In strategic terms, nations ended up being dependent or independent according to their ability to make things for themselves. Why were Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians subservient to England and France in the nineteenth century? Because they could not make the machines and weapons Europeans could.      -James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly, December 1993 In 1991 the economic historian William Lazonick published an intriguing book, Business Organization and the Myth of the Market Economy. It examined

At a global level, there is just one really big surplus (China) – and one really big deficit (the US).  That in a sense makes global adjustment easy.     -Brad Setser, Council on Foreign Relations, via X, 2/5/25 When paired with Setser’s chart on the prior page, the inference is that China has recycled a substantial portion of its world-leading surpluses into US equities, and specifically, the Nasdaq 100.  i.e., the Nasdaq 100 is the biggest

We’re going to monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people.  There’ll be a combination of liquid assets, assets that we have in this country as we work to bring them out for the American people.     – Scott Bessent, via Reuters, 2/3/25 We’re also at a unique moment geopolitically, & I could see in the next few years that we are going to have to have some kind of a