“The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.” — Proverbs 22:7 Wealth is not a number. It is not a currency. It is not a claim on someone else’s promise. Wealth is energy captured in physical form—human effort stored across time, transformed into…
“And it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark.” — Revelation 13:17 Pax Silica is a U.S.-led strategic initiative launched…
How the Fed Bails Out the World With Your Savings “How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” — Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises The Man Who Downgraded America In August 2011, Deven Sharma did something unprecedented. As president of Standard & Poor’s—one of the three major…
How the Law of Reversal Is Remaking the Middle East “The Middle East is no more. Welcome to West Asia.” —Mohammed Soliman The post-Cold War regional order has entered a period of systemic collapse. That’s the verdict from Mohammed Soliman, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and one…
A Three-Part Mini-Series — Part One “They know us better than we know ourselves. That should frighten you.” — Shoshana Zuboff, Author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Doesn’t it give you the creeps—that you’re being studied by the minute? Right now, somewhere yonder, a server is coalescing around your identity—your name,…
Lessons on chaos and emergence from the universe itself “The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” – Arthur Eddington The Dissolving World Open a news feed, scroll a timeline, wander the comment threads, and you can watch competing realities collide in…
“The way up and the way down are one and the same.” —Heraclitus Last week I went to see an orthopedic surgeon. A nagging shoulder–elbow issue I’m trying to sort out. That same evening, an ad popped up on Facebook: a Free Shoulder Rehab Masterclass. Like magic! Except it wasn’t…
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” —Henry Ford A New Monetary Era Begins: Born Into Fiat On this day, I was born 54 years ago—just…
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” — Daniel J. Boorstin Turning Inward: Noticing Things This week, I’m shifting my focus from the global to the local. I’ve temporarily muted the constant noise from the Global South, the Middle East, Europe, Russia, and…
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” — E.O. Wilson This past year has been unlike any other. I haven’t left Southwest Michigan—haven’t seen any other part of the world. Instead, I ventured into a more elusive frontier: reality. Writing…