The Pen & Pencil Club Book Series welcomes Gretchen Morgenson and Josh Rosner on "These Are The Plunderers"

Morgenson and Rosner will talk with me Sept 12 on how "private equity runs — and wrecks — America".

Once you realise that you are an expression of the whole of nature, you come to realise that, although you will die, you are also eternal in a non-trivial sense, since the one substance of which you are an expression will endure. Helen De Cruz

Fall is officially here in Philadelphia but it certainly doesn’t feel like it!

The sweltering temperatures and intermittent thunderstorms are better experienced from my perch way above Center City.

Silly of me to complain since, tragically, others are weathering hurricanes, devastating earthquakes, damaging floods, and tragic wildfires.

If you have ever been overtaken by feelings of dread, and occasional helplessness, I recommend Professor of Philosophy Helen De Cruz’s essay in aeon, “How to face the climate crisis with Spinoza and self-knowledge”:

Drawing together these insights from Lorde, Næss and Spinoza, we can say that the climate crisis seriously hampers our ability for self-expression. Its degradation of our sense of place and belonging makes it difficult for us to realise ourselves as human beings. Increasingly, we are pushed to settle for safety from immediate threats posed by the degradation of the environment. We cannot even begin to think about how to preserve ourselves in all the diverse aspects of our existence, and therefore cannot really survive. This is in part why the climate crisis is so corrosive to our sense of self: it impedes our ability to know ourselves.

Self-realisation implies a unity of acting and knowing: you need to know yourself accurately as part of a vast, interconnected nature, and as more than a narrow ego. Once you know this, you can begin to act.

But, like Coach Prime, I pretty much know myself and I know I always feel better when I have something great to look forward to!

Coming up this Tuesday, September 12, at the Pen & Pencil Club, Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times bestselling financial journalist Gretchen Morgenson and financial policy analyst Joshua Rosner investigate the world of private equity, “revealing how it leeches profits from everyday Americans, tanks the companies it acquires, and puts our entire economic system at risk” in These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs―and Wrecks―America.

You can see the event on the club calendar and register to help me know if we’ll have enough space right here.

On October 3, I’ll host Professor John Coates, the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School, where he also serves as Deputy Dean and Research Director of the Center on the Legal Profession. Coates was also General Counsel and Acting Director of the Division of Corporation Finance of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Coates’ new book, The Problem of Twelve: When a Few Financial Institutions Control Everything warns us that America’s past methods for keeping economic power dispersed and monitored no longer do so—instead, a small number of index funds and private equity funds are growing at an alarmingly fast pace and now have disproportionate influence over our economy. He brings his vast insider knowledge of how our financial institutions work to reveal how the “problem of twelve” came about and offers much-needed guidance for how to understand, manage, and check this power, while preserving the good that these funds can do.

You can see the event on the club calendar and register to help me know if we’ll have enough space right here.

On November 15 I’ve got Zeke Faux, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News and a winner of the Gerald Loeb Award and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award and a National Magazine Award finalist, with his book Number Go Up. Bloomberg’s Matt Levine says it’s an “endlessly entertaining” account of the crypto delusion, and how Sam Bankman-Fried and a cast of fellow nerds and hustlers turned useless virtual coins into trillions of dollars.

You can see the event on the club calendar and register to help me know if we’ll have enough space right here.

On December 12, Richard Vague will edify us with his take on the debt problem, all from his new book, The Paradox of Debt: A New Path to Prosperity Without Crisis. Richard served most recently as Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and has even run for President! He’s a venture capitalist and philanthropist and a classic Renaissance man.

You can see the event on the club calendar and register to help me know if we’ll have enough space right here.

Take a look here at a write-up by Joe DiStefano of the Philadelphia Inquirer of my last book series event with Brady Dale talking about his SBF/FTX book.

Please buy your books from our partner Head House Books and then join us at the Pen & Pencil Club. Doors open at 6:30, program starts at 7:30 and bar mixes strong drinks. Always free and always open to everyone.

Spread the word! Everyone is welcome!

© Francine McKenna, The Digging Company LLC, 2023