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(This item originally appeared at Forbes.com on September 28, 2025.) Africa too can get rich, as once-poor Asian countries have, but not if governments keep doing what they’ve been doing. Basically, they will have to throw off the stifling tax systems inherited from their prior colonial governments. There are other things you can add to that. But, I think we can say, with confidence, that if things stay as they are, nothing is possible. Much of Africa was once ruled by European governments, including those of France, Germany and Britain. These countries gained their independence in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, but still, particularly among those with a prior connection to France, they retained close ties with French influences. These included various forms of corruption and exploitation – basically sweet deals for entities in France. Several countries, particularly in West Africa, have recently thrown off these French influences – including Guinea (2021), and joined by Burkina Faso (2022), Mali (2021), Chad (2021), Sudan (2021), Niger (2023) and Gabon (2023), all of which were former French colonies. Along the way, they also inherited the French currency, now the Euro. These are the West African CFA Franc, and the Central African CFA Franc, originally pegged to the French franc in 1945, and pegged to the euro since 1999. With all this, they also inherited the French tax system. In Guinea, the individual income tax has a top rate of 40%, hit at an income of 20 million francs, or about 30,000 euros. The 35% rate starts at 10 million francs, or about 15,000 euros. The standard rate on Corporate Income is 35%. Then, there is a payroll tax, totaling a 24.5% combined rate. Plus, a VAT, of 18%. And, a universal tariff of 10%, rising to 20% on “final consumer goods.” See what I mean

This is from Mike Shedlock: This is an amazing decline in trust in a major institution just since 2010. It is why I put together the Build Your Own College series in 2020. Build Your Own College series Among all adults, we find that the percent that view college as “very important” has fallen from 70% to 35%. However, the support among men is even less, at 29%. There doesn’t seem to be much difference based on age. Support among college graduates is higher, but not that much higher, at only 40%. Only 40% of those that have actually gone to college think it is “very important.” Whites have a surprisingly low support rate, only 28%. And Republicans are even lower, at 20%. This is no surprise since colleges have been openly hostile to Whites and Conservatives for decades. Of course, this raises the question: How about White Conservative Men? I would guess it must be around 15%. Educating White Conservative Men is, of course, the original purpose of college education. The top schools, including the Ivy League, were Men-only until about 1970. My view of college today is: Women mostly shouldn’t be attending college at all. They should live at home with their fathers until they are married — around Age 18-22. The main advantage for women attending college is finding husbands, of a certain level of intelligence, education and social class. Basically, men like themselves. Likewise, men should also aim to find a wife at college, also of a certain level of intelligence, education and social class. Women can still be educated, while they are living at home with their fathers. Even just reading a couple hours a day, in a somewhat casual fashion, would be a far better education than is available at nearly any college today.

(This item originally appeared at Forbes.com on August 29, 2025.) Governments sometimes get themselves into trouble with too much debt. Early economist Adam Smith devoted the last chapter of his famous Wealth of Nations (1776) to the topic of sovereign default. “The progress of the enormous debts which at present oppress, and will in the long-run probably ruin, all the great nations of Europe, has been pretty uniform,” Smith wrote. “The practice of funding [financing deficits with debt] has gradually enfeebled every state which has adopted it.” More recently, the economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff compiled information about many episodes of sovereign default since the time of Adam Smith, and some from before him as well, in This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (2009). Their basic conclusion was that, taking statistical averages, governments tended to get themselves into trouble when debt/GDP exceeded 90%. This was followed by varieties of sovereign default, typically involving either a failure to make debt payments and a restructuring of debt terms, or a bout of currency depreciation to inflate away debts denominated in domestic currencies.  Using a similar, statistical approach, Ray Dalio, founder of the macro hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, recently released How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle (2025). This also compiles many historical examples into a sort of average tendency, culminating again in default and devaluation. What we can conclude, from these two statistical historical studies, is that most governments do not escape their debt situations, and drift rather hopelessly into predictable outcomes. Their progress has been “pretty uniform,” as Smith termed it. But what these kinds of statistical studies don’t indicate are the exceptions – those countries with big debt loads, of more than 90% of GDP, that don’t default, don’t devalue their currencies, bring the debts down to manageable levels, and enjoy decades

Wikipedia has updated its information about the history of the French franc, with good numbers back to its founding in 781. Wikipedia on the French franc The livre tournois was adopted in 1266. The “franc” dates from 1795 as part of the French Revolution, but it basically had the same value as the pre-Revolution livre. This value of the franc continued until 1914. And so we see that the silver value of franc declined from 408 grams — just about a pound, from which the name livre is derived — down to 4.5 grams before all the ruckus of the 20th century. For comparison, here is the British pound, which was based on the livre of France established a few years earlier. Both names are based on the Roman libra, or pound. So we see that the original British pound had about 350 grams of silver, compared to 409 grams in France. The original Roman coinage was the as, made of bronze (alloy of copper and tin). The original as of the third century BC in Rome was … one pound. The actual weight of this “pound” was: Here are the Roman units of weight, independent of coinage: Here the libra was 329 grams. Here is some information on the “pound” since then. Thus the British pound of 800AD was based on the Tower pound, which was quite close to the original Roman libra, and had 12 ounces. Today’s avoirdupois pound and London pound are based on 16 ounces. These “libra” and “pounds” of various sorts are themselves based on the mina, a measure from ancient Mesopotamia. This mina was about 500 grams. Here we see an early mina of 570 grams, and also a standardized measure of 2x 248g or 496 grams. These “mina” also became a standardized weight

Here is some updated data, from a big dataset at the Bank of England with statistics going back to 1209. Click for BOE “millennium of macroeconomic data” This is a “Retail Price Index” (mostly just commodity prices before 1800 I am sure), and a “Consumer Price Index,” from 1209 to 1913. We can compared to the silver value of the British pound during that time. There is a big response to “prices” to the devaluations and debasements of Henry VIII. However, we don’t see the effects of the prior debasements. The dataset might be adjusted for these somehow. There is also information on the “price of gold” in British pounds from 1257. Using that data as an adjustment, we get an RPI index in gold from 1257 to 1913, which looks like this: The RPI for the 19th century is somewhat above the 18th. I think this represents an expansion of the “RPI” beyond simple commodity prices after 1800 or so. The big rise around 1800 is related to the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, which also involved Britain. There is also a smaller rise around 1650, related to the Civil War in Britain. Our other dataset, from Jastram, also shows this rise in agricultural commodity prices after 1500: However, there is no such rise in metals prices, making me think that this had something to do with agricultural commodities in Britain (it happens over the course of a century), not the “real value of gold.” Also we see that the low values around 1500 were actually a decline from the values around 1300. The RPI values around 1700 were higher than the values around 1300 — about 20 on the chart, compared to 15 — but I suggest that +33% over the course of four centuries is maybe not that

(This item originally appeared at Forbes.com on July 8, 2025.) Ray Dalio, one of the most successful macro hedge fund managers of our era, released a new book this year, How Countries Go Broke. This is an interesting topic, but an even more interesting topic is: What countries should do after they go broke. It might be important someday. For a country like the United States, with debt denominated in a local currency, “going broke” normally means that continued deficit spending can’t be financed by the bond market. Governments could, at this moment, reduce spending dramatically and basically balance their budgets. Ha ha ha! Of course this never happens. What they do instead is: print the money; or, one way or another, have the central bank buy the bonds or at least support the bond market somehow. Actually there is not so much of a clear delineation here. The US dollar has already been losing quite a lot of value vs. its old benchmark, gold. The Federal Reserve hasn’t been “printing money” to any degree, but the effect is similar – the existing debt is inflated away. This has already been happening. This money-printing is fun at first, but soon becomes unpleasant. Basically, it is hyperinflation, to a greater or lesser degree. Eventually, this becomes intolerable. Then, a government is truly “broke.” Then what? It is good to have a playbook for that day, because it will be a time when you have to act quickly and decisively. It is not a time to debate various hypotheses and proposals. Both Germany and Japan found themselves in this condition in 1949. It was already well after the end of the war. Both countries were under US military occupation. But the focus was shifting toward preventing local communist movements (happens when the economy