Back in 2015 at NYMAS - the fabulous New York Military Affair Symposium - I was invited to give a retrospective talk on Wages of Destruction.

The result was the talk that is recorded in this audio file.

I started listening to it again because PolicyTensor had dug up the Youtube and asked me whether there was a powerpoint pack to go with it.

To find the powerpoint I needed to remember which talk it was. So I ended up relistening to myself.

Tbh it was one of those nights.

I sound as though I was on speed, or preaching, or committed to the longest high-energy solo in history. The delivery is unusually staccato, but lucid and strangely urgent.

In the process I managed to say out loud a bunch of things that needed saying about Wages.

Perhaps it was the environment.

NYMAS used to meet in this somewhat run down, hotel-like space. The South Lounge of the Soldiers', Sailors', Marines', Coast Guard and Airmens' Club.

The event had the ambiance of a seance, or a Jazz gig from the bebop era.

Dana was there and fabulous folks like Jim Dingeman.

Anyway, there was a powerpoint and here it is:

Tooze Wages Of Destruction Nymas 2022

20.3MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

I have redacted the last few slides on the Reichsstelle Getreide, leaving the talk as a teaser for that.

I have redacted those few slides, because if I still have archival ambitions with regard to the Third Reich, one of them is to dig into the files of this agency that decided over the allocation of grain in the Nazi empire.

After the talk, I remember going to eat and drink with Jim and folks. We talked about 1970s and 1980s wargaming, SPI etc.

We had just moved from New Haven. I remember riding home in the taxi very high on the city. It was a great New York evening.

A good memory. Enjoy!

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The latest episode of Ones and Tooze my regular podcast with Cameron Abadi of Foreign Policy just dropped.

Get it at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any of the other major podcast shops.

Cameron and I talked about the UK music biz, how much the Beatles actually earned, and the latest in price controls.

Back in December we did the GIGANTIC Pentagon budget, scaled against Walmart.

Coming up with have a mini-series on life cycle economics, starting with big tech and egg freezing.

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New Ones and Tooze just dropped.

Cameron and I talk about electric vehicles, chargers, the US and China …. and then Cameron takes us down a really wild and dark path about the economics of death, end of life care, COVID, the pandemic and trauma.

Going to come back to this with a post tomorrow filling out the details on the economics of dying. But this is a taster.

You can get it from the Foreign Policy website

Or from Apple here:

Or from Spotify.

Gotta say, I still get a kick out of being on Spotify.

This is definitely an episode you can share with friends.

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If you like the show, please write reviews at all the obvious places. And back us in our friendly in-house rivalry with FP’s other excellent shows. Listen to them all!

Have a good Friday.

A

From Apple here:

Or from the Foreign Policy website, here.

Since we recorded the episode even the Bank of England, seemingly the most hawkish of the Anglosphere central banks has declined to raise rates.

Markets adjusted their expectations for rate rises, and the pound sold off.

The “inflation is transitory”-narrative remains the main game in town, anchored both by the ECB and the Fed.

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This week on Ones and Tooze, Cameron and I give you a run down of COP26.

Get the podcast here:

One factoid I wish I had known ahead of time is COP26’s own carbon footprint:

Apparently, of COP26’s estimated 53,374 tons of carbon footprint, 45k are for air travel. Source: FT

The second segment in the podcast is on global food prices.

I covered this story in Chartbook last week:

Chartbook

Chartbook #47: Crisis Talk - Global Food Prices

The economic news right now is filled with talk of inflation, energy price hikes and shortages. There is even a mini strike wave. “Striketober” is a thing! References to the 1970s are everywhere. Stagflation - the combination of low growth and inflation characteristics of the 1970s -has become one of the most searched terms on…

Read more

4 years ago · 22 likes · 5 comments · Adam Tooze

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This morning I read in the FT that the ripple effect is spreading through the food chain. The FT has compiled a “cost of breakfast”-index consisting of futures prices for coffee, milk, oats, orange juice and wheat, it has surged 60 percent since its low in the spring of 2020.

On top of the harvest failures in Brazil, we have other climate issues to deal with:
”Oat prices, meanwhile, have doubled this year after a severe drought in Canada wiped out almost half of its crop. As the world’s largest oat producer and exporter, Canada’s oat production drives global trade, and this year its crop shrank 44 per cent, according to Gro.” Oats are at an index value of 240 relative to 100 in the summer of 2020.

This week Cameron and I discuss inflation and why Germans love Italian pasta and what it means!

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At Apple

Or from many other podcast providers at the Foreign Policy website.

Apparently the best derivation of Maultaschen is

Maul = animal mouth

Taschen = pouch

→ Ravioli = feed pouch.

Kinda makes sense!

Why do you need to know this? Listen to the latest Ones and Tooze to find out.

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Hi friends,

the latest episode of Ones and Tooze is up.

Cameron and I tackle the background to the scandal surrounding Kristalina Georgieva, MD at the IMF.

Its a story of economic statistics, skullduggery and geopolitics. How could we resist! And it could hardly be more timely. According to the FT, Friday is decision day.

If you haven’t tried the podcast yet, check it out.

You can get it from Apple here

And Spotify here

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If you’ve been following the Ones and Tooze show and enjoying it, please leave us a review. Every nice review helps!

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The latest Ones and Tooze is up. Cameron and I discuss the German election.

Get the podcast from apple here.

From Spotify here.

Or straight from Foreign Policy.

Meanwhile, bunches of new and interesting data are coming in about the election.

One of the least discussed points is that the largest “party” in the election were the non-voters. They come above all from areas with low average income, above all in the East. Data by Neues Deutschland (one of the survivors of the GDR press).

The Greens did phenomenally well in the cities.

This is a PR system, so these high scores are fully counted in their final tally. It isn’t like the US or the UK where running up votes in California or New York does not move the national dial. But it tells you something about the kind of party that they are.

Die Linke lost heavily but continues to cling on in districts with high unemployment. Good data here:

Overall, votes and incomes line up much as you would expect. SPD did better in areas with below-average income. CDU, Greens and FDP all did better in areas with higher incomes, which basically just means in West Germany as opposed to the GDR.

The personal popularity of a candidate can be gauged by comparing 1st votes (for the candidates) with 2nd votes (for the party in the same district). Note the popularity of Gregor Gysi of Die Linke, a survivor of the immediate post-1989 period. Also Cem Özdemir the leading Turkish-German politician for the Greens in Stuttgart, Habeck, Schäuble and Norbert Röttgen, one of the options the CDU spurned for the leadership.

Since the results were declared, the CDU has plunged further in the polls.

Even the CDU’s own voters prefer the party to go into opposition rather than form a new government. A Jamaica coalition looks like a suicidal choice for the Greens, even if the FDP demand it.

A Traffic Light Coalition of SPD-Greens-FDP (liberals) is most likely, but it would represent above all the preferences of Western Germany (Not Bavaria).

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Ones and Tooze for your weekend just dropped.

In this weeks episode, Cameron and I discuss Evergrande, Chinese urbanization, the taper talk and the anniversary of the TGV, Europe’s high speed rail champion.

Get your listening at

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Or pick your favorite from our website:

Fun for all the family!

Today was the debut for Ones and Tooze my new weekly podcast with my editor at Foreign Policy Cameron Abadi. Every week on Friday Cameron and I will be in conversation about two really interesting things that caught our eye, one more topical and newsy, the other more “background”.

Click here to go to apple podcasts. Here it is on Spotify.

Having listened to the first episode, I have to say I am quite excited.

To be honest I didn’t know how this was going to turn out. Podcasts come in all shapes and sizes - intense one-one, the crazy gang, “the trio”. I’ve done them all and like them all in their own way. So, how would this one turn out?

Ones and Tooze is concentrated, professional and tightly edited. It is more NPR or BBC than basement tapes. It is only 24 minutes long and man, thanks to our brilliant editors, we pack a LOT in!

Above all thanks to the production team of Laura Rosbrow-Telem, Rob Sachs and Dan Ephron. On account of their skills both Cam and I are digitally enhanced! Plus, in this episode we have a great intro, clips, jingles, outros, PLUS Hobbes and Woodrow Wilson and debt ceilings and bond markets, and Keynes and infrastructure and really interesting numbers.

In this episode we talk about America’s debt ceiling and the global furlough. For the debt ceiling I would like to thank Brendan Greeley for a piece he did back at the end of August on US Treasuries.

Next week, if memory serves, we are doing high speed rail investment, the anniversary celebrations of the TGV and a mystery data point still to be decided. Please do listen and give us feedback. The formula is evolving ....

To follow the podcast go here: for apple podcasts. For Spotify.

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Hope folks in the US are enjoying the holiday and are off to a good start to the week wherever you are.

For your listening pleasure, I recommend this thoroughly entertaining conversation with Jordan Schneider and Matt Klein.

Also consider supporting China Talk. One of very best podcast shows around.

ChinaTalk

Weekly analysis of US-China policy and translations of Chinese-language sources on tech, politics and the broader economy

By Jordan Schneider

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My friend Duncan Weldon reminds us that today is the anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 23 1939. If there was ever a diplomatic decision that inverted prior expectations this was it. It set the stage for the destruction of Poland and freed Germany to make its high-risk blow in the West in May 1940.

Even if you are familiar with the event and with the logics at work, there is something staggering about this image, of Lenin looking down, as Stalin watches Molotov putting his pen to the document.

A few years ago, Duncan made this excellent radio show with interviews with the great expert on the Soviet economy Mark Harrison, the Oxford international history Patricia Clavin and yours truly.

It’s really a good episode. Click here for the podcast.

In fact, the entire series is excellent.

And if you enjoy Duncan as a wonderfully intelligent and well-informed broadcaster, check out his equally excellent new economic history of Britain.

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Back in July I did a long piece for the New Statesman on China and its relations with the West.

One of the pleasures of doing this kind of writing is that it provokes further conversation and one of the pleasures of our new world of digital media is that these conversations can take place in public in a relaxed, unstructured podcast form.

The New Statesman China piece spawned two podcast episodes.

One with Jeremy Cliffe and Emily Tamkin of NS on their regular show.

The other - a particular privilege - with Kaiser Kuo of Sinica and SupChina.

The two conversations made for an interesting contrast. Jeremy, Emily and I, are none of us die-in-the-wool China experts, so the conversation goes to all sorts of interesting places.

Kaiser on the other hand is one of a cohort of brilliant folks devoted to the exchange of ideas and culture between China and the West. They face a break in their historical perspective and future outlook that is very profound - not a surprise, but nevertheless dramatic.

Uneven and combined development as a personal shock.

We saw one agonizing face of that shift on the runway in Kabul in recent days. You hear another version of it in conversations with someone like Kaiser. The tectonic plates of geopolitics are shifting and many are scrambling to adjust.

I hope the reference to Afghanistan is not taken as flippant or disrespectful. I mean it entirely seriously.

Delighted also to see that the New Statesman article triggered a response from the great China expert George Magnus. He insists quite rightly that China’s future is still very much uncertain.

**********

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Top Links, the regular service with interesting material from around the net, normally goes out in the full version only to paying subscribers.

In the fall, after the appearance of Shutdown, I will host a series of reading-group-style meetings to discuss the book.

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In September 2020 I “sat down” with two of my favorite interlocutors - Jordan Schneider and Matt Klein - to talk 20th-century history and its implications for the present. It really was a very productive opportunity to join up the dots.

The Podcast version is here or here.

More great conversations to come.

Chartbook newsletter #32 on US economic policy in Afghanistan in the works for the weekend. To makes sure you get the emails.

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I get invited to do podcasts fairly regularly.

On the Chartbook audio channel I am going to feature the most interesting conversations for newsletter readers. If you would like to receive these postings to your email inbox, sign up here:

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If you already subscribed you don’t have to do anything. These will be coming regularly to you.

If you are already a supporter, THANK YOU!

If you enjoy Chartbook content and can afford to chip in, there are three options:

1. The annual subscription: $50 annually

2. The standard monthly subscription: $5 monthly - which gives you a bit more flexibility.

3. Founders club:$ 120 annually, or another amount at your discretion - for those who really love Chartbook Newsletter, or read it in a professional setting in which you regularly pay for subscriptions, please consider signing up for the Founders Club.

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Down to business:

Back in February 2019 I sat down with two friends - Mark Blyth of Brown University (he of “austerity” and “angrynomics”) and Brendan Greeley of the FT - to talk about political economy, the 1970s, the “China shock”. It was a really good conversation. Recalling the scene - I think it was in my Columbia office - it seem as though it comes from another world. But the content has stood up well.

To listen, click here

Don’t worry about the usual FT paywall. It says that access is free.

More great conversations to come.

Chartbook newsletter #31 on climate political economy in the works.

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