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The Phoenix Economy
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The Phoenix Economy

Work, Life, and Money in the New Not Normal

Felix Salmon
Harper, 2023
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Hot Topic
  • Engaging

Recommendation

In this perceptive look at the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, financial journalist Felix Salmon takes stock of a legacy of lockdowns and social distancing. He details the pandemic’s market effects and inflation, but he also delves into the societal costs of the virus. In just one of many insightful bits of analysis, Salmon frames the bubble in meme stocks, cryptocurrencies and NFTs through a generational lens: Millennials took a chance at getting rich while spurning their elders’ traditional views. Along with its deep dives into the mental health crisis and the upset in American workplaces, Salmon’s text offers a comprehensive view of COVID-19’s lasting impacts.

Summary

The COVID-19 recession was part of a “great acceleration” of economic timetables.

The economic downturn that hit the US economy in mid-March of 2020 was so dramatic that it clearly qualified as a recession. But economists traditionally define a recession as back-to-back quarters of declining economic output; the COVID-19 recession lasted just two months. The speed of the downturn and recovery shortened timelines of all sorts. For instance, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs numbers for March 2020 could scarcely hope to capture the reality that the labor market was strong for the first half of the month but then fell off a cliff in the second half.

Zoom and Slack, two technology companies that went public in 2019, became household words almost as soon as the pandemic started. But just as quickly as Zoom shares benefited from the COVID-19 boom, they fell back down to Earth. While Zoom was hot for a few months, it didn’t take long for Microsoft to respond. Perhaps if Zoom had grown more gradually and quietly, Microsoft wouldn’t have noticed the upstart. But Microsoft promptly responded by upgrading Teams. From there, it didn’t take long ...

About the Author

Felix Salmon is chief financial correspondent at Axios and the host of the weekly Slate Money podcast.

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