Best Reads in 2023
Project Syndicate
Scott Patterson, Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis, Scribner, 2023.
Like the corporate raider Gordon Gekko’s famous “greed is good” speech in the 1987 film Wall Street, Chaos Kings is both a roadmap to riches (for some) and a powerfully crafted cautionary tale. Taking center stage is not unbridled greed per se, but rather the financial opportunities associated with volatility, uncertainty, and chaos. Scott Patterson, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, masterfully covers the gamut from financial to climate risks, showing how both the “unknowns” and the “unknowables” make climate change particularly costly and, for some, lucrative.
In: "PS Commentators’ Best Reads in 2023" (15 December 2023)
