Opinion

Years ago, economist/financial consultant Ira Cobleigh wrote a series of books called “Happiness Is A Stock That Doubles In A Year,” and each featured a few dozen companies priced under $5/share.  The list usually included tiny oil and gas explorers, and some gold and silver miners, with a few computer and retail issues rounding out the list.

’They’ve been talking about this for years and are still singing the same tune.  Even if you disagree you have to give them credit for never giving up.   

A few weeks ago we covered the then-upcoming summit of BRICS nations in South Africa.  This was a history-making event because the five founding countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – voted to expand the organization.  Six additional nations would be admitted to the club: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Iran, Ethiopia, and Argentina.  This development changed BRICS but more important it changed the world.

Over the last five decades, antibiotics have literally saved millions of American lives and many more around the world.  But bacteria and other harmful organisms mutate and over time develop resistance to medicines. As a result, illnesses that typically respond to medication are becoming much more difficult to treat.  Is there any way out of this dilemma?

With so many problems on Earth, why are our leaders allocating time and resources on voyages to the Moon? There’s a very simple explanation: The Moon may hold the solution to many of our challenges.  And this is not just wishful thinking; a growing number of leaders believe this.    

The US went off the gold standard in 1933, and in 1971 it stopped converting dollars to gold.  These were major policy changes, so dramatic that even today, many decades later, economists argue whether they were vital or a terrible blunder.