Teaser: Investing in America: The Rise Of A 250-Year Bull Market
August 12, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readThe United States was not founded despite capitalism; it was founded by it. That is the central argument of Meb Faber’s new coffee table book, Investing in America: The Rise of a 250-Year Bull Market, which he previews in this solo teaser episode of The Meb Faber Show. Faber, co-founder and chief investment officer of Cambria Investment Management, frames the American experiment as history’s boldest investment project—a venture capital success story that has compounded wealth for a quarter of a millennium.
America as a Startup Portfolio
Faber opens by rejecting the common notion that America was founded purely on ideology. Instead, he argues that the country’s earliest settlements were financed, organized, and governed by joint-stock companies—the 17th-century equivalent of modern venture capital funds. These structures existed to pool capital, spread risk, and pursue asymmetric upside. The Virginia Company, chartered in 1606, backed the Jamestown colony not out of idealism but for profit: gold, trade routes, land appreciation, and monopoly rights. The Plymouth colony’s Mayflower voyage was similarly funded by investors expecting future returns. Even the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony operated within a corporate framework, complete with charters, shareholder governance, and capital calls.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:06) **Episode Introduction** - Meb Faber announces his new book "Investing in America: The Rise of a 250-Year Bull Market" and frames the episode as a preview reading.
- 2 (01:50) **Warren Buffett Quote on American Abundance** - Meb reads a Buffett quote from the 2016 Berkshire letter celebrating American ingenuity and the rule of law.
- 3 (02:25) **Preface: Charlie Munger on Compounding** - Meb reads the preface, opening with a Charlie Munger quote and a personal anecdote about riding a Waymo self-driving taxi.
- 4 (03:30) **The Core Thesis: America as an Investment Project** - Meb argues that America's founding is best understood as one of history's boldest investment projects, not just an ideological crusade.
- 5 (05:36) **Colonies as Startups** - Meb details how colonies functioned as undercapitalized, overambitious startups dependent on constant reinvestment, with many failing and a few scaling spectacularly.
- 6 (06:52) **From Nothing to Global Dominance** - Meb traces America's economic rise from a farming nation to a global powerhouse, highlighting the power of compounding.
- 7 (08:43) **America's Lead in Key Metrics** - Meb lists the ways the US leads the world despite representing only 5% of the global population and landmass.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
In today's episode, I read the opening of my new book, Investing in America: The Rise of a 250-Year Bull Market, plus a couple of sidebars. The book is available now. Grab a copy on Amazon or learn more at www.investinginamericabook.com.
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Past guests include Ed Thorp, Richard Thaler, Jeremy Grantham, Joel Greenblatt, Campbell Harvey, Ivy Zelman, Kathryn Kaminski, Jason Calacanis, Whitney Baker, More from this podcast