Gilder’s Guideposts Newsletters
Will National Security be the Death of Us?
In his first State of the Union address, John Quincy Adams laid down the fundamental principle of strategy for a commercial republic: “let us not be unmindful that liberty is power; that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth…” This […]
Ukraine Losing as U.S. Military Tech Lags… the Russians!
Ukraine is losing the war for many reasons including the all-too-familiar cycle of Russian military ventures: corrupt, politicized, and incompetent. The Russians start out failing pathetically, hold on in the interim by massive blood sacrifices of untrained troops, and finally, battle-hardened and led by officers competent enough to have survived, use their massive advantages in […]
Don’t Worry America, Israel is Behind You
More than a decade ago on trip to Israel, Richard V bought a tee shirt inscribed with the slogan above. The street vendor, handing him the tee with a slightly shy (for an Israeli!) and ironic smile said, “I know, it’s other way around, right?” Maybe not. As things stand today, no nation is more […]
The Topological ‘Traitors’ Who Will Save America’s Chips
The sagas of knowledge and power continue to deform the topology of the world. In 2012, George authored a book entitled Knowledge & Power, expounding the “Information Theory of Economics.” Consummated in my new book, “Life After Capitalism” (2023), it espoused the unpopular view that knowledge has no nations, and ultimately dominates the preferences of […]
Instant Karma Comes for the U.S. Semiconductor Industry
Here is our best investment tip. We wish we could say it was based on inside information, but unless being old and experienced count as cheating, we’re afraid that even under the Biden Securities and Exchange Commission, this advice is strictly street legal: Always bet against the force-fed fancies of politicians. Currently those include the […]
The United States as a Petrostate?
The financial press has recently been celebrating that the United States has reached all time-highs in oil production. Some Republicans, accustomed to blistering Biden for crippling our oil and gas extraction fear losing an issue. Into this confusion steps the indispensable John Tamny who points out the real reasons U.S. production is high, and they are […]
Heat or Light for the New Year
Let there be light! Around the world, we see an incendiary spread of heat. As the light of freedom dwindles, the heat rises. “Burn Baby Burn” in many languages. Baffled by the crippling futilities of socialism, the political world moves toward the distraction of ever-hotter conflicts, seeking “national emergencies” to divert the electorate from the […]
Seasons Greetings; Good Will and Peace to All!
Merry Christmas and happy New Year! We spare you our regular Gilder Guideposts on the simple grounds that we know no one who wants to read about the Fed, or Bidenomics, U.S. non-strategy or other multivarious journeys towards Hell in handbaskets, smack in the middle of Christmas vacation. And we promise you it was even […]
America’s China Hawks Get Their Way; Chinese Chip Makers Get the Money
The U.S. ban on selling advanced microchips and chip-making equipment to China has been a huge success—for China. Over the last 12 months, revenues of Chinese semiconductor equipment companies—they make the machines that make the chips– grew almost 40%; sales of U.S. and other western companies subject to the export ban declined by 0.6% Forced […]
Jobs Harder to Find, Powell to Party?
Amazing is the U.S. media’s reverence for, of all institutions, the Federal Reserve. You’d think that our Democrat-leaning press might be just a little skeptical about an institution that takes ensuring the nation’s titan saurian banks never have a bad day as its most sacred calling. And yet the media, even our beloved Wall Street […]