After Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutineers had taken control of Rostov-on-Don, Vladimir Putin appeared on television to appeal, above all, for unity. At a time when “Russia is waging a hard fight for its future,” the mutiny was “a stab in the back of our country and our people.” So far, so predictable, but what came next was less so…
Read MoreIncreasing criticism of ESG (an often incoherent investment “discipline” under which actual or portfolio companies are scored in part by how they score against various environmental, social, and governance measures) and the pushback against it in certain (red) states are worrying those in the ESG ecosystem who have done so well politically and economically (or both) out of it. Newspapers such as the Financial Times complain about elected politicians meddling in topics such as ESG, even though ESG is nothing if not political. Billionaires such as Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer have issued warnings that those who oppose ESG just don’t understand capitalism, as has (more or less) Al Gore, climate change “prophet” and profiteer.
Read MorePoland is, as it was in 1920, on the West’s front line, even if this time the conflict — cyberattacks apart — is across its border and it has NATO at its side. Back then, Western assistance consisted mainly of some French matériel, a large detachment of French officers, and a smaller collection of Brits. Led by Józef Piłsudski, the father of a reborn Poland, Polish forces launched a counter-attack against the Bolshevik army that was nearing Warsaw. The result, named after the river running through the city, was the “Miracle on the Vistula.” The invaders were routed, Poland was saved, and the Red Army was stopped from spreading Lenin’s revolution to a dangerously fissile Germany.
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America’s support for Ukraine has removed any remaining doubts that the Cold War’s two leading adversaries are embarked on a new version of that contest. And Beijing is now in a very different position. After China’s break with the USSR in the early 1960s, the relationship between Moscow, Washington, and Beijing evolved into an intricate triangular dance in which the distance between the three vertices was always shifting.
Forty years on, the nature of that dance has changed, and not to America’s advantage. Thanks to its growing economic, technological, and military power, China has now emerged as America’s most formidable challenger…
Read MoreWith the pushback against ESG (an investment “discipline” under which actual or prospective portfolio companies are measured against various environmental, social, and governance benchmarks) gathering momentum, its proponents have finally had to mount a credible defense of a once seemingly irresistible concept that, up to now, has had no need of one.
That’s not proving easy…
Read MoreApril 3 saw the death of one of the last Thatcherite greats, Nigel Lawson. He was ninety-one. Serving as Margaret Thatcher’s chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister) between 1983 and 1989, Lawson played a vital part in creating a British economic revival so strong that it took the combined efforts of both the Conservative and the Labour parties decades to destroy it…
Read MoreSay what you will about Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, but when it comes to property rights, he is pretty consistent. He was chairman of the Business Roundtable when, in 2019, in a statement co-signed by a large number of CEOs, it jettisoned its support for shareholder primacy — the idea that the principal purpose of a corporation is to generate return for its shareholders. That was old hat. Now corporations should “deliver value” to all their stakeholders, of which shareholders are only one class.
Read MoreMispricing money comes with consequences. And the longer that money is mispriced the more uncomfortable those consequences will be. We are now seeing what look to be the early stages of a long, painful period of readjustment…
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Those who believe in free markets — or who are familiar with the history of developed economies after they became developed (or, maybe, completed postwar reconstruction) — ought to have little time for industrial policy. Free markets are bottom-up, flexible, and work with their own imperfections. They function through a continuous process of communication that recognizes that the valuable message sent by a price yesterday may be worthless today. Much of their operation is by trial and error. To be sure, there are disasters — plenty of them — but they often point to a better use of capital elsewhere or next time. The prosperity free markets have brought, and the human flourishing they have enabled, is unmatched.
By contrast — and despite some successes — industrial policy has a generally inglorious track record…
Read MoreThe notion that closer trade connections with the West will necessarily set less enlightened nations on a course toward prosperity and liberty is nonsense, but convenient nonsense. Germans have a phrase for it — Wandel durch Handel, change through trade — often given as a justification for their business dealings with Russia and China. Unfortunately, the change they triggered was in Germany. In one case it has been for the worse; in the other it appears to be headed that way…
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