SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said the United States and its allies developed a “systemic blind spot” after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, arguing that the West treated liberal democracy’s victory as inevitable and, in doing so, walked into structural economic mistakes that still fuel today’s political and cultural fractures.
‘End Of History’ Fueled Policy Arrogance
In a post on X on Wednesday, Scaramucci said leaders absorbed political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” framing and “got arrogant,” assuming Western systems would naturally spread.
He wrote that confidence helped justify offshoring and deeper trade integration, including bringing China into the World Trade Organization in 2001, while dismissing early warnings about hollowed-out factory towns that flared into public view during the 1999 Seattle protests.
Scaramucci Admits He ‘Misread The Moment’
Scaramucci also aimed part of the critique inward, describing himself at the time as “I was there. I was 35. A smug Wall Street analyst,” and saying he waved off the concerns of American workers. In his telling, the problem wasn’t a single bad bet but an era of overconfidence that treated cheaper capital and lower costs as “inevitable progress,” without preparing for the social and political backlash that followed.
He closed the post with a warning he framed as a lesson for the present, “Success breeds overconfidence. Overconfidence breeds structural mistakes. And when the bill comes due, it’s cultural, economic, and political all at once. The first step in fixing it is admitting we misread the moment.”
Upcoming Book And Trump Critique
Scaramucci tied the argument to launch his forthcoming book, All the Wrong Moves, which he says traces how major bipartisan decisions over decades dismantled parts of the American dream and widened mistrust and division.
It is worth noting that Scaramucci has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump’s broad economic and foreign policy decisions. Most recently, he predicted a Republican defeat in the upcoming midterms, citing Trump’s record-low approval ratings.
The financier has, however, heaped praise on Trump’s administration for its attempts to support the cryptocurrency industry and has admitted that the President and his administrators have done a “far better” job for cryptocurrency than what Joe Biden or Kamala Harris would deliver.
Photo courtesy: Al Teich / Shutterstock.com
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