Sublime

‘the provisional life,’

This book is about the role of interest in a modern economy. It was inspired by a Bastiat-like conviction that ultra-low interest rates were contributing to many of our current woes, whether the collapse of productivity growth, unaffordable housing, rising inequality, the loss of market competition or financial fragility. Ultra-low rates also seeme

In 1999 Thomas Friedman published The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization. It was Das Kapital for Smart America. In Friedman’s account, globalization is the organizing system of the post–Cold War era, but, unlike the Cold War, it is the result of technological advances and blind economic forces, not government policies. Rejecting

This is the age of discretionary income. People are supposed to forgo earnings opportunities in order to lead richer lives.

America’s superior ability to manage big companies over wide geographical areas was making it impossible for European companies to compete. The Americans, he pointed out, had mastered the tools of organization that held the key to prosperity; the Europeans, on the other hand, were held back by their commitment to family firms and their cult of flai

To suppose that some specific new form of governance will emerge simply because another has failed is a fallacy. By that reasoning, Haiti and the Congo would long ago have had better government simply because what they had was so luminously inadequate.

he owed his superiority only to unjust legal and economic discrimination.