Sublime

This is important because those in power have seldom reacted peacefully to developments that undermined their authority. They are not likely to now.

The federal government wasn’t designed by World War II to manage power of the sort it had, and the inclination to use military power as a first response has proven unsustainable.

a historic transition of intellectual and economic leadership from the old American elites to a prophetic new generation in what is often termed the Third World but is rapidly eclipsing America in free zones of the mind, from Guatemala City to Shanghai.

Globalization Means Substitution

It is not at all clear how the poorest countries in Asia and Africa will manage to dramatically improve their prospects in a world that no longer needs untold millions of low-wage factory workers.

"The lesson is, we must pay attention to bubbles," the minister replied. "With stocks, or companies, or countries, all are part of the same phenomenon. Probably Argentina is the best example of a country." For developing nations, he added, "the worst period is when financial markets have the most liquidity. This is when cou

This nostalgia for the past will be fed by resentments inflamed by the inevitable transition crisis. The greatest resentment is likely to be centered among those of middle talent in currently rich countries. They particularly may come to feel that information technology poses a threat to their way of life.

The financial crisis of 2008, and the Great Recession that followed, had a similar effect on the home front. The guilty parties were elites—bankers, traders, regulators, and policymakers. Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman and an Ayn Rand fan, admitted that the crisis undermined his faith in the narrative of Free America. But those who di

A society with deep, troubling economic problems had rigged itself to disguise those problems, and the chief beneficiaries of the deceit were its financial middlemen.