In the Blind Spot: Exorbitant privilege as a service
SNEAK PEEK — The risky attempt to transition from an era where America provided the world with liquidity for free to one where access to the dollar is a premium service. — U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent provides some more clues about how a U.S. sovereign wealth fund might work. — Ask not what the […]
In the Blind Spot: The incoming ‘Trump Pump’
SNEAK PEEK — Still struggling to understand what the great Trumpian economic restructuring is all about? Think reverse ESG. — It’s not a tariff on money. It’s Regulation Q in reverse. — We ask what role private military contractors will play in a Ukraine peace deal Happy Saturday subscribers! We’ve spent some time this […]
It’s not ‘Military Keynesianism’, it’s ‘Military Thatcherism’
“Surplus production provokes a destructive backlash that precludes civilization for societies that do not have, or cannot build, defense capabilities. Yet, an optimal first public choice offers a resolution to the paradox of civilization along two paths. One is being twice-lucky in terms of growth and defense capabilities. The other is to create artificial defense […]
The DSR: A Bretton Woods for War?
A coalition of former NATO officials, European defense leaders, and financial elites is pushing for the creation of a Defense, Security, and Resilience (DSR) Bank. This is a proposed £100 billion military finance institution designed to underwrite Western defense spending. Styled as an IMF for war, the DSR Bank would issue AAA-rated bonds to raise […]
In the Blind Spot: A controlled demolition of U.S. stock prices
SNEAK PEEK — The Mar-a-Lago Accord as a pathway to a new global order and a renewed trust pact centered on the idea of “mutual assured narrative collapse” theory. — Why Trump’s ‘tariff talk’ seeks to emulate China’s ultimate inequality-check mechanism (aka its tendency to use regulatory threats to burst financial bubbles before they […]
In the Blind Spot: Mutual liberation syndrome
SNEAK PEEK — A renewed bid to help Ukraine get its hands on €300 billion of frozen Russian assets may embolden Zelensky to go it alone with only EU support. — When both sides think they’re saving the other. The skeleton key to understanding global markets is that nobody can agree on who is […]
In the Blind Spot: Memecoin philanthropy and the Mar-a-Lago Accord
Dear Subscribers, Izzy here. Writing from “burnout leave”. Dario is holding the fort for now, but I am acutely conscious that subscribers have only had one properly drafted newsletter from me this year. I just wanted to reassure you all that I will be back in normal operating mode the first weekend of March. Until […]
In the Blind Spot: Why the doom loop is no longer theoretical
SNEAK PEEK — The doom loop is coming for the West and coordinated financial repression will be needed to deal with it. — Why incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is eyeing the formation of a new liberal trading bloc and exotic securities to counter the worst of it. — What the TikTok and RedNote […]
How the ‘power or prison’ dynamic gate-crashed our liberal consensus
Or, What Biden’s pardoning of Hunter augurs for late-stage liberalism — and what we can learn about it from Poland Here at The Blind Spot we’ve long highlighted that the “you’re either in power or in prison” dynamic, while largely alien to postwar Western states, is and always has been a feature of weak political […]
In the Blind Spot (In defense of forward deployed engineers)
SNEAK PEEK — Is spytech contractor Palantir miscast as the source of all evil? As the company takes control of the U.K MoD’s contracting review, Izzy considers the counter-narrative. — U.K. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ National Wealth Fund announcement invited more questions than answers. We look at what we know for sure. — There’s a […]
