meet the vigilantes

Who is TDV

The Dollar Vigilante (TDV) is a joint-venture publication founded by two respected free-market speakers and analysts in the financial sector, Jeff Berwick and Ed Bugos. Both Jeff and Ed consider themselves financial freedom fighters and have written extensively in the past about the ongoing and impending collapse of the US dollar based financial system. They joined forces to publish TDV, a publication and community for dollar crash survivors.

Jeff Berwick / Editor In Chief

Anarcho-Capitalist. Libertarian. Freedom fighter against mankind’s two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks. Jeff Berwick is the founder of The Dollar Vigilante, CEO of TDV Media & Services and host of the popular video podcast, Anarchast. Jeff is a prominent speaker at many of the world’s freedom, investment and gold conferences as well as regularly in the media including CNBC, CNN and Fox Business.

Jeff's background in the financial markets dates back to his founding of Canada's largest financial website, Stockhouse.com, in 1994. In the late ‘90s the company expanded worldwide into 8 different countries and had 250 employees and a market capitalization of $240 million USD at the peak of the “tech bubble”. To this day more than a million investors use Stockhouse.com for investment information every month.

Jeff was the CEO from 1994 until 2002 when he sold the company and still continued on as a director afterwards until 2007. Afterwards, Berwick went forth to live on and travel the world by sailboat but after one year of sailing his boat sank in a storm off the coast of El Salvador. After being saved clinging to his surfboard with nothing but a pair of surfing shorts left of all his material possessions he decided to "live nowhere" and travel the world as spontaneously as possible with one overarching goal: See and understand the world with his own eyes, not through the lens of the media.

He went on to visit nearly 100 countries over four years and did and saw things that no education could ever teach. He met and spoke with a plethora of amazing people, from self-made billionaires to some of the brightest minds in finance – as well as entrepreneurs from a broad range of backgrounds and locations from tech companies in southern China to resource developers in Mongolia, Thailand, Russia and Chile. He also read everything he could find on how the world really works… politically and financially. A pursuit he continues to this day.

He expatriated, long ago from his country of birth, Canada, and considers himself a citizen of the world. He has lived in numerous locales since including Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Bangkok and currently lives in Acapulco, Mexico and is building a home in Cafayate, Argentina. In essence, everything he writes about here for TDV he has done or is doing.

As well, during his travels, both real and virtual (through the internet), he met some amazing people who have a similar shared vision of what is currently going on in the world and enticed them to come aboard TDV and provide their own brand of analysis.

Ed Bugos / Senior Analyst

Ed Bugos, with a strong background in Austrian economics, is one of the world's most sought after and respected mining analysts. Based out of the global epicenter for gold mining exploration and financing, Vancouver, Canada, he has been writing publicly since the late ‘90s and is a well known critic of government interventions, central banking and the Federal Reserve since 2000, starting as the original contributing editor for Safehaven.com. Ed founded goldenbar.com in 2001, a website publishing his gold & currency digest portending the collapse of the strong dollar policy and the rise of the secular bull market in gold and commodities. He was one of the first to make the call for $2,000 gold (he now is calling for $5,000-$10,000 gold), back when it was still struggling with $300 per ounce and it was a sin to own it.

From 2000 to 2006, Ed’s advice produced annual compounded returns of more than 20 percent following a conservative strategy that involved no leverage and included no junior companies (see the "What is TDV" section to see a full accounting of Ed's track record since 2000).

Ed is most famous for his prescient call to sell all gold stocks near the end of 2006 and into 2007, just months prior to the crash in gold stocks precipitated by the financial system collapse of 2007-2008. We know of no other gold analyst who recommended buying from 2000-2006, selling during 2006-2007 and then returned to a bullish stance during and after the gold stock market crash.

Since March 2009 Ed has been a private research analyst with Strategic Energy Research & Capital to provide its institutional clients with “precious metals equity research.”

But, being concerned by the rapidly declining political landscape and loss of freedoms in the western world, Ed was looking for a way to get his research and thoughts out to the public. He joined The Dollar Vigilante in July, 2010.

Redmond Weissenberger / Managing Editor

Redmond is the Managing Editor of the Dollar vigilante and the Founding Director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada, the centre for the study of the Austrian School of Economics within Canada.

While studying fine art at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Redmond read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, beginning his study of economics that culminated in the discovery of the Austrian School. After graduation Redmond spent 7 years as an industrial designer, working for a company involved in manufacturing residential lighting in China for sale in North America, and then a boutique design/build architectural firm involved with projects such as Norman Foster’s Bow skyscraper in Calgary, Alberta.

Redmond founded the LvMIC in 2010 to address the lack of knowledge about the true cause of our booms and busts of the last 100 years and the need for sound money and sound economics to be applied to the Canadian and global economy.

Jim Karger / Legal Correspondent

Jim Karger is a lawyer, and frequent contributor to The Dollar Vigilante, who has represented American businesses against incursions by government and labor unions for 30 years. In 2001, he left Dallas and moved to San Miguel de Allende in the high desert of central Mexico where he sought and found a freer and simpler life for him and his wife, Kelly, and their 10 dogs. He is TDV's San Miguel de Allende concierge and his website is found at www.crediblyconnect.com.

Gary Gibson / Editor

Gary Gibson cut his teeth writing for liberty and profit as the managing editor of the now-defunct Whiskey & Gunpowder financial newsletter. He now writes for and edits The Dollar Vigilante. In his capacity as managing editor of TDV’s monthly subscription letter TDV Homegrown, Gary insists on playing Russian Roulette by basing himself in the USSA heartland. He braves arctic blasts and black helicopters so he can round up content on how the TDV readers stuck in the USSA can best survive and profit in the increasingly turbulent times in the morally and financially bankrupt empire.

Ken Johnson / Director of Business Development

Ken Johnson is a former resident of the United States whom was quite apathetic to the travesty that is American government. He has been extensively involved in various industries, including real estate development, real estate sales, investment, management and consulting in the clean tech sector and also a long time advocate in the alternative health methodologies. Ken has extensive experience in contract negotiations, corporate accounts, product distribution, product branding and business development. In recent years, Ken has also appeared on numerous programs with Jay Leno, Ed Begley Jr., Larry Hagman, William Shatner, Mario Van Peebles and other health and environmentally focused celebrities on HGTV, Planet Green, the Equator Network and the Internet to help educate the public on the importance of viable and effective alternative health and environmental products, while never preaching the facade that many refer to as global warming. As a managing partner, Ken works directly with Jeff Berwick on many aspects of TDV interests and programs, while overseeing business development and negotiations on behalf of TDV with agents, attorneys…and yes, government officials all around the world. Ken is an avid believer in helping others achieve what he believes in…namely freedom.

Wendy McElroy / Contributor

Wendy McElroy is a renowned individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982, and is the author/editor of twelve books, the latest of which is "The Art of Being Free". Follow her work at http://www.wendymcelroy.com.