Bravo Johnson
@bravojohnson
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That money—European surplus dollars, Japanese capital allergic to risk—cycled through the dollar system and, through no grand plan, ended up funding independent film. Not just the tasteful awards bait, but the personal, eccentric, totally unmarketable stuff. The kind of movies that wouldn’t survive five minutes in today’s pitch gauntlet. But back then, the world had too much money and not enough imagination on where to put it—so why not give it to filmmakers?
It wasn’t logical. But it worked. Often despite itself.
And now the alpha’s turned. The flows are reversing. That surplus capital is no longer content to underwrite American scaffolding and California paperwork. The whole ecosystem’s splintering. Whatever this was—this semi-coherent, occasionally brilliant, frequently wasteful mechanism that floated entire careers, mine included—it’s not coming back.
At least not in the same form. 0 reply
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The irony is the Americans didn’t know either. The crypto founders, the VCs, the tech substacks—they thought the money came from hustle, from merit, from ingenuity, from dollar-denominated destiny. They didn’t know it was European and Japanese surplus capital, cycled through the global dollar system, that gave them their Series A, their rocket fuel, their token launch. The apps, platforms, and megaprojects they built were subsidized twice—first by the U.S. state, then by foreign capital fleeing accountability in the very economies that earned it to co-finance a techno-utopia they were never invited into. Why they exported real value and got back American narratives and a weaker continent in return.
And then wait until the folks in SV realize they weren’t the product of destiny or genius—but of other people’s deferred dreams, converted into liquidity, handed to them through the opaque machinery of global finance. 1 reply
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Wait until the euros find out that the dollars earned from their exports—cars, tools, perfume, pharmaceuticals—weren’t reinvested in Europe, weren’t used to rebuild southern infrastructure or fund a next-gen Airbus or even create a sovereign tech stack. Instead, they were quietly parked in U.S. Treasuries, in hedge funds, and in crypto moonshots. Not as a grand conspiracy, but as financial habit, as elite consensus, as path dependence. Meanwhile, Europe’s industrial base hollowed out, its strategic autonomy slipped, and a generation was told to tighten belts while their savings quietly bankrolled cryptobros and spandex superheros 1 reply
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And this is all hitting an economy already half-collapsed—held together with duct tape, stimulus fumes, and vibes. Companies cut matches. The ripple moves fast because folks aren’t just workers—they’re consumers,—from SaaS subs and furniture to Disney+ and cars. When they stop spending, ad revenue tanks. Creative hubs like Austin, Brooklyn, Portland crash. Startups fold. “Disruption” quietly packs up and leaves. P/E ratios shrink. Stocks dip. 401(k)s sag.
Then the “safe” people—seniors, juniors, middle managers start asking, “Where’s my money?” A generation raised on ZIRP and optimized for the next big thing suddenly realizes there’s no hack for surviving a 401(k) apocalypse. Meanwhile, a Substack guy chirps, “We’re just in the early innings,” while they open a new tab: how to live in your car without getting caught. 0 reply
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