History Rhymes

Sounds familiar

Nearly a century later, countries have to reconcile between neutrality to benefit from the chaos around them or take a stance to combat growing international radicalism. Historically, which choice do you think has brought greater peace and prosperity?

According to Penguin Random House: "Rees traces the rise and eventual fall of the Nazis through the lens of ‘twelve warnings’ – from talk about ‘them’ and ‘us’ to the escalation of racism – whilst also highlighting signs to look out for in present day leaders."

"Washington has become the court of Nero: An incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers, and a buffoon on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service." - French senator, Claude Malhuret (buffoon = royal court jester, i.e. the clown employed to entertain the mad emperor)

In the most recent @morganhousel podcast, he mentioned: “Part of the reason that the German military was so powerful in the early years of World War II is it had to forfeit every gun and tank and ship and plane to the Allies after World War I which meant that when it rearmed in the 1930s, it rearmed with brand new state of the art supplies while other armies were using outdated equipment. Having everything taken away from them in 1917 was a counterintuitive competitive advantage.” While listening to it, part of me wondered whether the US is making similar “mistake” with their chip ban to China. As China has increasingly no option but to build the advanced chips nanometer by nanometer, the chip ban may eventually prove to be one of those “counterintuitive competitive advantage”. Ben Thompson has been indicating similar long-term concerns on the chip ban as well. US’s position in semis may seem more assured today, but such assurance is far more hinged on the continued access to TSMC, ASML et al. Any future volatility to such access can make the US look much more fragile than China. Unfortunately, banning advanced chips to China seems one of those rare bipartisan agreement and I sense the long-term risks for the US are somewhat less appreciated by most stakeholders.