Tag: financial crisis
Carry-On Baggage Has Reached a Breaking Point
A man grunts and sighs in the crowded aisle next to you. His backpack swats your shoulder. “If an overhead bin is shut, that means it is full,” a flight attendant announces over the intercom. A passenger in yoga pants backtracks through the throng with a carry-on the size of a steamer trunk—“Sorry, sorry,” she mutters; the bag will need to be checked to her final destination. Travelers squish aside to make way for her, pressing against one another inappropriately
Michael Lewis Is Buying What Sam Bankman-Fried Is Selling
Michael Lewis was captivated by Sam Bankman-Fried from their very first meeting—and on the evidence of Lewis’s new book, Going Infinite, his affection has not wavered in the two years since. Which is surprising, because Bankman-Fried is no longer a lauded cryptocurrency billionaire but an alleged con man, on trial for seven counts of fraud and money laundering. (He has pleaded not guilty.)
Lewis was introduced to Bankman-Fried by an unnamed friend, who was poised to invest in
The Myth of the Effective Dictator
Last week, at a Fox News town hall (where else?), former President Donald Trump called China’s despot, Xi Jinping, a “brilliant” guy who “runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.” Lest anyone doubt his admiration, Trump added that Xi is “smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There’s nobody in Hollywood like this guy.”
Trump is not alone. Many in the United States and around the globe see the allure of a dictator who gets things done and makes the trains run
The End of German Exceptionalism
Asked what came to her mind when thinking about Germany, former Chancellor Angela Merkel once said, “I think of airtight windows. No other country can build as airtight and as beautiful windows.”
With its history tainted, post-1945 Germany looked to its economy for a positive conception of itself. The goods Germany produced, such as those quality windows, allowed politicians to celebrate the country as an “export world champion.” Germany Inc., was a well-oiled capitalist-corporatist ensemble. Trade-union leaders and CEOs
A Novelist Relentlessly in Search of Her Other Selves
In the early days of the pandemic, it became harder for us to see one another. The human face, the ultimate marker of individuality, what the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas called “the first disclosure,” was suddenly sheathed in fabric. Strangers encountered on the street were even stranger—and the masks that covered their visage became a screen on which to project anxious thoughts.
In August Blue, the South African–born, North London–based novelist Deborah Levy’s latest, a concert pianist named Elsa Anderson
The Real Reason South Koreans Aren’t Having Babies
On the days she’s feeling most generous toward men—say, when she sees a handsome man on the street—Helena Lee can sometimes put her distaste aside and appreciate them as “eye candy.” That’s as far as she goes: “I do not want to know what is inside of his brain.” Most of the time, she wants nothing at all to do with men.
“I try to have faith in guys and not to be like, ‘Kill all men,’” she says. “But
What I Learned When My Parents Got Arrested
I was eating tandoori chicken at Shalimar Restaurant in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco on a school night when I received a call from my aunt, Yasmeen, who said my parents had been arrested.
Earlier in the morning, a dozen armed FBI agents had raided our home in Fremont, California; dragged my parents out of bed; handcuffed them while they were in their pajamas, and drove them to the county jail in Oakland. There was even a helicopter circling
Will Britain Survive? – The Atlantic
The grim reality for Britain as it faces up to 2022 is that no other major power on Earth stands quite as close to its own dissolution. Given its recent record, perhaps this should not be a surprise. In the opening two decades of the 21st century, Britain has effectively lost two wars and seen its grand strategy collapse, first with the 2008 financial crisis, which blew up its social and economic settlement, and, then, in 2016, when the