Hello from Croatia!!
Actually, we literally just landed back after being gone for a month.
Nick’s family is still there for a little bit.
A month passes fast and Carol and I enjoyed one of the best summer trips of our lives.
We began in Puglia, Italy and ate like champions of the world in towns like Ostuni, Monopoli, and Polignano a Mare.
We stayed in a masseria in Puglia (a traditional farmhouse) right in the middle of hundreds of olive trees. Some that were 1,300 years old!
We met up with our kids and Nick’s family as we journeyed over to Croatia.
And during an ATV tour of the island of Hvar, we stumbled into this super old village and look what we discovered!!
See the picture up top?
It’s an old olive press that the village used.
That style of press goes all the way back to the Greeks and Romans, who used large stone wheels to crush olives before pressing them for oil.
The heavy limestone wheels would be turned by a donkey or a group of people pushing a wooden beam, crushing olives into a paste.
That paste would then be scooped into woven mats or bags and placed under a lever or screw press to extract the oil.
And olive oil was a sign of wealth back then!
It was a source of light (via lamps), medicine, and even payment in ancient and medieval economies.
The Croatian island of Hvar has been growing olives for over 2,000 years, so a press like this is part of a very long local tradition.
They take their olive oil so seriously that when Nick’s family visited a modern olive mill he learned that the owner is one of the judges for international olive oil tasting competitions.
Restaurants in Croatia will have olive oil on every table but have their “high end” first press oil in the back and they’ll bring it out for you…but only if you know to ask.
I can’t even tell you how much olive oil we enjoyed on this trip.
It was ridiculous. I was drinking it in the mornings, LOL.
Between the great breads, olive oil, sunshine, smooth stone beaches (natural PEMF grounding), salt water and fish…we just felt like a million bucks!
And did I mention the wine? The Pošip grape out there produces some of my favourites white wine. Just incredible stuff.
And how interesting is it that good olive oil was used as a form of payment?
Today we use little units of debt as money…I’d much rather be using olive oil!!
And speaking of debt as money…
Check out what we found out as we came back to North America:
|
|
|
|
The US Treasury will borrow $1.6 trillion in the second half of 2025. $1.007T in Q3. $590B in Q4. That’s nearly $18 billion per day in new debt.
And as we sort of all know…the U.S. government is just guessing at the rate of inflation.
|
|
Then there's this…
The average Canadian family spent 42.3% of income on taxes last year —more than on housing, food and clothing combined.
|
|
The CD Howe Institute put out a report while we were gone projecting Canada’s deficits and here was the summary:
“Even in this optimistic scenario, the deficit would average $78 billion annually over the four years, and the net debt-to-GDP ratio would rise to 45 percent. Excluding the speculative savings, the cumulative deficit would be almost $350 billion over four years – or an annual average of $86 billion” (Source)
Also Canada always seems to report a “net debt” level instead of a total debt level.
They’re one of the few countries that treat pension funds as an asset and subtract it off the debt. It makes no sense but they continue to do it.
If you look at Canada’s gross debt levels it’s over 100%, closer to 107% right now. Wild.
At this point, good quality, first-press olive oil, is looking like a better store of value than the money printing that is going on in Canada.
Canada is printing new money at a wild rate.
In our opinion you have a couple of options:
Just like that olive press changed the game when it came to olive oil production…Bitcoin is changing the game when it comes to money.
The challenge for most people is that we have never had the technology to create a global, decentralized, money ledger so they don’t know what they’re looking at.
They’re looking at history to try and evaluate the future.
But with a technology change you can’t do that accurately.
We’d recommend reading Larry Lepard’s new book, The Big Print, if you’re trying to figure out this stuff.
A finite money supply, like Bitcoin, in a world of growing debts and deficits is something to do a deep dive into (in our opinion!).
(Quick Aside: Because we’re always asked, we like Bull Bitcoin in Canada for Bitcoin purchases and if you use the link RockStarBTC.ca to create a new account you get preferred rates and fees on any purchases).
Anyway, enough for this week.
Hope you’re enjoying your summer!
Tom & Nick
