Ben S. Bernanke (2022 Nobel Prize in Economics) 21st Century Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve from the Great Inflation to COVID-19 Norton & Company Inc., 2022, 426 pages.
Description:
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Reserve deployed an extraordinary range of policy tools that helped prevent the collapse of the financial system and the U.S. economy. Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues lent directly to U.S. businesses, purchased trillions of dollars of government securities, pumped dollars into the international financial system, and crafted a new framework for monetary policy that emphasized job creation.
These strategies would have astonished Powell’s late-20th-century predecessors, from William McChesney Martin to Alan Greenspan, and the advent of these tools raises new questions about the future landscape of economic policy.
In 21st Century Monetary Policy, Ben S. Bernanke―former chair of the Federal Reserve and one of the world’s leading economists―explains the Fed’s evolution and speculates on its future. Taking a fresh look at the bank’s policymaking over the past seventy years, including his own time as chair, Bernanke shows how changes in the economy have driven the Fed’s innovations. He also lays out new challenges confronting the Fed, including the return of inflation, cryptocurrencies, increased risks of financial instability, and threats to its independence.
Beyond explaining the central bank’s new policymaking tools, Bernanke also captures the drama of moments when so much hung on the Fed’s decisions, as well as the personalities and philosophies of those who led the institution.
John H. Cochrane The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level Princeton University Press, 2023, 584 pages.
Description:
Where do inflation and deflation ultimately come from? The fiscal theory of the price level offers a simple answer: Prices adjust so that the real value of government debt equals the present value of taxes less spending. Inflation breaks out when people don’t expect the government to fully repay its debts. The fiscal theory is well suited to today’s economy: Financial innovation undermines money demand, and central banks don’t control the money supply or aggressively change interest rates, invalidating classic theories, while large debts and deficits threaten inflation and constrain monetary policy. This book presents a comprehensive account of this important theory from one of its leading developers and advocates.
John Cochrane aims to make fiscal theory useful as a conceptual framework and modeling tool, and for analyzing history and policy. He merges fiscal theory with standard models in which central banks set interest rates, giving a novel account of monetary policy. He generalizes the theory to explain data and make realistic predictions. For example, inflation decreases in recessions despite deficits because discount rates fall, raising the value of debt; specifying that governments promise to partially repay debt avoids classic puzzles and allows the theory to apply at all times, not just during periods of high inflation. Cochrane offers an extensive rethinking of monetary doctrines and institutions through the eyes of fiscal theory, and analyzes the era of zero interest rates and post-pandemic inflation.
Filled with research by Cochrane and others, The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level offers important new insights about fiscal and monetary policy.
Jon Fosse (2023 Nobel Prize in Literature) Morning and Evening (Original in Norwegian: Morgen og kveld, 2000) Dalkey Archive Press, 2015, 109 pages.
Description:
A child is born: he will be named Johannes and he will be a fisherman. An old man dies: his name is Johannes and he was a fisherman. This novel, written with the concentrated power of poetry, spans these two extremes of a human life, its language entering into the very process of being born and that of dying, when everything remains the same and yet is completely different. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed. Beginning with Johannes’s father’s thoughts as his wife goes into labor, and ending with Johannes’s own thoughts as he embarks upon a day in his life when everything is exactly the same, yet totally different, Morning and Evening is a novel concerning the beautiful dream that our lives have meaning.
Mario Vargas Llosa (Premio Nobel de Literatura 2010) Un bárbaro en París: Textos sobre la cultura francesa Alfaguara, 2023, 281 páginas.
Description:
«La literatura francesa fue la mejor y sigue siéndolo. La más osada, la más libre, […] la que se insubordina a la actualidad, la que regula y administra los sueños de los seres vivos».
Los mitos literarios y el dinamismo intelectual en Francia sedujeron a Vargas Llosa en los inicios de su carrera hasta el punto de que llegó a creer que sólo se convertiría en escritor si llegaba a París y lograba aclimatarse a un ambiente que concedía a las artes y al pensamiento un lugar privilegiado. Las novelas de Dumas y Flaubert le abrieron la imaginación y lo inclinaron hacia el realismo, y las ideas de Sartre, Camus, Bataille, Aron y Revel le mostraron cómo debía ser un intelectual público.
Según indica Carlos Granés en el prólogo de este libro, «su formación intelectual y cultural le dio la certeza de que cualquier escritor latinoamericano, incluso uno nacido en la provincia peruana (un bárbaro), podía participar en todos los asuntos políticos, culturales y sociales de su época si se nutría de sólidas tradiciones literarias y filosóficas. Buscando a Francia, Vargas Llosa encontró su país natal y el mundo entero».
La selección de escritos que conforman Un bárbaro en París da cuenta de esta devoción por la cultura francesa que ha conducido a Vargas Llosa a ser el primer autor de una lengua extranjera que recibe el más alto honor destinado a los escritores francófonos: convertirse en uno de los «inmortales». Por esta razón, el volumen se cierra con el discurso inédito de ingreso en la Academia Francesa pronunciado en febrero de 2023.
Ferdinand von Schirach Nachmittage (2022) Luchterhand, 175 Seiten.
Description:
Ferdinand von Schirach erzählt von milden Frühsommermorgen, verregneten Nachmittagen und schwarzen Nächten. Seine Geschichten spielen in Berlin, Pamplona, Oslo, Tokio, Zürich, New York, Marrakesch, Taipeh und Wien. Es sind kurze Geschichten über die Dinge, die unser Leben verändern, über Zufälle, falsche Entscheidungen und die Flüchtigkeit des Glücks. Schirach erzählt von der Einsamkeit der Menschen, von der Kunst, der Literatur, dem Film und immer auch von der Liebe.
Tenzin Geyche Tethong His Holiness the Fourthteenth Dalai Lama: An Illustrated Biography Roli Books, New Delhi, 2020, 352 pages.
Description:
This biography of the Dalai Lama—blessed by His Holiness himself—is the most authentic and intimate profile of the world’s greatest living spiritual figure. Tenzin Geyche Tethong, a close aide of His Holiness for forty years who became family, offers readers unprecedented access to the Dalai Lama in this beautifully illustrated book. The Dalai Lama’s youngest brother, Ngari Rinpoche Tenzin Choegyal, who was only 12 years old when he accompanied His Holiness on his dangerous 1959 escape to India, is a personal friend of Tethong and the mentor for this book project. As “elders” to the Tibetan community in exile, these men have come together to tell the true story of His Holiness—their brother, friend, and leader.
Featuring previously unpublished photographs, as well as interviews and memories of those closest to him, this book renders unparalleled insights into the Dalai Lama’s experiences as the preeminent leader of Tibet, and the wealth of his compassion and gentle humor in the face of the ongoing conflict. This is in no small part due to Tethong and Ngari Rinpoche’s unique perspectives on many sensitive issues.
Richly compelling, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama: An Illustrated Biography is a stunning visual celebration of the Dalai Lama, sketching a memorable portrait of an icon and a cause that have won the attention and hearts of billions across the world.
Daniel San Martín Clarity: un modelo unificador de las ciencias … y un relato del todo Planeta, 2021, 372 páginas.
Description:
Clarity está estructurado en siete capítulos que siguen un orden evolutivo histórico, pero que también es una secuencia de menor a mayor complejidad. Ellos son: formación del universo y átomos, ARN y vida, células y conciencia, animales y seres humanos, comunidades humanas, civilizaciones e historia universal, y el futuro de la humanidad. Para cada uno de estos grandes temas, el modelo plantea cuatro etapas (comunes en los siete capítulos): aparición, selección, cooperación y especialización. Cada una de estas implica un aumento exponencial en complejidad, cuya medida está dada por Φ, variable definida como el flujo de energía que utiliza un objeto dividido por la masa del objeto (Chaisson 2014).
Esta obra de Daniel – fruto de dos décadas de lecturas, estudio y desarrollo de su modelo – es simplemente extraordinaria. Como dice nuestro común amigo Álvaro Fischer en su prólogo: es “el libro que unifica el mundo físico con la vida humana”.
Henry Kissinger Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy Penguin Books, 2022, 499 pages.
Description:
Henry Kissinger analyses how six extraordinary leaders he has known have shaped their countries and the world’Leaders,’ writes Henry Kissinger in this compelling book, ‘think and act at the intersection of two the first, between the past and the future; the second between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. They must balance what they know, which is necessarily drawn from the past, with what they intuit about the future, which is inherently conjectural and uncertain. It is this intuitive grasp of direction that enables leaders to set objectives and lay down a strategy.’In Leadership , Kissinger analyses the lives of six extraordinary leaders through the distinctive strategies of statecraft which he believes they embodied. After the Second World War, Konrad Adenauer brought defeated and morally bankrupt Germany back into the community of nations by what Kissinger calls ‘the strategy of humility’. Charles de Gaulle set France beside the victorious Allies and renewed its historic grandeur by ‘the strategy of will’. During the Cold War, Richard Nixon gave geostrategic advantage to the United States by ‘the strategy of equilibrium’. After twenty-five years of conflict, Anwar Sadat brought a vision of peace to the Middle East by a ‘strategy of transcendence’. Against the odds, Lee Kwan Yew created a powerhouse city-state, Singapore, by ‘the strategy of excellence’. Although when she came to power Britain was known as ‘the sick man of Europe’, Margaret Thatcher renewed her country’s morale and international position by ‘the strategy of conviction’.To each of these studies, Kissinger brings historical perception, public experience and – because he knew each of their subjects, and participated in many of the events he describes – personal knowledge. The book is enriched by insights and judgements such as only he could make, and concludes with his reflections on world order and the indispensability of leadership today.