读Geopolitical Alpha（二）——We’re No

第一章的标题就是We’re Not in Kansas Anymore —— 什么意思？

这里是个《绿野仙踪》中的典故。多萝西被龙卷风吹入仙境后，她对宠物小狗说：“多多，我有一种感觉，我们已经不在堪萨斯了。” —— 旧世界已经结束，新世界开始了。

那么，旧世界是什么？

是戈尔巴乔夫宣言后的世界：

是美帝国霸权的世界：

The strategic victory of the US over the Soviet Union complemented the ideological victory of the free market. With the dissolutionof the Soviet Union, the US became the sole superpower capable ofenforcing norms of state behavior on a global scale.

与此同时，从资本主义内部来看，是1980年代，撒切尔-里根的供给侧自由化、放任主义，胜过密特朗的需求侧改革：

In the battle of ideas, the Thatcher/Reagan supply-side – laissez faire – won as decisive a victory over Mitterrand’s demand-side –dirigisme – as one could imagine. Voters and policymakers across thedeveloped world took note and adjusted behavior accordingly.

所以，苏联解体后（苏联解体的原因之一也是对自由放任派资本主义的迷信），这两种力量主导了世界：

By the mid-1980s, the twin tailwinds of laissez-faire economics and American geopolitical hegemony created the ultimate Goldilocks scenario for investors and C-suite executives alike.

范式转移如何发生的呢？

Hegemony sows the seeds for its own decline. America’s policing freedup other countries to strengthen their own economic independence. By ushering in stability and globalization, the US allowed countries to setaside their challenges to US hegemony and focus on economic development. But those material gains ultimately allowed these challengers toget to the point where they could challenge the US for hegemony. Thisis the story of the rise and fall of empires; stability breeds collapse.

第一句话非常有趣：霸权自身就播下了其衰弱的种子 —— 中国人的说法是，天下大势，分久必合合久必分，异曲同工之妙。因为在霸权之下：

- 其他国家无需关心外部环境变化，如果有定力，可以安心搞经济

- 而美国又是全世界的需求中心，只要抱住美国大腿就行了，直到

- 成长的足够大，威胁到霸权，也就是威胁到这一体系本身

所以在作者看来，多极世界是不可避免的：

Without a single hegemon to enforce rules of behavior, globalization reached its apex in the past decade. This sequence of events didnot require the election of a populist to divine. Deglobalization is structual and thus difficult to reverse. For globalization to persist, one ormore states need to bear the high cost of global public goods, such asdefense of trade routes, global economic policy coordination, the role ofa consumer of last resort, and the continued defense of rules of behavior,such as state sovereignty and noninterference. It was difficult to imagineany country filling this void in the 2010s, and it still is in the comingdecade.

霸权世界下的民粹崛起，来自于不平等的积累：

次贷危机是最后一击，尤其对于自由放任的英美两国，冲击最大：

That said, the political reaction is not uniform across the developedworld. In the US and the UK, the populist backlash was the strongest, inpart because the two countries most enthusiastically adopted laissez-fairein the 1980s and 1990s. These policies left their middle classes the mostexposed to the winds of change after 2008.

新世界的孕育在旧世界中；但是最后一根稻草来自于新冠，作者称之为：

The Nail in the Coffifin: COVID-19

The pandemic has simply accelerated theparadigm shifts that began in the 2010s: geopolitical multipolarity,deglobalization, and the end of the Anglo-Saxon laissez-faire consensus.

对于美国的影响也是，从自由放任主义的转向：

The COVID-19 crisis may have accelerated the inevitable, butAmerica’s turn from a laissez-faire economy into a dirigiste one hadbegun much earlier. For investors and businesses, geopolitical analysisbecame more important than ever.

所以，新世界的Oz国，来了：

The quarter-century between 1985 and 2010 was a great time to be aninvestor. With geopolitics and politics on autopilot, running a business ora portfolio became routine, iterative, and mathematical. The GoldilocksEra allowed for the professionalization of the investment industry inunprecedented ways.

在新世界中：

But the only way to make an investment decisionin 2020 is to think of political analysis as part of the investment processitself, not to merely outsource it to external research providers.

For now, the point is that investment-relevant political and geopolicital analysis is not something that should be outsourced to a former StateDepartment deputy assistant secretary of European and Eurasian affairs.22Political and geopolitical analysis is not exogenous to the investment process. It is inherent to it.

不断试汤的Goldilocks Era已经结束，再放水也无法挽回：

It means thatwe are no longer in the Goldilocks Era, where the twin tailwinds ofAmerican hegemony and globalization allowed investors to ignore themessy world of geopolitics.

要去识别真实世界的约束：

The world of constraints is measurable and quantifiable whereas the world of preferences is not. It is the constraints that are ultimately predictive, actionable, and alpha-generating.

作者再次强调：

This is because of the Maxim That Shall Forever Be Bolded: Preferences are optional and subject to constraints, whereasconstraints are neither optional nor subject to preferences.