Following Boswell

For ten years now, I have found myself joyously stranded on the beaches of St. Barts, toes sunk in sanded memory, channeling a fellow Scotsman who wandered far from home in search of truth, beauty, and conversation. James Boswell, the eighteenth century’s diarist, libertine, and traveler. A seeker of great men and turbulent ideas. He is rightly celebrated for his trek across the Hebridean Islands with Samuel Johnson, a journey as much philosophical as physical. His writing places you front and center, making you both witness and participant in the sublime theatre of human folly and greatness.

I like to think I am trying to do something similar, though not on horseback, not in Johnson’s shadow, and certainly not in Scotland. I speak to the camera, to the market, and, I hope, to you. My Hebrides is here in the French tropics. A different coast. A different century. Turbulent times are the connection.

Boswell had the rare gift of finding the philosophical in the fleeting, the eternal in the mundane. He understood that landscapes speak, that nature murmurs redemptive truths to those willing to listen. That redemptive power, that neurological jolt from salt air and the trade wind, is something I crave. There is science behind it. 

Attention Restoration Theory. Beautiful natural settings invoking soft, gentle fascination, immersive stimuli like waves that allow the brain to rest and reset. From barefoot beach runs to lobster tagliatelle lunches to my own summer camp, I am not zoning out, I am zoning in. Recharging my mental acuteness. St. Barts is my canvas. Here, disconnected from the mainframe, I am strangely plugged into the future, allowing the macro condition to percolate my mind.

But unlike Boswell, I am not here to chronicle greatness. I am analyzing it. Specifically, the strange pantheon of acid capitalists now seemingly steering the course of the American economy. Lighthizer at Trade, Lutnick at Commerce, Bessant at Treasury, and the economist-technocrat Stephen Miran, who whispers a gospel far removed from the prior consensus. Characters from a hyper-capitalist fever dream. I admire their boldness. They would rather be scorned than preside over the thought of another year of American decline.

They seem to want to grasp the nettle. They have come to recognise from their business careers that with prosperity comes the toleration of incompetence. We have immense clusters of prosperity today, a tiny population that is ecstatically rich and getting richer, while the majority have no prosperity. Why? The tolerance of incompetence. We ignored the prophecies of Keynes, lived with Bretton Woods, accommodated the rise of China and its perpetual trade surpluses, accepted the recycling of trade flows into the purchase of risk-free securities, and sat idly by as they were transmitted by the euro-dollar system into credit funding not physical investment but widespread speculation.

With complacency, we moved from an entrepreneurial to speculative society.

I have just described the last forty years.

But I see echoes of Gorbachev in these business titans intent on transforming the US government, the tragic earnestness of a group of men really daring to change the course of a system already at terminal velocity. There is nobility in that, even if it may cause the financial system to go up in flames.

The complacency of the last forty years left America facing two bad options, damned if they do, damned if they don’t. With no one strong enough to reject the status quo, the philosophical conundrum has been whether to tolerate mass unemployment or dis-save through escalating public debt and government spending. Democracies always favor the second option. But in doing so, Reagan’s debt-to-GDP ratio of thirty-two percent has more than tripled, the S&P500 has soared 60x. The endpoint has arrived. The death of money I have long warned of is no longer metaphor. It is math. And it is roiling the markets.

So now we ask, what replaces it?

The new American administration is no longer willing to dis-save to save the world. Instead, it is reshoring, employing, and stimulating wage growth. Fueling a new kind of inflation, not the distortionary inflation of the past, but something harder, brighter, and perhaps more honest. Perhaps this will be the age of plain old profit again. The natural rate of profit. If so, I am here for it. Tariffs. Golden visas. Tax resets. Once dismissed, now uttered in the same breath as national interest. Twenty thousand golden passports. One trillion dollars. Madness? Maybe. Method? Undoubtedly. I love the idea.

Boswell would have seen the comedy, the tragedy, and the conceit. He was mocked for attaching himself to controversial figures. So am I, but I share his instinct to stand near the tremors of transformation, to stake out the front row when history starts to shake. And there will be fire.

These policies threaten the core assumptions that have enriched the financial elite for decades. If fully implemented, they will face backlash. The rejection of dis-saving will be called a disservice. Nothing could be further from the truth, but many supporters may rebel, especially the big money backers who have made their money from markets. But future generations may come to call it the necessary deed. A Volcker-style purge. Even two years of GDP contraction, in service of a longer, more stable ascent. One that no longer relies on the adrenaline of constant debt infusions brought about by these periodic financial crises.

Like all moments, this one is temporary. Beach bars rise and fall. Competition replaces complacency. Even the perfect surf break is sometimes too windy to ride. But to be awake, to feel the pulse of history through the sand beneath your feet, that is the privilege of being alive right now.

Today is April Fool’s Day. It marks my tenth anniversary on this blessed isle. Boswell wrote to preserve clarity in chaotic times. I film and write for the same reason. So I follow him, not in costume, but in spirit. With a journal in one hand and a mic in the other. From the Hebrides to St. Barts, the question remains. Will they really burn the house down to right the economic wrongs? Are they truly this far-sighted and courageous? Just how far do asset prices need to fall? How much economic pain in the short term can American politics tolerate to reset the system toward a more meaningful ascent?

And how do we invest, mentally, financially, and spiritually, in a system that seems set to rewrite itself right before our eyes? Maybe that is why I still believe in surf breaks and barefoot walks to the airport. Some rituals are worth preserving, even as our financial empire seems poised to burn spectacularly to the ground.

Hugh

The Acid Capitalist