“The present, as permanent and overwhelming as it can seem, is fleeting,” writes Robert Kaplan in the introduction to The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate. “The only thing enduring is a people’s position on the map.” As a country built with a spirit of [...]
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With Greece again roiling world financial markets, it can be useful to step back and get an historical perspective. Greece has been here before, and if history is any guide this will not be the last time.…
With outstanding U.S. debt fast approaching 100% of GDP and budget deficits continuing to yawn stubbornly wide, the next president and congress will have some unpleasant decisions to make. Spending will have to be cut. But from where? Social Security and Medicare will come under debate, as will most discretionary spending. But the elephant in [...]
Share/Bookmark World stock markets soared on Wednesday after a German court gave its blessing to the EU sovereign debt bailouts. The Dow finished the day 275 points higher, and the standby safe havens—Treasuries and gold—fell sharply. As much as I’d like to believe that the gut-wrenching volatility that plagued us throughout the month of August [...]
Share/BookmarkIf you think that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is unpopular, consider the tragic case of Takahashi Korekiyo, who served as Bank of Japan governor from 1911-1913 and as finance minister and prime minister in the 1920s and 1930s. Gillian Tett recounts his story in the Financial Times. In the first decades of the 20th century, [...]
Share/BookmarkNeil Howe, who previously co-wrote several groundbreaking books on demographic trends with William Strauss (Generations, The Fourth Turning, Millennials Rising), published a new book in 2008 with Richard Jackson: The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century. We consider Howe’s prior work with Strauss to be required reading for anyone [...]
Share/BookmarkBook Review of Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World Fareed Zakaria, Editor of Newsweek International and host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, has emerged in recent years as one of America’s best minds in current events and world politics. His recent book, The Post-American World, touches on several issues near and dear to our research. The gloomy [...]
Share/BookmarkThat China’s One Child Policy will eventually wreak havoc on China’s economy will come as no surprise to my readers. I have written for years that China will find it impossible to sustain a viable domestic consumer economy when the younger generation is, due to the simple math of one child per every two parents, [...]
Share/BookmarkAs a follow-up to my prior post on how demographics are affecting the calculus of international relations in the Middle East—and between Turkey and Israel in particular—I’d like to start with some comments from Mark Steyn. Steyn is a bit of a controversial shock jock—the Howard Stern of conservative commentary, if you will—so I hesitate [...]
Share/BookmarkYears ago, when I was earning my master’s degree at the London School of Economics, I had a memorable conversation with a classmate of mine from Istanbul named Deniz. Over a couple beers at the Three Tuns, Deniz explained Turkey’s two most pressing problems—the rise of political Islam and the Kurdish separatist movement—and he tied [...]
Is the founder and editor of The Sizemore Investment Letter, a monthly newsletter dedicated to finding superior investments backed by powerful macro trends. 
