By: Steven McIlraith

Bill, always good reads from you, and this talk does much to help explain many things we face.

You asked for comments, so couple things:

Much emphasis is on what went wrong with the response to the GFC, which is awesome. You touch on briefly the causes in your “Complexity and Returns” section, but I’m thinking more could be said about that. Talking about the damage to the body from the “cure” is good, but we should also clearly recognize the disease and it’s causes. You hint at some of the same problems/causes occurring now, maybe expand with an article specifically about that? Would be lovely.

Can we make stock buy-backs illegal again?

Zonk theory–maybe it’s a sound idea, but it appears a government mumbo-jumbo smoke-and-mirrors pay no attention to the man behind the curtain move that may backfire to more inflation, but what do I know?

One more thing, China. We ignore them to our peril, and right now it seems they are attempting to leverage the chaos to their advantage. You blame populism for a blunt approach, but they are clearly continuing to dominate and exploit wherever they can (Africa for a poignant example). You often mention China as an opportunity, but at what cost? And what are the ideas that could thread the needle? I agree the “populist” reaction is facile, and there is a great distance between that and the kow-tow, so a discussion of another way would be helpful.

Thanks for your consideration!