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Articles by Sean Ring
Temporarily Embarrassed Capitalists
My father drove a truck for 40 years and never once called himself working class. Pop came home smelling like grease and hard work. He cursed New York drivers with creative flourishes that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush. I used to laugh hysterically while my appalled mother prepared our dinner. But if you’d asked Philosopher-Truck Driver John Ring what he was, he wouldn’t have said “labor.” He’d have said, “A guy who’s doing all right, and whose kid is going to do better.” He was right.
Too Big to Nail
Everett Stern slept on a camping cot because he did his job. In 2010, he was a compliance officer at HSBC, working out of a back office in New Castle, Delaware. He watched billions move to drug cartels, sanctioned regimes, and terrorist groups. He wrote it up, then escalated it. When the bank sat on its hands, he walked into the FBI. The result was a $1.92 billion settlement in 2012. By Stern’s math, that was about five weeks of HSBC’s profit. Not one banker was charged, let alone went to prison.
Too Big to Nail
Everett Stern slept on a camping cot because he did his job. In 2010, he was a compliance officer at HSBC, working out of a back office in New Castle, Delaware. He watched billions move to drug cartels, sanctioned regimes, and terrorist groups. He wrote it up, then escalated it. When the bank sat on its hands, he walked into the FBI. The result was a $1.92 billion settlement in 2012. By Stern’s math, that was about five weeks of HSBC’s profit. Not one banker was charged, let alone went to prison.
Pam’s $2,300 Middle Finger
My darling wife Pam owns two Yves Saint Laurent bags (and a damn Gucci bag, but that’s another story). One of the YSL bags cost $200; the other, about $2,300. The cheap one came from the Spice Market in Istanbul. It was obviously and openly a fake, and Pam loved it on sight. I thought buying it was stupid. But it was only $200, an amount I’m happy to pay for some peace. She still has that bag. To my shock and wonder, it still looks as new as the day she bought it.
If You’re a Saver, You’re a Sucker
In the fall of 1923, a German housewife waited at the factory gate for her husband’s pay. Back then, workers got paid at least once a day because prices rose by the hour. A wife needed to be ready the instant the cash hit her hand. Then, like a relay runner handed a baton, she sprinted to the shops. The bread she bought at noon would’ve cost more by dinner. By November 1923, 1 U.S. dollar fetched about 4,200,000,000,000 (yes, 4.2 trillion) Reichsmarks. In 1914, it was worth only about 4.
The Last Triumph - Daily Reckoning
Legend has it that in March 630, Emperor Heraclius rode up to the gates of Jerusalem in full imperial splendor. On his shoulder, he carried the most precious object in Christendom: the True Cross, the wood on which Christ was crucified. The gate wouldn’t open. The story says that an angel reminded him that Christ entered this city on a donkey. So the emperor stripped off his robes, removed his shoes, and carried the Cross through the gate barefoot, like a penitent.
The Recess Veto - The Daily Reckoning
Harry Truman won the White House by running against a Congress that outworked this one. In 1948, he barnstormed the country, blasting the “Do-Nothing” 80th Congress. That Congress passed the Marshall Plan, created the Department of Defense and the CIA, and put over 900 laws on the books. Ok, no institution is perfect, but that’s not the point here. Still, it got branded lazy, and the voters threw the majority out.
The Emergency Makeshift - Daily Reckoning
It’s Vienna in 1927. Ludwig von Mises is sitting in his office at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and has just written the most dangerous paragraph of his career. Of course, he doesn’t know that. But that paragraph will be clipped, stripped of context, and thrown in his face for the next century. His ideological enemies will use it to smear him. What’s even worse is that some of his supposed friends will use it to claim him. The book is called Liberalism.
The Coin Flip - The Daily Reckoning
While teaching one of my graduate classes this summer, an interesting and incendiary topic came up. Students argued that Generation Z, the most recent up-and-comers, were at a massive disadvantage when it comes to earning power. My colleague vehemently disagreed with them, and a near brawl ensued. Sure, there’s a lot of whining going on, but I thought the kids had a point. How on earth can they afford anything with the way costs have spiraled out of control in New York City?
The Book Guillotine - Daily Reckoning
Vandals! Scoundrels! Savages! I make it a rule not to get offended by things that don’t involve me, lest I sprout blue hair and a nose ring. But this has got me raging as few things do. If you’ve read my scribblings for a while, you’d know there are few things in life I love more than reading books: beautiful, dusty, dog-eared books, preferably leatherbound. Sure, I take my Kindle on the road to make my bag lighter.
You Don't Own Your Stocks
Do me a favor. Open your brokerage app. Look at your shares. Your Apple. Your silver miners. Your index funds. Now here’s the fun part: you don’t own them. Not the way you think you do. The legal owner of nearly every share listed in America is a partnership you’ve never heard of. It’s called Cede & Co. It sits inside the Depository Trust Company in Lower Manhattan. On paper, and paper is what counts, Cede & Co. holds almost the entire US stock market. You own an IOU.
The Conquest Clause - Daily Reckoning
In 1493, Pope Alexander VI picked up a pen and drew a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Everything west of that line belonged to Spain. Everything east belonged to Portugal. Two kingdoms split an entire hemisphere neither of them had ever seen, based on one man’s signature in Rome. It was the greatest real estate deal in history. No inspection. No survey. No buyer’s remorse allowed. There was just one problem. A line on a map doesn’t hold ground. Ships and soldiers do.
The Marble Ledger - Daily Reckoning
This past weekend, from my hotel in Midtown Manhattan, I strolled up Fifth Avenue… all the way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Along with the Louvre, the British Museum, the Uffizi, the Vatican Museums, and the Hermitage, it’s one of the world’s great museums. (The only one I haven’t been to is the Hermitage.
The Man Who Took Their Measure
I was walking through Lower Manhattan early Sunday morning when a window stopped me cold. It was the poster, pasted across the glass. A tailor fitting a red British coat. A Black man standing beside him. The title read: “Hercules Mulligan and the Spy Network That Saved a Revolution.” Credit: Sean Ring I’ve walked those streets a hundred times. I had never heard the name. That’s a crime. So let me fix it. The Tailor Who Fooled an Empire Hercules Mulligan came off a boat from Ireland as a boy.
The Consequence Gap - Daily Reckoning
Michel de Montaigne once said he’d rather keep company with peasants than professors. Montaigne said the peasants had not been “educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.” He wasn’t in awe of ignorance. He was diagnosing something worse: a kind of education that trains sharp minds to be wrong with great confidence, at great length, and in great comfort. You already suspect this about the experts running your country. Montaigne just gave you the receipts he wrote 450 years ago.
The Small Coalition Trap
Every few years, the same headline shows up. “Iran’s regime is on its last legs.” “The mullahs are finished.” “This is the beginning of the end.” 1979. 2009. 2022. Now. Each time, sharp people with real access said the same thing: the theocracy can’t hold. Each time, they were wrong. Confidently, expensively, repeatedly wrong. They’re not stupid. They’re just using the wrong math. There’s a simple, almost brutal theory that explains why. It comes from a political scientist named Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.
The Billionaire Sorting Hat
Elon Musk sleeps on a couch at his factory and gets told he owes $50 billion on money he hasn’t spent. A handful of women holding similar fortunes, built from inheritance or divorce, not from anything they personally shipped, and get magazine profiles about their “thoughtful giving.” Same wealth bracket. Completely different treatment. The reporting gap isn’t random. In it, three separate failures are stacked. Let’s explore them, one at a time.
The Maestro's Tab - Daily Reckoning
Alan Greenspan is dead. He was 100 years old. He died Monday morning from Parkinson’s disease, at home, with his wife, Andrea Mitchell, beside him. I felt an incredible sadness when I found out he had died. Not because he was taken from us too soon. Clearly, he had lived long enough. But because he was a man so close to greatness, and would’ve attained it… had he exercised his better judgment. I also thought about the naivety of my young banking career. I really thought he was a hero.
The Bill of Rights Museum
Lysander Spooner said it plainly in 1867: the Constitution has no authority over anyone who never consented to it. At the time, people thought he was being provocative. A century and a half later, the evidence is on his side. The document that was supposed to limit government power has become the very thing it was designed to prevent — a rubber stamp for whatever the political class decides to do. The Bill of Rights is still printed. It’s just not particularly enforced.
Our Four Fathers Were Right
For most of its history, the United States treated debt with suspicion, if not outright fear. That instinct came from four men who understood, in ways modern policymakers seem to have forgotten, debt is less an economic tool and more a political weapon. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, America’s founders, architects, and revolutionaries, were students of history. History taught them one simple lesson: nations don’t collapse overnight.
A Rather Convenient Trap
Just an hour or so to go! I can’t wait to watch Jim, Byron, Adam, Dan, Zach, Matt B., and the rest of the awesome Paradigm peeps at RickardsLive.com. Just click this link today at 1:00 p.m. ET, and you’ll be magically transported to America’s cheesesteak capital for a ticker-filled chat with the Paradigm’s celebrated macro mavens. Now onto today’s edition. Xi Jinping stood at a Seattle podium in 2015 and said, with a straight face, that the Thucydides Trap doesn’t exist.
The Loom and Doom Crowd
They were wrong in 1812. They were wrong in 1905. And they’re wrong again. In 1812, English textile workers stormed mills across Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. They smashed power looms and burned cotton frames. They called themselves Luddites, after a possibly mythical weaver named Ned Ludd who’d supposedly done the same years before. Their grievance was simple: the machines were taking their jobs. They were right about the short term… but spectacularly wrong about the long term.
The Arsonist’s Playbook - Daily Reckoning
My good friend and colleague, Greg “Gunner” Guenthner, and I were chatting on X when he introduced me to a term I had never heard. It knocked me for a loop, so much so that I had to research and write about it. This piece is the result of that research, and it won’t cheer you up. But I hope naming what’s happening to America’s once-great cities will help end their rot. You see, we tell ourselves a comforting story about bad politicians. They mean well. They got the models wrong.
The Quiet American Giant
“You know who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” asked Philosopher-Truck Driver John Ring, many moons ago. After a long and considered think, I replied, “I dunno. Who, Pop?” “GRANT!” My father got me with that at least 10 times before I figured it out. Those were the good old days, when my father, mother, and I would take a ride up River Road, along the Jersey side of the Hudson River.
Warsh Games - The Daily Reckoning
“Are you going to be the president’s human sock puppet?” That was Senator John Kennedy, the Louisiana Republican who talks like a small-town lawyer and punches like one, too. He lobbed that grenade at Kevin Warsh on Tuesday, during Warsh’s Senate Banking Committee confirmation hearing to become the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Warsh’s answer: “Senator, absolutely not.” Welcome to yet another DC circus, dear reader. Trump picked Warsh because he wants rate cuts.
Congratulations, Mississippi. You've Earned It.
Let’s start with a tweet that’s been circulating and making Britons choke on their morning biscuits. It goes something like this: Mississippi’s GDP per capita — America’s poorest state, the one the rest of America makes fun of — is higher than the United Kingdom’s. Mississippi. The state synonymous with poverty, crawfish, and “bless your heart.” That Mississippi now outproduces the cradle of the Industrial Revolution on a per-person basis. Congratulations, Mississippi.
Will the SpaceX IPO Zuck Early Buyers?
My friend and editor of Paradigm Press’s Million Mission, Davis Wilson, wrote a piece on the Facebook IPO I read with a potent mix of nostalgia and alarm. I’ll start with the nostalgia. The Big G In 2012, I had already moved to Singapore, but was still flying back and forth to London, my old home, to meet and greet with friends and clients. One of my friends, G, was a partner at Goldman Sachs and had lived in New York since we graduated from London Business School together.
The Toll Booth Returns
One of my favorite things about driving through the Italian Alps is seeing all the medieval castles on the cliffs. Their ornate, haunting beauty lurks menacingly above the smooth new EU-sponsored highways that run along the valleys. Why were they built there? For centuries, the main source of revenue for the Lombards, the Savoy family, or the Italian state (at different times for different passes) was tolls for crossing the Alps. Take Reifenstein Castle. It guarded the Brenner Pass route.
Training Your Replacements - Daily Reckoning
In the 1990s, NAFTA moved the factories south. Towns lost their plants, their tax base, and, most lamentably, their kids. The elites called it “efficiency.” The workers called it a gut punch. Now the same film is playing again, but in a different, equally important industry. This time, the soon-to-axed workers aren’t on the assembly line. These workers write the code to build our apps.
The Pentagon's Amazon Prime Problem
There’s a certain tragicomic quality to watching the most powerful military in human history discover, in real time, on the world stage, it has run out of munitions. Last week, The Donald summoned the CEOs of Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, and RTX (the military-industrial artist formerly known as Raytheon) to what I imagine was a dreadfully serious meeting with some serious coffee, at which he urged them to make more missiles. Faster, please. Lots of them. The defense contractors nodded gravely.
We've Seen This War Movie Before - Daily Reckoning
Let me take you back to October 2002. Two-thirds of Americans were convinced Saddam Hussein was close to having a nuclear weapon. Another 14% thought he already had one. And two-thirds — that’s right, the same supermajority of your fellow citizens — believed Saddam personally helped the terrorists who flew into the World Trade Center. None of it was true. Not the nukes. Not the stockpiles. Not the al-Qaeda connection. Post-war investigations didn’t just fail to confirm the WMD case.
Sorry for Your Loss. Please Remit Payment. - Daily Reckoning
Before I get into why I loathe inheritance tax, let me issue a disclaimer. Never, ever do anything to piss off the taxman. There’s a line: don’t even walk towards it, let alone cross it. With nearly everything happening electronically now, you won’t “outsmart” the revenue authorities, no matter how morally justified you feel. Always pay a professional — accountant, tax lawyer, or both — not just for their advice but for their signature on the paperwork.
The Donald Scores!! ...Wrong Net - Daily Reckoning
You probably know this already, but indulge me. It’s material to the plot. Donald Trump — a man who spent four years screaming at Jerome Powell to cut rates, who practically begged the Fed to juice the economy on demand like it was a vending machine for political convenience, who treated monetary easing as something between a birthright and a campaign promise — nominated Kevin Warsh to be the next Federal Reserve Chair. Kevin Warsh. Let that sink in for a moment.
Better Than Machiavelli - Daily Reckoning
There’s a book sitting on the shelves of some of history’s sharpest minds, and yet most people have never heard of it. Nietzsche called its author “Europe’s greatest moralist.” Schopenhauer translated the book himself and kept it on his nightstand. A Spanish Jesuit priest named Baltasar Gracián wrote The Art of Worldly Wisdom in 1647. It’s a collection of 300 short maxims about how to move through the world without being eaten alive by it.
Sir, You’re Behind on Your Cheese - Daily Reckoning
One free weekend last May, Pam, Micah, and I decided to take a ride to Bologna, in Emilia-Romagna, a mere three hours by car from our home in Il Piemonte. Friends had told me that Bolognese cuisine is beyond compare, but I wasn’t all that excited. Yes, I love Parmigiano Reggiano, Grana Padana (another hard cheese), and balsamic vinegar, all from that part of Italy.
Covfefe Confetti - Daily Reckoning
Did you believe Jim Rickards when he coined the phrase “Mar-a-Lago Accord”? Did you believe Stephan Miran when he actually wrote the Mar-a-Lago Accord? If you did, you’re way ahead of Wall Street. And lightyears ahead of Main Street. No one really believed until two days ago. Not Wall Street. Not the City of London. Not Tokyo, Hong Kong, or Singapore. That’s when The Donald told the world the dollar was doing “just fine.” And for the President, it is.
An Old Historian Goes To Washington - Daily Reckoning
If Ibn Khaldun parachuted into Washington in 2026, he wouldn’t ask for directions. He’d ask for a whiteboard. The man spent the 14th century explaining why empires rise, rot, and fall apart under their own weight. The awkward truth? His framework maps onto modern America a little too cleanly. Debt binges. Bloated bureaucracies. Culture-war bread and circuses. Elites who talk about “the people” the way anthropologists talk about uncontacted tribes. Different fashion. Same play.
World on Fire? Be a Buyer! - Daily Reckoning
I spent years in the financial wilderness, waiting for the sky to fall. You see, the Chicken Little Austrian School forgets to remind its adherents to gather ye rosebuds while ye may. That is, there’s a boom before the bust, and one has to make hay while the getting’s good, no matter how much you disagree with the prevailing fiscal or monetary policy. Yes, the state is a gang of thieves writ large, as Rothbard said.
The Magic Word (For Adults) - Daily Reckoning
There are many different skills that any person – especially a businessperson – must develop. Presentation, writing, and networking skills, among others, are crucial to developing both the self and the business. Imagine your prospective customer discussing a potential business deal with you. You’re able to navigate the conversation effortlessly, without any theatrics. The dialogue feels like a sharp, rewarding tennis rally. It goes back and forth between the two of you for a time.
Tell Me What You Really Think… - Daily Reckoning
I haven’t done a mailbag edition in ages, so it’s time. This is a longer one, but the feedback was rich. I’m sorry I couldn’t include more. Let’s get to it! Draining the Swamp This is for Sean: God bless you for actually telling it like it is. That is so rare. I urge your group to propose paths to a better situation than the US finds itself in at this time. I am a businessman and, more importantly, a grain farmer in Illinois. Not much gets past my scrutiny, and this is not my first rodeo.
The Consumer Credit Conundrum - Daily Reckoning
Every so often, Wall Street rediscovers something that’s been sitting in plain sight for years. Right now, it’s rediscovering the American consumer. Specifically, the consumer is leveraged to the hilt, running out of oxygen, and basically holding up 70% of the U.S. economy with a credit card that’s already maxed out. And the craziest part? Most people think we’re safer because housing isn’t blowing up like it did in 2008. And they’re right… sort of. Mortgages aren’t the problem this time.
DEI Liberates Blue-Collar America! - Daily Reckoning
Two months ago, I made the case that DEI was—ironically—the best thing that ever happened to white guys. The week after, I elaborated after a subscriber wrote in with a genuine concern. I follow up now because Zero Hedge dropped a bombshell, reporting that America desperately needs half a million highly skilled workers just to keep basic national functions running. For too long, America has constructed a strange mythology around the college degree, DEI bureaucracy, and credentialism.
The Pope, the Libertarian, and the Angelic Doctor Walk Into a Bar… - Daily Reckoning
My good friend and host of the No Way Out podcast, Mark McGrath, likes to call me the second-most famous Villanova graduate in Italy. Of course, the most famous one sits on the Throne of St. Peter and has this uncanny penchant for pissing me off. I had high hopes for Papa Leone, as we call him here in Italy. But time and again, from blessing ice blocks to condemning nation-states for enforcing borders, he’s let me down.
The Curious Case of Dr. Watson and the Inquisitors - Daily Reckoning
In the grand pantheon of science mythos, Galileo is the poster child for “the scientist forced to recant by the powers that be.” And boy, have TPTB regretted it ever since! But they didn’t at the time. The modern analogue isn’t an astronomer with a telescope, but a molecular biologist with a model kit. That man, James D.
The World Is Still Stupid - Daily Reckoning
Ever feel like the world’s gone mad, idiocy reigns, and the wise are mocked? Every day, you say? Well then, welcome! You’re living in Desiderius Erasmus’s world. Only 500 years later. Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) was the original intellectual troublemaker — the man who used humor, reason, and razor-sharp Latin to mock the stupidity of his age while trying to save it from itself.
America is Starting to Look Like Her Mother - Daily Reckoning
Traditionally, the defining moment in a man’s life arrives when he looks in his shaving glass and finds his father staring back at him; but there is a day so much more terrible we rarely speak of it – when he catches himself in a full-length mirror and sees his mother… Don Paterson, The Book of Shadows I was living in London when I picked up Paterson’s book of aphorisms.
Bully For Investment Banks! - Daily Reckoning
I remember getting my offer letter from Lehman Brothers in early 1997, a full 11 years before they went bankrupt, I hasten to add. For a whopping $34,000, I was theirs, green as a Granny Smith apple. My job was in a division called Global Corporate Equity Derivatives, and I was going to help the traders keep their trading books reconciled with the general ledger. It was my first, and last, accounting job, and it sucked from Day 1.
DEI View: "Wrong... Absolutely Disgusting!" - Daily Reckoning
Last Saturday, as I was waiting for Pam and Micah to arrive back from visiting Pam’s sister in Belgium, I went through the Daily Reckoning’s mailbag for any responses to my articles. One stood out, and I want to reprint it so you can read it as well. Sean, I read you every day. Most of the time, I appreciate your perspective. This one is not only wrong but absolutely disgusting.
Why DEI Is the Best Thing Ever… For White Guys - Daily Reckoning
After I woke up from a long sleep last Saturday morning, fresh back from my trip to Saudi Arabia, I went downstairs to make myself a fresh cup of coffee. It was a fine morning, as some leaves had already fallen in a sign that Autumn was just around the corner. Although the sun shone brightly, the temperature was pleasantly cool. From my seat in the kitchen, I looked up at the arched brick ceiling and let out a sigh of relief that I was home.
Legally Bondi - The Daily Reckoning
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is easily President Donald J. Trump’s worst appointment. I honestly don’t know how he could get it so wrong. Bondi has done nothing worthy of note, other than saying she’s going to do something of note. No Epstein files. No disclosure of her lobbying work was made during the confirmation process. And now this, perhaps the most disgraceful of all. Hey, Pam! The United States of America doesn’t do “hate speech.” Why not?
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