Each week, I listen to a couple of dozen podcasts. My favorite by a good margin is NPR’s Planet Money. It’s about economics, but this is economics as you’ve never heard it before. This is not the economics of complex numbers, difficult equations, statistics, and ten economists in a room all saying different things till you don’t know what to believe. This is economics of the real world, in essence a behind-the-scenes look at how practically everything in the world really works.

This speaks to me because I have always found that regular media misses the nitty-gritty details. A case in point would be the stories about the pirates in Somalia. The newspapers and TV stations tell a very dramatic story of men in small boats with big guns taking on huge ships and holding them for ransom. It’s all very exciting stuff. But I always wonder where the money comes from and where the money goes. Who paid for those guns? They cost money and someone had to buy them. The pirates get ransoms in the millions of dollars for those ships, but how in the world do they get that money? Does someone write a check? Do pirates have bank accounts?

When Planet Money told the story of the Somali pirates, they looked at those very important details and told a fascinating story of how things really work, of men in suits who fly to Europe and meet with financiers and bankers and arrange for vast amounts of money to change hands. They looked at the economics of the individual pirates themselves – the men with the guns in the boats – how much money they made on each ransom and how they spent that money. They also looked at the men behind the scenes – the warlords – and where the bulk of the money goes. All of this seemed to me to be the real story, and the usual media outlets don’t tell it.

Another example concerns the rebels in Libya. Television stations and newspapers told the usual story of men in trucks with guns. It was all about politics and fighting. Planet Money looked at the economics. Rebels may be motivated by politics, but in order to rebel, they need money. Where does it come from? Where does it go? How is it stored and how is it spent? Planet Money uncovered the astonishing story of Ali Tarhouni, the finance minister for the anti-Ghadafi forces. A Libyan exile in the United States, Tarhouni returned to Libya when the revolution started. His main job was to get money to finance the revolution. He knew there was money in the central bank in Benghazi, but they didn’t have all the keys. What did they do? They literally robbed the bank – dug a hole and emerged with two hundred million US dollars worth of dinar, the local currency. That was a good start, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

Tarhouni then focused on the nearly 200 billion US dollars that Ghadafi had squirreled away in banks around the world. He couldn’t just withdraw it, but he flew to Rome and other places and made a deal with the banks. He borrowed money from the banks with the agreement that after the revolution succeeded, the banks would be paid back with the money they’d seize from Ghadafi’s accounts. All of this was much more interesting to me than the stories of NATO bombings. It also seemed more important. Nothing happens without money, not even a revolution, and to truly understand something, you have to follow the money. That’s what the Planet Money podcast does.

Planet Money looks at every kind of economic story you can imagine, from the failing economies of Greece and Italy to the economics of shining shoes in India or selling fruit in a market in Haiti. They even create their own stories. For example, they decided to make their own T-shirts from scratch, going so far as to buy their own raw cotton. All of this offered a fascinating portrait of how the clothing manufacturing industry works. They even bought their own gold and through that learned a great deal of the economics of gold.

Really, I could go on and on about the fascinating stories they’ve covered. It’s just a great podcast and would be interesting for anyone who wants to know how the world really works. You can subscribe to it on iTunes or check it out here: Planet Money.

 

Tags: job, Libya, NATO, NPR, Planet Money, Podcast, Rome, US