Wednesday Wisdom

WHO

Walter Bigelow Wriston was an American banker who served as CEO and chief Executive for Citibank and Citicorp from 1967 to 1984. He is regarded as one of the most influential commercial bankers of his time helping bring innovations like interstate banking, ATMs and negotiable certificated of deposits. In the 1970s he helped New York City stave off bankruptcy by setting up Financial Control board and the Municipal Assistance Corporation. He persuaded the city’s union pension fund and local banks to help in the effort by buying the restructured bonds in the Municipal Assistance Corp.

Walt Wriston was born in Middleton CT, where his mother was a chemistry teacher, and his father taught history at Wesleyan University. Wriston received his BA from Wesleyan and later attended Tufts University for a master’s in law and diplomacy. He joined the foreign service where he helped with prisoner exchanges between the US and Japan. He was drafted into the Army and served for four years between 1942-1946. He served as a chairman to Ronald Reagan’s Economic Advisory Board. Wriston was known for his ethics, often deriding the practices of unsavory characters who used subsidiaries or legal means to walk away from obligations around the world. He was so influential that he received 12 honorary PHDs and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George Bush in 2004.

“Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution Is Transforming Our World”; written in 1992, Wriston argues that the information revolution, driven by computers, telecommunications, and the rapid flow of data will weaken the traditional power of nation-states. He argues in his book that the information revolution will diminish the power of nation-states, as capital, data, and ideas flow freely across borders, making traditional government control obsolete. He argued that the future belongs to global markets and informed individuals, not centralized governments. His book was prescient, written before the internet, cloud computing or artificial intelligence and his book remains a bulwark for the covenant of capitalism.

Walter Wriston famously spoke about capital and free trade saying, “Capital goes where its welcome and stays where its well-treated”. Wriston logically advocated that trade wars only serve to hurt consumers and stifle economic growth. He saw free trade as an essential component of global prosperity, allowing countries to specialize in what they do best and access goods at the lowest possible cost disruptions that could damage businesses and economies long term.

2025- why should we care?

Post World War, The United States was integral in helping rebuild Europe and Japan. The growth of economies and the need for power fueled the Petro dollar (American dollars) which in turn became what is known as the Euro dollar which shouldn’t be confused with the Euro the currency of Europe. Today 64 pct of the world’s debt is dollar denominated. The dollar became the reserve currency of the world as United States provided a safe haven secured by its economic engine and rule of law. The results speak for themselves, United States and world have prospered and billions of people around the world have been lifted out of poverty.

Frédéric Bastiat lived from 1801 to 1850 and was born in Bayonne, a town in the southwest of France, near the Spanish border in the region of Aquitaine. The 19th-century French economist and free-trade advocate Frédéric Bastiat believed that economic interdependence between nations through trade would promote peace and reduce the likelihood of conflict. Bastiat was a bit of a late bloomer intellectually, he didn’t start writing seriously until his 40s but in just a few years, he produced some of the most enduring and sharp critiques of socialism, protectionism, and government overreach. Bastiat was considered part of the post-Enlightenment classical liberal tradition, but his views mirrored those of philosophers of the Enlightenment and the founding fathers of the United States. He believed in reason over authority, natural rights and liberty and free markets and individual autonomy. “Economic Sophisms" is a series of short essays debunking bad economic ideas—especially protectionism and government intervention. In one essay titled the “The Candlemakers’ Petition”, he presents a hilarious satire where candlemakers ask the government to block out sunlight to eliminate unfair competition from the sun

Although his writing was pithy and filled with satire, he is also known for a chilling remark on the benefits of free trade and the risk of protectionism.

"When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will"

History and sound principles……………….. ignore at your own peril……..

And now you know...

Thank you, Dad, for the gift of curiosity.

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science.

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer the what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses.

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain.