Top all-time · #1407
Adam Tooze
Personal blog · adamtooze.substack.comeconomicspoliticshistory
Adam Tooze writes Chartbook, a personal blog at adamtooze.substack.com about economics, politics and history. Since 2020, 50 different Hacker News readers have linked it 92 times, most often “The Closing of the Cocoa Frontier”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (19) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Adam Tooze's Chartbook Substack as a source on economics, finance, energy and geopolitics, valued for current-affairs analysis with historical context.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Described as stimulating and challenging, a serious thinker, a very interesting overview, and a newsletter that gives all the macroeconomics context one needs.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 19 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A newsletter on economics, geopolitics and history from Adam Tooze. More substantial than the twitter feed. More freewheeling than what you might read from me in FT, Foreign Policy, New Statesman. Click to read Chartbook, by Adam Tooze, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscriber
Most-linked posts?
- The Closing of the Cocoa Frontier3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-02-19
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-03-11
- China, Cuba and Albania came to have higher life expectancy than the USA2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-08
- Defining polycrisis – from crisis pictures to the crisis matrix2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-24
- How we paid for the War on Terror2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-08-23
- Burning Hamburg 1943 – the first culmination of liberal militarism2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-08-02
- How Intel is resorting to financial engineering to raise billions for fabs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-08-07
- Something Broke the Silicon Valley Bank Failure2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-03-11
- Is Green hydrogen the "gas of the future"? (2023)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-03-14
- The South Asian Polycrisis2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-09-23
What Hacker News says?
"Dusts all their equity on a dumb bet"??? They bought mostly agency-backed mortgage based securities! Those are high quality assets. All major banks have the same problem of sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars of unrealized losses in total [1] caused by fallen fixed income security prices. Yet you didn't have other businesses panicking and pulling their deposits. [1] https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook…
Comment linking /p/chartbook-200-something-broke-the
on “FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank”Submitted The anti-inflation pivot of 2022 as a story · 140 points
HN discussionAdam Tooze is a history professor at Columbia University so definitely doesn't participate in conspiracy theories. His writing is mostly on current affairs but with history as context. I don't agree with 100% of what he writes but it is always stimulating and challenging. Very strongly recommended. https://adamtooze.substack.com
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on “We’re the founders of Substack, we just launched an iOS app. AUA”Submitted Turkey's Financial Crisis as a story · 116 points
HN discussionWhy? Because Oil Companies are lobbying for inefficient hydrogen to delay a green revolution: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/carbon-notes-5-green-hydrog... > The members of the hydrogen coalition are all obviously incumbent fossil fuel and petrochemical interests looking for a bridge to the new era. If realized, their ambitious hydrogen projects may overload the available supply of green power, for little real ben…
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on “Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?”Submitted The South Asian Polycrisis as a story · 107 points
HN discussionYou're saying nothing dramatic or surprising has ever happened in history, or at best that when it did, no one saw it coming. Both are obviously wrong. In any case, Tooze is a serious thinker who has written various things besides this line I paraphrased from a podcast. I recommend checking out his work. https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-401-the-dollar-sy...
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on “China is eating the world”Submitted How we paid for the War on Terror as a story · 104 points
HN discussionAssuming US can print any value of USD out of thin existence as they have done multiple times in last 20yrs, it doesn’t matter for them whether they later buy in the oil to fill the reserve back at 40$ or 400$. Key issue here is that we are seeing hard assets especially commodities being repriced in USD after a steep cycle. The winner here, as always are gulf countries flushing with cash as they are the real owners…
Comment linking /p/chartbook-153-the-south-asian-polycrisis
on “America Has Lost Its Oil Buffer”Submitted Reading Grossman's “Stalingrad” and ”Life and Fate” as a story · 93 points
HN discussionI found Adam Tooze's overview very interesting: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-68-putins-challen...
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on “Russia says Ukraine talks hit 'dead end', Poland warns of risk of war”Submitted Murder not crisis – Why Israel's starvation of Gaza is exceptional as a story · 77 points
HN discussionAccording to this Adam Tooze article the wars cost around 800,000 dead people. Then there is the incalculable emotional cost to survivors and participants. This alone means that spending $6 trillion building trains would have been much better than on war. https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-34-how-we-paid-fo...
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on “Amtrak might add more routes, but they won't be faster than a car”Submitted Keynes on the influence of furniture on love as a story · 77 points
HN discussionFor those wondering, it’s about 6% of global GDP [0], annually. That’s what the world was spending on all things military during the Cold War, so it’s very doable. [0] https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-carbon-notes-3-fo...
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on “Shell admits 1.5C climate goal means immediate end to fossil fuel growth”Submitted In China, clean energy is now THE driver of overall economic growth as a story · 44 points
HN discussionAdam Tooze does this for economics: https://adamtooze.substack.com/s/chartbook-top-links It is paid however. He also has a unpaid one-topic-per-week Substack: https://adamtooze.substack.com Chartbook is free, deep dive and Chartbook Top Links is paid and a weekly summarised econ news.
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on “This week's archaeological news: Underground stone circles and ancient trade”Submitted Economic history of World War II and the 18th Brumaire as a story · 42 points
HN discussionProject-syndicate is a great option: https://www.project-syndicate.org/ I’ve also enjoy Adam tooze’s newsletter after seeing it crop up on hacker news lately: https://adamtooze.substack.com
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on “Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist Magazine?”Submitted Russia's financial meltdown and the global dollar system as a story · 40 points
HN discussionAdam Tooze acknowledges Mearsheimer's analysis. His criticism of Mearsheimer is more subtle. My take is that Mearsheimer triggers cognitive dissonance. https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-95-is-ukraine-the...
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on “To Make More Stingers, US Needs to Revive Production Technology from Scratch”Submitted Who is driving Germany's far-right poll surge? as a story · 29 points
HN discussionI read Adam Tooze's Chart Book[1] and it's become the only source of information I really need to understand general macroeconomics and how it relates to the events of the world. 1: https://adamtooze.substack.com/
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on “Ask HN: Which substacks do you read as soon as it hits your inbox?”Submitted Germany after the European elections as a story · 18 points
HN discussionAdam Tooze has some insights: "The most obvious common factor in explaining the UK’s miserable trajectory is that it represents the accumulated consequences of a sustained failure to invest." Maybe there are too many rent seekers in power. https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-184-nostalgia-for...
Comment linking /p/chartbook-184-nostalgia-for-decline
on “'We Are Being Levelled Down’: Why the UK’s Wealth Gap Is Widening”Submitted Is Green hydrogen the "gas of the future"? (2023) as a story · 14 points
HN discussionIf we limit this claim to _just_ German manufacturing competitiveness (which is often synonymous with "European manufacturing" in the context of these discussions -- and I will assume this is true of your comment as well, given the nuclear energy remark), this really isn't true. What changed my view on this was one of Adam Tooze's newsletters from last year.[1] The relevant points here are: - Germany manufacturing i…
Comment linking /p/chartbook-150-why-cheap-russian-gas
on “Europe’s CEOs Eye Shift in Spending Plans Toward North America”Submitted Mussolini's “March on Rome” and the dilemmas of the liberal expert class as a story · 14 points
HN discussionSouth Africa's electricity and coal sectors are run by kleptocrats: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/carbon-notes-4-from-feast-t... . The solar boom is notable, but the author hasn't sone his homework.
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on “South Africa’s blackouts are driving a solar boom”Submitted From DRC to Yemen – a megaregion in polycrisis as a story · 13 points
HN discussion
