Brilliant Long Term Large Scale Macro-Econ thinking on display

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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I follow two brilliant historians very very closely, reading all they write and listening to their main on-line interviews: Sarah Paine and Stephen Kotkin.

Stephen Kotkin’s three volume (#3 is just going into publication) biography of Stalin is one of the greatest works of research combined with tight thinking I have ever encountered, and in the process of examining Stalin’s life he explains much of the structure of the world we live in and the nature of the humans we share it with.

This post is to point METARites to Sarah Paine, long a reclusive scholar at the U.S. Naval War College whose brilliant analyses and lectures have shoved her more and more into the public. In this interview she shines light on why/how little Japan jumped from feudal dwarf state hiding near mighty China to becoming a great modern world power in zip historic time. Just a warning, the interviewer isn’t an idiot, but is a bit of a twerpp…..

My naval officer Uncle Bud guest lectured at the Naval War College, and knowing my obsessions told me to follow her when she was still pretty hidden. What a ride it has been for me!

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Yes, Sarah Paine is pretty great.

About Stalin…have you read “Gulag Archipelago” by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn?

Stalin used to say, “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.”

Wendy

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Required reading. A great book.

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Yes! And in fact at this very moment I am in Mexico drinking a beer with a brilliant Russian artist of my age whose father was slowly murdered as described by A.S.

She has his complete works, but in Russian. She is a fascinating person, and as argumentative as a Russian ought to be.

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