PRICE WARS - OUT NOW

I couldn’t help but wonder... could a book about the chaotic 2010s say much about the coming 2020s?

As the publication date for Price Wars approached, I couldn’t help but wonder if a book about the chaotic 2010s had much to say about the coming 2020s? And just like that, a revolution deposed Kazakhstan’s government for letting fuel prices double. Inflation surged world wide, rising gas prices tanked Biden’s poll numbers, and a ‘cost of living’ crisis struck the UK. Price Wars were still (Mr) Big.

But just as this coming rebooted decade would cast off some familiar faces and bring in new ones, the plot appears to be largely the same. Global price shocks triggering global crisis triggering yet another round ruinous price shocks. The formula will be tweaked, for sure, but engine of chaos continues to roar.

And now my guide to lower-Manhattan shenanigans is finally for sale. My anthropology of Wall Street banks, hedge funds and commodity traders exposes what the markets really want. And it’s these nefarious interests that govern the rules that rest of us have to play by.

Two free excerpts went out this week at Anand Giridharadas’s The Ink and Lit Hub. I penned a piece for TIME on what climate activists can learn from the war on drugs for fighting the war on oil. I spoke to Bloomberg TV about the war in Ukraine and the Daily Beast about the story’s true villain.

More on Price Wars to come, but for Season 1 we have plenty to get started.