France on Fire

 France is burning. What started as a student protest against dilapidated schools has turned into a nationwide round of rioting over the weekend. Instead of peaceful protest an alliance of far left and Islamist protestors (the red/green alliance) has laid waste to cities across France. (See: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/18/world/europe/france-protests-shock-arson.html - paywall) In Marseilles a pogrom against Jewish shopkeepers brought up memories of Nazi Germany’s 1938 Kristallnacht. Although I hate to say it, France is now paying the price for its unrestricted immigration policy.

 

Cheering on the protestors was France’s far left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon who is in the running to be France’s next president. Of course, it wouldn’t be a protest without the anti-west Greta Thunberg showing up.

 

Almost two years ago we wrote that France was quickly becoming the new Greece of Europe. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2024/12/2025-revenge-of-bond-vigilantes.html ) Simply put, France cannot afford to pay for its welfare state. Since then, France’s finances have deteriorated and the scenes of the collapse of public order will only make things worse. In all likelihood the French electorate will soon turn to Marine Le Pen, the doyenne of the far right to be its next president. She might be able to restore civic order, but her policies would only make France’s fiscal crisis worse.

 

However, unlike the Greek crisis of 2011, France is part of core Europe, and its fiscal problems could very well undermine the Eurozone. Although in the near term that would be dollar friendly, we shouldn’t forget that the fiscal order in the U.S. is far from perfect.

My Review of Simon Sebag Montefiore's "The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East"

120 Years of Near Constant Warfare

 

The greater middle east (Morocco to Iran) has been pretty much in a state of war for 120 years. Here the distinguished British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore presents us with an encyclopedic history of the middle east starting with Abdul-Azizz (Ibn Saud) conquest of Riyadh in 1902 up to the early stages of the U.S./Israel War with Iran in 2026. The one constant throughout this history is that the nations of the middle east has been in a near constant state of warfare fighting outside enemies, fighting among themselves, and engaging in a host of civil wars. What Montefiore’s book makes clear is that the Arab-Israeli conflict represents only a minor portion of the fighting that has taken place over the past twelve decades.

 

The book opens with Abdul Azizz conquering all of what was to become Saudi Arabia in 1917. In the following year British forces marched into the Holy Land and the British and the French then had to fight to maintain their mandates in the region. In the early 1920’s the Greco-Turkish War led to the mass ethnic cleansing of Greeks on the Asian mainland and of Turks living in Greece. There was also the Turkish massacre of Armenians in 1915. Later there were coups and counter coups with Nazi inspired officers seizing control of Iraq in 1941 which the British has to forcibly remove them. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/06/my-amazon-review-of-john-broichs-blood.html )

 

Of course, all of North Africa became a conflict zone from 1941-1943 and the British and the Russians took control of Iran during most pf the war, only to leave in 1946. In 1948 there was the Israeli War of Independence followed by the 6-Day War in 1956 and the 1967 war. All of this occurred against the backdrop of the Cold War where the U.S. and Russia jockeyed for influence and Nasser of Egypt played a dominant role.  

 

Before that Algeria endured seven years of war before achieving its independence from France. I can go on and on, with civil wars in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, and Libya.  Further, there was the six-year war in the desert between Iraq and Iran and later Iraq invaded Kuwait, and then a U.S. led coalition kicked them out. There were also mass killings in Syria, Iran, and Iraq to suppress the local population. I could go on and on, but I will stop here.

 

I have learned much from Montefiore’s book. For example, it was not the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov Agreement of 1916 that created the modern state system in the middle east; it was rather the San Remo Conference of 1920 (which reiterated the Balfour Declaration) and the Lausanne Conference of 1922-23 that establish much of the borders that we know today. Instead of starting America’s withdrawal from the region (until recently) with Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the signal was sent by Barack Obama’s failure to enforce his redline in Syria in 2013. He states that T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) was more a showman than a warrior and he minimizes the U.S. role in 1954 Iran coup, despite CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt’s claiming of the credit.

 

He believes that 1979, the year of Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran as one of the most pivotal years of the 20th Century. Khomeini fooled the west into thinking he was someone they could do business with. Instead, he was as diabolical as Stalin and Mao. He had no hesitation in mass murdering his opponents and we saw that in real time earlier this year when his son killed 40,000 protestors in the streets of Tehran.

 

My criticism of the book includes that he does not pay enough attention to the role of oil in region, he is too naïve about what the chances were for Jewish-Arab reconciliation in the early days of Zionism, he understates the role of UNRWA in helping to form the Palestinian identity in the so-called refugee camps ( See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2022/02/my-amazon-review-of-adi-schwatzs-and.html ), and he characterized the Hamas fighters as “militants,” an understatement, if you will. He also had Wilson presenting his 14 Points in 1918 when it was in 1917 and he credits Saudi Arabia with forming OPEC in 1960, when it was Venezuela.

 

That said Montefiore has written perhaps the defining history of the middle east since 1900. There is much to take in. To him Iran, Israel and Türkiye will determine the future of the region. And we shouldn’t underestimate the role of Morocco, perhaps the best run state in the areas whose industrial production has surpassed South Africa.

Inflation Ticks Up

The CPI report today brought with it news that inflation is far from quiescent. The overall index came in up 0.6% inline with expectations, but the all-important core reading was up 0.3%, 0.1% above expectations. As result on a year-over-year basis the CPI is up 3.7% and the core CPI is 2.6%, both well over the Fed's 2% target. Perhaps more unsettling was the 0.4% increase in the core services index (services ex housing) signaling that inflation is more endemic than previously thought. Remember the huge increase in diesel prices are only now beginning to be felt in the prices of final goods and services.

Initially the bond market sold off hard, but rallied into mid-day with yields modestly higher on the short-end and modestly lower on the long end. Stocks sold off with the S&P 500 down 1.3% a little over an hour before the close. My sense is that stocks are beginning to price in an aggressive tightening cycle which would lead to a recession later in 2027. Although I don't think the Fed will increase the funds rate in October, I would not rule out a 50 basis point hike in December, if core CPI continues to come in in the 0.3% range.

Further, I don't think the stock market has come to terms with growing probability of Democratic sweep in a few weeks. Should that happen, the markets should be prepared to see congressional show trials of all the corporate executives who cozied up to Trump.

 

My Review of William D. Cohan's "Money to Burn: The Unvarnished Truth about Leon Black........"

 

The Rise and Fall of Leon Black

       “Behind every great fortune there is a great crime.”

                                             Honoré de Balzac

Financial journalist and former investment banker William Cohan brings together the intertwined history of financier Leon Black and Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm he founded. The most formative event in Leon Black’s life was the suicide of his father Eli in 1975. The senior Black founded the 1960’s conglomerate United Brands which fell to hard times in the early 1970’s. It was Eli who convinced him to give up on his love of art history, which came from his mother and aunt, to go to Harvard Business School. Nevertheless, his knowledge of art and the big bucks he made enabled him to accumulate one of the largest private collections in the world whose value exceeds one billion dollars.

 

Black gets his start as a young associate at Michael Milken’s Drexel Burnham’s junk bond empire. By the mid-1980’s Milken became the “King of Wall Street” by first using high yield bonds to finance hitherto noncredit worthy smaller companies, especially in cable television (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/09/my-review-of-john-malones-born-to-be.html ) Black expanded the use of junk bonds to acquire established companies through the use of “highly confident letters” that sent shivers down the corporate establishment. It was that innovation that made Black’s reputation at Drexel.

 

However, Drexel and Milken were soon charged with securities law violations that brought down the firm and sent Milken to jail in 1990. Out of the wreckage Black formed Apollo. It was here where the great crime took place. Apollo received funding from France’s Credit Lyonnaise to acquire the junk bond portfolio of Executive Life Insurance that was in receivership in California. Executive Life was one of Drexel’s biggest clients and Black had intimate knowledge of its portfolio. As the junk market recovered Apollo made a fortune and its reputation. Although Apollo was never charged, Credit Lyonnaise was charged with violating state and Federal banking laws and ended up paying a $770 million fine.

 

Working hand and glove with Black in the early 1990’s Marc Rowan, now head of Apollo, and Josh Harris became key members of the firm. Although they were not exactly cofounders, Black gave them the title in the early 2000’s and made them billionaires. One of the keys to Cohan’s book is that Black, Rowan, and Harris talked freely to him. Thus, we get here inside views as to how Apollo grew from being primarily a private equity company to a leader in private credit. It was Rowan’s idea to establish a captive annuity company that would buy Apollo’s debt products. That company, Athene, has become a leader in the sale of annuities.

 

The advantage of having an insurance company to hold private debt is that it is not subject to the vagaries of short-term finance. It also has the benefit of being regulated by the generally understaffed state insurance departments. The risk here is that should private debt experience a wave of defaults the annuitants and the backup state insurance funds would be at risk.

 

After riding high for years, Leon Black got caught up in the Jeffrey Epstein sexual predator scandal. It was discovered that he paid Epstein a staggering $158 million fee for tax advice on his estate plan. To be sure Epstein found a way to correct a major mistake that Black’s white shoe law firm made, it hardly justifies the $158 million. Cohan goes into unsubstantiated reports of Black’s sexual proclivities, too much for my taste, but I guess it sells books and might explain the $158 million.

 

Then there is Black’s long time Russian paramour who claimed that Black sexually abused her. Black paid her off for years, but then she broke her nondisclosure agreement and the whole sordid mess became public. With that the Museum of Modern Art removed Black as its chairman but left him on the board. Why? Cohan suggests they want his art collection.

 

One of the great attributes of Cohan’s book is that he goes into great detail about the successful and failed deals that Apollo was involved in. Here his investment banking knowledge is crucial. Of particular note is the dispute with the Huntsman family of Utah and their eponymous chemical company. It was a knock down drag out fight that Huntsman won, but afterwards the relationship remained cordial.

 

Cohan makes all his leading players come alive. It becomes very clear that Black, Rowan, and Harris continue to have money to burn and they all show it. As a postscript Leon Black continues to ignore a congressional subpoena to discuss his involvement with Epstein.

Bondage: A Note on the Bond Market Rout

Last week U.S Treasury bonds sold off across the entire curve. The 2-year rose 11 basis points to 4.86%, the 10-year surged 22 basis points to 5.17%, and the 30-year advanced by 19 basis points to 5.49%. Those Friday closing levels were off the weekly highs as short covering, and the hopes rose for a settlement to the Iran War after comments from the Iranian foreign office. On Saturday Trump rejected the Iranian offer, but he later stated that talks will continue in the coming week.

What was notable is the bond yields have become more detached from oil prices as investors and traders are beginning to recognize that underlying inflation is more embedded than previously thought, fiscal deficits are getting worse, the economy may be stronger than the current consensus, and there are far more uses of funds than there are sources of funds. Meantime, the market is pricing two more rate hikes from the Fed with one coming as early as late next month. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-fed-acts.html )

 

As longtime readers of Shulmaven know, we have been arguing that we are in a secular bear market for bonds. (See for example: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/01/we-are-in-early-stages-of-bond-bear.html ) The current bear market began in August 2020 when the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield bottomed at 0.55%. We are now in the seventh year of the bear market, and we would note that the last bond bear market lasted for 35 years, 1946-1981. Thus, in our opinion, we are still in the initial stages of the secular bear market in bond

 

That said, long term market moves are never in a straight line. It is likely that the recent backup in rates will break a significant sector in the financial markets before too long. Thus, while I think we are on the road to much higher interest rates that will make today’s yields look low, it is not out of the question that a countertrend rally could soon begin. My guess is that will happen around a 6% yield for the 10-year U.S. Treasury Bond.

 

While the S&P 500 has been seemingly immune from the bond market route as earnings are on pace to increase 33% this year, the forward price-earnings ratio of the index has declined from 22 times to 19 times. As long as the strong earnings momentum continues stocks are likely to hold up reasonably well. However, once a crack appears in the earning cycle, stock market investors will take note of the high bond yields, and we will face a Wile E. Coyote moment.

The Fed Acts

As we noted last week the Fed was on track to increase the federal funds rate by 25 basis points. ( See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-die-is-cast-for-fed.html)  Today the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee acted. What is more, according to the infamous dot plot projection most of the committee member signaled that at least one more hike is in the cards. To add emphasis, Chair Warsh noted that "we removed a dose of accommodation." We would note that with the committee forecasting a 3.7% year-over-year increase in the personal consumption deflator by December indicates a mere 0.2% real funds rate at the new 3.75%-4% target range.  

In response the yield on 2-year U.S Treasuries surged by 7 basis point to 4.74%, thereby confirming at least one more rate hike. The 10-year Treasury advanced by a more modest 2 basis points, while the 30-year was unchanged. In other words a continuation of the "bear flattening" trend.

Although the more cyclical Dow Jones Industrial Average sold off by 1.2%, the S&P 500 was only off by 0.45% and the NASDAQ was flat. Thus, the stock market took the hike and the prospect of another hike by yearend reasonably well. The real issue for the stock market is at the long end of the yield curve. Our view is that long rates will work their way higher with the 10-year exceeding 5.25% and the 30-year exceeding 5.5% by yearend as the secular bond bear market grinds on.

My Review of Robert Harris' "Agrippa"

Caesar’s General

This is the fourth Robert Harris historical novel I have reviewed. (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Robert Harris', "An Officer and A Spy: A Novel", Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Robert Harris' "Munich: A Novel", and Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Robert Harris' "V2" ) Here Harris in the voice of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa retells his life story in the form of a dying man’s memoir starting from his very plebian beginning to rising to the heights of the Roman Empire. His rise is the result of his boyhood and ultimately lifelong friendship with Octavian who would become Agustus Caesar, the supreme ruler of the empire.

 

Agrippa was not only Caesar’s general, but he was also his admiral, and, in many respects, he was the Robert Moses of Rome by building aqueducts, public baths, parks, and waste removal systems. When Agrippa was 19 and Octavian was 18, they both exhibited high-order military skills. By the time there were 30 they were in charge of all Roman and land and naval forces.

 

Here you have to brush up on your Shakespeare because Octavian had to defeat Brutus and Cassius and later defeat Antony and Cleopatra. While Agrippa was the military strategist, Octavian was the political strategist in outmaneuvering all his rivals from the outside and from within. He does this through guile and having his children engage in strategic marriages, including forcing Agrippa to divorce his wife in order to marry Octavian’s daughter.   

 

So great was Agrippa’s military skills that in a period of 18 months he built a port and an entire naval fleet that would successfully defeat Sextus Pompeaus’s pirates in the Bay of Naples. Would that our Navy work with the same alacrity today?

 

Harris gives a very real sense of the power politics of the late Roman Republic and the dawn of the empire. From Julius’s Caesar crossing Rubicon the days of the republic were numbered, and constant fighting made the once great Roman Senate irrelevant. Harris also brings up with anecdotal evidence, but no proof that Agrippa was Julius Caesar’s illegitimate son.

 

Harris does a real service in presenting the grandeur that was Rome in a very readable format. He gets the history right and gives the reader a chance to be a fly on the wall when many of the great decisions were made along with getting a real sense of what life in the Roman army and navy was like.

The Die is Cast for the Fed

 With the headline consumer price index for August coming in at 3.4% and at 2.4% year-over-year for the core, the die has been cast for the Fed to increase its policy rate by 25 basis points at its meeting next week. As we noted two weeks ago, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and his Open Market Committee members have all the evidence they need to hike rates. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2026/08/warsh-strikes-right-chord.html ) Indeed with oil prices moving higher in September and diesel prices at record highs, it is hard to believe that August's increase in energy prices were a one-off event.

 

The bond market responded appropriately by flattening the yield curve with the yield on 2-year notes advancing by 6 basis points and the yields on the 10-year and 30-year Treasury bonds declining by one basis point and four basis points, respectively as of midday. For the moment, the Fed has gained a modicum of credibility, but time will tell as to whether or not it can be maintained. Shulmaven has long believed that inflation is more endemic than what most market participants believe, and thus the hike next week has to be viewed as the start of a tightening cycle, not one off.  

My Review of Porter Stansberry's "Warren's Mistakes"*

 Chinks in Buffett’s Armor

Financial newsletter writer Porter Stansberry has written a detailed critique of legendary investor Warren Buffett’s investments after 1999. In essence Stansberry believes that Buffett changed his investing style in 1999 when Berkshire Hathaway offered its then undervalued stock to buy General Re. From there, instead of finding hidden value in the stock market, Berkshire embarked on a process of buying companies whole with huge investments in electric utilities and the Burlington Northern Railroad. Berkshire became a clunky conglomerate, a business model he once derided. In a notable example he cites Berkshire’s acquisition of the Benjamin Moore paint company for one billion dollars in 2001. Instead Stansberry argues that Berkshire should have bought a 25% interest in Sherwin Williams, a far better paint company.

 

The reason why the years around the turn of the century are so important is that from 1967-2000 Berkshire dramatically outperformed the stock market as a whole. After that Berkshire’s performance roughly tracked the S&P 500. To Stansberry, Buffett is a better investor than an operator.

 

One of the questions Stansberry asks is to what we attribute Buffett’s success as a stock market investor. He found the answer in a 2018 Financial Analysts Journal article by Andrea Frazzini, David Kabiller and Lasse Heje Pedersen, all of AQR, entitled “Buffett’s Alpha.” Using data from 1976-2017 the AQR authors developed a multi-factor analysis that attributed much of Buffett’s outperformance to buying high-quality low beta stocks with a considerable amount of leverage. A good piece of the leverage came from Buffett’s utilizing the float from his insurance companies.

 

Buffett’s genius was to consistently utilize these factors, even the face of temporary downturns that could have broken other managers employing the same strategy. In 1998-1999 Buffett was sorely underperforming and many “value” managers were crushed during that period. (See for example: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2026/02/my-review-of-jeremy-granthams-making-of.html ) Such was the strength of Buffett’s reputation and the permanence of his capital that enabled him to ride out the storm.

 

Stansberry is especially critical of Berkshire’s investment in the Burlington Northern Railroad in 2010 and a series of investments in Berkshire Hathaway Energy. (BHE) In the case of Burlington Northern the author notes that is has the worst operating ratio of all the Class I railroads significantly underperforming its competitor, Union Pacific. Indeed, Buffett himself has noted that Burlington’s capital expenditure consistently exceeds its depreciation allowance. Thus, owner’s income is less than reported income.

 

In the case of BHE, Stansberry states that it has yet to pay a dividend to the parent company. BHE’s huge investment in solar and wind energy is done solely for the tax credits that the parent company utilizes. Absent the tax credit the investments in solar and wind would not be economic. Furthermore, in 2022 BHE was valued in excess of $90 billion in 2022 when then CEO Greg Abel sold his stock back to Berkshire. Two years later the company was valued when the Scott family sold its interests back to Berkshire, a huge haircut. In the interim the PacifiCorp subsidiary became on the hook for a maximum of $50 billion for potential liabilities accruing from the Oregon wildfires. Stansberry unfairly harps this maximum liability because should it be awarded the liability would be limited by the bankruptcy of its Pacific Power subsidiary.

 

Stansberry’s solution is for Berkshire to spin off both Burlington Northern and BHE. That would clean up Berkshire’s balance sheet and make it look more like the Berkshire of old.  

 

My primary criticisms of the book are twofold. First, Stansberry after paying lip service to Buffett’s investment acumen, he takes on the role of prosecutor and in many instances, he refers to Buffett as an “old man,” hardly fair. Next, he leaves out perhaps the most important reason as to why Berkshire has failed to outperform the S&P 500.

 

My explanation is that Berkshire’s primary competitive advantage, aside from Buffett’s investment acumen, is the ability to access its insurance float at a low or zero cost. With the Federal Reserve operating at a very low or zero interest rate policy for the past 25 years, Berkshire’s competitive advantage from this source has been severely eroded. Thus, with interest rates normalizing, we should expect Berkshire to once again outperform the market averages. However, this would be a tall order with Buffett no longer at the helm. Greg Abel, Berkshire’s new CEO, has his work cut out for him.

* Shulmaven is a longtime shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway. Subsequent to the original post I discovered that Stansberry was found civilly liable by the SEC for violating the securities law to the tune of $1.5 million in 2007.

 

Warsh Strikes the Right Chord

Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh struck the right chord in his Jackson Hole speech yesterday. He noted that the Fed has missed its 2% inflation target for five years and the economy is operating at full employment. Although there has been some modest improvement in the recent inflation data, Warsh remains skeptical that it is on a clear glide path towards 2%. Although not giving forward guidance in the traditional sense, Warsh put the markets on notice that a rate hike is likely at the September Open Market Committee meeting.

 

The treasury market responded with a “bear flattener” where short rates went up much more than long rates. The 2-year surged by 12 basis points to 4.36% while the 10-year and 30-year yields advanced by 5 basis points and 2 basis points, respectively. The market action on Friday was the mirror image of the response after Warsh’s comments after the July Fed meeting. Then the market put on a “bear steepener” trade with short rates falling and long rates rising significantly. (See: Shulmaven: The Bond Vigilantes Strike)  I would remind readers that the 10-year treasury is trading at 4.72%, precisely the level when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced his expanded bond buyback program. (See: Shulmaven: The Treasury Strikes Back )

 

Whether a September rate hike is one-off or the start of new tightening cycle remains to be seen. However, with the 2-year note yielding 4.36%, it looks like the federal funds rate is now on a slow road to 4.5%.

My Review of Daron Acemoglu's "What Happened to Liberal Democracy?”

The New, New Deal

M.I.T. economist and Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu’s idea of a liberal democracy is the New Deal era of 1933-1973 where under some very unique circumstances the U.S. enjoyed a “shared prosperity.” True to form, the book is being hailed by a host of Left and Far-Left economists.  As a result, his liberal democracy is not the liberal democracy of Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek. Thus, if a reader wants a more balanced account on the need to restore liberal democracy, I would suggest Adrian Wooldridge’s the “The Revolutionary Center.” (See: Shulmaven: My Review of Adrian Woodridge's "The Revolutionary Center" ) What both books have in common is that they go back to the seminal works of Kant, Hobbes, and Locke.

 

In many respects this book is a follow-on to Acemoglu’s and James Robinson’s “Why Nations Fail.” Simply put, Acemoglu worries about how the collapse of democratic institutions leads to authoritarians of the Right and the Left. Here Acemoglu makes a plea to the Democratic Party to return to its working-class roots of the Roosevelt era. He notes that the party began going astray when it traded the working class for the college educated elites. This was in response to the post-industrial world’s reduced need for mass production factory workers in favor of highly educated technical workers needed to run the more automated work of the future.

 

To Acemoglu the first sign of this was the student deferments of the 1960’s during the Vietnam War. It was the factory workers that went to Vietnam while the college students of that era lived it up with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. I know from experience as college graduate in the army at the time, college graduates among my fellow enlisted personnel were few and far between.

 

To Acemoglu, the turning point of the Democrats abandoning the working class went into full force in the 1980’s. This dating is no coincidence because it represented the start of Reagan’s first term. To the author the slow demise of the working class begins then.

 

He is wrong on this point. I would date the slow decline in the working class to the early 1970’s which brought with it the first oil shock and increased foreign competition in automobiles and steel. The date that will live in infamy was September 19,1977 when Youngstown Sheet and Tube shut down its 5,000-worker Campbell Works. Within five years the Mahoning Valley lost 50,000 workers. Why is this important? The Democrats held the presidency and both houses of Congress and did nothing.

 

At the same time the Democratic Party, instead of supporting in the interests of factory workers, turned its attention to the environment, abortion, and racial preferences. To be sure those are real issues, but it was of no solace to the relative and absolute decline of manufacturing work. Thus, it is no wonder that many workers moved away from the Democratic Party.

 

To cure this Acemoglu wants to return the Democratic Party to its to emphasize prolabor positions by strengthening labor unions, selectively supporting tariff, investment in public goods improving the safety net, and above all stop having its elites look down on people who work with their hands and live in small and mid-sized cities across America that have been devastated by deindustrialization. No more should a Hillary Clinton call them “Deplorables.” People forget that FDR was socially conservative, religious and very patriotic, characteristics that hardly define the Democratic Party of today.

 

What Acemoglu gets right is his hostility to identity politics and the cancel culture it breeds. As a liberal he believes in free speech and compares the cancel culture with the Spanish Inquisition, Maoism, and Soviet Communism. The logic behind identity politics requires Orwellian speech police to enforce all of its strictures. Acemoglu, within limits, accepts the rights of diverse communities to live their lives as they see fit.

 

My problem with Acemoglu’s New, New Deal is that the original New Deal was a product of a time and a place that no longer exists. The massive factories of that era are gone, and America has lost its postwar monopoly position in tradeable goods. Further the original New Deal was not bogged down by a host of regulations that make it impossible to build. To be sure Acemoglu is supportive of the “abundance agenda,” but that is a long way from being implemented. (See: Shulmaven: My Review of Ezra Klein's and Derek Thompson's "Abundance") Even more problematic is the prevalence of government employee unions which makes effective government hard to deliver. Recall that FDR himself was against public employee unions. And if you need further proof all you have to do is to look at the failed states of California, New York, and Illinois to see how a New, New Deal would work in practice.

 

To conclude I wish the Democrats would take to heart Acemoglu’s criticism of identity politics. Here he completely agrees with Adrian Wooldridge. I am also glad that Acemoglu is at the barricades fighting the illiberality of the Left and Right. It is good fight. On a more technical level, the book is in need of an editor because it bogs down in too many places and it is need of tables and charts to visualize the data in the text and finally why does the author have to cite himself 56 times in the bibliography, a bit over the top.

The Treasury Strikes Back

As we wrote earlier this month the bond vigilantes were on the warpath sending the yields on 30-year sovereign debt to generational highs. ( See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-bond-vigilantes-strike.html ) With the headlines screaming “bond market rout,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent announced that he was doubling the treasury’s bond buyback program from $2 billion to $4 billion a week starting in early September to be financed in the short-term bill market. In essence the treasury is engaging in a version of “operation twist,” a policy that historically had little long-term effects.

 

In response the yields on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond declined from 5.3% to 5.19% and the yield on the 10-year dropped from 4.7% to 4.64%. In a clear way Bessent told the speculators that shorting bonds was not a one-way street. In response gold and bitcoin rallied and the dollar declined.

 

However, Bessent, as former hedge fund trader, knows full well that temporary interventions of this type do not work unless they are backed up by the underlying fundamentals. In this case nothing has changed as fiscal deficits continue to mount, AI spending soars and there is a global build-up in military spending.

 

Thus, it will take a lot more that $4 billion a week to halt the secular bear market in bonds that we are now in. If Bessent wants to engage in a policy of yield curve control it would require the full cooperation of the Federal Reserve, which at this time seems unlikely. Why?  It would unleash a collapse in the dollar with a concomitant increase in inflation.

 

Net. Net. Look for yields to work their way higher as the summer turns to autumn. 

My Review of Batya Ungar-Sargon's "The Jews and the Left"

 Jews and Democrats: Time for a Divorce?

Last November I wrote that Jews were between a rock and a hard place in that both Democrats and Republicans have become more hostile to Jews. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/11/american-jews-between-rock-and-hard.html ) Here polemicist Batya Ungar-Sargon argues that it is time for the Jews to divorce from the Democratic Party. Simply put the Left in America has become increasingly hostile to Jews; witness the Michigan senate primary win of Abdul El-Sayed, the near gubernatorial primary win of Francesca Hong in Wisconsin, and Peggy Flanagan’s win the Minnesota Senate primary. However, Ungar-Sargon does not suggest that Jews marry the Republican Party, but rather to vote strategically. As my late father of blessed memory constantly reminded me the criterion for a vote is whether or not a candidate would be good for the Jews.

 

Ungar-Sargon presents a brief history of the relationship of Jews and politics in America starting in colonial times. She notes that with George Washington’s letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island in 1790 that Jews in America would be free to practice their religion. Aside from Grant’s Civil War order which was cancelled by President Lincoln there hasn’t been official discrimination against the Jews. Thus, in her mind Jews should not consider themselves a persecuted minority. This is especially true because Jews as a group have achieved huge success in “The Golden Land.”

 

A problem with the book is that she ignores the entire 19^th Century history and the whole history of private discrimination against Jews (restictions on club membership and property covenants) that existed from the beginning. She also ignores the rabid antisemitism of the Klan in the 1920’s and Father Coughlin in the 1930’s. She also ignores that in Europe and especially in Russia it was the Left that led the charge against the antisemitism of the Right.

 

To her the source of the bond between the Jews and the Democratic Party is a result of the labor movement in the early 20^th Century where Jewish immigrants were in the vanguard of the growing movement, especially after the Triangle Fire in 1911. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2020/01/my-amazon-review-of-terry-golways-frank.html )  The deal was closed with the very pro-Labor Roosevelt Administration and Roosevelt’s opposition to Hitler.

 

It was an easy step from labor activism to civil rights activism in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Here Jews were in lockstep with the northern Democratic Party. However, once the civil rights movement moved away from equal opportunity to equal results and later to the DEI mentality of oppressor versus the oppressed Jews began to have second thoughts about the Democrats. This is especially because DEI treats Jews as oppressors, not the persecuted minority of old. In a nutshell, the Democratic Party abandoned the working class in favor of identity politics.

 

All of this has come to a boil with the virulent anti-Zionism of the Left after October 7^th. Here the Left is calling for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and thus condemning half the Jews in the world who happen to live in Israel to death. That is exactly what “from the river to the sea” means.

 

Although I have outlined several issues with Ungar-Sargon’s book, she makes a convincing case that the Democratic Party as it exists today is far from the best political home for Jews today. That said, Trump and the Republican Party do not make for a comfortable home. However, given current trends, in a post-Trump world the Republicans could very well offer a better option than Democrats. In the meantime, a trial separation from the Democrats is in order.

 

My Review of Bojan Pancevski's "The Nord Stream Conspiracy"

 Sabotage in the Baltic

On September 26,2022, a team of six Ukrainian divers blew up the $20 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that lied 80 meters below the surface in the very dark and very polluted Baltic Sea at a cost of about $250,000. The 760-mile pipeline stretched from Russia to Germany and was to supply cheap gas for German industry. In this remarkable feat of investigative journalism Wall Street Journal reporter Bojan Pancevski tells us the story as to how the operation came together and the police work in Germany to uncover the source of the sabotage.

 

The operation was conceived shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was put together by an off-the books operation of former SBU (Ukraine CIA) and GUR (Ukraine military intelligence) called The Start-Up. In order to protect their identities, the author calls the two leaders The General and the Colonel, respectively. They are high enough in the bureaucracies to get things done even though at time they were officially retired and later in jail. The purpose of the operation was to cut off the dollars that Putin received from selling natural gas to the West that fed his war machine.

 

Pancevski uses many aliases for the leading characters in his book. The most interesting is Freya, a woman in her late 30’s who in a former life graced the cover of an erotic magazine. She is full of spunk, and it was her who actually placed the charges that blew up the pipeline. 

 

Because much of the action took place on German territory, the German Federal Police became involved. Here we follow The Chief Inspector engage in the extraordinary nitty-gritty police work to piece together what happened and to ultimately name the Ukrainians involved in the plot. For example, a speed camera in Germany caught the license plate of an automobile used by the Ukrainians. Piece-by-piece the Chief Inspector solves the crime. However, when seeking help from Poland, he was turned down because Poland rightfully viewed the Ukrainians as heroes deserving of medals.

 

The author gives a great deal of background on the entire Nord Stream endeavor. Despite U.S. opposition, Germany’s need for cheap gas over-rode the strategic imperative of not funding Russia. Indeed, once Putin understood that his invasion would not stop the flow of gas, he green—lit the Ukrainian invasion. He was wrong in that assumption. The pipeline represented a massive outlet for Gazprom, Russia’s leading gas producer. The German-Russian relationship on gas was more than cozy as Pancevski notes that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder ends up on the Gazprom board. Did someone say payoff?

 

We also discover the CEO of Nord Stream was Mattias Warnig. Early in his career he was member of the Stasi, the East German secret police and later became a good buddy of Putin. It just shows how important Germany’s lust for cheap gas was and Angela Merkel was no exception.

 

We also learn that much of the Ukraine Army is funded privately with individual oligarchs and businesses putting up money for individual units. That is how The Start-up was funded. Furter Voldamyr Zelensky is not quite the boy scout his press portrays him and his former deputy Andry Yermak participated in more than his share of corruption. Nevertheless, that while both The General and The Colonel expected Zelensky to flee after the invasion, he did not. Lastly, we learn that the CIA station in Kiev was and is very active and there are American boots on the ground training Ukrainians how to use U.S. equipment. My guess is, not mentioned in the book, the special forces were and are on temporary duty to the CIA giving Washington deniability.

 

Bojan Pencevski has written a nonfictional spy thriller that gripped me throughout reading his book. We witness unbelievable human courage on the part of the Ukrainians and excellent police work on the part of the Germans. It should be a leading candidate for the major book awards!

The Bond Vigilantes Strike

 Most market commentators attributed last week’s bond market sell-off to the lack of specificity in newly installed Fed Chair Kevin Warsh comments during his post-open market committee news conference. Although the Fed voted to keep the Fed’s target rate unchanged, regional bank presidents Beth Hammack, Lori Logan and Neil Kashkari voted for an increase thereby issuing a challenge to Warsh who has said that “inflation is a policy choice.” Warsh did not give any guidance as to how the Fed will bring inflation down to its long missed 2% inflation target. Thus, short-term interest rates declined as long-term interest rates rose in a classic bear steepener trade.

 

To be sure, I am in general agreement with Warsh on the limitations of forward guidance. The markets should not be spoon-fed the Fed’s outlook as to the course of short-term interest rates. As I noted a decade ago, the Fed should not be the stock market’s fairy godmother. (See:https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2016/01/memo-to-stock-market-janet-yellen-is.html )

 

My sense is that the back-up in yields has more to do with the return of the late 20^th century bond vigilantes in a 21^st century form. Simply put, the back up in the 30-year Treasury yield to 5.27%, its highest in 17 years and new multi-year highs in British, French, German and Japanese yields is telling us that something more fundamental is going on than a Fed meeting. What the markets are coming to grips with is the fiscal train wreck across the industrialized world, combined with supply shocks and an unprecedented amount of business investment associated with AI. Put bluntly, there is not enough funding to go around and the bond vigilantes sense this. There are more uses of funds than sources of funds.

 

In my year-end outlook I noted that the 30-year Treasury Bond would end this year at around 5.5%. (See: Shulmaven: 2026: A Year of Turbulence ) My guess is that target is likely to be exceeded before year-end and that it will likely have a 6 handle on it next year. Although the stock market rallied late week in response Citadel’s covering the hedge fund Situational Awareness’ margin call, it will soon turn its focus to the bearish forces emanating from the bond market.

  

My Review of John Ireland's "The Death of Trotsky"

 Stalin’s Long Arm

Stalin’s long arm reached into suburban Mexico City in August 1940 to assassinate Leon Trotsky, his former rival for power in the Soviet Union. Here author John Ireland examines how Stalin used his NKVD security service to infiltrate Trotsky’s inner sanctum to allow Ramon Mercader to smash an ice ax into the back of Trotsky’s skull thereby killing him.

Ireland tells us how the mother son team of Caridad Mercader and Ramon Mercader were recruited during the Spanish Civil War. Though both of them were stone-cold communists, they enjoyed the finer things in life. They were aided by Iosif Grigulevich, the NKVD’s super spy who assisted in the plot. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/05/my-review-of-shaun-walkers-illegals.html )

 

The operation had a very long tail. For example, Ramon Mercador first had to seduce Sylvia Ageloff, a Brooklyn social worker who was the sister of one of Trotsky’s secretaries. It was the connection to Sylvia that enabled Ramon to enter Trotsky’s household.

 

Ireland goes into the background as to how Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army, lost his fight with Stalin. Trotsky was too much of an intellectual to get involved in the day-today nitty gritty of Soviet politics. On the other hand, Stalin coldly and methodically accumulated power to best all of his rivals. (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of "Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878 -1928" and Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Steven Kotkin's "Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941" ) Although, by the time Trotsky was assassinated he had little power being in charge of a very small sect revolving around his personality, Stalin was so paranoid that he feared him as a potential rival. Trotsky wasn’t the only one because during the Purge Trials Stalin finished off his old Bolshevik comrades in the early leadership including Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin.

 

So how did Trotsky end up in Mexico?  Stalin first exiled him to Turkey and Trotsky moved on to Paris and Soviet diplomacy forced him out. He then went to Norway. From Norway the new revolutionary regime of Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico invited him in. Initially he stayed with the painter Diego Rivera and had an affair with Frida Khalo, Rivera’s wife. Of course this did not please Natalia, Trotsky’s wife.  With so much tension the Rivera household Trotsky moved on to a villa in suburban Mexico City.

 

While there Stalin sent three assassination teams into Mexico. The first attempt failed, but not for the lack of trying; 200 bullets rained into the Trotsky household. The second attempt succeeded. After the assassination Ramon was jailed, a Stalin had no interest in pursuing the remainder of Trotsky’s following.

 

At times Ireland’s book reads like a spy thriller. However, at other times it gets bogged down in minutia. A better editing job would have been helpful. Nevertheless, we get a very real glimpse as of what happened to people who got on the wrong side of Stalin.

 

 

 

My Review of Maggie Haberman's and Jonathan Swan's "Regime Change"

 A Man in Full*

Much has already been written about “Regime Change.” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan have chronicled the first year of the second Trump administration which they rightly characterized as the start of an imperial presidency. Thus, I don't have much to add. It is an administration loaded with sycophants who are willing to enforce Trump’s retribution agenda. Indeed, Trump is presiding over an historic expansion of executive power that has no parallel in peacetime and has engaged in a pattern of self-enrichment that is without precedent.

 

There are more than a few nuggets in the book such as the use of the situation room, hitherto focused on national security events, to discuss the Epstein affair which for a while, paralyzed the administration. We also learn that Trump aide, Natlie Harper is with him constantly as she runs his Truth Social account and caters to his every whim.

 

Nevertheless, I expected much more from the book, especially from Maggie Haberman who has followed Trump since her days at the New York Post in the early 2000’s. ( See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Maggie Haberman's "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America")  In many respects the book reads like a long New York Times article, except most of the sources are on deep background. The authors put you in the room where it happened with direct quotes of the participants without attribution.  Unlike Trump’s first administration, the current one does not leak out of a real fear of retribution.

 

So, we are left with question, who talked to the authors?  Who benefits from the book? I can only guess, but those officials most interested in running for office in 2028 and in protecting their future reputation from the investigations that are sure to come can give us a clue as to who spoke to the authors.

 

My candidates are Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and son-in-law Jared Kushner. These folks talked to Haberman and Swan on a situation-by-situation basis. They only spoke when it served their individual interests, par for the course.

 

What Haberman and Swan have done is to give us a good summary of Trump’s first year and it demonstrates his primary motivation is to avenge those who he perceived wronged him in his first term and the investigations that followed. Policy is secondary to vengeance, the accretion of power and self-enrichment.

 

*-With apologies to Tom Wolfe.

My Review of Randall Sullivan's "The First All-Star Game"

 All-Stars

On July 14^th baseball will celebrate the 93rd anniversary of the first All-Star Game to be held in Philadelphia. Here Randall Sullivan recounts the history of how the first All-Star game came to be along with digressions about the history of baseball, the Great Depression, The Negro Leagues, Franklin Roosevelt, Chicago politics, and the gangsters of the 1930’s. As a kid growing up in the 1950’s, I ate, drank, and slept baseball. I read all kinds of sanitized books about the early years of baseball and the great players of that era.

 

As Sullivan notes, the origin of the first All-Star game in 1933 had its roots in the Chicago Tribune and its sports editor, Arch Ward. With the country in depression there was a special need to hype up the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. The idea came to Ward to have the “game of the century” that would feature the best players in the National and American leagues playing against each other with the players to be selected by a vote of the fans. To pull this event off it required the support of both league presidents, the Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the Commissioner of Baseball, Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly, and the support of President Roosevelt.

 

It worked and it all came together with Connie Mack, the manager of the then Philadelphia Athletics, and John McGraw, the manager of the then New York Giants piloting each team of all-stars. Of course, the great Babe Ruth played for the American League and let his team to a 4-2 victory with a home run.

 

I learned much about the players of that era. They weren’t quite the all-American choir boys, except for the great Lou Gehrig, they were portrayed in the books that I read those many years ago. For example, instead of coming out of an orphanage to play baseball, Babe Ruth was in reform school. He also had a gluttonous taste for food, booze, and women. He was a customer of brothels in every American League city. Nevertheless, after a night of carousing, he was still among the greatest of all time on the field and at bat.

 

My quarrel with the book is that Sullivan goes off on to many tangents that can lose the reader’s interest. Nevertheless, he tells a story of how baseball captured America’s imagination in the 1920’s with Babe Ruth along with Charles Lindberg being the two great celebrities of the Roaring 20’s.

 

Ukraine Goes on the Offensive

 Shulmaven has been commenting on Russo-Ukraine War since 2014 when the Russian “green men” seized Crimea. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-ukraine-what-is-to-be-done.html ) The all-out Russian invasion began in February 2022 and if we date the war’s start to then, the Russo-Ukraine War is now longer than the fighting in World War I. Similar to World War I, the battlefield has been stalemated since the end of 2022 with a “no-man’s land” in the east separating the forces and on ongoing Russian drone/missile blitz on Ukrainian cities in the West.

 

However, of late, Ukraine has gone on the offensive with drone and missile attacks reaching into the heart of Russia. Both Moscow and St. Petersburg have witnessed the war coming home. More important, Ukraine has taken out more than 25% of Russia’s oil refining capacity triggering gasoline rationing that Putin was forced to admit last week.

 

Under severe wartime conditions Ukraine has built up the capacity to mass produce long range drones and missiles. What we are witnessing in Ukraine is a revolution in military affairs where ground forces have become immobilized by the fear of drone attacks and that swarms of low-cost drones can overcome Russia’s sophisticated air defenses. No region in European Russia is safe and perhaps we will soon see Ukraine set ablaze the west Siberian oilfields, a course I have long advocated.

 

Russia is now in a box. Instead of their once thought of inevitable victory, it is now slowly losing the war. Putin will have to accept this reality or attempt to widen the War into Poland or the Baltic states. His goal would be to force NATO into pressuring Ukraine to accept its demands. Of course, this high risk strategy could very well bring NATO directly into the war with unknowable consequences.

 

NATO is meeting in Ankara, Turkey next week. I am sure Ukraine will be a major topic of conversation. Given Ukraine’s battle-tested army and its advanced weapons production capabilities, it would seem to me that NATO needs Ukraine more than Ukraine needing NATO. It wouldn’t surprise me that while the meeting is in progress, Ukraine will launch its largest air assault on Russia to date.

Havana on the Hudson - Part 3*

With the results of last Tuesday’s primary victories for the TikTok Jacobins and the enactment of a rent freeze on one million rent stabilized apartments, New York City drove a few more nails into its coffin. The congressional primary victories of DSA members Claire Valdez and Derializa Avila Chevalier along with the anti-Zionist Jew, Brad Lander, defeating Congressman Dan Goldman demonstrated the power of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s machine. To be sure he was pushing against a hollowed out Democratic Party. Put bluntly the socialist left in the Democratic Party is copying the Tea Party/Trumpian takeover of the Republican Party a decade ago.

 

Of particular note is that Chevalier is a stone-cold communist of the third world variety.  My guess is that she would take what I just wrote as a compliment. She doesn't beleive in prison terms for murderers. Her political support comes not from the Black and Latino populations of her district, but rather from the white intellectual leftists that seem to have found a home in New York City.

 

As expected, the Rent Guidelines Board froze rents on one million apartments under its authority. Because most of the rent stabilized housing stock is old, the likely outcome of a rent freeze would be speed up the deterioration of the buildings. Indeed, the not so hidden agenda of the Mamdani is to bankrupt the existing owners to enable the city to buy up the buildings.  Recall that the city is already the biggest slumlord through its housing authority.

 

While New York City seems to be prospering on the surface and benefitting from the Wall Street bull market, beneath the surface the socialist termites are eating away its foundation. So, just as the speed of the socialist takeover seemed to surprise, so too will the speed of the city’s demise. Havana here we come.

 

*-   See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/11/havana-on-hudson-part-2.html

The Fed Turns a Page: Warsh and Greenspan

Kevin Warsh’s first meeting as Fed Chair last week and the death of longtime Fed Chair Alan Greenspan yesterday signaled that the Federal Reserve is embarking on a new chapter in its history. The Fed is now turning a page as it leaves its policies for the first quarter of the 21^st Century behind. Under Warsh the Fed is abandoning its policy of forward guidance and with that the so-called “dot plots” that were introduced in 2012 which presented the forecasts of individual members of the Open Market Committee will soon go by the wayside. As a result, the Fed Put that worked as a floor underneath the stock market since 1987 has been removed. Look for more volatility in stock prices. As if on cue, the stock market is responding today. Over the longer term the four task forces authorized by Warsh, which will include outside members, may end up having a far more lasting effect on the Fed.

 

Ten years ago, I reviewed Sebastian Mallaby’s biography of Alan Greenspan so there is no need to recount his remarkable career here. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2016/10/my-amazon-review-of-sebastian-mallabys.html ) In a nutshell a kid from the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan rose to become the conductor of the global economic orchestra as I wrote then. Both Henry Kissinger and Henry Kaufman, my old boss at Salomon Brothers came from the same neighborhood. Something must have been in the water.

 

I met Alan Greenspan twice as an outside consultant to the Federal Reserve Board. The first time was in December 1991, when the Fed invited a group of real estate experts to discuss the then ongoing meltdown in commercial real estate. Greenspan listened and maintained a sphinxlike expression. Two days later he announced an inter-meeting 100 basis point cut in the discount rate and a 50-basis point cut in the federal funds rate. He obviously took seriously my comments and those of others on the gravity of the situation.

 

The second time was in December 1996 when the Fed called in several Wall Street equity strategists and few academics including Robert Shiller. The topic was whether or not the roaring bull market in stocks was getting out of control. A few days later Greenspan gave his famous “Irrational Exuberance” speech. When the formal meeting was over, I sat with him and a few others at a small table over lunch. There he gave me a marked-up copy with his autograph on “Comments on Credit,” Salomon Brothers weekly publication on the credit markets and the economy. He noted a small error. When I got back to the office I gave the copy to Robert DiClemente, the author of the report. Bob was flabbergasted that Greenspan read his work in such detail and he immediately had it framed. One of the secrets to Greenspan’s success was that he was very meticulous. He knew every data point in most economic series, both current and historical.

 

Under Greenspan’s leadership the Fed helped lead the U.S. economy into an extended period of moderate growth, with low unemployment and low inflation. Along the way he rescued the stock market after the 1987 crash giving rise to the Fed Put, organized the rescue of Long-Term Capital Management 1997, the Asian crisis of 1998. The whole period form 1982 -2007 was known as “the great moderation.” Unfortunately, it came crashing down with the financial crisis of 2008. Just as in the days of ancient Rome, a slave in the chariot of a conquering general would warn that all glory is fleeting, the ghost of Hyman Minsky should whisper in the ear of every Fed chair that “stability leads to instability.” I think Warsh understands that and let us hope he won’t be a slave to President Trump.

 

All that said, Alan Greenspan was a giant in the world of central banking. May his memory be a blessing.