What we've been reading

Climate in Africa

No, the biggest climate news this September is not the absurd price of accommodation for the upcoming NYC Climate Week - is that even news - but the inaugural Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi. Discussions about the continent’s natural wealth as drivers of the climate transition, through carbon credits or critical minerals are evidence of shifting geopolitical winds, and of a simple truth: Net Zero will be with Africa, or it will not be. Meanwhile, the continent’s leaders are publicly asking for a global carbon tax (we say yay!) and the African Development Bank committed an additional $1 billion to boost access to climate finance for Africa’s youth, which is nice.?

Humans in Europe

There has been much recent focus on the Open Society Foundation’s shift away from Europe in philanthropy, despite denials. Redde Caesari, it was really Barack Obama who started the pivot. Donald Trump gave it a nudge with his passion for Putin and the foundation is on trend. While Europe’s civil society, citizens, and philanthropists ponder the consequences, the rest of us would do well reading Ben Judah’s “This is Europe: how we live now” - a visceral mosaic of everyday people in Europe, from the port of Rotterdam to frontlines in Ukraine. Gas field workers, winemakers, students, fighters, migrants, mothers, work, live, aspire, and suffer. Making people real: a worthwhile, populist in the good sense of the term,? endeavor which hopefully makes our global technocracy a little bit more sane about a continent in the middle of radical transformations.

Democracy in America

Speaking of political organization, it’s hard to say that all is well with Democracy in America. It’s almost two centuries since Tocqueville, but this week the Atlantic adds its voice to those fearing the country may be left behind. It’s fair to assume that literally no one is looking forward to the 2024 election. The cycle is now well underway, and its upcoming litany of trials, primaries and constitutional disputes, and the billions poured into it by PACs, superPACs and other obscure swamp creatures feel dramatically at odds and out of sync with the rejection of the current neoliberal order left and right of center. Americans receive daily social media invitations to donate to sometimes far away political campaigns, because “the polls are so close and your five bucks could really tip this primary.” Would that our vote could, rather than our money. One wonders how Gandhi’s Satyagraha and its invocation of truth could play out in today’s America. It might not be comfortable for many of us.?

Fairness in markets

The SEC is ( finally?) changing the rule book for the private equity industry, with a? sweeping regulatory effort to make fees more transparent and LP-GPs negotiations more fair. The side letters will have to come out of the bottom drawers. Advocates applaud. Funds sue and once again the system tests itself.??

One thing we just finished reading

For folks trying to grapple with what’s next, it often helps to look at what came before. Cambridge-historian Gary Gerstler does a bang-up job telling the tale of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era. Especially interesting: his recounting of the 2008 financial crisis and the missed opportunity for reform.?

One thing we’ve been told to read

For lovers of? pop stars, holiday destinations, technology and the human condition, particularly those within this group desperate for an account of the last gasps of late-stage capitalism, ?Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall, by Zeke Faux, should be quite the piece of? entertainment. ?

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