In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. was so globally dominant that it could create a new economic order announced at Bretton Woods that relieved both allies and former enemies of much need for military defense and entitled them to free trade access to the rest of the world. It led to decades of global peace and the economic defeat of the Soviet Union. However, Zeihan argues that the cost of this arrangement to the U.S. has been high:

"[With the looming post-war threat of the Soviet Union,] what the Americans needed were not just allies to help carry the defense burden, but allies who were so eager that they would be willing to stand up against the awesome force of the Red Army, a Red Army that was still roused by the fact that it had single-handedly decimated the Nazi Wehr­macht at Stalingrad. That requires a special kind of motivation.

"Specifically, it requires a hell of a bribe. And what the Americans came up with was one of the great strategic gambits in history. They assembled a plan, and then assembled their wartime allies on July 1, 1944, for a confer­ence in New Hampshire to lay out their vision for the new world ... [at] Bretton Woods.


U.S. Trade Balance (1895_2015)

"The three-point American plan was nothing short of revolutionary. They called it 'free trade':

Access to the American market. Access to the home market was the holy grail of the global system to that point. If you found yourself forced to give up the ability to control imports, it typically meant that you had been defeated in a major war (as the French had been in 1871) or your entire regime was on the verge of collapse (as the Turks were in the early twentieth century). A key responsibility of diplomats and admirals alike was to secure market access for their country's businesses. The American market was the only consumer market of size that had even a ghost of a chance of surviving the war, making it the only market worth seeking.
Protection for all shipping. Previously, control of trade lanes was critical. A not insubstantial proportion of a government's military forces had to be dedicated to protecting its merchants and their cargoes, particularly on the high seas, because you could count on your rivals to use their militaries to raid your commerce. As the British Empire expanded around the globe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they found them­selves having constantly to reinvent their naval strategies in order to fend off the fleets of commerce raiders that the Dutch,
French, Turks, and others kept putting into play. The Ameri­cans provided their navy -- the only one with global reach­ -- to protect all maritime shipping. No one needed a navy any longer.
A strategic umbrella. As a final sweetener, the Americans promised to protect all members of the network from the Sovi­ets. This included everything right up to the nuclear umbrella. The only catch was that participants had to allow the Ameri­cans to fight the Cold War the way they wanted to.

"Accepting the deal was a no-brainer. None of the Allies had any hope of economic recovery or maintaining their independence from the Soviets with­out massive American assistance. There really was no choice: Partner with the only possible consumer market, the only possible capital source, and the only possible guarantor of security -- or disappear behind the Iron Curtain.

"As the strategic competition of the Cold War took firmer shape, the Americans were able to identify critical locations in the geopolitical con­test and invite key countries to join their trading system. Among the first postwar expansions, the Americans approached none other than the defeated Axis powers.

New York —Martin Shkreli was convicted of three of eight counts of securities fraud Friday.

He faces up to 20 years in prison, though legal experts say he is likely to get much less.

Braun said the team of editors would have to “reverse-engineer the show to make it look like his judgment had some basis in reality. Sometimes it would be very hard to do, because the person he chose did nothing. We had to figure out how to edit the show to make it work, to show the people he chose to fire as looking bad—even if they had done a great job.”

Trump’s frequent lies also presented a problem. Braun explained:

“He would say things like, ‘We had a million applicants and we chose this small group to be contestants on the show,’” Braun recalled. “And I would turn to my producer and say, ‘A million applicants? Really?’ And the producer would shake his head no. Trump would just take numbers and throw them around. I mean, from Season One to Season Two, he said his net worth tripled. One day he said he had a billion dollars and then later it would become three billion; he just made stuff up.”