THE STORY OF CAPITAL

OUT NOW

Very exciting, congratulations Pepper! Can’t wait to read it!

Billionaire Backlash is published today! (If you are in the US, this is a teaser -- out March 17 there). I had a fantastic conversation about the book with @hugorifkind.bsky.social from Times Radio yesterday. Link below (interview starts at about 50:30). Or join us for the launch in Oxford tonight.

if you came of age in the 20th century then this really sits you down about how much the Worlds changed in 21st century. no going back….
www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/bri...

The Great Reckoning - The Ideas Letter The world feels unsettled, as if history itself were changing tempo. The familiar landmarks of the modern age are blurring, slipping away, and the stories we once told ourselves about…

Kaiser Kuo on China’s astonishing transformation, and how it has profoundly upended liberal Western notions of modernization:

“Even those of us who have followed China closely, who pride ourselves on seeing past Western prejudices, have found it difficult to fully absorb what we are witnessing.”

New book forum published in the @geographers.bsky.social Review of Books,
with great contributions by Rachel Bok, @jeromeroos.bsky.social, Juvaria Jafri together with Nassar Alnassar, Henry Wai-chung Yeung, Angus McNelly, and @proufos.bsky.social

@campolis.bsky.social

Link below👇:

A new magazine of politics, culture, art. Coming soon.

Sign up to our mailing list: www.equator.org/

(Still image from a film by Yto Barrada)

Incredibly excited about this new magazine and global community, launching soon!

I’m thrilled to be joining the UCL Centre for Capitalism Studies as a Visiting Fellow next academic year!

📣 #BeyondNeoliberalism — updated site now live 📣
Check out the full schedule, speaker bios, and more.

Join our mailing list for updates — and get on the waitlist for the plenary with Rana Foroohar @jayatighosh.bsky.social @hboushey.bsky.social and @drodrik.bsky.social.

beyond-neoliberalism.org

In honor of Trump putting 25% tariffs on auto imports & various opinions about that, sharing my feature from this month’s TNR on what the Trump administration could mean for legacy US automakers as electrification transforms the sector globally

It's long so 🧵 1/
newrepublic.com/article/1921...

Why are minerals so central to geopolitics? How green are electric cars? Why is anti-mining protest increasing? Can the inequalities of the global economy be transformed?

I tackle these topics in my book EXTRACTION: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism

👀 September 2025 @wwnorton.bsky.social

Is the #InternationalOrder on the cusp of change, or has it changed already, in what promises to be the #Asian century?

📆 Wed, 12 Feb 25, ONLINE
🕒 3pm🇬🇧 4pm🇪🇺 6pm🇹🇷 8.30pm🇮🇳 11pm🇨🇳
🆓 Reg/Speaker details: www.lse.ac.uk/south-asia-c...

@jeromeroos.bsky.social @lseideas.bsky.social @lseir.bsky.social

Trump wants to reverse America’s decline. Good luck | Samuel Moyn Trump and his supporters would like to buck the tide of history, but they could end up pulled further into it, and have no way to stop it

Excellent piece by @samuelmoyn.bsky.social:

Trump “is the symptom of imperial decline who purports to be the cure … He and his supporters would like to buck the tide of history, but they could end up pulled further into it, and have no way to stop it.”

OpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitor White House AI tsar David Sacks raises possibility of alleged intellectual property theft

Look who suddenly cares about intellectual property now:

“OpenAI says it has found evidence that Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek used the US company’s proprietary models to train its own open-source competitor, as concerns grow over a potential breach of intellectual property.”

Opinion | The Dark Roots of Donald Trump’s Obsession With Panama and Greenland (Gift Article) He is tapping into a vision of a United States that is forever growing, forever moving outward.

Great piece by Greg Grandin on the Trump 2.0 turn from isolationism to expansionism:

“He is sending a clear signal that dominance, not mutualism, is the world’s new organizing principle and that the doctrine of conquest, thought to have expired, is still valid.”

The last days of Walter Benjamin Hounded by the Nazis, the great philosopher took his life in 1940, leaving several mysteries unanswered

Beautifully written and moving essay by @danhancox.bsky.social on the great Walter Benjamin:

Awesome, so glad to hear! I really enjoyed that conversation 🙂

So glad to hear—and the student was exactly right!

So cool that you’re using it in your class! Hope it will provoke a lively discussion 😉

Likewise!!

This place is becoming better by the day 🥳

When ppl try to tell Brett Christophers “markets” really are delivering the clean energy transition. www.economist.com/china/2024/1...

Here are UK & US BlueSky numbers separately, to show what’s driving the trends:

• Aug 3rd: Musk says ‘civil war is inevitable’ in UK during far right riots

• Oct 17th: Musk changes the block function on X, prompting a massive exodus

• Nov 7th: thousands more migrate in aftermath of Trump victory

Not necessarily, but the US will continue to lose ground in the race to lay down the material infrastructure for a new 21st-century world economy. It means China will take a more central role in global trade and the US will steadily become more and more marginalized in the Global South.