Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and the Mysterious Hand

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In a recent post, I quoted Capital Matters regular Vladimir Lenin describing the way that the Bolsheviks’ surprisingly successful (under the circumstances) New Economic Policy, a desperate turn to a “mixed” economy to bail out the flailing communist experiment, had worked:

The state is in our hands; but has it operated the New Economic Policy in the way we wanted in this past year? No. But we refuse to admit that it did not operate in the way we wanted. How did it operate? The machine refused to obey the hand that guided it. It was like a car that was going not in the direction the driver desired, but in the direction someone else desired; as if it were being driven by some mysterious, lawless hand, God knows whose, perhaps of a profiteer, or of a private capitalist, or of both. Be that as it may, the car is not going quite in the direction the man at the wheel imagines, and often it goes in an altogether different direction.

The mysterious hand strikes again.

And so to semaglutide, a medication first approved to combat the effects of type 2 diabetes…

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The Dollar: Gold Beating Green

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The Israel-Iran war has triggered yet another rise in the price of gold. That is no surprise. Gold has been seen as a safe harbor by investors for a long, long time. More interesting is that the price of gold has been strengthening for a while now, something I discussed in a Capital Letter from April 2024. I attributed its strength to, among other factors, worries about inflation, worries about America’s fiscal position, and worries about a tense geopolitical situation. Since then, concern over the latter two has not exactly gone away, and tariff wars have only added to investor jitters. In April 2024, gold was trading at around $2,400, an all-time high. It is now priced at about $3,400, up about 6 percent on the month…

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Close Encounters with Clowns and Aliens

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Just beyond the reception area where thrill-seekers or merely the clown-curious can check in at the Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nev., a (mainly) former mining town of about 2,000 in the middle of nowhere, there is a room infested with clowns. They are not for sale, but they line the shelves, sit on the floor, and hang from the ceiling. Please do not touch. What madman would?

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The Black Death’s Economic ‘Dividend’

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The Black Death, the bubonic plague that tore into England in 1348, was — this should not need saying — a cataclysm. The English had little natural immunity to this terrible disease, which arrived in Europe with the Mongols, either making its debut or for the first time in thousands of years. About 80 percent of those infected died. By the end of this first great wave of infection (others were to follow), England, like many other European countries, had lost around half its population…

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Enemies of the Market Mindset

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If capitalism had been overthrown as quickly as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had at first expected, John Cassidy’s sprawling “Capitalism and Its Critics” would have been shorter and easier to write, if not to sell. But, resilient, protean, abused and occasionally bailed-out, capitalism is still with us, and so are its critics, the latest in a line so long that Mr. Cassidy, who was setting out to tell capitalism’s story (or much of it) through their eyes, was spoiled for choice. Capitalism always provides consumers, and readers, with plenty of what they are looking for.

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Obsessions

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 On November 25, 1970, the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima (and four members of his Shield Society, Tatenokai, a private militia manned largely by right-wing university students) seized the general in charge of the Ichigaya military base. After an attempt to free the general was repelled, Mishima was allowed to address the base’s soldiers. But his call, given—in keeping with coup etiquette—from a balcony, to overthrow the constitution and return to an older Japanese order was greeted with jeers, not cheers.

Mishima stepped back inside and committed seppuku, ritual suicide (or, as it was topped off with beheading by a kaishakunin, assisted suicide), which was probably how he had expected the day to end. And that wasn’t so bad. His death wish was satisfied, and, despite the beheading needing some mulligans, he had staged a spectacle so dramatic and freighted with meaning that its memory would endure, he hoped, as an inspiration to future generations.

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The Tariffs of April

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When I see epic, self-inflicted disasters crowned by poor planning, slovenly, often outdated thinking, remarkable carelessness, and predictions of victory that are little more than slogans, the qualities of leadership that led to World War I — and the way that it was fought — have a way of coming to mind. They did so, for example, during the pandemic, and they do so when contemplating the pointless “race” to net zero.

And so, when thinking about the crisis dramatically deepened by “liberation” day, I recalled “The General,” a poem from 1917 by Siegfried Sassoon…

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Tariffs: 'Liberation' Day

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April 2 will be “liberation day for America” as President Donald Trump unveils his tariff hikes, he promised — one of the “most important days in modern American history,” according to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Trump will say what he’s going to say, but the basic picture he paints has not changed for decades, although the role of principal villain may do so (in the 1980s, it was Japan). Leavitt sets it out again: A lack of reciprocity has contributed to a “large and persistent annual trade deficit that’s gutted out industries and hollowed out key workforces.” This, the president says, will now change.

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Net Zero: Fantasy Island

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Britain’s Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (good luck with combining those) Ed Miliband has been working to accelerate the rate at which Britain runs the “race” to net zero since assuming office after the Labour party’s election victory in July 2024. Part of that acceleration will involve decarbonizing 95 percent of the U.K.’s electricity grid by 2030, an impossible objective. The people, equipment, and resources are not there. Nevertheless, the disconcertingly exuberant Miliband exudes the confidence of a Soviet central planner of the high Stalinist era, convinced that determination, coercion, and the arc of history will overcome all obstacles…

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