There are always a few candidates for ‘best public intellectual’, and candidate lists always reflect the priors of the selectors. In 2021 there’s no doubt Columbia University’s Adam Tooze would be at the top of the list. His output over a decade or more since his history of the global financial crisis Crashed confirms him as one of the few writers whose work has to be read if one wants to stay part of the conversation. Tooze is a better economist than most economists, a better historian than most historians, and has a focus more global than anyone currently writing.

His latest book Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World Economy has just been published. I read it before speaking with Adam from his home in New York (listen in the Podcasts section). The book chronicles the year between January 20, 2020, and January 20, 2021, as the world realised Covid for the threat it was, and moved to deal with it. Reading Shutdown induced a kind of Deja Vu in me. Like me you probably dimly remember the story about the mass monkey brawls in Thailand. Tooze recalls it for you but puts it – and hundreds of other sparse elements of the global Covid story – into a narrative structured in time. After embarrassing him with complements, that’s where we start. Why did Tooze, a historian of decades, choose a single year as the structure of his book?

We also discuss the possibility of a climate detente between the US and China, as the move to great power competition and cooperation between them accelerates. We discuss risk societies and polycrisis, the idea that the vectors of global change from climate to geopolitics to future pandemics feed into and accelerate one another. In 2016, while President of the EU Commission, Jean Claude Junker described polycrisis this way:

“Our various challenges – from the security threats in our neighbourhood and at home, to the refugee crisis, and to the UK referendum – have not only arrived at the same time. They also feed each other, creating a sense of doubt and uncertainty in the minds of our people.”

Doubt and uncertainty. Two words we’ve lived by since Covid first came into the global consciousness.

We move on to think about Keynes’ famous quote: anything we can actually do, we can afford. The emphasis on actually is both mine and Tooze’s, and we get into just how complicated the ‘real’ nature of the Covid crisis is and what it tells us about this moment of acceleration we are heading into. The ability of elites to act quickly to solve problems under time pressure with lots of uncertainty and imperfect information is a theme running right through both Crashed and Shutdown. The ability of those elites to deal with the climate change and biodiversity crises seems quite limited, though we talk extensively about where hope can be found, in expert networks and beyond.

Then we think about the problem of delivery in 2021. Shutdown contrasts the US and Chinese responses to Covid. Both were messy, uncertain, mired in the usual politics. But the Chinese were bold, decisive, they delivered. The US effort collapsed due to weak leadership on the part of President Trump, the internecine politics of the two-party system, and the fractured welfare state generations of policy makers have left behind. Seen against this backdrop, the achievement of Trump’s Operation Warpspeed is all the more remarkable.

Given the global nature of the conversation, we finish on a slightly parochial note. Where does Tooze see Ireland’s place in the world, and its position in the global political economy, as changes in investment, trade, and tax reform, take place? The answer is surprisingly reassuring and sensible. Focus on the creation of exceptional talent through your further and higher education systems. Curb emissions from the dairy industry in particular, and all will be well.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did, and I encourage everyone to read Shutdown and Crashed, and subscribe to Tooze’s Substack.

*****

When Stephen Kinsella met…

Stephen Kinsella’s interview with Adam Tooze is the latest in a series of interviews that The Currency’s Chief Economics writer has conducted with leading politicians, policymakers and thought leaders. Here is the full back catalogue:

Three governments, three crises, and ten years in the corridors of power: when Stephen Kinsella met Ed Brophy

Ed Brophy has served as chief of staff to a tánaiste and chief advisor to a finance minister. Having just stepped away from politics, he reflects on the intersection of power and policy, and the crises that defined the decade: the bailout, Brexit and Covid.

Housing, childcare, health and tax: When Stephen Kinsella met Pearse Doherty

With Sinn Féin leading in the latest opinion polls, Stephen Kinsella asks the party’s finance spokesperson to imagine himself as finance minister. From the unwinding of pandemic spending to preparations for a potential united Ireland, this is what Pearse Doherty said he would do.

The business of government: When Stephen Kinsella met Orlaigh Quinn

The top civil servant at Department of Business, Enterprise, and Innovation Dr Orlaigh Quinn talks productivity, Brexit and female entrepreneurship.

Fiscally speaking: When Stephen Kinsella met Paschal Donohoe

Two days after a landmark €17.75 billion budget designed to protect the economy from a pandemic, economist Stephen Kinsella spoke with Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe about budgetary philosophy, the economics of deficits, and the power of the state.

“Everything is dictated by the dynamics of how politics operates”: Stephen Kinsella meets Mary Lou McDonald

If the polls are correct, Mary Lou McDonald could be the next taoiseach. In this interview, she discusses leadership, organisational change, reunification, public sector reform and economics.

We need to talk about reform: When Stephen Kinsella meets Robert Watt

Ireland talks endlessly about taxation and expenditure, but few people talk about the mechanics of reform. This is what I wanted to discuss with one of the country’s top civil servants, 48 hours after Budget day.