Detroit – The Shadow of Decline

Detroit – once America’s shining example of a city built on the principles of a prosperous middle class, considered the Paris of the Midwest and submitted as America’s choice in 1963 for the upcoming summer olympics – today is America’s capital for unemployment, dropouts, and foreclosures – ranked #1 Most Miserable City by Forbes in…

American Gun Culture

If you’re like most Americans, you’ve grown up on a combination of Hollywood movies and public education, which, to varying degrees of surreality, depict guns as either cartoonish props used by heroes and villains, or weapons of war abstracted away by the faceless masses of soldiers of allied and enemy nations. The truth – whether…

Petrodollar – American Political Economics

The United States dollar is undisputed as the world’s most dominant reserve currency. What is disputed, however, is to what degree this is good for the world, let alone the United States. Also disputed is how sustainable this arrangement is, given perennial trade and US government budget deficits that call into question the strength of…

The New Deal – Reflections on Italy, Germany, and the United States

Every generation has a choice – that of adopting the previous generation’s ways and customs, or to cast some or all of these away in forging a new path. Most choose the former, inheriting the structural inertia of generations past, while occasionally, a people decide the time is right to try something new. In the…