Author Archives: Felix

Capitalism’s discontents

More voters than ever oppose capitalism. 

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Axios Edge: BlackRock won’t save the Blue Marble

The rise of indexing means that fund management giants like BlackRock and Vanguard are increasingly in a position to prevent the death and displacement of millions of people. 

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Axios Edge: What war is good for

Defense spending has accounted for more than 3% of U.S. economic activity in every year since World War II. Think of it as a consistent and predictable fiscal stimulus.

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Axios Edge: Why firing the CEO doesn’t change anything

When a CEO is forced out of a company, a lot of people hope and expect big changes. Much like Inigo Montoya in “The Princess Bride,” those people are going to have to get used to disappointment.

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Axios Edge: The last of the heroic technocrats

There are, and will be, many other successful and powerful technocrats, many of them just as capable as these two paragons of austerity. But none of them are likely to receive the kind of popular acclaim that Volcker and Rohatyn … Continue reading

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Axios Edge: The end of multilateralism

For some 350 years — from the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which marked the beginning of the modern system of nation-states — no international court existed. Then, the WTO was created.

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Axios Edge: The plight of the CEO

Increasingly, today’s CEO is merely an executive hired by the person who is really in control.

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Axios Edge: The ballad of Taylor and Kylie

This was the week that Kylie Jenner ratified her billionaire status beyond any doubt, even as fellow 20-something Taylor Swift found herself continuing to battle The Man over rights to her own work.

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Axios Edge: Tech is eating restaurants’ lunch

“The real purpose of digital capitalism is to extract value from the economy and deliver it to those at the top.”

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Axios Edge: Meltdown!

The world is angry.

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Axios Edge: Good monopolies — Bad conferences — Broken flywheels

1 big thing: The case for exchange monopolies

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Scoop: The grandees headed to Saudi Arabia’s “Davos in the Desert”

Never mind the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi — there’s money to be made. That’s the clear message sent by the list of grandees scheduled to attend the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia later this month.

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Axios Edge: Parochialism — Philanthropy — Banksy

For all that CEOs increasingly talk of their “moral duty to speak up,” those moral duties seem to be left on the tarmac whenever they hop on their corporate jet.

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Axios Edge: Rules — Tweets — Congestion

Capitalism works best when everybody is playing by the same rules. Right now we seem to be moving away from that ideal.

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Axios Edge: Unreliable markets — Unreliable do-gooders — Reliable sociopaths

Don’t trust the markets.

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Axios Edge: Epstein’s billionaire enablers

“‘Jeffrey has friends who owe him favors, and they’ll be making the donations to MIT.’ ‘Favor’ was a word that was used.”

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Jeffrey Epstein’s circles of complicity

Dozens of rich and influential men surrounded Jeffrey Epstein. They knew that what they were doing was wrong. That’s why they were so secretive about it.

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Axios Edge: Disintegration — Deductions — Divergence

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

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Collectors are now collecting museums, not the other way around

Seats on boards offered by major museums are increasingly being used to serve the narrow agendas of the ultra-rich

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Nota bene: Mass shootings

I am going to say something very controversial but terrorism is bad.

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Axios Edge: Decelerating trade, accelerating money

Everybody’s scared.

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Axios Edge: Powell’s constraints — Monopolies — Piketty revisited — Citi

Jay Powell did his best impression this week of a Fed chair making his own data-driven decisions about where he should set short-term interest rates. The reality, however, is that the markets and the president are giving him very little … Continue reading

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Axios Edge: Symmetry — Safariland — Sports

1 big thing: The ECB likes inflation now

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Axios Edge: Media wars — Warren vs. Wall St. — High-tech mortgages

The media consumption wars are heating up.

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Axios Edge: Fake billionaires — Metal plastic — $34,000 wine

Fake billionaires, the decline of legacy brands, volatile homes, Deutsche’s woes, Facebook’s woes, metal plastic, the downside of summer break, and even some wine content. Enjoy!

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