Iraq and it's still very, very cheap due to all the political uncertainty. So if you want to be a serious oil investor, I would say get yourself to Iraq in person and look around to find great opportunities.
There's been a dichotomy in the world financial markets over the last 30 years between the developed markets and the developing markets. Brazil, for example, always had to pay a lot more in interest to borrow money than governments in developed nations.
Farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and the traveling public have all had their troubles with the transportation lines, and the difficulties to which these struggles have given rise have produced that problem which is even now apparently far from solution.
I think the only thing that really can be done - it would be painful, but less painful than the calamity we're heading toward - is to demand that people be responsible for their private obligations. No more bailouts, no more stimulus, no cash for clunkers.
The nation did not begin to realize the extraordinary possibilities of the vast Western territory until its attention was thus suddenly and definitely concentrated on the Pacific by the annual addition of over fifty million dollars to the circulating medium.
The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of '49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
I can tell you what happens to countries that go bankrupt. I've been to Argentina. I'm familiar with the history of Mexico and Great Britain. We'll see the same things here shortly: inflation, huge tax increases, capital flight and, eventually, capital controls.
You wouldn't want to underestimate the perfidy of the government. I have no doubt that the government will need to increase revenues substantially to avoid default on either debt or social welfare promises. How they will increase those revenues, I can't predict.
Relative to oil, however, natural gas is very cheap and very attractive. And I think that natural gas in emerging markets is very attractive. There is very little natural gas infrastructure in places such as China, where there is tremendous demand for natural gas.
Manipulating the bond market is so greatly reducing the cost of capital that so far companies have been able to maintain profit margins without raising prices. As a result, we've been exchanging capital cost for commodity costs but you can only do that for so long.
Historically, bad money always drives out good. Accordingly, if a central bank anywhere in the world sets up its currency to be backed by any kind of hard currency, it would cause people all around the world to desire that currency for their savings, rather than dollars.
People began to understand that with the acquisition of California the nation had obtained practically half a continent, of which the future possibilities were almost unlimited, so far as the development of natural resources and the genera production of wealth were concerned.
The management teams in these royalty and streaming companies have the highest-quality research and the most visibility into all of the producers. So if you really want to know what's going on in the resource space, you should talk to the management team of a royalty company.
I studied what happened in the bond and the stock markets during previous periods when the Fed stopped manipulating the bond market. In every single case, the moment the Fed announced that there would be a cessation of intervention, stocks declined and interest rates went up.
The Fed's buying is far more important to the market price of U.S. debt than any other economic variable. If the Fed stops buying, it doesn't matter whether unemployment goes up or down. It doesn't matter whether inflation is higher or lower. Its influence on the market is dominant.
The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. One transformed millions of acres of uncultivated land into fertile farms, while the other furnished the transportation which carried the crops to distant markets.
There is no doubt in my mind that as central banks begin to abandon the dollar, there will be an enormous amount of monetary demand for silver and the silver ratio will plummet. If you look at all of the monetary crises over the last 100 years, any time that there has been even a whiff of a collapse of the dollar, the silver ratio has soared.