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Mar 15, 2023Liked by Timothy Burke

The hegemony of grift.

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If you’re not already familiar with it, please look at Joeseph Addison’s euphoric, unhinged allegory of speculation in the English bond market, published nine years before the South Sea Bubble and fifty-five before _The Wealth of Nations_ (_The Spectator_Issue 3: 3rd March 1711). http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/spectator/text/march1711/no3.html . Addison’s delight that investors’ confidence in the solvency of BoE bonds spins debt into real gold is matched only by his anxiety that the state’s malicious s adversaries will undermine confidence in credit to everyone’s ruin.

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Oh my yes.

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