Quote of the Day (John Webster, on the Treacherous Nature of Prosperity)

“Prosperity doth bewitch men, seeming clear;

  But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near.”—English Jacobean playwright John Webster (c. 1578 – c. 1632), The White Devil (1612)
 
Only a couple of years after William Shakespeare’s younger colleague in the London theater community, John Webster, passed away, Europe witnessed what is believed to be the world’s first speculative “bubble”: the Dutch Tulip Mania, in which investors bought flowers not for their beauty, but for the thought that their prices would continue their upward climb.
 
If only Webster, with his concern for intrigue, corruption, and revenge, could have lived to see that! But he might have had even more material for his macabre tragedies if only he could see how corporate CEOs are now gauging the possibilities associated with high tech, including robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and cryptocurrency.
 
As the American journalist and podcaster Derek Thompson noted in early October, it’s estimated that tech companies will spend about $400 billion in 2025 on infrastructure to train and operate AI models. Investor and author Paul Kedrosky told Thompson that he expected that AI would represent “a diversion of capital away from manufacturing in the United States” similar to the impact of the telecom industry on manufacturing in the 1990s.

Yesterday, Alex Carchidi of The Motley Fool, observing that recent troubles faced by Bitcoin don’t yet qualify as a “crash,” still pointed to disquieting trends that have fueled bearish forecasts, including the Trump administration’s trade policies, naggingly high inflation, the government shutdown, and the uncertainty resulting from the government’s late release of critical economic data.

Even if all the productivity gains predicted in the wake of AI come to pass, who will buy the resulting goods and services if people are out of work? An August blog post from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis suggests that “we may be witnessing the early stages of AI-driven job displacement. Unlike previous technological revolutions that primarily affected manufacturing or routine clerical work, generative AI can target cognitive tasks performed by knowledge workers—traditionally among the most secure employment categories.”

In Donald Trump, tech billionaires have a President ready to do whatever he can to loosen oversight that they believe unduly restrains them. They may come to regret deeply their unruly greed.

Quote of the Day (Christopher Buckley, Defining a Wall Street Term Much in Vogue Recently)

“Downside. Term preferred by brokers to describe financial calamity. Considered less alarming to client’s ear than ‘loss,’ ‘crater,’ ‘nosedive,’ ‘tank,’ ‘flameout,’ ‘bankruptcy,’ ‘Chapter 11,’ or ‘destitution.’ Often used in conjunction with ‘potential,’ ‘risk’ and ‘exposure,’ all belonging to the client. Compare: Downturn—What a stock will experience as soon as you have bought it. Down—Direction of a human being after leaping out the window of an office building following a call from a broker.” —American humorist and novelist Christopher Buckley, “Shouts and Murmurs: A No-Bull Guide to Investment Terms,” The New Yorker, July 9, 2001

Will America Survive the Great Trumpression?

I started to think about this post back in late winter, when Americans began to wrestle with the implications of COVID-19. I held back on finishing it, looking for other items to write about that were geared toward specific dates and/or less likely to send my blood pressure climbing.

Unfortunately, the main outlines of this piece remain as valid now as they were then. The only differences are that the list of daily outrages perpetrated by Donald Trump has grown far lengthier and that the American people will be coping with the resulting destruction for at least some time no matter who they elect President this week.

Thousands of articles have been published over these last several months, attempting to assess the unprecedented nature of the current American crisis. To call this a “recession” understates its complexity and, consequently, its peril to every American citizen.

A New Term for Our National Emergency

We need a new word coinage that will encompass this in all its dimensions, and assign responsibility for its creation and perpetuation. That phrase is The Great Trumpression:

*In its economic severity, the term lies between a recession and depression. Earlier this year, the U.S. unemployment rate had climbed to 14.7%, a level not seen since the Great Depression. Even its current rate of 7.9% is well above pre-pandemic levels. Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter remain the preeminent symbols of Presidential haplessness in the face of high joblessness, but Trump enjoys a dubious “distinction” possessed by neither of these two unfortunates: he has thrust 12.6 million unemployed Americans into a disease-ravaged environment, where it is more difficult to interview with or gain the attention of potential employers, and where his administration has been itching for the Supreme Court to rule against the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA) that so many depend on.

*The term also involves suppression of dissenters and even bearers of bad news. Put aside voter suppression (an effort that Trump has been pursuing energetically, as noted by Eric Levitz of New York Magazine). Forget about tolerating Democrats, the press or late-night comics: Trump can’t even abide opposition or even mild internal criticism from fellow Republicans. Last fall, even with high approval ratings for Trump among registered Republicans, state GOP officials canceled primaries in which Mark Sanford, Joe Walsh and William Weld were set to run. They did not dare the remotest possibility that voters could register adverse opinions, or that the President who could send them federal funds might retaliate for not doing their wishes. They surely feared an early-morning Twitter assault. This President hinted in a debate four years ago that he could attack Sen. Rand Paul for his looks, tweeted that Ted Cruz’s dad may have had something to do with JFK’s assassination, fired Attorney-General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Robert Mueller investigation, then ridiculed him enough to turn a majority of GOP voters against him in a race to re-join the Senate. This is also a President who, as soon as the impeachment inquiry was over, fired accuser Col. Alexander Vindman and his brother Yevgeny from their jobs with the National Security Council. (Even Bill Clinton waited till the closing days of his Presidency to sack Linda Tripp for her role in instigating the Lewinsky investigation.) To his everlasting shame, Trump has not only gleefully hinted that he will sack Anthony Fauci after Election Day but has whipped up animosity so extreme that this immunologist, honored by past administrations of both parties, now requires a security detail. But, at last, that suppression may have finally come home to roost. In keeping the lid on eight weeks of coronavirus reports from early to mid-summer, Trump’s aides ensured that COVID-19 would spike just as voters would be going to the polls, with the administration’s denials and sorry performance fresh in their minds.

*It implies repression of marginalized groups at home and abetting autocrats abroad. Trump’s use of federal military force to crack down on protests against police brutality—not just constitutionally dubious but hypocritical, given the conservative movement’s longtime extolling of states’ authority—diverts attention from his failure to mitigate the pandemic. This sham show of strength is being used against a group disproportionately affected by the health crisis and the economic downturn. Trump’s “playbook”—encouraging far-right nationalists and scoffing at COVID-19—has been followed by fellow aspiring international authoritarians, notably Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who, in styling himself the “Trump of the South,” initially scoffed at masks, then, when the pandemic worsened, imitated the U.S. President in advocating tirelessly for hydroxychloroquine.

*It facilitates the proper assigning of responsibility for the twin pandemic-economic collapse. Ten years ago, Republicans fell over themselves calling the ACA “Obamacare.” However one might feel about the nickname, it focused voters’ attention on who should be credited or blamed for sweeping legislation that would alter how Americans received medical care. A similar need for accountability would be met by assigning Trump’s name to the current crisis. Earlier this year, National Catholic Reporter contributor Michael Sean Winters suggested the term “Trump tents” in case the military erected MASH tents in parking lots to handle hospitals pushed to capacity by COVID-19. That event may yet come to pass, but “Trumpression” will certainly in the meantime convey what has been going on since March—and what will likely continue to happen in the new year, even with a change of Presidents.

Trump Branding in Reverse

Another delicious aspect of this neologism is that it inverts Trump’s hideous branding practices. For nearly four decades, users of Trump properties had to stomach seeing his name in big letters and bright lights, no matter the extent of his involvement, all to satisfy his colossal egotism (a practice only recently receding as the name loses its allure). Now, with “Trumpression,” that megalomania will be properly checked.

Throughout his real estate career, Trump sought every opportunity to seize credit but avoid blame. He was everywhere when The Art of the Deal trumpeted him (falsely) as a great businessman, but was saved from a total collapse of his businesses because of cash infusions from his father.

The pattern continued into his Presidency. When disasters occurred on the watch of other Presidents (e.g., John F. Kennedy with the Bay of Pigs, Jimmy Carter with the failed hostage mission), they appeared before the public and accepted responsibility.

In contrast, Trump said, “I don’t take responsibility at all” for virus testing delays in March when they could have made a material difference, just as, a few weeks later, he said he “can’t imagine why” there could have been a spike in hotline calls about disinfectants after he suggested injecting them to treat COVID-19.  

He complains at rallies about media that cry “COVID, COVID, COVID,” even as his campaign requests that attendees sign statements absolving the President of any liability in case they contract the disease at venues in which most attendees disdain mask wearing or social distancing.

The term “Trumpression” assures that this slide away from responsibility ends. For weeks early in the crisis, he conducted daily press briefings—colossal wastes of time surpassed in fatuity only by the interminable anti-capitalist harangues of Fidel Castro at the height of his power. These rambling, content-free, propaganda exercises falsely reassured his followers that the boastful empty suit now occupying the Oval Office was acting like a true President.

In fact, it was governors who were seizing the initiative. They took the risks of lost revenues, lawsuits from businessmen, Fox News harangues, and—in the case of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer—crazed libertarians’ kidnapping plots; he took the bows for the one tangible result of those stiff measures: preventing COVID-related deaths and caseloads from rising even higher. By refusing to lead a federal response to the coronavirus, he let them take the rap for the failures that were his own doing.

The term “Trumpression” puts an end to this charade. It will indicate concisely to future students of American history the identity of the principal National Insecurity President. For contemporary voters, the tag signals that clown time is over.

COVID’s ‘Wartime President’ Surrenders, Without a Shot Fired

Back in his spring five o’clock follies, the onetime Candidate Bone Spur said that he had in fact felt at times like a “wartime president.” How rich!

Too bad he doesn’t seem to have studied the Civil War, or else he might have learned how Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman used a version of their old chief Winfield Scott’s “Anaconda Plan” at the start of the war—till they came along, applied inadequately by prior Union commanders—to coordinate efforts simultaneously across several regions to bring down the Confederacy.

Instead, the struggle to contain COVID was hampered by Trump’s haphazard, half-hearted strategy of letting states fend for themselves, even to the point where they were competing for scarce medical supplies. Later, he even threatened withdrawal of aid from states like Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan whose governors criticized the federal approach.

Trump projects onto opponents the faults of himself or his opportunistic toadies—in this case, the evisceration of attempts to prepare a strategy to fight future pandemics. He laid the groundwork for the fumbled federal response by cutting the number of staffers who could identify health problems in China and by reducing funding for the Centers for Disease Control.

Subsequently, by refusing to take COVID-19 seriously and flashing contradictory signals about the need for wearing masks, he not only undercut pandemic preparation procedures by the Democratic predecessor he has loathed for possessing the intelligence and class that he lacked, but even earlier foundational efforts by the Republican George W. Bush. (“If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare,” Dubya said—as far back as 2005.)

Trump couldn’t be bothered to learn any more than the rudimentary facts about COVID-19, so he put others in charge of dealing with it. But who was it? Not the scientists or doctors who studied the disease’s transmission and who should have been involved. No, it was Mike Pence and Jared Kushner. Even then, he couldn’t decide which one would have ultimate authority.

The upshot? Two adjectives this WWE aficionado loves to apply to others but never himself: “Pathetic” and “weak.” The nation once admired by the rest of the world for its scientific advances muffed the opportunity to lead the international campaign against the greatest medical threat of our time. “Promises kept”? Not by the President who continually said the disease would go away by summer, then that America was “rounding the corner” in dealing with it.

This is what the GOP let themselves in for when they acquitted Trump on all impeachment charges: a resentful, self-pitying Fox watcher and Twitter practitioner who went AWOL against COVID-19. If historian Barbara Tuchman were alive today, she would surely want to add this as a chapter to The March of Folly.

The Lasting Residue of the COVID Nightmare

In the beginning, Trump insisted that the coronavirus would eventually “wash away.” Not only did that never happen, but the casualties have only mounted. Each repetition or variation of that phrase makes him sound more like Herbert Hoover claiming in the Great Depression that “Prosperity is just around the corner.”

Hoover, at least, only thought that restarting production was simply a matter of injecting confidence into the American economy. Trump, we now know from tape recordings released by Bob Woodward, knew as far back as February that "this is deadly stuff."

His claims to the contrary since then have been an attempt to dance around the judgment of voters, just as he managed, from the 1980s to 2000s, to evade bankers’ attempt to claw back the millions he owed them. (Witness his repeated assertions over the last few weeks that a vaccine would be available by Election Day—a date that even spokesmen now shamefacedly agree was “kind of an arbitrary deadline.”)

Trump has been sure that COVID will be gone, “like a dream.” I think the more exact noun is “nightmare,” with scenes not easily forgotten when we awake to the brighter tomorrow he claims desperately will come any day now. (Even his own brush with the disease has left him unchastened about spreading misinformation.)

The danger is that, before then, it will leave a lasting residue on American civic, commercial and even private life. Even before a single state government had ordered a lockdown, many Americans were already withdrawing from going to offices, attending trade shows, using public transportation, eating in enclosed restaurants, or shopping at malls for fear of contradicting a disease that even then was growing exponentially.

Look around now and the danger has spread. It’s more than just the downtowns of blue cities and suburbs that feature gaping holes. Now, states that initially thought their lower population density and Republican voting base would somehow magically save them are experiencing infection spikes and strained health-care capacity. And it is all because Trump feared how the damage to the economy would affect his reelection hopes.

Ironic, isn’t it, that America’s greatest germaphobe forfeited the chance to rally his countrymen against COVID-19—and now risks not only defeat at the polls but a mortal threat to the multinational business portfolio he never divested himself of?

Uniquely in the annals of Presidential leadership, Trump has demonstrated how impaired moral character and intellectual laziness can combine to produce monumental managerial disaster.

I have no doubt that history will judge this Great Trumpression harshly. That will be so whether a victorious Trump immediately fires dissenters like Fauci or a losing Trump orders the destruction of papers and electronic files that would document his mismanagement and crimes.

What I fear is that somehow, the President will win re-election, and go on to lead America to an even worse catastrophe over the next four years—because each time in his life that Trump has been enabled, he goes on to incur a greater risk and experience a graver crisis of his own creation.

It's not like even some Republicans didn’t foresee what he might do—or undo. Jeb Bush called him appropriately “the chaos candidate” during the 2016 primaries. Then, in July 2019—not only before COVID-19, but even the impeachment battle—conservative columnist George F. Will warned, in an interview on MSNBC, of the lasting damage wrought by Trump to the functioning of government, the civility of political discourse, and the solidity of truth:

“You can't unring the bells. You can't unsay what he is saying. And it's amazing to me…how fast something could go from unthinkable to thinkable to action. And it doesn't seem to me it's going to be easy to just snap back as though this didn't happen. It happened, and he got away with it, and he became president, and there will be emulators.”

The most ardent of Trump’s followers have wanted to “own the liberals,” but, by handing him a second term, they will share ownership in the wreck of the world’s greatest economy and the deterioration of the proud leader of democracy on earth.

What Is Lost When a Store Closes

I read with sadness Sarah Seltzer’s recent New York Times article on the demise of Lord and Taylor. More than a few people will identify with her longing for her past shopping with family members.

But far more than nostalgic memories will be involved when Lord and Taylor closes, and the same sense of loss will surely be felt as other retailers, who have somehow managed to hold on till now, finally go under.

In years past, few people in the food chain of media consumers would have questioned how retail analysts’ predictions of store closures or bankruptcies were derived, let alone how closely they accorded with reality by year’s end. They were preconditioned to accept Wall Street’s fascination with bright and shiny novelty and with “disrupters” rather than with traditional industries enjoying healthy profits (a distinction that Amazon, for instance, couldn’t claim until four years after going public).

But 2020 is different. Consumers were uneasy about venturing into stores as COVID-19 hit, and in areas that remain hot spots they will remain wary, even in states where restrictions are increasingly eased.

Additionally, as one shoe store employee explained to me recently, most customers don’t realize how badly supply-chain disruptions are hurting retail revenues. The range of these impacts is “long and varied,” according to a June report by Accenture, including demand drop-off in fashion apparel; lower operational productivity because of health and hygiene requirements and government-mandated shutdowns; and stranded, aging inventory.

The pain of consumers and retailers, then, was intense and widespread even in early spring. This time, analysts and the press will not be exaggerating: the casualty rolls of retailers will be lengthy.

Since Lord & Taylor filed for bankruptcy, Stein Mart and Century 21 have followed suit. Don’t expect the casualties to stop there. Whole chains will either go under or, as in the case of Brooks Brothers (acquired by Authentic Brands Group and Simon Property Group) go on life support. Luckier chains will examine their portfolios, identify underperforming units, and prune them now before they are weighed down later.

But naysayers had better be careful as they hover over bleeding retail institutions. Quite apart from the tax revenues and employment they generate for communities, physical stores are crucial to the economy for multiple reasons. Their shrinking in the post-COVID landscape is a cause for deep concern and even anxiety.

The impact on newspapers 

Newspapers have barely restrained themselves in reporting on these difficulties being experienced by physical locations. Yet, though reporters have written ad nauseum about the closure of one major metropolitan newspapers after another, precious few seem to make the connection that their papers—and, hence, their own jobs—are hardly helped—indeed, they are further endangered—by retail closures.

When stores close, papers lose prime sources of advertising revenues. Advertising revenues for newspapers fell 62% from 2008 to 2018, according to a report by Pew Research. Even newspapers able to generate profits, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, have been doing so largely through gains in subscription revenues rather than ad revenues.

Online advertising hasn’t helped them make up the difference. An April 2019 article by www.eMarketing.com estimated that digital ad spending for newspapers would only grow 2.3% for that year.

In other words, when it comes to longtime institutions, newspapers should not ask for whom the bell tolls—it tolls for thee. 

The “treasure hunt” aspect of shopping

At their best, stores offer the delight of the unexpected, the possibility of finding an unusual item when least expected. The consumer’s delight in a bargain is not merely tangible, but electric.

This “treasure” hunt element, however, is much more difficult to replicate online. Consumers seldom have the patience for getting beyond a few clicks to find a special item. By necessity, retail websites are plain, limiting the chance that a one-of-kind piece of merchandise will turn up. It is extremely difficult to find one product when one must browse through multiple ones online. Patience wears thin.

Shopping as a social experience

With all the fears created by COVID-19, it is remarkable that so many people still want to go to stores. Shoppers might want to avoid crowds and traffic, but that does not mean they wish to sit in their homes making all their purchases. Never going to a store, missing the chance to shop with family or to bump into friends, is isolating and stressful in its own way, further weakening communal ties.

The hub of an omni-channel world

Misunderstanding about the impact of digital channels predated the current crisis, however. In their desire to simplify a retail environment affected by multiple factors (the withering of the American middle class also played a part, for instance), major news media such as The Wall Street Journal largely soft-pedaled a truly transformative development in store operations: the convergence of physical and detail operations into an omni-channel environment in which stores would create a unified, integrated approach in the service of a seamless experience for customers.

Before COVID-19 hit, retailers were increasingly discovering that physical locations exerted a “halo effect,” or the direct impact of physical stores on digital engagement and consumer awareness of a brand. Additional omnichannel spending will occur within days of making a purchase in a physical store or online, according to two studies by the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).

As part of omni-channel retail, the presence of a physical location also aids in returning merchandise. Even amid COVID-19, consumers continue to crave that capacity, with 58% of U.S. consumers preferring to return merchandise in store, according to a survey by Inmar Intelligence, a data and tech-enabled services company. Increased online sales has brought with it gains in items sent back to retailers, which can cut into a company’s profits.

Having a store allows retailers another means of re-circulating items closer to consumers. At the same time, by stocking other merchandise geared towards impulse buying close to the front of the store, retailers can capitalize on ancillary purchases, helping to offset return costs, which now amount to at least 10% of total retail sales, according to Wharton marketing professor Thomas S. Robertson.

When the dust settles, retailers will need to resume the task of re-educating retail analysts and reporters on the significance of all of this. In the meantime, however, many may be forced to close many of the very locations that in the long run could improve company profitability. 

(By the same token, keep in mind that the crisis that doomed so many stores was a once-in-a-century medical event, foreseen by none of the industry’s skeptics. Remember the fall of 2001, when anonymous letters with anthrax spores began arriving at large media organizations and Congressional organizations? Imagine that event, except with more randomly selected targets with a terrorist able to pursue it over a longer period, and you might begin to imagine the widespread panic that could ensue with packages delivered to homes. It would resemble how consumers began to freeze in place before many states even issued lockdown orders.)

In-depth knowledge of store employees

Online operational units may not be aware of all the ramifications of how their products are delivered. This was illustrated vividly for me when I recently ordered a large TV set. A problem with a link sent to complete my phone order led me to a physical store to finish the process instead.

There, as the order was being inputted again, I noticed that the delivery time for the TV would take longer than when I had tried to order it from my home. The store clerk told me that the company’s online rep may not have been aware that the time he was promising could have occurred only because the product would be delivered by a third-party firm whose performance had led to complaints that packages had shown up late or not even been delivered at all.

Physical stores are de facto town hubs, where families not only shop but friends may encounter each other. These stores have stakes in the vitality of their communities because their success depends on it, in a way that more digitally oriented companies do not have.

Hoping for the best in the new retail world

In crises, good sometimes emerges from all the difficulties, and very likely this will happen again whenever shoppers no longer sense a threat to their health and they return to stores.

By that time, the sanitation practices forced by the crisis will have become standardized in physical locations. Heating, ventilation and air conditioning will be changed, upgrading indoor air quality. Employees at corporate offices who don’t have to work onsite will be permitted and maybe even encouraged to stay home.

Click-and-collect—i.e., buying online but picking up in store—had already been booming before COVID-19. It is likely to become even more important now.

And management may look less to overambitious expansion plans and more towards improving sales and reducing costs as growth strategies.

But before that day comes, the cost will be steep, and Americans will rue the loss of physical stores for utilitarian rather than sentimental reasons.

Quote of the Day (Sarah Gordon, on the ‘Overweening Power’ Behind the Last Recession)

“The failures which led to the [2008 financial] crisis were more of behaviour and character than of financial instruments or processes. The tales of casual greed and of ordinary people misled and deceived by irresponsible bankers are familiar. But there was one element to the crisis that I have seen repeated in many different forms: overweening power. In the business world this breeds all sorts of crises, from the personal to the systemic.”— Impact Investing Institute Chief Executive—and former business journalist—Sarah Gordon, “Making Sense of the City,” Financial Times, March 9-10, 2019

As it was a dozen years ago, as outlined by Ms. Gordon, so it is now—except that the “overweening power” was exercised not by a group of “irresponsible bankers” but by one individual, placed far higher.

In August 2019, Alex Shephard of The New Republic accurately predicted what might happen if a recession arrived during the last year of the President’s first term (though he missed the particular circumstance—COVID-19): “Not a disciplined, unified response to a crisis from this White House; instead, an unhinged president issuing feeble edicts from his bed, many of which could cause a sputtering economy to spiral.”

Quote of the Day (Yves Smith, on How the 2008 Crash Led to Trump)

“Why do you think we have Trump? I mean, even though he did a big bait-and-switch, as we all know, there were a lot of people that lost their homes, their community wasn’t what it used to be, particularly if they lived in the Rust Belt. And then you have these people on the coast saying, ‘Oh, they should go get training. It’s disgusting.’ I mean, let them eat cake is let them get training. What you hear from these coastal elites: People over 40, even over 35, are basically unhirable. Are you gonna train them? They’re gonna waste their time thinking they can get a new job? I mean, that’s just lunacy.”—Financial blogger Yves Smith, explaining the impact of the 2008 Crash on American politics, interviewed by Noah Kulwin, “Yves Smith on Why We Didn’t See the 2008 Crash Coming,” New York Magazine, Aug. 6, 2018

Lunacy--or the blindness of Wall Street's Democratic allies.

Quote of the Day (Michael Sivy, on a Key Campaign Issue of 2012—And This Year)

“It is probably always true that the most established and most competitive prosper first when the economy rebounds, while the most vulnerable benefit only with a lag. But the current economy is not generating new jobs fast enough to keep up with population growth and also to start broadening the recovery to the majority of the population. Until, say, two-thirds of the population feels the economic expansion, it is not just a disappointingly slow recovery — it is really no recovery at all.”— Michael Sivy, “Every American Is Experiencing a Different Economy,” Time.com, July 23, 2012

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.