Corporate strategy in America today is about orchestrating bottlenecks, because if you can create a chokepoint, aka some form of a monopolistic toll booth or restraint of trade, you can charge more money. The U.S. economic strategy, as we learned during Covid, is about creating precisely such bottlenecks. Whether done through copyright, patent, cost of capital, merger, price discrimination, foreclosing a rival from getting access to the market, surveillance, limiting homebuilding by sitting on land, or any other tactic, broadly speaking, all inflating financial assets does is hinder production. That’s the point, withhold supply, increase the price.