Here are 100 books that COVID-19 and Sovereign Debt fans have personally recommended if you like
COVID-19 and Sovereign Debt.
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As a physicist by education and therefore fundamentally interested in how things work, my early career was spent in secure communications before moving into finance, specifically payments. I helped to found one of the leading consultancies in the field and worked globally for organizations ranging from Visa and AMEX to various governments and multiple Central Banks. I wrote, it turned out, one of the key books in the field, Identity Is The New Money (2014), and subsequently, Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin (2017), about the history and future of money. The Currency Cold War (2020) was a prescient implication of digital currencies, particularly CBDC.
I see David Greaeber’s book as a landmark in the field. He completely changed my understanding of and views on money’s role in society and its evolution. I had the good fortune to meet David a few times (in fact, I made a podcast with him) and feel like I learned from every conversation.
Until I read David’s book, I had assumed that the Barter theory of money and the double coincidence of wants was the natural and unchallenged explanation for how money came to be and what roles it performed. David’s and subsequent authors' work has shown that this view is simplistic and outdated.
The groundbreaking international best-seller that turns everything you think about money, debt, and society on its head—from the “brilliant, deeply original political thinker” David Graeber (Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me)
Before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors—which lives on in full force to this day.
My interest in sovereign debt began as a UN economist in the 1980s. We detailed statistics on the stark impact of the crises and watched Latin American presidents plead for help in the General Assembly. Based in New York, I got invited to some meetings of major banks that held problem debt, wouldn’t admit it, but ultimately had to accept losses. African countries in crisis were mainly in debt to official creditors that also did not want to accept losses. Over time, the types of creditors changed and changed again, and debt crises kept reappearing, being fixed, reappearing until today. This is dramatic stuff. How could I not be interested?
Most debts embody a legal contract specifying how and when the borrowed funds will be repaid and any circumstances in which the obligation can be amended.
Non-payment of most loan contracts end up before a judge whose decisions on repayment are guided by a national bankruptcy law. Debts of sovereign states differ.
Insolvent governments negotiate partial or delayed repayment with their various creditors. The starting point is always that the contracts must be honored.
Professor Lienau argues that there are instances in legal theory and historically in practice in which governments did not and should not have had to repay “illegitimate” debts. She calls for international recognition of a legally enforceable concept of “responsible” lending and borrowing.
Imagine how that might make creditors think twice about lending to oppressive regimes?
Conventional wisdom holds that all nations must repay debt. Regardless of the legitimacy of the regime that signs the contract, a country that fails to honor its loan obligations damages its reputation, inviting still greater problems down the road. Yet difficult dilemmas arise from this assumption. Should today's South Africa be responsible for apartheid-era debt? Is it reasonable to tether postwar Iraq with Saddam Hussein's excesses?
Rethinking Sovereign Debt is a probing historical analysis of how sovereign debt continuity--the rule that nations should repay loans even after a major regime change, or expect reputational consequences--became the consensus approach. Odette Lienau…
My interest in sovereign debt began as a UN economist in the 1980s. We detailed statistics on the stark impact of the crises and watched Latin American presidents plead for help in the General Assembly. Based in New York, I got invited to some meetings of major banks that held problem debt, wouldn’t admit it, but ultimately had to accept losses. African countries in crisis were mainly in debt to official creditors that also did not want to accept losses. Over time, the types of creditors changed and changed again, and debt crises kept reappearing, being fixed, reappearing until today. This is dramatic stuff. How could I not be interested?
When people talk about human rights and sovereign debt, it is usually when the government cannot pay its obligations and squeezes its citizens in the effort.
Who will speak up to protect those people? Thirty authors (including your correspondent) aim to do just that.
While one essay claims that creditor (property) rights trump human rights in international law, most of the authors discuss how to bring human rights into the legal landscape governing different types of foreign loans or investment, or how to protect the rights to food, health, education and more when the International Monetary Fund and creditors demand austerity.
Other essays propose international legal reforms (including arbitral, soft law, and “anti-vulture” litigation). Scholars, activists, or just the curious will want to consult this important and thoroughly accessible volume.
Sovereign debt is necessary for the functioning of many modern states, yet its impact on human rights is underexplored in academic literature. This volume provides the reader with a step-by-step analysis of the debt phenomenon and how it affects human rights. Beginning by setting out the historical, political and economic context of sovereign debt, the book goes on to address the human rights dimension of the policies and activities of the three types of sovereign lenders: international financial institutions (IFIs), sovereigns and private lenders.
Bantekas and Lumina, along with a team of global experts, establish the link between debt and…
My interest in sovereign debt began as a UN economist in the 1980s. We detailed statistics on the stark impact of the crises and watched Latin American presidents plead for help in the General Assembly. Based in New York, I got invited to some meetings of major banks that held problem debt, wouldn’t admit it, but ultimately had to accept losses. African countries in crisis were mainly in debt to official creditors that also did not want to accept losses. Over time, the types of creditors changed and changed again, and debt crises kept reappearing, being fixed, reappearing until today. This is dramatic stuff. How could I not be interested?
Government borrowing is the golden goose that makes possible investment in public infrastructure and continuing expenditures despite temporary shortfalls in tax revenue.
But when not managed well or when rocked by unforeseen catastrophes, sovereign debt can become an impossible burden.
Because the International Monetary Fund is mandated to worry about international financial stability, it is the central institution for international oversight of sovereign debt.
In this volume, the IMF brought together 38 economic and legal experts to explain to a broad audience why governments borrow, how to borrow sustainably, and how to emerge from default.
It is not a training manual but is comprehensive and clearly written so that even ministers of finance and legislators should understand it and civil society should draw on it in campaigns against debt crises.
The last time global sovereign debt reached the level seen today was at the end of the Second World War, and this shaped a generation of economic policymaking. International institutions were transformed, country policies were often draconian and distortive, and many crises ensued. By the early 1970s, when debt fell back to pre-war levels, the world was radically different. It is likely that changes of a similar magnitude -for better and for worse - will play out over coming decades. Sovereign Debt: A Guide for Economists and Practitioners is an attempt to build some structure around the issues of sovereign…
John was born in Brisbane, Australia, and grew up roaming the beaches and playing backyard sports with his mates. His career spanned from mowing lawns and packing groceries, to being the Global Head of Acquisitions for a public listed travel company. In between bouts of work, he has travelled through over 80 countries, and been shot at, tear-gassed, robbed at gunpoint, and locked up in an African jail. He has stowed away in a Columbian cargo plane and been a passenger in two train derailments. John now lives with his family in the comparative safety of the Currumbin Valley on Australia’s Gold Coast. He considers it their base camp.
How could I leave out the doyen of modern-day autobiographical travel writing? Paul Theroux’s list of books describing his overland adventures and the history and culture of places he rides through, is impressive. He is funny, cantankerous, offensive, likable, and informative. I chose his last book Zona because he travels the same path I myself once took. It also differs from his earlier tomes in one distinct way; Paul undertook the hard overland journey from Cape Town to Angola at age 71, when most of us expect to be tucked up in bed with a warm toddy and a cat purring at our feet. His perspective from an older man commentates on and compares the Africa he once knew to now. At times, it’s a depressing tale, exposing stories of hunger and starvation, genocide, nature clogging with plastic, and vast examples of greed, climate change, wilderness destruction, and species extinction.…
Following the success of the acclaimed Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and The Great Railway Bazaar, The Last Train to Zona Verde is an ode to the last African journey of the world's most celebrated travel writer, Paul Theroux.
'Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,' writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey though the continent he knows and loves best.
Having travelled down the right-hand side of Africa in Dark Star Safari, he sets out this time from Cape Town, heading northwards in a new direction, up the left-hand side, through South Africa…
I became deeply interested in democracy and authoritarianism at an early age because of my experiences living under military dictatorships in Argentina in 1971-72 and in Brazil from 1980- 82, and also my experience as an undergraduate living in a democracy that failed in profound ways (Argentina, 1975). I saw first-hand that authoritarianism can affect daily life in hugely negative ways but also that democracy can fail in dismal ways. Reading and producing scholarship about democracy and authoritarianism, and teaching these subjects, became central to my immensely satisfying life’s work.
What I most admire aboutAutocracy and Redistributionis that it brings the best of contemporary political science to bear on questions of deep scholarly and real-world importance: what explains redistributive land reform? Albertus argues that redistributive land reform is much more likely when 1) top-level state leaders and large landowners have diverging interests and2) institutional barriers to achieving large-scale reform are lower. Albertus shows that redistributive land reform is more likely under dictatorship than democracy.
When and why do countries redistribute land to the landless? What political purposes does land reform serve, and what place does it have in today's world? A long-standing literature dating back to Aristotle and echoed in important recent works holds that redistribution should be both higher and more targeted at the poor under democracy. Yet comprehensive historical data to test this claim has been lacking. This book shows that land redistribution - the most consequential form of redistribution in the developing world - occurs more often under dictatorship than democracy. It offers a novel theory of land reform and develops…
In 6th grade I did a report about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, which manifested in a career spanning more than 20 years where I’ve worked for NGOs, the State Department, and the United States Agency for International Development to help make the world a better place. I’ve lived in Guatemala, Tajikistan, Armenia, and Jordan, and travelled throughout Sub-Saharan Africa working on conflict prevention, democracy, governance, and human rights. I’m a firm believer that, no matter your profession, everyone can help make the world a better place – and that’s why I wrote my book and why I read the books on my list – to help make this a reality.
This book is like the other side of the coin to Sex and World Peace.
In that book, the authors articulate the connection between gender inequality and global suffering through statistics, whereas Half the Sky describes it in individual stories. It is moving to hear about these women’s suffering, but it is also uplifting to hear how they have overcome.
This book is an excellent resource for understanding how gender equality leads to increasing economic growth while reducing global poverty and inequality. It is an important tool in any ordinary hero’s toolkit.
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation—the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. From the bestselling authors of Tightrope,two of our most fiercely moral voices
With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world…
Today's reporter inhabits an environment ranging from hostile to apathetic. Somewhere beyond the blistering criticism and rabid mistrust is the writer's haunting suspicion that today's revelatory art will line the reader's birdcage before his or her lunchtime McChicken. I get it. My entire professional career has been spent filing Right-to-Know and other public information requests, working the phones, chasing the perfect photo, and hammering at the keyboard in the hopes of something legible. On occasion I've mined something of both meaning and impact. That's what the writers I've featured have done as well as anyone I've ever read. May you find their journalism as inspiring as I do.
Seek finds Johnson mining his own humanity through true tales of Alaskan gold prospecting and the manhunt for a serial bomber.
He loses himself in fungus at an Oregan hippie festival and searches for God at a Christian biker rally in Texas. His travels take him to the sometimes-literal frontlines of the news, including the hellish delirium of the Liberian civil war and conversations with Constitution-toting Montanans bent on the overthrow of the United States government.
Johnson's writing in this compilation of essays was absolutely searing and a revelation to me. This stuff belongs in the home library of anyone who's ever aspired to pick up the pen.
“Johnson writes with a fervor that can only be described as religious. Seek is scary and beautiful and ecstatic and uncontrolled…he elevates the mundane to the sublime; he boils things down to their essence. He’s simply one of the few writers around whose sentences make you shudder.” —Adrienne Miller, Esquire
Part political disquisition, part travel journal, part self-exploration, Seek is a collection of essays and articles in which Denis Johnson essentially takes on the world. And not an obliging, easygoing world either; but rather one in which horror and beauty exist in such proximity that they might well be interchangeable.…
I became an anthropologist by accident. I never liked school, but I loved to travel, and I got a PhD so that I could rail against development and the perils of cross-cultural misunderstanding in print. Naively, I thought maybe someone would listen. Luckily for me, I discovered I also liked teaching. I first taught at UCLA and then at the Naval Postgraduate School, where I had mostly mid-career U.S. and international special operations officers in class. More serendipity: my two decades at the Naval Postgraduate School bracketed the Global War on Terror, which unfortunately proved to be a witch’s brew of cross-cultural misunderstanding.
Yes, this is the same Graham Hancock who now writes contrarian archeological tomes. I conducted some of my PhD fieldwork in the same area of Somalia that he visited as a reporter, and I was there not long after he was in the 1980s.
This was the first book I came across that explained why almost every development project I’d encountered when traveling around Africa seemed to be such a waste, or worse. Next to no one at the time was reporting on the corruption generated by ‘development’ or the extent to which aid was an industry. Hancock nailed it.
Each year some sixty billion dollars are spent on foreign aid throughout the world. Whether in donations to charities such as Save the Children, Oxfam, CARE, UNICEF, or the Red Cross, in the form of enormous loans from the World Bank, or as direct payments from one government to another, the money is earmarked for the needy, for relief in natural disasters—floods or famines, earthquakes, or droughts—and for assistance in the development of nations.
The magnitude of generosity from the world’s wealthy nations suggests the possibility of easing, if not eliminating, hunger, misery, and poverty; in truth, however, only a…
The essential feature of democratic capitalism is creative destruction–put simply, constant innovation in the products and services we produce and how we produce them. My book gives a history of electricity and demonstrates the wide-angle lens we must use to fully understand this sort of innovation. The books I recommend here are among the absolute best in this regard. Importantly, in Cold War II, China is challenging America with state capitalism and creative destruction is at the heart of the battle. I have a Ph.D. in Economics and founded a consulting company that assessed new technologies in the energy sector for over 30 years.
I love this book because of the compelling answer it gives to one of the most fundamental questions: why are some nations rich and others poor? The answer is that it depends on the political and economic institutions in place, with wealth accruing to nations with “inclusive institutions.” Put simply, nations with intellectual and economic freedom are richer.
Why does freedom matter? Because freedom opens the stage to Schumpeter’s creative destruction! The authors prove this, remarkably, through examples from around the globe, and they even use examples thousands of years apart in history. This is a must read to understand the way in which creative destruction drives prosperity both today and historically.
Shortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2012.
Why are some nations more prosperous than others? Why Nations Fail sets out to answer this question, with a compelling and elegantly argued new theory: that it is not down to climate, geography or culture, but because of institutions. Drawing on an extraordinary range of contemporary and historical examples, from ancient Rome through the Tudors to modern-day China, leading academics Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson show that to invest and prosper, people need to know that if they work hard, they can make money…