Postcards: The "O" Word...

A term that has escaped U.S. financial markets and politics has reared its ugly head, and it's clear that Americans are waking up to reality. Plus, trouble at ADM, a Pirate Looks at Shorting and more.

Dear Fellow Expat:

In the last week, I’ve been seeing a word that not many people in America use very often. It’s typically been reserved for Russia’s economy - but it’s now evident in the U.S. political class and the “dirigisme” that captured our economy.

That term is Oligarchy.

Since Sunday, I’ve read the term from left-leaning publications like Mother Jones to lengthy libertarian arguments at the Unherd or Stream. And I think author David Samuels has knocked it out of the park with his description of today’s system.

The new American system has little in common with the process of balancing regional interests through the two-party system, as described by 20th-century American political scientists. Today, power flows from the top down, from a set of fantastically wealthy billionaires, to a national administrative class and to a new layer of non-profit administrators, foundation executives, and NGOs, which in turn employ a floating class of hundreds of thousands of grant-makers, organi…