Crossroads

 Freight train, each car looks the same, all the same, And no one knows the gypsy's man, And no one hears his lonely sighs.. There are no blankets where he lies…

- The Allman Brothers Band

The only way to truly learn about the world is to experience it for yourself. No amount of reading or studying can replace the lessons that come from direct experience.

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb [Skin in the Game]

- Luck is when Preparation meets Opportunity. - Lou Holtz

Do you believe in destiny? Pivotal moments?

Jerome, Arizona rests upon the slopes of Cleopatra Hill in Yavapai County, Arizona; and is steeped in a rich history of copper, zinc, gold, and silver ore mining from a massive ancient ‘volcanogenic’ sulfide deposit formed on a sea floor more than 1.74 billion years ago.

 - Copper was noted in the area as far back as 1585 when Spanish Conquistadors were sent to the region to recover gold and silver.

The first official copper claims, however, came in 1876 by Angus McKinnon and Morris A. Ruffner. These claims were purchased by future Arizona Territory governor Frederick A. Tritle in 1880.

In 1883, Tritle formed the United Verde Copper Company with Frederick F. Thomas, a mining engineer from San Francisco. They were financially sponsored by a couple of bankers from New York named James A. MacDonald and Eugene Jerome.

Yes, THAT Jerome. He became the secretary of the United Verde Copper Company. But much like the namesake of Prescott, just 35 miles to the southwest, Jerome never visited the town named for him.

Not much is known about Mr. Jerome, other than the fact that he was a prominent lawyer and invested heavily in mining ventures. Much more is known about Jerome’s first cousin, Jennie Jerome.

Jennie Jerome was born in Brooklyn in 1854 and was raised there and in Paris, France. A talented pianist as a girl, Jennie put her personal ambitions on hold when, in 1874, she married Lord Randolph Churchill at the British Embassy in Paris. Jennie would henceforth be known as Lady Randolph Churchill. 

Less than eight months after their nuptials, Lady Randolph gave birth to the couple’s first child: A boy named Winston.

Winston Churchill, of course, would go on to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II and was arguably the most prominent British statesman in history.

Arizona has a direct connection to Winston Churchill and that it runs straight through that quirky hill town of Jerome, just a short drive from anywhere along State Route 89A. - AZdot.gov

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Wolves in Lambskin > Bank of England Schools mold minds > Fabian Socialism. [1] The financial welfare state has been greatly facilitated thru fractional reserve banking & a century of gradual disconnection from accountable balance sheets. The venerable Sir Alan Greenspan summarized insolvent funded states ultimate goal > “Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.’

Traveling the World may be constructive. Working & Living in Hard Industry with Skin in the Game can be life changing. None of the worlds Great Game or greatly prolonged Millennial Storm could be properly comprehended without direct interaction & skin in the game. Perhaps there was divine intervention to follow a passion of architecture, design and reconstruction of a historic bungalow in one of North America’s most profitable copper & gold camps only to later be pulled into the late stages of a financial & technocratic bubble thru a chance meeting. The gift to be foolish enough to chose a chance passion - crossroads - to ride entropy created the opportunity to see the real electrical engineering in world finance pulling the strings. A chance opportunity with death in World Trade in New York City helped accelerate this awakening. 

Collateral Metals from the North America & Australia helped to largely recapitalize much of Europe from the Great Depression in Europe. “The end to prosperity came in May 1873 when the Vienna Stock Exchange was struck with a devastating financial panic that spread like a wildfire to London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin and then to New York.” [2] Dr. Marc Faber’s book ‘Tomorrow’s Gold: Asia’s Age of Discovery’ helps connect financial speculation gone rampant in Europe in the 1800’s [new stock & bond issues between 1971 & 1873 > Dilution]. As the word has been removed from collateral based currencies [specie money] the prevailing volatility in markets have become unquestionably noticeable.

Making sense of short term cyclical changes in the world ocean conditions or global financial markets is often a fools game. Gaging strategically the longer term cycles based upon supply vs demand brings occasional distortions.

Investment & speculation in the secondary markets is as much an art as science.

During the summer of 2020 lighting struck with an opportunity to move into financial services at Paul & Jerry’s [est 1887]. Ironically, thoughts on history of the west [much less provinces like Australia] had no real conception of the importance of metallic metals to the financiers in Europe.

1. Post USNA / Annapolis / College the outlook was unknown regarding international markets, capital flow & real financial history.