>The third, and most striking, reason Europe has fallen behind is the lack of newly created firms in its blue-chip indices. Many of the biggest companies in Ame

>The third, and most striking, reason Europe has fallen behind is the lack of newly created firms in its blue-chip indices. Many of the biggest companies in America, such as Amazon, Netflix, Tesla or Facebook, are young enough to be run by their founders. In Europe old names prevail. Harry Truman said in 1945 about the atomic bomb, "We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies". I feel the same way about FAANG and SpaceX/Tesla and Silicon Valley as a whole (and Wall Street, and Hollywood, and the Ivy League), that they are in the United States. That doesn't mean I approve of everything they do. That doesn't mean I can't or won't decry their putting thumbs on scales toward a certain type of bien-pensant ideology. That does mean that, overall, I am very, very glad that they are American instead of Russian, Chinese, or even British, French, or German.