Indonesia is the world’s third-largest producer of coal. Not only does it power the country, it powers the economy. But the country’s president, Joko Widodo, wants to change that. Indonesia is garnering global attention due to its stock of nickel and cobalt, core elements in the batteries needed for the booming electric vehicle industry. Can the government swap the fossil-fuel-powered economy to one that runs on batteries instead?

On this week’s podcast, hosts Soumaya Keynes, Mike Bird and Alice Fulwood ask whether Indonesia can really go green. Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist’s editor-in-chief, sits down with Joko Widodo to find out if he is the man to wean the country off coal. Finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and education minister Nadiem Makarim tell us how to train a generation of battery-makers. And Patrick Foulis, our business-affairs editor, warns of a red flag.

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Until last week, Sam Bankman-Fried - or SBF as he’s become known - was crypto’s poster-child. He was a regular in Washington, DC where he schmoozed journalists, regulators and lawmakers alike. He funded political campaigns and sponsored sports teams ranging from basketball to Formula One. For many, the floppy-haired, 30-year-old once-billionaire wasn’t just the face of his crypto trading firm FTX, he was the face of crypto. But last week, SBJ’s business, which was valued at $32bn at the start of the year, collapsed into bankruptcy and now he is being investigated by regulators and law-enforcement agencies.

On this week’s “Money Talks’, hosts Alice Fulwood and Soumaya Keynes ask whether the crypto phenomenon can survive the loss of a figurehead. They speak with Alesia Haas, the CFO of the second-largest exchange Coinbase. And hear from some of the recipients of SBF’s contributions to the effective altruism movement about what’s next.

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On November 1st, New York City’s workers woke up to a new reality: every job listing for work that could be done in one of the five boroughs now had a stated salary band. Gossips rejoiced. But who does the law really benefit?

On this week’s podcast, hosts Soumaya Keynes, Mike Bird and Alice Fulwood look at the pros and cons of pay transparency. First, they hear from Harvard Business School’s Zoe Cullen who says wages fell by 2% on average when firms opened up about pay. Then, they speak to Joel Gascoigne, the founder of online marketing firm Buffer, who went further than companies in New York and published each of his employees’ salaries, by name, on the company’s website (it lists his salary as $298,958). And then they go to Norway, where incomes have always been publicly available - and hear about the unexpected consequences on happiness when you can easily see what your friends, neighbours and enemies earn. 

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Most of America’s biggest technology firms are having a bad time - and not just the ones who have been recently acquired by a mercurial billionaire. More than $1tn has been wiped from their market value in recent weeks. Is the sell-off just investor jitters? Or is it a symptom of something more fundamental about the future of the sector? 

On this week’s podcast, hosts Soumaya Keynes, Mike Bird and Alice Fulwood are joined by our technology editor Tom Wainwright and global business correspondent Thomas Lee-Devlin to diagnose the common problem facing the movers (like Uber), the streamers (like Netflix) and the creepers (like Facebook owner, Meta). And we ask what they can learn from China, where tech behemoth Alibaba has seen its share price plunge by 77% from a 2020 peak. Plus, we ask if this is a turning point - what does that mean for the future of the formerly most profitable sector in America?

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Gary Gensler has spent just a little over a year and a half as the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), America’s top markets regulator. In that time, he’s proposed 40 separate filings for rules, given 60 speeches, and intervened, in sometimes controversial ways, in everything from crypto to SPACs to environmental regulations. In other words: he is getting a lot done and making a lot of people angry. 

On this week’s episode, hosts Alice Fulwood, Mike Bird and Soumaya Keynes sit down with Mr Gensler to try and figure out what he wants to accomplish and how he plans on getting it all done. They discuss everything from the functioning of the Treasury market, to efforts to prioritise retail investors in the wake of the meme-stock craze, to why he thought it was important that the SEC fine the reality television star Kim Kardashian.

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Ukraine’s economy is both hurting and defying expectations. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that GDP will shrink by 35% this year and inflation is running at 24%. Yet slowly and grimly the country’s economy has adapted to war—and seems to be growing again. What can and should the long march back to normalcy look like?

On this week’s podcast, hosts Mike Bird, Soumaya Keynes and Alice Fulwood are joined by our European economics editor Christian Odendahl and our Europe correspondent Matt Steinglass, who is in Ukraine, to discuss the country’s economic future. They hear from Yuriy Ryzhenkov, the boss of Metinvest, Ukraine’s largest steel company and the owner of the factory that became the site of a deadly siege in Mariupol, about how the firm is adapting. And Vladyslav Rashkovan, the alternate executive director at the IMF responsible for Ukraine, outlines the key areas Western powers should be thinking about in terms of their plans to offer reconstruction aid to the country.

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This year’s Nobel prize in economics was awarded to Ben Bernanke, Philip Dybvig, and Douglas Diamond for their pioneering research into the role that banks play in financial crises. On this week’s episode, hosts Soumaya Keynes, Mike Bird and Alice Fulwood speak with Professors Dybvig and Diamond about their eponymous model of financial panics - one economics’ most cited papers - and ask whether policymakers have truly absorbed their insights.

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The image of management consultants has taken a pounding in recent years, giving the industry a reputation for unscrupulousness on par with investment bankers. And a recent difficulties and controversies at the three most prestigious firms - McKinsey, Bain and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), known collectively as MBB - hasn’t exactly helped the perception that they serve mostly to bamboozle CEOs while collecting fat fees. Can the industry be reformed?

On this week’s episode, hosts Mike Bird, Alice Fulwood and Soumaya Keynes are joined by our global business correspondent Thomas Lee Devlin to find out more about the booming business for advice, and the problems that bedevilling the industrry. They also speak with New York Times journalists Michael Forsythe and Walt Bogdanich about their newly-published book, “When McKinsey Comes to Town”, looking at failures at the most prestigious consultancy, McKinsey - failures that McKinsey says misrepresent its business. 

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The world’s financial markets are going through their most painful adjustment since the global financial crisis. Global stock markets have sold off sharply and bond markets are on course for their worst year since 1949. The British pound briefly fell to its lowest level ever against the dollar. And the Japanese government has intervened to prop up the value of the yen for the first time since 1998. What’s underlying this shift?

On this week’s episode, hosts Alice Fulwood, Mike Bird and Soumaya Keynes are joined by our business affairs editor Patrick Foulis to parse the fallout from this month’s synchronous decision by the majority of the world’s central banks to raise interest rates. They’ll look at the idiosyncrasies of two outliers: Britain, where the government’s tax cuts are at odds with the Bank of England’s desire to reign in prices, and Japan, where the central bank recently decided to keep rates negative. Plus, Blue Bay Asset Management’s chief investment officer Mark Dowding explains why he’s decided to bet against sterling. And former Bank of Japan policy committee member Goushi Kataoka outlines why he thinks a weak yen could spell opportunity for Japan’s ailing economy.

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Lawsuits aimed at green-house gas emissions are a growing trend, and better science is making them more precise. As ESG comes under attack, could these suits represent a different front in pressuring companies to act on climate change?

On this week’s episode, hosts Alice Fulwood and Mike Bird speak with our environment editor Catherine Brahic about the rise in climate litigation aimed at holding companies responsible for climate change. Then, we head to Peru, to meet the farmer at the centre of a potentially seismic court case against Germany’s largest electricity firm. Finally, Sophie Marjanac of the environmental organisation ClientEarth explains why the law can be a useful way to outline the responsibilities of corporations when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions and who pays the costs of a warming planet.

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