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For decades, the surest trade in the labor market was long college degrees and short manual work. That trade is reversing. And like most crowded trades, the people caught on the wrong side are discovering that yesterday’s prestige offers no protection.

The media saw bad meals aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. The sea saw something else entirely: too many missions, too few ships, and 35 years of neglected American naval power.

Jeff Bezos built Amazon by selling books. Thirty-two years later, his company is buying old ones by the thousand, chopping off their spines, scanning their pages, and throwing what remains in the trash.

I went to Avignon expecting medieval architecture. Instead, I found one of the clearest explanations of fiscal dominance ever built.

When Madrid issued an order that violated Basque law, the answer was magnificently polite: We obey, but we do not comply. John Adams saw the genius immediately.

The United States controls the world’s financial plumbing. Iran sits beside the world’s most important oil chokepoint. Now each side is trying to weaponize what it controls.

Oil is a thing. Copper is a thing. Gold is a thing. A 20-year Treasury is a promise. In August, the market made its preference painfully obvious.