Substack Library

Glossary

China’s “Maskirovka”

I cannot sleep.

The Downdraft

Have you always been crazy?

The Global Scan

My desire to reconcile my family’s communist background with my own capitalist ambitions had brought me to Russia, but, naively, I never imagined that this pursuit would result in a human tragedy.

The Coming Shifts

The blood-dimmed tide is loosened, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Weighing the Tails

A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

The Big Forces

So compelling is the evidence of our own eyes and ears, so swift is your mind to assume your own version of the story, that one of the hardest things in this world is to understand there’s another way of seeing things.

Notes on the Market Action

I talk to myself, as many of us do, for much of the day—admonishing myself (“Your fool!, Where did you leave your glasses?”), encouraging myself (“You can do it!”), complaining (“Why is that car in my lane?”), and, more rarely, congratulating myself (“It’s done!”).

Politics and Pricing

A declaration of war by Japan could not be reconciled with reason. I felt sure she would be ruined for a generation by such a plunge, and this proved true. But Governments and peoples do not always take rational decisions.

The Kamala Correction

Democracy is predicated on the belief that the majority makes better decisions than a ruling elite.

Immoral Markets

In the government quarter of Berlin during the course of 17 April, nobody really knew what to do except draft strong declarations combined with further threats of execution.