27 Insights From Three Years of Bismarck Brief

Free market logic describes how the laws of supply and demand incentivize providing the best goods at the lowest prices. But custom means economic decisions are made unthinkingly, outsourced to tradition, which might be political, ideological, or even aesthetic in origin. By law and in practice, the entire U.S. banking system has been fully guarant... See more

The difference between Saudi Arabia's wealth and Venezuela’s poverty is mainly that Venezuela's national oil company PDVSA is dysfunctional, but Saudi Aramco isn't. Two-thirds of native Saudis work for the government. The profligacy of the Saudi economy is underwritten by oil exports by Saudi Aramco, which has a special arrangement for autonomy in ... See more