|  Have
a question about economics? Ask Uncle Eric. That's the moniker Richard
Maybury has adopted to explain free-market economics, history, and law
to young readers.
Maybury has written 11 books in the Uncle Eric series, including Whatever
Happened to Penny Candy? (1989), Whatever Happened to Justice?
(1993), Are You Liberal? Conservative? or Confused? (1995),
and Uncle Eric Talks About Personal, Career and Financial Security
(1994). Written in the form of letters from an economist to a 14-year-old
niece or nephew, the books promote Maybury's Two Rules: "Do all
you have agreed to do. Do not encroach on other persons or their property."
In an interview with the International Society for Individual Liberty
(ISIL), Maybury said he prefers to avoid the word "libertarian"
to describe the books' message. "Labels are scary," he said.
"A person is more comfortable if he comes to the understanding
before he comes to the label. People find the message of liberty very
attractive as long as it is packaged in a way that does not scare them."
Maybury is also the publisher of U.S. & World Early Warning
Report For Investors (EWR) newsletter. The newsletter has a unique
investment focus: government. "Major changes in your investment
portfolio come mostly from changes in the economy, and major changes
in the economy come from politics," Maybury wrote. "To know
how your investments will behave, you must know how governments will
behave."
Although EWR covers the entire world, Maybury tends to focus
on the Middle East, which he dubbed Chaostan -- "the land of the
great chaos." As early as 1981, Maybury warned "that if Washington
did not stop meddling in that area, we would end up in a gigantic religious
war between the Islamic world and the Christian world." The same
foreign policy Maybury worried about in 1981 led directly to the 9/11
terrorist attacks, he said. "The federal government gives money,
weapons, ammunition, military training, and other forms of support to
114 governments, 94 of which are run by crooks and tyrants," he
noted. "All these crooks and tyrants have enemies, so now their
enemies are our enemies. This is why 9/11 happened."
In EWR, Maybury tells clients how they can profit from the
U.S.'s hazardous foreign policy. "War is the most reliable economic
and investment trend," he said. "EWR has long recommended
investments that profit from war: real estate, raw materials, certain
foreign currencies, precious metals, and defense stocks. We can't stop
this insanity, so we might as well make money from it."
Maybury is a former global affairs editor for MoneyWorld magazine.
His essays have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today,
Personal Investing, and the Entrepreneurs of America newsletter.
He has also written Precious Metals, Politics and Paper Money
(1978), Common Sense for the 1980s (1981), and The Coming
Soviet Civil War (1990). Robert Ringer, author of Restoring
the American Dream, called Maybury "one of the truly original
thinkers in the free-market movement in this country." Visit
Maybury's
Web site.
-- Bill Winter |
