After the 2008 Financial Crisis, the Economy Was Fracked Up

After the 2008 Financial Crisis, the Economy Was Fracked Up

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act injected almost nine hundred billion dollars into the U.S. economy to help the nation recover from the 2008 financial crisis. Ninety billion dollars went to clean energy, with the intention of jump-starting a new “green economy” to replace aging fossil-fuel technologies. Instead, the bill may have done the opposite. Low interest rates, which made borrowing easier, encouraged a flood of financing for the young fracking industry, which used novel chemical techniques to extract gas and oil. Fracking boomed, and made the U.S. the leading producer of oil and gas by some estimates. The financial journalist Bethany McLean and the investor and hedge-fund manager Jim Chanos tell The New Yorker’s Eliza Griswold that something in the fracking math doesn’t add up. If interest rates rise, reducing the flow of cheap capital, they believe that the industry will collapse.

Then, the former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson tells Adam Davidson what went wrong in Obama’s policy. Subsidies for specific industries, like solar, can’t change the market significantly enough, Paulson says. In his view—one shared by a growing consensus of economists—we need to correctly assess the costs of carbon emissions to society, and charge those costs to the emissions’ producers: a carbon tax. Then, with a more level playing field, the market can pick the best source of energy.

Episoder(1019)

Sam Altman’s Trust Issues at OpenAI

Sam Altman’s Trust Issues at OpenAI

At the end of February, OpenAI’s C.E.O., Sam Altman, made headlines by swiftly cutting a deal with the Pentagon for his company to replace Anthropic, which had balked at the Trump Administration’s bid...

10 Apr 49min

Pick Three: Spring Sports News

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The New Yorker staff writer Louisa Thomas, who writes the Sporting Scene column, talks with David Remnick about the biggest basketball stories this season: how LeBron James embraced a new late-career ...

7 Apr 14min

How Donald Trump’s War on Iran Helps Vladimir Putin’s War on Ukraine

How Donald Trump’s War on Iran Helps Vladimir Putin’s War on Ukraine

In 2021, when Olga Rudenko and other journalists launched the English-language news outlet the Kyiv Independent, they were committed to making a publication that wouldn’t face political pressure from ...

3 Apr 36min

A Former Federal Prosecutor on Why He Quit Donald Trump’s Department of Justice

A Former Federal Prosecutor on Why He Quit Donald Trump’s Department of Justice

Thousands of federal prosecutors have been fired or have resigned from their roles since Pam Bondi took over as Attorney General. She has made no secret of weaponizing the Justice Department to pursue...

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John Lithgow on the Controversial Authors Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling

John Lithgow on the Controversial Authors Roald Dahl and J. K. Rowling

The new play “Giant,” on Broadway, dramatizes the scandal around Roald Dahl, the beloved children’s-book author who, in the nineteen-eighties, began making antisemitic statements and invoking stereoty...

27 Mar 28min

Julio Torres Makes Everything Funny—Including Color Theory

Julio Torres Makes Everything Funny—Including Color Theory

Julio Torres got his big break as a writer on “Saturday Night Live,” and went on to make the cult favorites “Los Espookys” and “Fantasmas” for HBO. He also wrote and directed the film “Problemista,” a...

24 Mar 18min

Is Cuba Trump’s Next Target?

Is Cuba Trump’s Next Target?

The staff writer Jon Lee Anderson has reported from Cuba for many years, and recently wrote about the deteriorating economic conditions on the island. His newest piece for the magazine dives into the ...

20 Mar 33min

Chloé Zhao on “Hamnet,” Which Is Nominated for Eight Academy Awards

Chloé Zhao on “Hamnet,” Which Is Nominated for Eight Academy Awards

Chloé Zhao became only the second woman to win an Oscar for Best Director, for 2020’s “Nomadland,” and she is nominated once again for “Hamnet,” starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. Based on Maggi...

15 Mar 22min

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