There are certainly smart people out there, and there are certainly people who are able to see a bit down the road, and they are certainly attempting to influence policy in various ways...

... but they are not setting policy. Policy is set by the people who actually run things from day to day, and constrained by the narratives they subscribe to. Nebulous conspirators have to either plant or ride narratives with the people who actually have their hands on the levers. When President Cheney and his oil buddies wanted to go to war in Vietraq, they had to spend three or four months gearing up the war propaganda. Economics, widely considered an arcane subject best left to experts, may not need quite so visible propaganda in order to shape policy, but you can't keep the people who actually manage it completely in the dark about your objectives. And I'm simply not seeing those narratives among the Serious People.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.