What Actually Mattered This Week: Musk Buys Twitter, Macron Wins Big

I get a lot of questions both here and on the road ranging from bright spots I see on the horizon to the best book I’m reading.?

Preorder my latest book The Power of Crisis now and send the receipt to [email protected] for a video with the answers to all that and more.

WHAT ACTUALLY MATTERED THIS WEEK

My thoughts on some of this week’s biggest news stories:

Elon Musk reaches agreement to acquire Twitter for about $44 billion

I wish Musk wasn’t buying Twitter, but billionaires owning media isn’t new.

I do fear we’ll lose some of his extraordinary talent for entrepreneurship and world changing product, and I expect he’ll make Twitter an even more polarizing and inhumane environment.

Emmanuel Macron wins France’s presidential election

Macron 58%

Le Pen 41 %

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It wasn’t even close.

A big vote for Europe and against Putin.

Russia shuts off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria

It’s hard to be surprised or get upset with Russia for cutting off gas to Poland and Bulgaria.

It’s only economic desperation that keeps them pumping anything to Europe—after Russia’s invasion, it’s full-on economic warfare between Russia and the West.

Prefer long-form analysis? Here are my thoughts on why Finland and Sweden seem likely to join NATO .

TRUTHS, DAMNED TRUTHS, AND STATISTICS

Largest share of wealth in the hands of the top 0.01% in U.S. history

-via New York Times

THE GZERO WORLD WE’RE JUST LIVING IN

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GRAPHIC TRUTH

YOUR GZERO WORLD

Russia and Ukraine are agricultural powerhouses. But the war and sanctions have crippled their ability to feed the world.

Who's most at risk? Developing countries that rely on those imports. What will the impact be? The disruptions could double the number of people currently suffering from acute food insecurity (some 275 million) due to the pandemic.

On GZERO World, I speak to Ertharin Cousin, who knows a thing or two about food security as the former executive director of the UN World Food Programme.

For a longer, more in-depth version of my interview with Cousin, check out the GZERO World podcast.

YOUR PUPPET REGIME

Everyone knows Americans love apple pie and culture wars, but these days they also seem to really love Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky recently hit the streets of New York to find out why.

Do you like what you’ve seen? Subscribe and stay informed .

BECAUSE THE INTERNET

On target

WHAT TO READ THIS WEEK

Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations by Paul Blustein

This book was written in 2009 but it remains one of the best on global trade. The World Trade Organization is highly dysfunctional now, it can’t negotiate new deals much less enforce the current ones. Blustein’s book foreshadows the WTO’s current dysfunction, writing about its creation in 1995, the Battle of Seattle, and the implosion of the Doha Round. Most importantly—he writes in an entertaining way, weaving in memorable stories of impatient trade negotiators trying to close deals. If you want to understand why the WTO is the way it is, this book explains it. And it will make you smile along the way.???

DEEP THOUGHTS

"To the most trivial actions, attach the devotion and mindfulness of a hundred monks. To matters of life and death, attach a sense of humor." – Zhuangzi

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Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media and foreign affairs columnist at TIME. He currently teaches at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and previously was a professor at New York University. You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.