Joakim Book
Research Fellow
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The Backward-Looking Storyteller
“History is slow, with fascinating moments and events scattered among tons and tons of mundane and inconsequential things. When we select some of them and weave them into an iconic story, we often make a mockery of the past – and ourselves a disservice.” ~ Joakim Book
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The Success of Climate Mainstreaming
“Mainstreaming any important topic means to single-mindedly put everyone’s efforts in one basket and ignore all other important issues. That was my mistake ten years ago: not seeing the bigger picture. Now the world has caught up, keen on making that same mistake, central banks more so than most. Don Quixote de la Mancha sends…
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Lift Your Gaze, Please: the April Inflation Overshoot is Not the Problem
“A betting man, if he wants to remain a betting man, updates his priors. So, I side with Jason Bloom at the asset manager Invesco: ‘There is so much dislocation in the economy from the reopening and base effects from a year ago that it will take at least six to 12 months before we…
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To Lean, Clean, or Reign Supreme
“After a decade or more of economic and financial events that put central banks under heavy strain – financial collapse, a slow and timid recovery, the pandemic – strange things are again amiss in financial markets. Broda and Druckenmiller are right to say that ‘the Fed seems to be fighting the last battle.’ Ironically, so…
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The Inevitable Yo-Yo Ride of Pandemic Fortresses
“In a world where people suddenly ceased traveling it was inevitable that end stations should do comparatively well in every way except economically. Crediting their ‘success’ to government policies is a mistake. Instead, geography appears to be the dominant factor.” ~ Phillip W. Magness & Joakim Book
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Dissenters, Unite!
“Nemeth falls for the classic writer’s mistake of telling her readers something rather than showing them. She repeats her talking points about the group value of dissent and she explains the results from various experimental studies, but she never really delves into precisely how those studies convincingly prove the psychological results they aim for: that…
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Is This Our 1914 Moment?
“Last year’s government power-grabbing disasters could be the modern equivalent of 1914 – the war to end all wars, where ‘We’ll be back by Christmas’ is to be replaced by the ‘Two weeks to flatten curve,’ that unfathomably stretched into years or decades. It took Europe some 50 years to recover from that initial governmental…
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Bitcoin and a Lesson in Electricity Markets
“We should indeed be skeptical of financial fads, of everything in the Everything Bubble. And we should argue over bitcoin’s many monetary attributes – mostly because we therefore highlight how other monetary regimes work. But the environmental accusations of Bitcoin’s mining operations is like hitting your head against brick walls – not a very useful…
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What Chess Can Teach Us About Economic Justice
“Congrats to all the hard-working chess-producers out there: you deserve every cent you earn – even the ones that governments steal from you. In any counterfactual world, we’d want somebody’s skills and work and knowledge, in which case they would deserve that wealth. It had to be someone, and it happened to be you. Congrats!”…
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The Ignorant World and What to Do About It
“It’s a counterintuitive notion and a difficult thing to wrap one’s head around, that the world can both be better and is still in many respects bad. We do nobody any favors, least of all our children, by exaggerating one while forgetting how far we’ve come.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
The Backward-Looking Storyteller
“History is slow, with fascinating moments and events scattered among tons and tons of mundane and inconsequential things. When we select some of them and weave them into an iconic story, we often make a mockery of the past – and ourselves a disservice.” ~ Joakim Book
-
•
The Success of Climate Mainstreaming
“Mainstreaming any important topic means to single-mindedly put everyone’s efforts in one basket and ignore all other important issues. That was my mistake ten years ago: not seeing the bigger picture. Now the world has caught up, keen on making that same mistake, central banks more so than most. Don Quixote de la Mancha sends…
-
•
Lift Your Gaze, Please: the April Inflation Overshoot is Not the Problem
“A betting man, if he wants to remain a betting man, updates his priors. So, I side with Jason Bloom at the asset manager Invesco: ‘There is so much dislocation in the economy from the reopening and base effects from a year ago that it will take at least six to 12 months before we…
-
•
To Lean, Clean, or Reign Supreme
“After a decade or more of economic and financial events that put central banks under heavy strain – financial collapse, a slow and timid recovery, the pandemic – strange things are again amiss in financial markets. Broda and Druckenmiller are right to say that ‘the Fed seems to be fighting the last battle.’ Ironically, so…
-
•
The Inevitable Yo-Yo Ride of Pandemic Fortresses
“In a world where people suddenly ceased traveling it was inevitable that end stations should do comparatively well in every way except economically. Crediting their ‘success’ to government policies is a mistake. Instead, geography appears to be the dominant factor.” ~ Phillip W. Magness & Joakim Book
-
•
Dissenters, Unite!
“Nemeth falls for the classic writer’s mistake of telling her readers something rather than showing them. She repeats her talking points about the group value of dissent and she explains the results from various experimental studies, but she never really delves into precisely how those studies convincingly prove the psychological results they aim for: that…
-
•
Is This Our 1914 Moment?
“Last year’s government power-grabbing disasters could be the modern equivalent of 1914 – the war to end all wars, where ‘We’ll be back by Christmas’ is to be replaced by the ‘Two weeks to flatten curve,’ that unfathomably stretched into years or decades. It took Europe some 50 years to recover from that initial governmental…
-
•
Bitcoin and a Lesson in Electricity Markets
“We should indeed be skeptical of financial fads, of everything in the Everything Bubble. And we should argue over bitcoin’s many monetary attributes – mostly because we therefore highlight how other monetary regimes work. But the environmental accusations of Bitcoin’s mining operations is like hitting your head against brick walls – not a very useful…
-
•
What Chess Can Teach Us About Economic Justice
“Congrats to all the hard-working chess-producers out there: you deserve every cent you earn – even the ones that governments steal from you. In any counterfactual world, we’d want somebody’s skills and work and knowledge, in which case they would deserve that wealth. It had to be someone, and it happened to be you. Congrats!”…
-
•
The Ignorant World and What to Do About It
“It’s a counterintuitive notion and a difficult thing to wrap one’s head around, that the world can both be better and is still in many respects bad. We do nobody any favors, least of all our children, by exaggerating one while forgetting how far we’ve come.” ~ Joakim Book