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When Great Britain was ascendant the world broke out in parliaments and the businessmen of the tropics sweated in black wool. We have our New York, so other countries want New Yorks of their own—and they get them, new New Yorks more New York than New York. Count one remove from reality. Then, of course, we scale up the real New York to match. Count two removes from reality. (This is the level of the junk-bond era, I think.) The rest of the world scales up their New Yorks to keep up with the American example. The world’s tallest skyscraper keeps turning up somewhere in East Asia. Count three removes from reality. So the real New York scales up yet again, mortgages the country and securitizing its mortgages. Count four removes from reality. This isn’t economics; this is pataphysics.
