Articles
I have written articles, op-eds, and book reviews for many publications, including the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Wired, the Financial Times, The Observer, The Telegraph, Reuters; and the New Statesman.
I currently write a column on economics, finance, and markets for Reuters Breakingviews.
For an archive of my other articles, columns, and op-eds, click here.
For an archive of my book reviews, click here.
A couple of recent pieces are below.
Gambling Man: the Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son by Lionel Barber
The Financial Times | 16 October 2024
At the very beginning of Gambling Man, his biography of Masayoshi “Masa” Son, the founder of Japanese investment firm SoftBank, Lionel Barber concedes that his subject is “probably the most powerful mogul of the twenty-first century who is not a household name”. The rest of the book proceeds to prove how absurd a paradox this is.
Son is, after all, a biographer’s dream. His career is an almost surreal string of personal highs and lows. Zelig-like, he has been present at - and indeed often responsible for - almost every big turning point in global tech over the past four decades.
This is a man, Barber, a former editor of the FT, reminds us, who has been “the single largest foreign investor in capitalist America and communist China; the biggest start-up funder in the world, and the boss of one of the top ten most indebted firms, continually threatening a financial implosion”.
You can read my review of the book here.
The Financial Times | 16 October 2024
At the very beginning of Gambling Man, his biography of Masayoshi “Masa” Son, the founder of Japanese investment firm SoftBank, Lionel Barber concedes that his subject is “probably the most powerful mogul of the twenty-first century who is not a household name”. The rest of the book proceeds to prove how absurd a paradox this is.
Son is, after all, a biographer’s dream. His career is an almost surreal string of personal highs and lows. Zelig-like, he has been present at - and indeed often responsible for - almost every big turning point in global tech over the past four decades.
This is a man, Barber, a former editor of the FT, reminds us, who has been “the single largest foreign investor in capitalist America and communist China; the biggest start-up funder in the world, and the boss of one of the top ten most indebted firms, continually threatening a financial implosion”.
You can read my review of the book here.
George Soros’ 1980s debt warning echoes today
Reuters Breakingviews | 8 Nov 2024
“The stock market boom has diverted our attention from the fundamental deterioration in the financial position of the United States.” So wrote hedge-fund titan George Soros in late 1986 in his investment classic “The Alchemy of Finance”. His ominous warning of the threat that unsustainable public finances can pose was realised spectacularly the following October, when the U.S. equity market registered its fastest crash in history.
On the eve of Tuesday’s presidential election, the S&P 500 Index traded at 25 times earnings – more than 50% above its long-term average – and the Congressional Budget Office was predicting that U.S. public debt would by 2027 blow through the record set immediately after World War II, relative to GDP. With a Republican clean sweep of Congress looking likely, even that looks under-egged. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reckons that by 2035 President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign plans will add up to a further US$ 15.6 trillion to the US public debt. U.S. Treasury yields have risen sharply. Soros’ four-decade old warning is all too relevant again.
You can read why in my column here.
Reuters Breakingviews | 8 Nov 2024
“The stock market boom has diverted our attention from the fundamental deterioration in the financial position of the United States.” So wrote hedge-fund titan George Soros in late 1986 in his investment classic “The Alchemy of Finance”. His ominous warning of the threat that unsustainable public finances can pose was realised spectacularly the following October, when the U.S. equity market registered its fastest crash in history.
On the eve of Tuesday’s presidential election, the S&P 500 Index traded at 25 times earnings – more than 50% above its long-term average – and the Congressional Budget Office was predicting that U.S. public debt would by 2027 blow through the record set immediately after World War II, relative to GDP. With a Republican clean sweep of Congress looking likely, even that looks under-egged. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget reckons that by 2035 President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign plans will add up to a further US$ 15.6 trillion to the US public debt. U.S. Treasury yields have risen sharply. Soros’ four-decade old warning is all too relevant again.
You can read why in my column here.