● King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World’s Dominant Currency
Paul Blustein
Review via Financial Times
Dollar hegemony has long enraged governments around the world. In the 1960s the French complained of America’s “exorbitant privilege”. Forty years later, as the global financial crisis wreaked havoc, China called for a shift away from the dollar… Blustein believes that the forces supporting the dollar are quite durable and the potential alternatives weak, making its dominance “almost impregnable”. Even if the dollar’s role attenuates, he is not too concerned. Financial stability might actually increase with more international currencies, he writes, because “a multipolar currency regime would create more safe havens to flee to during crises.”

● The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto
Benjamin Wallace
Review via The Wall Street Journal
In 2008 a cryptocurrency called bitcoin was first proposed in a digital white paper signed by someone who called himself “Satoshi Nakamoto.” A few months later, Mr. Nakamoto released the source code to the internet. For a few years, he collaborated on the project remotely with others. Then, in 2011, Mr. Nakamoto wrote in an email to co-developer Mike Hearn that he had “moved on to other things.” He was never heard from again. And to this day, as Benjamin Wallace shows in his highly enjoyable “The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto,” no one knows who he really is.

● Blunt Instrument: Why Economic Theory Can’t Get Any Better…Why We Need It Anyway
Alex Rosenberg
Summary via publisher (MIT Press)
Economic theory has never gotten any better at prediction. Its explanations are always after the fact. The mathematical models economists have devoted themselves to for more than a century can’t be improved to enhance their empirical relevance. But from this research program that never paid off, a very useful tool has emerged—game theory. It’s just what civilized society needs to protect itself from the rapaciousness that condemns all markets to fail. In Blunt Instrument, Alex Rosenberg helps explain to outsiders exactly what they need to make sense of economic theory, and why despite its failures, it’s still indispensable.

● Abundance
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
Review via Noahpinion
The basic thesis of this book is that liberalism — or progressivism, or the left, etc. — has forgotten how to build the things that people want. Every progressive talks about “affordable housing”, and yet blue cities and blue states build so little housing that it becomes unaffordable. Every progressive talks about the need to fight climate change, and yet environmental regulations have made it incredibly difficult to replace fossil fuels with green energy. Many progressives dream about the days when government could accomplish great things, and post maps of imaginary high-speed rail networks crisscrossing the country, yet various progressive policies have hobbled the government’s ability to build infrastructure.

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