Shutdown

How Covid Shook the World's Economy

By: Adam Tooze

Narrated by: Simon Vance, Adam Tooze

Deftly weaving finance, politics, business, and the global human experience into one tight narrative, a tour-de-force account of 2020, the year that changed everything--from the acclaimed author of Crashed.

The shocks of 2020 have been great and small, disrupting the world economy, international relations and the daily lives of virtually everyone on the planet. Never before has the entire world economy contracted by 20 percent in a matter of weeks nor in the historic record of modern capitalism has there been a moment in which 95 percent of the world's economies were suffering all at the same time. Across the world hundreds of millions have lost their jobs. And over it all looms the specter of pandemic, and death.

Adam Tooze, whose last book was universally lauded for guiding us coherently through the chaos of the 2008 crash, now brings his bravura analytical and narrative skills to a panoramic and synthetic overview of our current crisis. By focusing on finance and business, he sets the pandemic story in a frame that casts a sobering new light on how unprepared the world was to fight the crisis, and how deep the ruptures in our way of living and doing business are. The virus has attacked the economy with as much ferocity as it has our health, and there is no vaccine arriving to address that.

Tooze's special gift is to show how social organization, political interests, and economic policy interact with devastating human consequences, from your local hospital to the World Bank. He moves fluidly from the impact of currency fluctuations to the decimation of institutions--such as health-care systems, schools, and social services--in the name of efficiency. He starkly analyzes what happened when the pandemic collided with domestic politics (China's party conferences; the American elections), what the unintended consequences of the vaccine race might be, and the role climate change played in the pandemic. Finally, he proves how no unilateral declaration of 'independence" or isolation can extricate any modern country from the global web of travel, goods, services, and finance.

*This program includes a downloadable PDF of graphs and tables from the book.

Powerful, Ominous, Global Context

This book is many things: It’s a grand narrative that explores the global financial system and it’s reaction to COVID. Brilliantly performed by Vance. It’s also an illuminating peek behind the curtain in a year where I felt like I tracked the neural pulses of the Economy more than ever before— this book taught me I hadn’t.

As with Tooze’s previous work, the detail can be overwhelming. But even being understood at its broadest, Shutdown makes itself worthy of your time. It tells the human story of failure and triumph, in context we can all still emotionally attach to. Further arguing for the timeliness of this book; we are amidst a turning point in history, and to even understand the moment for what it is, you need to widen your lens. Shutdown is essential to understanding the physics of global finance.

A needed look at the economic impact of Covid

Some parts of this book was a rehash of the multitude of material we absorbed during the covid crisis. The important part adds how the economies of the world responded-- this was a hugely dangerous moment with not a lot in the way of precedence. That we came through it with just a temporary supply shortage and a tinge of inflation is a credit to the economic ministers of the world.

Nice refresher of the crisis

Detailed analysis of all the key players. Insightful to look at it in retro and appreciate the complete change in our outlook of the coming times.

An impressive tale

The content and research that went into this book is on evident display throughout, with data-Rick arguments and clear-headed and factual reporting. Where I struggled was sections where the author chose to go on diatribes and into rabbit holes, not necessarily conspiracy theorizing, but certainly hubristic and at least sometimes rather evidently redundant.

My biggest gripe was the fact that entire sections were spent, page after dense page, without a clear tether to the virus that is supposedly at the root of this volume. Agreed that much of what happened in that eventful year 2020 was years, if not decades, in the making and so while contextual relevance was never in question, the author’s persistent and long winded explanations left me wondering whether brevity would have served to demonstrate wit better.

Having said that, though, I must reiterate the absolutely impressive achievement that this book is, and an invaluable and persuasively embarrassing reminder that humanity was never really in control. Wasn’t the first time, and certainly won’t be the last.

Oh, read this book

Tooze writes history with analysis skill unmatched. Yet, he too is a traveler on the earth with more thank an ounce of skepticism. That makes him relevant.