Quote of the Day (Niall Ferguson, on How the West Blew the Peace Dividend)

“The west had its peace dividend after 1991. We blew it in a two-decade party of consumption, leverage and speculation. First came the financial hangover; now comes the geopolitical reckoning. Dealing with it will mean relearning the arts of grand strategy and war.” —Historian Niall Ferguson, “The West Has Blown Its Peace Dividend,” The Financial Times, Sept. 26-27, 2015

Ferguson wrote this article before the cascade of bad news—terrorist attacks, right-wing reaction—that has afflicted the West since. Even so, his last sentence is so ominous in its way that I hope and pray it won’t come true.

Quote of the Day (Niall Ferguson, on Improving High-School History)

“Here are three positive suggestions to make high-school history more engaging and thereby more memorable. First, replace those phone-book-size tomes with Web-enabled content. Second, make the new stuff more interactive. (There's solid evidence that well-designed games and simulations hugely improve learning.) And third, ask more exciting questions.”—Niall Ferguson, “How to Get Smart Again,” Newsweek, March 20, 2011

Quotes of the Day (Ferguson and Allen, on Crises Past, Present and Eternal)

“The Great Repression is upon us. On one side can be seen the chain reaction of deleveraging as banks, other companies and households all battle to stabilise balance sheets that became much too highly geared in the days of easy money; as the resulting credit contraction and forced asset sales create a vicious downward spiral; as the slowdown spreads to Main Street and from Main Street to the world. On the other side are the Fed and the Treasury, desperately manning the monetary and fiscal pumps while trying to decide who is too big to fail and who is not.”—Niall Ferguson, “A Long Shadow,” Financial Times, September 22, 2008

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”—Woody Allen, “My Speech to the Graduates,” Side Effects (1980)