Gilder’s Guideposts Newsletters
The Troubles of Chairman Xi
It was less than a year ago that the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party named Xi Jinping ruler for life. It’s shaping up to be a tough life. Xi has real troubles. Getting past them would require some dramatic backpedaling. If he can pull that off, he could save himself and serve his […]
An Act of War or Just Another Two Minute Hate?
If it is true that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has planted malware “deep inside the networks controlling power grids, communications systems and water supplies that feed military bases in the United States and around the world,” as The New York Times reports, then China has committed an act of war. If so, the U.S. […]
The European Grasshopper Loses to the American Ant
The Wall Street Journal has made a remarkable discovery. He who does not work (much) does not eat (much). Europe, says the Journal, is descending into poverty because Europeans are, um, lazy. Based on International Monetary Fund (IMF) figures, in 2008 the Eurozone and U.S. economies were roughly the same size with U.S. GDP at […]
Should We Imitate China, or Taiwan?
Despite the anti-Chinese hysteria gripping our rulers in Washington, much of what they do seems devoted to making us more like the country they profess to hate so much. From Democrats, some 65% percent of whom pine for the socialist path, this is hardly a surprise. Republicans, however, are doing as much or more to […]
Two Cheers for Senator Warren
Has the Federal Reserve heard of supply and demand? Of demand, Fed officials have heard for sure. They are obsessed with it, possibly because they believe they can control “aggregate demand” by manipulation of credit markets. But if prices are set by supply vs. demand, shouldn’t inflation fighters care about the supply side? The Fed […]
Free at Last? Or why we are even happier than usual about the U.S. economy
Our readers know that we have long resisted the idea that the U.S. economy is headed for a serious “recession,” despite the best efforts of the Federal Reserve to wreak one, and the ravages of emergency socialism mulcting our wealth and savings. Our reasoning has not been complicated. During the Reagan era, from 1983 to […]
AI is already beyond the reach of the regulators, and that’s good news for the rest of us
Something important happened this week and it was nothing to do with squabbles between factions of Russian thugs, or even Hunter Biden. Databricks, a privately held software company, with circa $1billion annual revenues, announced it would pay $1.3 billion to acquire an utterly obscure artificial intelligence (AI) start-up called Mosaic ML. This matters because it […]
The Chairman Blinks Twice
On the campaign trail in 2000, George W. Bush, commenting on China’s future, noted “once a measure of economic freedom is permitted, a measure of political freedom will follow.” Today, GOP China Hawks partly regard Bush as intolerably naïve. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, their intellectual leader, chides, we now know such hopes were “rooted […]
United Arab Emirates Takes Lead in Artificial Intelligence
Well, Okay, the UAE is not the world’s leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI). But in terms of government policy on AI, the regulators of that sandy land appear to be a whole lot better at their jobs and, if we may be excused for using the term, more progressive, than their U.S. counterparts. The UAE […]
In Memoriam
As Memorial Day came and went, the thought that lingered was how terrible it must be to live in a weak country. Fear always. Bad deals with bad neighbors. Invasion. Chaos. Flight. Poverty. Disease. All because a weak country cannot choose its wars. Throughout U.S. history, we have chosen every one of our wars. Yes, […]