Month: December 2025

The Bear’s Lair: What would bring the 1820s back again?

In discussing modern American, British or global politics, I often find myself on a different planet from other commentators, because my preferred political system is not that of any modern polity, but that of Britain under Lord Liverpool’s government from 1812 to 1827. Most of the policies were better in that government’s earlier years, but […]

The Bear’s Lair: Are bankers coming to their senses?

JP Morgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon recently expressed a preference for Kevin Warsh over Kevin Hassett as the next Fed Chairman, on the grounds that Warsh is less likely to be influenced by President Trump’s calls for rate cuts. To one who has followed bankers for several decades (and been one in the distant past) […]

The Bear’s Lair: Thought Police Kill the Economy

Britain, the EU and Canada have instituted regimes of “thought police” where police departments randomly arrest those “guilty” of politically incorrect social media postings. They have also in recent years suffered economic growth rates far below their historic norms, which have produced a yawning gap between their living standards and those of the by no […]

The Bear’s Lair: We Had the Singularity in 1712

For decades now, techno-optimists have been prattling about a “Singularity” that will immeasurably increase the growth rate in human productivity and thereby living standards. This Singularity may either come through Artificial Intelligence, as it outpaces the human brain and begins to make its own technological advances, or through other technologies that combine to produce a […]

The Bear’s Lair: Blame America’s Decline on the Bushes

Ronald Reagan was a pretty good President but like all of us not perfect. Probably his greatest blunder, like Margaret Thatcher’s and without her excuse of facing an unexpected end to her rule, lay in not securing a successor who would follow his principles. The Presidency of George H.W. Bush (Bush 41), whose break with […]