Martin Wolf – The crisis of Democratic Capitalism
After a slow start, the book provides interesting analyses, which after the 2024 US elections is more relevant than ever.
If, as a financial journalist, you want to bring down a fraudulent fintech startup, you need to be very, very careful
The Netflix documentary is better, because it has less extensive digressions into the author’s personal life.
Even though the art world is hermetic, myopic, elitist, and irrational there is still inherent value in art itself (whatever the definition of art is)
Bianca Bosker – Get the picture
The characters are carefully positioned as archetypes that are painfully accurate.
A bunch of geeks figured out a better way to run a company and are now taking over the economy
The case that “data trumps opinions, provided your corporate culture doesn’t get in the way” contains little original thinking, but that – to be fair – is not the author’s objective
Most crypto currencies are Ponzi schemes funded and operated by hardened criminals and effective altruists lacking a moral compass
The author’s hard-felt frustration that the crypto market could (and in a sense still can) stay irrational as long as it did makes the story even more juicy.
If you are quirky enough; people may just trust you because you seem harmless even if you have a history at a Wall Street trading firm
Michael Lewis – Going infinite
Amazing story, told with a consistent yet not so surprising perspective
To optimally solve for the UN Social Development Goals, optimize on simple metrics with good pay-off
Bjorn Lomborg – Best things first
Nice exercise that provides some nice contrarian thinking, as long as one is aware that the methodology of cost-benefit analysis (as applied here) seems to ignore systemic risks (e.g. climate change) and under-plays the difficulty of getting from theory to policy (let alone realization).
To counter the Big Evil of the New York Times you should put the truth on the blockchain ledger and solve world politics through technology
Balaji Srinivasan – The Network state
Some fair nuggets of socio-economical diagnosis mixed with personal pet-peeves and drained in a techno-utopian rant.
Structural shifts in energy production and usage (especially shale oil and EVs) have fundamentally affected the global power balance
The ‘it is all about oil’ narrative of international politics over the last 20 years made explicit is a comprehensive yet digestible form.
The lack quality control on generic drugs opened the door to fraud and deceit, endangering health and lives of the world’s poor
Katherine Eban – Bottle of lies
Impressive and concerning whistleblower story illustrating the subtleties in developing and producing effective generic drugs.
Since the invention of the micro processor, chip production has become of imminent strategic importance for both the USA and other geopolitical power blocks
Nice historical overview, very topical in an era where technology significantly affects the Ukraine war and the power play between the USA and China around Taiwan.
Aging populations and the breakdown of global trade make that very bad things are going to happen all over the world, but less so in the USA
Peter Zeihan – The end of the world is just the beginning
Highly entertaining read with a lot of black humor, but incomplete in its analysis (e.g. of risk of internal conflicts in the USA and likelihood of collaboration between states in Europe).
To learn how to make an open source software project a commercial success, study business models in the media industry
Nadia Eghbal – Working in Public
From an economical perspective, open source software is no different from other content that is published online.
Governments of developing countries should: 1. stimulate household farming 2. push through land reform, and 3. protect their budding manufacturing industry – in that order
Interesting historical perspective on economic development with renewed relevance in a post free-trade world.
The US postal service is a success story of the benefits of public funding
Winifred Gallagher – How the post office created America
In theory a fascinating topic, but in practice a boring read; as I should have expected because the Post leveraged rather than drove innovation.
Traders trying to make a killing in an ever more sophisticated market economy are driven to ever smarter deals and lower moral standards
Javier Blas and Jack Farchy – The world for sale
Well documented account of how instrumental commodity markets have been in global politics.
Today’s dominant ideology is the acceptance of ‘how the world really is’ and that any attempt to change that will lead to ruin
Slavoj Zizek – Like a thief in broad daylight
Mix of interesting Marxist perspectives on contemporary politics and confusing rants about old movies.
To make the fashion industry sustainable (from both environmental and social perspective) consumers need to care and get engaged
Maxine Bedat does for fashion what the Michael Pollen did for food, but with a much more solid program behind it.
China’s debt-fueled economic growth cannot continue in the same way
Dinny McMahon – China’s great wall of debt
October 2021: Apparently, the financial troubles of Evergrande are the first cracks in the wall.
July 2019: Interesting perspective on China’s impressive rise over the past years, providing more context to the recent trade war with the US and contrasting the view of Kai-Fu Lee.
Apparently, the success factors that made Jack Ma are his command of the English language, his showmanship
After a reasonably insightful chapter describing Alibaba’s strategy, the book slides into an enumeration of facts that illustrate the way in which China’s government steers private enterprise.