Starting to dig into this, very different from Beckert obviously 🧐🤓📚
19.02.2026 21:48
👍 10
🔁 0
💬 0
📌 0
Starting to dig into this, very different from Beckert obviously 🧐🤓📚
This is great!
AI made a word cloud from the text of Beckert's Capitalism.
Not so surprising (if you've read the book): merchants, trade, labor, state, among others.
More surprising: French (?), distribution, family
Good 'books in the mail day' yesterday, can't wait to dig in. Muldrew is unsurpassed at showing how we can't understand capitalism, merchant networks, and banking, no matter how global, without talking about social foundations and institutional mechanisms
From “flags of convenience” to shell companies, the “offshore economy requires such legal abstractions” to ensure “it can be neatly separated from the ‘real’ economy onshore.” —@vanessahistory.bsky.social
“For every waterfront revitalization project in Europe or North America, there is a port somewhere else that was not downsized and cleaned up but expanded, often at appalling cost.” —@vanessahistory.bsky.social
❤️
For @nybooks.com, I wrote about the transformation of the world economy since the 80’s, as beautifully told in Ian Kumekawa’s Empty Vessel (with a very brief shoutout to the city where I grew up) www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
Emerging here briefly to share what I find to be a mind-boggling factoid from today's writing so far (and to disappear again into writing mode just as quickly 😊 )
🚨New international Finance and Society Conference happening in Copenhagen in September 11-12! Keynotes by Christian Borch (University of Copenhagen), Fabian Muniesa (Mines Paris – PSL), and @vanessahistory.bsky.social (Yale University) 💸🗺️
So proud of the work @emiliafavuzzi.bsky.social is doing. Such an important field 😍
Not on here ATM really but re-upping this in light of today's news (which are better than nothing but not what many had called for):
www.nybooks.com/online/2024/...
www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solu...
Read about noblesse without oblige and the effects of secrecy on politics and society in tax havens, out from behind the paywall:
“Imagine the chief executives of America’s top universities and richest corporations…issued a public statement that spoke clearly and loudly about the dangers…” Those who speak out will at least put themselves on the right side of history. www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/w...
"Offshore finance" is conceived very broadly including historically, do share and check it out!
When I worked in UK academia I recall hearing of a Japanese man who was baffled at how Britain had decided to run its universities like firms. “Why? Your universities are excellent and your firms are terrible.”
if you thought archives were problematic, wait till you see no archives
Over at the Socio-Economic Review, we're planning a special issue on offshore finance! Historical contributions are very welcome. CfP here: academic.oup.com/ser/pages/cf.... Please share and spread the word! Excited to be working with @ebharrington.bsky.social and Kimberly Kay-Hoang on this!
You wouldn't know from FoxNews gold coin ads and other rightwing goldbuggery, but there's actually a material economy behind gold and the gold trade. It's often shady and dirty, and, you guessed it, tied to tax havens, today and in the past. Wrote about it here: www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...
Apparently, allowing Americans to file their tax returns for free is a bad thing. A big gift to the Big Tax lobby and a big middle finger to Americans.
You wouldn't know from FoxNews gold coin ads and other rightwing goldbuggery, but there's actually a material economy behind gold and the gold trade. It's often shady and dirty, and, you guessed it, tied to tax havens, today and in the past. Wrote about it here: www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...
BTW, perhaps nothing would enrage Trump more than US trade partners brushing the tariffs off and saying we‘ll just find other trade partners, thank you very much.
Leopard: I will eat your face
Bank analysts: Our baseline assumes no face-eating
Leopard: Chomp chomp chomp
Over at the Socio-Economic Review, we're planning a special issue on offshore finance! Historical contributions are very welcome. CfP here: academic.oup.com/ser/pages/cf.... Please share and spread the word! Excited to be working with @ebharrington.bsky.social and Kimberly Kay-Hoang on this!
Some news: A few hours after I filed the draft to this story, CNN laid me off.
As part of a massive restructuring/changes across the network, my role as climate writer was among the 200 that got cut last week.
It’s disappointing, but I’ll be okay. My last day is on Feb 21. A thread.🧵 1/
Some political graffiti I spotted on my stroll
With all the news about Elon Musk and the AfD, I guess it’s time to repost my starter pack: “Experts on German Rightwing Extremism”
go.bsky.app/DnB9hMz
Reductress headline: Woman Decides to Unwind by Reading a Thousand People's Thoughts on the 68 Most Horrible Things That Happened Today
me
Interview with @princetonupress.bsky.social on Erased... including why, in the end, I wasn't actually able to write this history ‘without men’... and the broader and contemporary relevance of the story...
press.princeton.edu/ideas/patric...
