Substack Library
GlossaryThe Global Scan
September 1, 2024My 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
August 26, 2024The blood-dimmed tide is loosened, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
Weighing the Tails
August 23, 2024A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
The Big Forces
August 15, 2024So 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
August 5, 2024I 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
August 1, 2024A 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
July 25, 2024Democracy is predicated on the belief that the majority makes better decisions than a ruling elite.
Immoral Markets
July 18, 2024In 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.
Behind Washington’s China Pivot
July 15, 2024China’s splendid isolation nurtured a particular Chinese self-perception. Chinese elites grew accustomed to the notion that China was unique—not just ‘a great civilization’ among others, but civilization itself.
Party Logic
July 11, 2024It seems to me the quality that makes any book, music paining worthwhile is life, just that. Books, music, painting are not life, can never be as full, rich, complex, surprising or beautiful, but the best of them can catch an echo of that, can turn you back to look out the window, go out the door aware that you’ve been enriched, that you have been in the company of something alive that has caused you to realize once again how astonishing life is, and you leave the book, gallery or concert hall with that illumination, which feels I’m going to say holy, by which I mean human raptness.