You might call them “free-form” merchants. They did a little bit of everything, as opportunities presented themselves. In the 18th century, you could find such merchants in seaports up and down the East Coast, from Boston to Charleston. Such a merchant might arrange voyages to Africa or the Far East – hire a captain, underwrite the insurance and divvy up the profits. He might deal in shares of land companies or bonds. He might lend money, trade grains, sell lottery tickets – whatever. These merchants were not committed to a single business. They would go where the best of it looked to be. They were opportunists in the best sense of the word.

The so-called Waxman-Markey bill snaking its way through the greasy halls of Congress looks likes the most expensive thing to hit the economy since the financial crisis began. Even the normally mild-mannered Wall Street Journal called it “one of the most ambitious efforts to re-engineer American social and economic behavior in decades, presenting risks and opportunities for a wide array of businesses from Silicon Valley to the coal fields of the Appalachians.”

“Investing in agriculture today will be like investing in the oil sector in 2001-2002,” writes Mark McLornan in the May issue of Marc Faber’s Gloom Boom & Doom Report. McLornan runs a fund that invests in farmland. Some of his on-the-ground observations confirm many of the things I’ve been telling my readers for the past several years.

The EPA recently ruled that too much carbon dioxide is threatening the planet. What this does is make it a lot easier to regulate and tax emitters of this gas.

For the first time in a couple of decades, some of America’s most successful, big-name investors are buying gold.

I’m not sure if the stock market has reached its ultimate low for the Great Bear Market of 2007-9.  But even if additional declines lie ahead, there are probably a few stocks worth buying anyway.

The stocks of oil tanker companies are cheap…very, very cheap. But before moving into the heart of this investment observation, let’s gain a sliver of insight about the value of shipping itself.

Wall Street trader David Feldman lived through the Great Depression. In 1997, at the age of 87, he set down his thoughts in a little memoir entitled, “The Ups and Downs of a Wall Street Trader During the Depth of the Great Depression of the 1930s.”

Chris Mayer with Agora Financial notes that even during the ongoing financial crisis, the global demand for food and the fertilizer needed to grow it will continue to skyrocket.