2022.07.05一位危机史学家给我们带来了一些坏消息

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A CRISIS HISTORIAN HAS SOME BAD NEWS FOR US
Adam Tooze, a historian of economic disaster, sees a combination of worrisome signs.

By Annie Lowrey
close up of Adam Tooze's face in color
Brian Finke
JULY 5, 2022
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About the author: Annie Lowrey is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.   

America and the world are living through what Adam Tooze, the internet’s foremost historian of money and disaster, describes as a “polycrisis.” As he sips a beer at a bar near Columbia University, where he is the director of the European Institute, Tooze talks through a long list of challenges: War, raising the specter of nuclear conflict. Climate change, threatening famine, flood, and fire. Inflation, forcing central banks to crush consumer demand. The pandemic, closing factories and overloading hospitals. Each crisis is hard enough to parse by itself; the interconnected mess of them is infinitely more so. And he feels “the whole is even more dangerous than the sum of the parts.”


Not too long ago, Tooze was an obscure academic. Now he’s among the world’s most influential financial commentators, with loyal readerships in Washington, London, Paris, and Brussels, as well as on Wall Street. Tooze’s readers turn to him for his uncanny ability to know which numbers on a spreadsheet matter, or when a trend has hit the point at which it has started to shape history. He looks at trade, currency, equities, wage, employment, debt, and commodities data and somehow makes sense of it—not just in the moment but in the sweep of time. “Economic events have had such a huge influence on politics this century,” Robert Skidelsky, the John Maynard Keynes biographer, told me. Tooze “illustrates the interpenetration of economic policy and political events. It’s as simple as that.”

He does so in books, opinion pieces, and a podcast. But his greatest reach might come through his Substack newsletter, Chartbook, which comes across as a bloggy, ivory-tower version of the research notes that investment-bank analysts send to clients. Tooze describes it as his “incomplete and somewhat raw” thoughts, a “mélange of different styles and materials.” Recent dispatches have analyzed the Allies’ resources at the Battle of Normandy, the financing of the War on Terror, contemporary siege warfare in Mariupol, and West Virginia as a roadblock to climate policy.

From the December 2020 issue: The next decade could be even worse


His kind of analysis—nerdy and highbrow and often a little inscrutable—is not for everyone. He writes for people who like reading material that “hits a bit heavier”: more technical than what you might read in the Financial Times, more intellectual than reports put out by Goldman Sachs. But it’s revelatory for many, including young lefties (described memorably in New York magazine as “Tooze Boys”), denizens of #econtwitter, history buffs, and money managers, many of whom trade on the data he digs up.

At least some signs look encouraging: The coronavirus pandemic appears to be abating, and inflationary pressures are easing. Yet the revelation that Tooze is now putting forth is that we might not be emerging from crisis. Indeed, we might be in a worsening one, in which much of the world faces a series of self-reinforcing financial and geopolitical pressures, building, perhaps, to some ominous end. Given that possibility, our most distinguished crisis historian finds himself very busy.

Wherever our current catastrophe is headed, it has been good to Tooze, he tells me with some bewilderment. The combination of COVID-19, buckling supply chains, and central banks’ scramble to respond constituted “the first crisis where I found my professional existence, my personal existence, and my understanding of my relationship to history were all just completely seamless, continuous,” he says. He found his niche—and thousands of new readers.

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Tooze, 54, rose to academic prominence as a historian of the Third Reich. His careful archival work revolutionized our understanding of Germany’s finances and how they shaped the Nazi war strategy. He first connected with many nonacademic readers with the 2018 publication of Crashed, in my view the best book on the global financial crisis—an analysis of the enormous slosh of money that caused the Great Recession (mortgages originated in the suburbs of Las Vegas, packaged into securities in New York, and sold around the world), the enormous slosh of money that ended it (the world’s monetary authorities pumping dollars and euros and yen into the markets), and the political fallout that ensued.

In the mid-2010s, he began writing short posts on Facebook and Twitter. “I started doing social media absurdly late,” he tells me. “I’m a middle-aged man.” But, he says, he loved it—the immediacy, the intimacy, and the ability to think out loud. In 2020, he launched Chartbook. He included graphs. He included links, poems, snippets of books, meditations on market anxiety. And he included essays, using financial data to clarify what had caused cataclysms of the past and what might be causing them now.

Derek Thompson: ‘Everything is terrible, but I’m fine’

Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves, for instance. One Tooze post examined how accumulating those reserves helped Vladimir Putin turn the country into a “strategic petrostate” bold enough to invade Ukraine and capable of countering Western powers. About 150,000 people, including some in the German chancellor’s office, read the essay. “I thought, Wow, this is worthwhile,” Tooze told me. “For somebody who comes out of an academic publishing background, where you’re lucky if 1,000 people read what you write, the numbers tick up so fast.” On Substack, his output also proved financially rewarding: “For anyone on a regular, white-collar, academic-type salary, it’s transformative.”


Despite the seriousness of his subject matter and the esoteric quality of his references, Tooze’s writing has a kind of magpie joy. In person, he comes off as intellectual, sure, but also self-deprecating, voluble, funny. While we chat polycrisis, he riffs on his love of cities (“You cannot feel depressed!”); his sense of alienation, being so few degrees from so many important people (“a weird club”); and his experience in therapy (“Being present is the hardest thing on Earth”).

He also riffs on his newsletter as an intellectual project. As he tells it, he’s not just circulating data or building arguments; he’s also bathing in an anarchic, unstoppable flow of information. “What does it mean to be in the present, in this constant experience of obsolescence, this constant experience of having your ideas and preconceptions consumed by the flow toward the future, which, at any given moment, is fundamentally unpredictable and then once you have consumed it, becomes obsolete?” he says effusively. “That’s my now—this literal floating on the surface tension of the current moment.”

The son of a prominent molecular biologist, Tooze spent his childhood in West Germany, heading to Cold Spring Harbor, New York, for the summers so his father could collaborate with James Watson. He studied economics at Cambridge before decamping to Berlin’s Free University in 1989 to figure out if he wanted to be an academic. He “wanted to find some space for himself,” he tells me, and was not quite tuned into the history happening around him. “There were these huge street demonstrations that helped bring the regime down, the most dramatic demonstrations of nationalism or patriotism I've ever witnessed.” The night the Berlin Wall came down, “It had been a very long, very cold day. I was in the bath, listening to the radio, trying to warm up,” he says. “The radio said that something weird was going on. And I turned it off.”

He did decide to become an academic—an economic historian to be specific, studying at the London School of Economics and then returning to teach at Cambridge. He became known in part for his knowledge of military history and in part for his facility with numbers, and especially for being able to tie financial minutiae to world-historical trends. Hitler was compelled not just by murderous anti-Semitism but by shortages of land, steel, and fuel, Tooze argued in 2006’s Wages of Destruction, for instance. “We always wonder what drives this propulsive quality of the Nazi state, why it is so intent on blitzkrieg and fast conquest,” says Susan Pedersen, a renowned historian of Europe. “Adam lays out how they are operating in a world of economic constraint: For them, victory is possible, if it happens fast.”

Much of his academic output at Cambridge and later Yale focused on the first half of the 20th century—World War I, the League of Nations, the economy of Weimar Germany. But his study of the philosophy of history—a heady branch of inquiry into how historic actors understand their influence on the course of events—thrust him “into this dynamic relationship between the past and the present.” He turned to writing about the near-past; Crashed examined the financial crisis that had started just 10 years earlier. At Columbia, he became a historian of the present, publishing Shutdown on the COVID crisis and working on an account of climate change.


Read: 2020 was almost worse than 2008

He is no longer in the bathtub with the radio off. Instead, he is deeply engaged in today’s intellectual politics. He talks to government officials. He writes his newsletter. He advises hedge funds. And he teaches. I sat in on the final class he taught this spring, with a group of students discussing the work of the environmental historian Elizabeth Chatterjee in a damp, halogen-lit basement, synthesizing Marxist theory and parsing energy data.

Sometimes parsing such data leads to disconcerting places: As Tooze sees it, the forces of central-bank tightening, war, inflation, and climate change are reinforcing one another. He is offering no reassurance about where that might head—only the hope that perhaps this polycrisis might be knowable to us.

Annie Lowrey is a staff writer at The Atlantic.



一位危机史学家给我们带来了一些坏消息
经济灾难的历史学家亚当-图兹看到了一系列令人担忧的迹象。

作者：安妮-洛瑞
亚当-图兹的彩色面部特写
布莱恩-芬克
2022年7月5日
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关于作者。安妮-洛瑞是《大西洋》杂志的一名工作人员。

这篇文章被收录在 "今天要读的一个故事 "中。"今天要读的一个故事 "是一份时事通讯，我们的编辑会在周一至周五推荐《大西洋》杂志的一篇必读文章。请在此注册。   

美国和世界正在经历互联网上最重要的货币和灾难历史学家亚当-图兹(Adam Tooze)所描述的 "多重危机"。当他在哥伦比亚大学附近的一家酒吧喝着啤酒时，Tooze谈到了一长串的挑战，他是欧洲研究所的主任。战争，引发核冲突的幽灵。气候变化，威胁着饥荒、洪水和火灾。通货膨胀，迫使中央银行压制消费需求。大流行病，使工厂关闭，医院超负荷运转。每场危机本身就很难解析，而它们之间相互关联的混乱局面就更难解析了。他觉得 "整体甚至比各部分的总和更危险"。


不久前，Tooze还是一个不起眼的学者。现在他是世界上最有影响力的金融评论家之一，在华盛顿、伦敦、巴黎和布鲁塞尔以及华尔街都有忠实的读者。Tooze的读者向他求助，因为他有一种不可思议的能力，知道电子表格上的哪些数字是重要的，或者知道一个趋势在什么时候开始影响到历史。他关注贸易、货币、股票、工资、就业、债务和商品数据，并以某种方式使其合理化--不仅仅是在当下，而是在整个时间范围内。"约翰-梅纳德-凯恩斯（John Maynard Keynes）的传记作者罗伯特-斯基德尔斯基（Robert Skidelsky）告诉我："经济事件在本世纪对政治产生了巨大的影响。Tooze "说明了经济政策和政治事件的相互渗透。就这么简单"。

他在书籍、评论文章和播客中这样做。但他最大的影响力可能来自于他的Substack通讯《Chartbook》，它就像一个博客，象牙塔版的投资银行分析师发给客户的研究报告。Tooze将其描述为他 "不完整的、有些原始的 "想法，是 "不同风格和材料的混合体"。最近的文章分析了盟军在诺曼底战役中的资源，反恐战争的融资，当代马里乌波尔的围困战，以及西弗吉尼亚州作为气候政策的一个障碍。

来自2020年12月号。未来十年可能更糟糕


他的那种分析--迂腐和高深莫测，往往有点高深莫测--并不适合所有人。他是为那些喜欢阅读 "重口味 "材料的人而写的：比你在《金融时报》上读到的更有技术性，比高盛发布的报告更有知识性。但它对许多人来说是有启示意义的，包括年轻的左翼人士（《纽约》杂志曾将其描述为 "Tooze Boys"，令人印象深刻）、#econtwitter的居民、历史爱好者和资金经理，他们中的许多人都在利用他挖掘的数据进行交易。

至少有些迹象看起来令人鼓舞。冠状病毒大流行似乎正在减弱，通货膨胀的压力正在缓解。然而，Tooze现在提出的启示是，我们可能没有摆脱危机。事实上，我们可能正处在一个不断恶化的危机中，世界上大部分地区都面临着一系列自我强化的金融和地缘政治压力，也许会发展到一些不祥的结局。鉴于这种可能性，我们最杰出的危机史学家发现自己非常忙碌。

他有些困惑地告诉我，无论我们目前的灾难走向何方，它对Tooze来说都是好事。COVID-19、供应链瘫痪和中央银行争相应对的组合构成了 "我发现我的职业存在、我的个人存在以及我对我与历史的关系的理解都完全无缝、连续的第一次危机，"他说。他找到了自己的定位--以及成千上万的新读者。

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现年54岁的Tooze作为第三帝国的历史学家在学术界崭露头角。他细致的档案工作彻底改变了我们对德国财政以及它们如何影响纳粹战争战略的理解。他在2018年出版的《崩溃》首次与许多非学术界的读者建立了联系，在我看来，这是一本关于全球金融危机的最好的书--分析了造成大衰退的大量资金（源自拉斯维加斯郊区的抵押贷款，在纽约被包装成证券，并在世界各地销售），结束大衰退的大量资金（世界货币当局将美元、欧元和日元注入市场），以及随之而来的政治后果。

在2010年代中期，他开始在Facebook和Twitter上写短文。"我开始做社交媒体很晚，"他告诉我。"我是一个中年男人。" 但是，他说，他喜欢它--即时性、亲密性，以及大声思考的能力。在2020年，他推出了Chartbook。他加入了图表。他包括链接、诗歌、书的片段、对市场焦虑的沉思。他还写了一些文章，用金融数据来澄清什么导致了过去的大灾难，什么可能导致现在的大灾难。

德里克-汤普森："一切都很糟糕，但我很好

例如，俄罗斯的外汇储备。Tooze的一篇文章研究了积累这些储备如何帮助弗拉基米尔-普京将该国变成一个 "战略石油国家"，敢于入侵乌克兰并有能力对抗西方大国。大约有15万人，包括德国总理办公室的一些人，阅读了这篇文章。"我想，哇，这很有价值，"图兹告诉我。"对于一个有学术出版背景的人来说，如果有1000人读你写的东西，你就很幸运了，数字上升得太快了。" 在Substack上，他的产出也证明了经济上的回报。"对于任何一个拿着普通白领、学术类工资的人来说，这都是一种转变。"


尽管他的主题很严肃，他的参考资料也很深奥，但图兹的写作有一种鹊桥之乐。在人前，他的确是个知识分子，但也是自嘲的、多变的、有趣的。当我们谈论多危机时，他谈到了他对城市的热爱（"你不能感到沮丧！"）；他的疏离感，与这么多重要人物的距离如此之小（"一个奇怪的俱乐部"）；以及他的治疗经验（"存在是地球上最困难的事情"）。

他还把他的通讯作为一个智力项目进行了阐述。正如他所说，他不仅仅是在传播数据或建立论点；他还沐浴在一个无政府的、不可阻挡的信息流中。"在当下，在这种不断被淘汰的体验中，在这种不断被流向未来的想法和先入为主的体验中，这意味着什么，因为在任何特定的时刻，它从根本上是不可预测的，一旦你消耗了它，就会被淘汰？"这就是我的现在--这种在当前时刻的表面张力上的字面漂浮"。

Tooze是一位著名分子生物学家的儿子，他的童年是在西德度过的，夏天去纽约的冷泉港，这样他的父亲就可以和詹姆斯-沃森合作。他在剑桥大学学习经济学，然后于1989年前往柏林的自由大学，想知道他是否想成为一名学者。他告诉我，他 "想为自己找到一些空间"，而且对他周围发生的历史不甚了解。"当时有这些巨大的街头示威，帮助推翻了政权，这是我见过的最引人注目的民族主义或爱国主义的示威。柏林墙倒塌的那个晚上，"那是一个非常漫长、非常寒冷的日子。我在洗澡，听着收音机，试图取暖，"他说。他说："收音机里说，发生了一些奇怪的事情。我就把它关掉了。"

他确实决定成为一名学者--具体说来是一名经济史学家，在伦敦经济学院学习，然后回到剑桥大学任教。他之所以出名，部分原因是他的军事历史知识，部分原因是他对数字的熟练掌握，特别是他能够将金融细枝末节与世界历史趋势联系起来。比如说，希特勒不仅仅是被凶残的反犹太主义所蛊惑，而且是被土地、钢铁和燃料的短缺所蛊惑，图兹在2006年的《毁灭的代价》中这样认为。著名的欧洲历史学家苏珊-佩德森（Susan Pedersen）说："我们总是想知道是什么推动了纳粹国家的这种推动力，为什么它如此执着于闪电战和快速征服，"。"亚当阐述了他们是如何在一个经济受限的世界中运作的。对他们来说，胜利是可能的，只要它发生得快"。

他在剑桥大学和后来的耶鲁大学的大部分学术成果集中在20世纪上半叶--第一次世界大战、国际联盟、魏玛德国的经济。但他对历史哲学的研究--一个研究历史人物如何理解他们对事件进程的影响的令人振奋的分支--将他 "推向了过去和现在之间的这种动态关系"。他转而写近代史；《崩溃》研究了10年前刚刚开始的金融危机。在哥伦比亚大学，他成为现在的历史学家，出版了关于COVID危机的《关闭》，并致力于对气候变化的描述。


阅读：2020年几乎比2008年更糟糕

他不再在浴缸里关着收音机。相反，他深入参与了今天的知识分子政治。他与政府官员交谈。他写他的通讯。他为对冲基金提供建议。他还教书。我旁听了他今年春天教的最后一堂课，一群学生在潮湿的卤素灯下的地下室讨论环境史学家伊丽莎白-查特吉的工作，综合马克思主义理论并解析能源数据。

有时解析这些数据会导致令人不安的地方。在Tooze看来，中央银行的紧缩、战争、通货膨胀和气候变化的力量正在相互加强。他对这一现象的发展方向没有提供任何保证，只是希望也许这种多重危机对我们来说是可知的。

安妮-洛瑞是《大西洋》杂志的一名工作人员。