Updates

  1. Person pages list letters, writing, profiles and links as sortable tables with filters, and show each person's companies as links; Fund letters show each letter's description in its own column.
  2. Experts show a checked job title and a short description of each person; 30 more people have photographs.
  3. Every company, fund, university and publication the experts work for has a page listing the people there.
  4. Fund letters show each letter's thesis and filter by it; 225 person pages list the essays, columns and newsletter issues the person wrote.
  5. Person pages list every essay and newsletter issue a person wrote, and their own books as a table in List view.
  6. Recommends shows the five largest kinds of book and the rest under More; browse pictures load sooner.
  7. Podcasts and talks link the original episode, filter by Audio and video or Press, and list each publisher once.
  8. Pages are wider, Recommends has List and Grid, and a filter clicked again turns off.
  9. Book cards sit in a ruled grid with Open Library and Goodreads links and each book's one-line note.
  10. Funds is now Investors; each investor's styles are buttons that filter the table.
  11. Podcasts and talks on a person's page filter by year and publisher and show as a list or a grid of pictures.
  12. Quotes show only people's own words: 472 summaries written by list sites are gone.
  13. Country pages open from Browse again, and every link on the shelf lands on a page.
  14. Subject and person pages show their sections as tabs, and each book appears once on a person's page.
  15. Book cards show the quote, who said it and the source; grids show five cards to a row.
  16. On a phone, a menu holds the sections, search, Updates, Feedback and dark mode.
  17. Feedback takes a screenshot of the page with no browser prompt, opens a screenshot full size when you click it, and clears itself once sent.
  18. Book cards are centred, search names the topic each book sits in, and any text cut short shows whole on hover.
  19. Search groups its results by kind: people, companies, geographies, subjects, topics, books, funds, fund letters and papers.
  20. The Books table lists who recommended each book by name, and the browser tab names the section you are in.
  21. Feedback can take a screenshot of the page, or one you paste or choose, and opens in the corner beside Updates.
  22. Each rail button reopens its section where you left it, and Browse, Table and People show on every book and subject page.
  23. Filters grey out choices that hold nothing instead of hiding them, and Books › People filters by authors or recommenders.
  24. Feedback takes a subject line and up to three screenshots.
  25. Biographies are grouped by the person they are about: 41 new pages, from Abraham Lincoln to Lee Kuan Yew.
  26. Sport splits into 23 sports, and Religion into one topic per faith.
  27. Book lists show as cards: the cover, one recommendation quote and every recommender by name.
  28. Seventeen subjects that had two or three pages under different names now have one page each.
  29. Every page lists its Experts as authors and recommenders, with a link to them on the Experts tab.
  30. Economics, Financial history, Financial panics and Accounting are subjects of their own, with one page per financial crisis.
  31. Book, person and subject pages open inside the app, so the tabs stay in view.
  32. 996 more book covers, and photographs or logos for 227 more people and companies.
  33. Books › Browse shows every subject as cards, and the rail holds Fund letters, Papers, Experts, Books and Funds.
  34. Every topic over 150 books splits into narrower topics, each with a page of its own.

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Sovereign debt and default

Secular themes

Governments have defaulted for eight centuries and will again; the literature is now data-driven as well as narrative.

Books 10Experts 1Recommenders 6

Start here

  1. Lords of FinanceLiaquat Ahamed, 2009
  2. Adults in the RoomYanis Varoufakis, 2017
  3. This Time Is DifferentCarmen M. Reinhart, Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2009
Lords of FinanceLords of Finance
T1 Lords of Finance
Liaquat Ahamed · 2009
Open LibraryGoodreads

How four central bankers and the gold standard turned a slump into the Depression.

“I'm going to use "classic" again but rightfully so.” — Christopher Bloomstran

Source: Semper Augustus 2020 Letter to Clients, 'To Read or Not to Read', p. 57

Recommended by: Christopher Bloomstran, Mohnish Pabrai

This Time Is DifferentThis Time Is Different
T1 This Time Is Different
Carmen M. Reinhart, Kenneth S. Rogoff · 2009
Open LibraryGoodreads

Eight centuries of defaults and banking crises show the same patterns recurring.

Recommended by: Mohnish Pabrai and 3 others

Debt: The First 5,000 YearsDebt: The First 5,000 Years
T1 Debt: The First 5,000 Years
David Graeber · 2011
Open LibraryGoodreads

Debt came before money and barter, and its history is one of forgiveness and revolt.

Recommended by: Patrick Collison

Golden FettersGolden Fetters
T2 Golden Fetters
Barry Eichengreen · 1992
Open LibraryGoodreads

How the gold standard spread the Depression, and why leaving it early meant recovery.

Crisis EconomicsCrisis Economics
T2 Crisis Economics
Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Mihm · 2010
Open LibraryGoodreads

Financial crises are normal, not freak events, and the reforms they call for.

Hall of MirrorsHall of Mirrors
T2 Hall of Mirrors
Barry Eichengreen · 2015
Open LibraryGoodreads

How 1930s lessons guided policy in 2008, averting a depression but adding errors.

Adults in the RoomAdults in the Room
T2 Adults in the Room
Yanis Varoufakis · 2017
Open LibraryGoodreads

Greece's 2015 debt talks with its creditors, by its finance minister at the time.

In Defense of Public DebtIn Defense of Public Debt
T2 In Defense of Public Debt
Barry Eichengreen, Asmaa El-Ganainy, Rui Esteves, Kris James Mitchener · 2021
Open LibraryGoodreads

Sovereign borrowing from Italian city-states to the pandemic, and what it paid for.

And the Weak Suffer What They Must?And the Weak Suffer What They Must?
T3 And the Weak Suffer What They Must?
Yanis Varoufakis · 2016
Open LibraryGoodreads

The euro's design flaws traced back through the postwar monetary system.

The Euro and the Battle of IdeasThe Euro and the Battle of Ideas
T3 The Euro and the Battle of Ideas
Markus K. Brunnermeier, Harold James, Jean-Pierre Landau · 2016
Open LibraryGoodreads

The euro crisis as a clash between German and French economic traditions.

More secular themes

← Reshoring and Supply Chain RelocationSpace Economy →All secular themes