● Seeing Like a Supply Chain: The Hidden Life of Logistics
Miriam Posner
Summary via publisher (Yale U. Press)
Seeing Like a Supply Chain is a compelling investigation into the hidden networks that drive our global economy. Miriam Posner presents a blow-by-blow account of the technology of supply-chain management from punch cards to neural nets, revealing how the system’s built-in ambiguity shields companies from accountability while exploiting workers. Drawing on more than a decade of research, Posner shows how computation converged with the growth of global trade to allow for a lightning-quick, astoundingly efficient supply chain that lets corporations source products without any notion of where their goods are actually being produced. At a time when multinational firms fear the reputational damage of human rights violations in the making of their products, the supply chain’s shroud of vagueness is a feature, not a bug. Posner shows how this is technically accomplished—and how the strategic disavowal of information extends through every step of that chain.

● The Original Error: Why Macroeconomics Keeps on Failing
Mathew Coakley
Summary via publisher (Atmosphere Press)
Why are there recessions? Why can firms earn persistently high profits? Why do wages depend so dramatically on where people live? The Original Error argues that these are not separate puzzles. They arise from a foundational mistake in how economics understands production. That mistake has endured for two centuries, surviving successive revolutions in economic thought even as the discipline made genuine advances. Philosopher Mathew Coakley traces its path through that history to explain why increasingly sophisticated macroeconomic models continue to encounter the same unresolved problems.

● Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East
Matthew Cole
News report via CBS News
Jared Kushner is pushing back on a report involving a hacked iPhone, international spies and billion-dollar transfers from foreign governments.
An upcoming book by journalist Matthew Cole claims Kushner, who is President Trump’s son-in-law, had access to more than $2 billion in “slush money funds” from Middle Eastern leaders in an attempt to influence U.S. foreign policy.
An excerpt of the book released Thursday details allegations encompassing Kushner’s time as a senior White House adviser during the first Trump administration, which included a lead role in U.S. policy in the Middle East. Kushner had a major hand in negotiating key foreign policy deals that involved Israel, the Gulf states, China and Russia during that period.

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