Past performance is not a guide to future returns. By chance, I was reading an account of the post-WW II US occupation of Japan the other day, and was struck by the difference between a rising Empire and a falling one. MacArthur's people had brains, vision, and imposed a raft of quasi-socialistic economic policies. They instituted the right to unionize, female suffrage, a reasonably free press, etc. That doesn't mean the US occupiers were angels of mercy, but the contrast between FDR's bunch and the oil-orcs of $auron is startling.
-- DRR