All empires have depended on local legitimacy and local collaboration; they are not based primarily on coercion. An imperial rule that relies wholly on coercion can't endure. It's too expensive.

When bond prices fall, interest rates soar, with painful consequences for all borrowers.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

Collaboration is risky. If it fails, if the occupation is wound up prematurely and the bad guys come back to power, you might find yourself in some serious trouble.

The Armenian genocide showed what could happen when empires were beaten into nations.

I refuse to accept that Western civilization is like some hopeless old version of Microsoft DOS, doomed to freeze, then crash. I still cling to the hope that the United States is the Mac to Europe's PC, and that if one part of the West can successfully update and reboot itself, it's America.

If the financial system has a defect, it is that it reflects and magnifies what we human beings are like. Money amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong. Booms and busts are products, at root, of our emotional volatility.