US energy policy impasse. The global hierarchy of defense R&D. Early modern comparative religion & the true face of the Qing.

Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. An Aztec 9-inch-tall jade figure of Xolotl (god of fire and lightning and a soul-guide for the dead) with inlays of coral in the mouth. 1500–1520, now on display at the Landesmuseum Württemberg in Stuttgart American retail electricity prices are running very far ahead of CPI – striking report by Grace Fan The constraints on expanding American power supply are crippling. “greenfield transmission line buildout in the US takes seven to 10 years on average.” However, the single biggest obstacle to faster adoption of all of these resources remains disinterest from most investor-owned utilities to pursuing optimized and capital-efficient solutions for two reasons: 1) their economic model guarantees a regulated rate of return on capex but not opex; and 2) they are shielded from competition by a regulated monopoly. Still, with both literal and online pitchforks out for politicians and businesses as electricity bills inexorably climb and costs pile up, utilities are at their most vulnerable in decades to new regulatory interventions and pressure from fed-up voters if they continue to follow outdated business-as-usual practices instead of ripping up past playbooks. This is especially true as utility capex spending has ballooned in recent years (see chart below left), aggravated by the increasing frequency of extreme weather events as well as new capacity demands on top of their capex-first priorities. Source: TS Lombard If you ask why the US dominates so many areas of high-tech weaponry in the West, the scale of defense R&D gives you an answer. Source: CEPR HEY READERS, THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day. I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button. If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $50. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to. Subscribe The switch back of capital flows to low-income developing countries has been wrenching. For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe The Aztec Deity Xolotl Depicted by a Mosaic Mask, 1325 – 1521 CE The early modern discovery of the history and anthropology of religion German scholar Adam Olearius (1603-1671) is remembered because of his diplomatic activities on behalf of his home state of Holstein. He was part of two ambassadorial delegations that visited Russia and later, Persia, seeking to establish an overland trade route to Persia. The commercial aims of the journeys were largely unsuccessful but Olearius afterwards published his detailed observations in a travel book that had several editions and translations and which introduced Europe to Persian culture. Beyond his diplomatic envoy role, Olearius was employed by Duke Frederick III of Holstein-Gottorp in a number of functionary positions. As librarian he helped expand the book and manuscript holdings of the Duke and as keeper of the Cabinet of Curiosities, Olearius purchased key regional collections and saw to it that Oriental specimens were included in the exhibit. Hence, according to the custom of the time, Olearius published a catalogue of the Duke’s collection or Kunstkammer in 1666: ‘Gottorffische Kunst-Kammer, worinnen allerhand ungemeine Sachen’ is most easily accessible from Strasbourg Universities Library . (once you load the book, click on the folder icon top left to get thumbnail images) This is the 1673 edition from which all the above (extensively cleaned) example images were chosen. These constitute perhaps two thirds of the illustrations in the book and, as usual, Strasbourg have enormous jpeg images available. Source: Blogspot The “true face” of the Qing h/t @ted_huang Striking and rare “true face” portrait of Qing Emperor Qianlong 乾隆帝 (1711-1799) in informal winter attire, oil-on-Korean paper (高麗紙), c. 1756-1757, attributed to Italian Jesuit missionary and painter Giuseppe Castiglione (郎世寧 Lang Shining, 1688-1766) Conference: An Age of Finance? Money, Government, and Society since the 1970s 11. May 2026 – 12. May 2026. If you are in the Berlin/Potsdam area, this looks great. Conveners: Ralf Ahrens (ZZF Potsdam) / Christian Marx (IfZ Munich) Since the 1970s, the financial sector has developed into a prime example of economic globalization due to exceptional growth and a rapid increase in international capital flows. Government actors have often felt overwhelmed by developments such as the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, the return of high inflation rates and the experience of stagflation, against which Keynesian economic policy measures appeared powerless. One response was to liberalize the banking sector and capital movements with the aim of unleashing market forces in international competition. Focusing on the financial sector, we want to examine how the relationship between state, economy, and society has changed since the 1970s. Ultimately, only such an integrative, internationally comparative contemporary history of financial markets can clarify the extent to which we are actually dealing with an ‘age of finance’ that continues to the present day. Source: ZZF Potsdam Wooden figure of Xolotl. Aztec, early 16th century. Museum für Völkerkunde, Wien, cat. no. 12585. Photograph: Fritz Mandl. If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: SubscribeRead More