Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 27, 2026

History Lessons: Technology and the Labor Market

For Clues About How A.I. Will Change Work, Look to the Past
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/22/business/economy/ai-economy-jobs-history.html
Economists hope earlier episodes of labor disruption, from the Industrial Revolution to the Great Depression, can help us prepare for the age of artificial intelligence. 

Saturday, September 26, 2026

America and the Middle East

The Death of the Old Middle East—and the Dangerous New World Replacing It
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/simon-sebag-montefiore-middle-east-alliances-cauldron-1d35b8cf
Simon Sebag-Montefiore on how traditional rivalries are receding as regional conflicts lead to powerful new alliances.


America is stepping back from a region it never managed to remake
https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2026/09/23/america-is-stepping-back-from-a-region-it-never-managed-to-remake
It is giving up the job of running the Middle East. 

Friday, August 14, 2026

Are You a Human?

Are You a Human?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/17/are-you-a-human
From branding irons to iris scans, the ancient business of proving who you are has never been stranger—or more lucrative.  

Sunday, August 2, 2026

Equity Bubbles

The 4 Bits of Jargon That Will Help You Spot a Market Swoon
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/06/opinion/ai-market-bubble-crash.html


Dalio On AI Bubble Nearing 1929, 2000 Levels: ‘Wealth Is not the Same as Money'
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/dalio-on-ai-bubble-nearing-1929--2000-levels---wealth-is-not-the-same-as-money-87991.html
Acadian Asset Management’s Owen Lamont has framed the clearest test of whether markets are truly in bubble territory around four conditions he calls the “Four Horsemen of the Bubble Apocalypse“: extreme overvaluation, widespread “bubble beliefs” (investors who admit prices are too high but expect them to rise anyway), a surge in equity issuance, and a flood of new market participants. Dalio’s comments map almost precisely onto the third horseman.
“There’s almost nothing that’s easier to produce than stock,” he said, describing how a company can raise $50 million, get valued at a billion, and mint a paper billionaire without a billion dollars ever changing hands. He’s identified surging stock issuance as one of the two primary forces that “prick” a bubble, alongside rising interest rates.


America Is Great at Creating Stock Market Bubbles—and Shrugging Them Off
https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/stock-market-bubbles-recovery-029d21d0
One day the bust will be the big one. But for now the pullback in AI-related stocks has been almost completely offset by gains elsewhere.
 
Big Tech Earnings Are Sending Valuations in Wildly Different Directions
https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/tech-company-earnings-stock-market-5c4179d8
Reports from tech giants drove big gains and losses, while the Fed-fueled bond selloff adds to market pressures. 

The AI bubble could be worse than the dot-com bust by Vivekanand Jayakumar, The Hill - 06/16/26
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/5925202-tech-bubble-ai-driven-growth/

Sunday, July 19, 2026

Pointless Wars

War Has Become Pointless
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/06/war-iran-ukraine-israel-united-states-russia-pointless/
Military conflict has always existed. It’s just stopped making sense. 

The Strong Suffer What They Must
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-russia-discredited-by-smaller-powers-by-harold-james-2026-07
Foolish military interventions driven by outdated calculations of economic power have thoroughly discredited the old big powers. Thucydides might well have appreciated the irony of a world in which smaller, weaker countries like Ukraine and Iran can expose Russia and the United States, respectively, as paper tigers. 

Thursday, July 9, 2026

Sunday, July 5, 2026

History Lesson: The True Nature of American Capitalism

250 Years of American State Capitalism
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/american-state-capitalism-started-under-george-washington-never-ceased-by-shang-jin-wei-2026-07
While the prevailing economic narrative in the United States has often extolled free markets, policymaking itself has always been more pragmatic. From its very founding, the US has had a hybrid model in which the state directs, subsidizes, and occasionally bails out private enterprise in the service of national priorities.
 
America's been arguing over trade for more than 250 years
https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2026/americas-been-arguing-over-trade-more-250-years 

Friday, July 3, 2026

Oligarchy versus Democracy

Oligarchy’s Ancient Origins
https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/ancient-greece-oligarchy-bitter-struggle-with-democracy-by-matt-simonton-2026-07
The struggle between democracy and oligarchy in classical Greece was bitter, with oligarchies relying on skillfully designed political institutions to shore up unpopular regimes. As concerns grow over the “rule of the few” in the United States, Americans should consider how their own institutions are doing oligarchs’ work for them. 

The Founders Are Why America Is Rich. That Legacy Is at Risk.
https://www.wsj.com/economy/american-institutions-founding-fathers-wealth-056bbee8
Checks, balances and trust in personal agency made the U.S. a haven for entrepreneurs and wealth creation.

Saturday, May 30, 2026

People/Politicians are Not Rational Actors

Jeremy Warner:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/05/30/a-year-from-now-nobody-will-be-talking-about-iran/
In the lead-up to the First World War, stock markets sailed blissfully on: not because investors were unaware of the ever-louder drum beat of impending conflict but because they collectively assumed none of the great powers would be stupid enough to stumble into the catastrophe of an all-out war.
That view was perfectly encapsulated in a highly influential book by Norman Angell, a British journalist, published a few years before the outbreak of hostilities. Angell’s The Great Illusion argued that the economic costs of war and the accompanying disruptions to trade were likely to be so devastating that nobody could possibly hope to gain by starting one.
Economic interdependence between industrial countries would be “the real guarantor of the good behavior of one state to another”, Angell argued. This had never stopped countries from going to war before but it was also true that the level of economic integration and interchange between elites in Europe at the time was without precedent. Sadly, it didn’t help. Yet markets refused to believe in bad outcomes right up to the point where troops were mobilized and borders closed. 

Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Prehistory of A.I. Slop

The Prehistory of A.I. Slop
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/25/the-prehistory-of-ai-slop
Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship. 

Thursday, May 14, 2026

How Buddhism Transformed Asia

The Unlikely Story of How Buddhism Transformed Asia
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/t-magazine/nepal-buddha-kathmandu-buddhism.html
Starting in Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha, we trace how the religion spread across the continent, changing it forever. 

Tuesday, May 12, 2026