What to read and listen to during your vacation

by — December 24, 2023 in Economy
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Whether your holiday season comes with flight delays, a long road trip, or a rare day with room on your calendar, chances are you’re about to have some free time.

If you want to use it to get a little smarter about deals and economics, and maybe even enjoy yourself in the process, you’re in luck: Here are our favorite books and podcasts from this year (plus a game) that will help you do precisely that. that.

“The Number is Rising: Inside the Wild Rise and Staggering Fall of Cryptocurrencies” by Zeke Faux

Cryptocurrencies have their detractors, including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who said at a congressional hearing this month that the government should ban digital assets. But few cryptocurrency critics have been as committed to trying to understand the technology and thoroughly explore the industry (which sometimes seems to make money out of thin air) as Bloomberg investigative journalist Zeke Faux. In his book, “Number Go Up,” he travels around the world for two years to meet the people fueling the enthusiasm for digital tokens and, along the way, uncovers corruption, greed and exploitation.

The book was published about a month before the criminal trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, who was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy last month. Faux begins by admitting that he didn’t see through Bankman-Fried’s billionaire wunderkind façade when they met. But Faux had his suspicions about the cryptocurrency industry and promises by digital asset enthusiasts that blockchain would democratize finance, and he knew many of the people selling these ideas. “From the beginning, I thought cryptocurrencies were pretty dumb. And it turned out to be even dumber than I imagined,” he writes.

trade

Quiz time: Which country’s foreign trade was approximately $597 billion in 2021? Here’s a hint: Its main export categories were automobiles, refined petroleum, wine and valves.

A. Japan

B.Argentina

C. United States

D. Italy

The answer is D, Italy.

That is according to tradethe Wordle-style game about global trade that has become a daily habit for economics buffs, global policy geeks, and at least one DealBook editor.

Developed by the Economic Complexity Observatory, a trade data visualization specialist, Tradle brings players around the world every day. The clues could lead to a developing island economy whose main exports are pleasure boats (the Cayman Islands, for example) or to a Group of 7 giant. like canada (Spoiler: Major exports include crude oil, sawn timber, and fertilizers.)

Gilberto García-Vázquez, an economist whose company is behind the game, said Market This summer the global popularity of Tradle came as a big surprise. The site was attracting “about a million visitors a month,” she said, another sign that everyone likes a good game, even ones about global trade.

“The city”

Who is on top in the media business and who is on the bottom? Tinseltown’s main industry has an image based on art and glamour, but Matt Belloni’s podcast about its inner workings treats it like a sport, with an AM radio vibe (unsurprising, given its roots in the podcast network The Ringer) and an informed informal approach. to the topic. Belloni came up through the Hollywood trades and is the author of Puck’s flagship newsletter, What I’m Hearing, but on the podcast he takes an approach that welcomes more casual followers of media news. However, keen industry observers will appreciate interviews with newsmakers like Ted Sarandos, CEO of Netflix, and Mark Shapiro, president of Endeavor, on hot topics like the streaming wars, the actors and writers strikes, and so on. why superhero movies are stumbling.

“Climate Fire: A True Story of a Hotter World” by John Vaillant

Wildfires were all over the news in 2023. Burning Canadian forests covered New York in smoke, there were deadly fires on Maui, and extreme heat sparked the worst fires on record in Greece. In “Climate of Fire”, Journalist John Vaillant writes about an earlier wildfire that provided a hint of what was to come.

In 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, was engulfed in flames, forcing 90,000 people to evacuate. The city is the center of Canada’s tar sands industry, meaning it relies on the production of fossil fuels that contribute to global warming. Vaillant calls it a “bifurcated reality,” in which executives recognize the threat posed by carbon dioxide emissions but still make money from the industry despite the harm it clearly causes.

The contradictions will not end soon. Some of the world’s largest energy companies signaled this year that they are doubling down on fossil fuels through a series of deals in the shale oil sector. July was the hottest month ever recorded. And the United Nations climate conference in the United Arab Emirates (a petrostate) was the first to publicly state that the world needs to move away from fossil fuels.

We are not done producing and using fossil fuels and our world is warming. Those two trends will inevitably collide again, and Vaillant’s book is a useful look at how that might play out.

“The crisis of democratic capitalism” by Martin Wolf

Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ chief economic commentator, believes in the union of liberal democracy and market economics. The combination, he maintains, has created the most successful societies in history, generating prosperity and freedom.

In “The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism,” he argues that this is changing because the system is not delivering economic and political results, leading to the rise of populists and counterproductive political movements. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump as president and the rise of rentier capitalism are bad for democratic societies and the institutions on which they depend, he writes. And that has worrying consequences for free societies and the companies that operate in them.

The case is personal for Wolf. He is an economist and his parents were refugees from the Nazis, who were able to come to power in part thanks to the Great Depression. History, he says, is a warning that political mistakes can be enormously destructive when combined with economic disasters.

“The closer”

Reports on deals often focus on the numbers. That approach can overlook the drama behind them and the aftereffect. “The Closer,” a podcast hosted by journalist Aimee Keane, uncovers rich stories behind the headlines, often revealing unexpected consequences.

In its first episode, it explored the 2013 merger between American Airlines and US Airways, which created the world’s largest airline, and the role unions played in the deal. Since then, the podcast has explained how an action by the Department of Justice led to Modelo’s rise to become the best beer in the US; why a failed deal in 2018 led to WeWork’s bankruptcy this year; and how private equity investors and Walmart killed Toys “R” Us (an episode featuring DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch, who broke the story that the company was considering filing for bankruptcy).

The show’s trick is to show the continued relevance of old agreements and how the cascading events they trigger can reshape industries.

“Acquired”

Technology investors Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal take listeners behind the scenes of some of the world’s most famous companies: Costco, LVMH, Porsche. Its extensively researched episodes last several hours (one on Nike ran about four hours) and explain the strategies and strange turns of fortune that allowed the founders of these companies to build lasting businesses. Gilbert and Rosenthal dedicate a few episodes to guests, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Berkshire Hathaway executive Charles Munger, who was interviewed about a month before his death in late November.

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