📅 On This Day
A Silver Compromise Signed Into Law Plants Economy's Ruin
On July 14, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, obligating the U.S. Treasury to buy 4.5 million ounces of silver every month at market price. The act injected $156 million in new paper currency into circulation but quietly drained Treasury gold reserves, eroding confidence in the dollar. Within three years, the resulting instability helped trigger the Panic of 1893, one of the worst depressions in American history.
What looked like a political peace deal between miners and gold advocates became a slow-burning fuse under the economy.
🇺🇸 US
Source: Congress.gov; JM Bullion
🌍 Around the World
Gordon Brown's 1997 Budget Decision Still Haunts UK Equity Valuations
In his July 1997 budget, Chancellor Gordon Brown abolished the pension fund tax credit on dividends — closing what had been an extraordinarily tax-efficient structure for UK retirement savings — to address a roughly £5 billion annual gap in the government budget. The change triggered a structural retreat: UK pension funds slashed equity allocations in favor of bonds, draining a vast pool of patient institutional capital from the London Stock Exchange. That domestic pension bid never fully returned, and UK equities still trade at persistent valuation discounts to US and European peers.
Foreign investors face 0% withholding on UK dividends today, but the deeper scar — lost domestic demand — shapes the market still.
🇬🇧 GB
Source: UK Parliament research briefing SN00581; Channel 4 FactCheck on pensions
🔥 Dividend Streak
Regulated Utilities Quietly Rack Up Dividend Growth Streaks Lasting Decades
Slow, debt-heavy, and utterly dependent on regulators for rate hikes — and yet that very predictability makes utilities among the most reliable dividend growers in the market. California Water Service (CWT) has raised its dividend for 58 consecutive years; National Fuel Gas (NFG) and Black Hills (BKH) each stand at 55 years of unbroken increases. Predictable regulated cash flows, not innovation, appear to be the single best predictor of a multi-decade streak.
Unglamorous beats exciting when the scorecard spans more than half a century of consecutive dividend raises.
Source: Sure Dividend — Dividend Kings: CWT (suredividend.com)
💡 Did You Know
The First MLP Was Born in 1981 — Then Congress Scrambled to Contain It
Apache Petroleum launched the Master Limited Partnership structure in 1981, letting an energy company sidestep corporate income tax by going public as a partnership. The idea spread so rapidly that by 1987 companies far outside energy were converting, forcing Congress to pass Section 7704 restricting MLPs to entities earning at least 90% of gross income from qualifying sources like natural resources. That restriction paradoxically legitimized MLPs as a permanent asset class — while saddling investors with Schedule K-1 forms that can trigger tax filing obligations across dozens of states.
One investment, one K-1, and potentially a tax return in every state where the partnership operates — buyer beware.
Source: IRS Section 7704; Tax Policy Center analysis of partnership taxation