Fiction readers often ask for a ride. To be “touched” is the great passive verb of the experience of art: we are consumed, we are overtaken. If we take this phrase at face value, we get most excited when we participate least—when we surrender to the power of the work of art, trusting the artist, or even that larger and more nebulous power we call “story.” take us where we couldn’t foresee.

Markets also move by forces we don’t fully understand. Although Adam Smith rarely used the phrase in his writings, his metaphor of the invisible hand—true to the image—slowly took on a life of its own. The idea that the market has an independent power that governs itself better than any single individual dominated the twentieth century and became especially prominent after World War II, when the gospel of deregulation swept the world. As Ronald Reagan put it, “the magic of the market” worked. Yet the invisible hand appears only once in Smith’s landmark work.”Wealth of Nationsas part of a withering evaluation of good intentions. A true capitalist, writes Smith,

pursues only his own benefit, and in this, as in many other cases, an invisible hand leads him to achieve a goal that was not part of his intention. . . . In pursuing his own interests, he often promotes the interests of society more effectively than when he really intends to promote them. I have never seen much good done by those who were willing to trade for the public good. Indeed, this is a pretense, not very common among merchants, and very few words are needed to dissuade them from it.

Smith argues that even if an investor wanted to improve society, his brilliant ideas would be less effective than the combined flows of supply and demand. Money moves in mysterious ways, and whether the effects are harmonious or just random, they are felt in everyday life: a good mortgage deal one year can mean foreclosure the next. This impersonal force can be felt as a god whose whims we obey. Maybe even as an author moving characters across the page.

In a sense, money has always fueled romance. The plot is based on loss and gain, whether it is Jane Austen’s fiancé’s passive income or the excruciating poverty depicted in Knut Hamsun’s novel.hunger“. But as money has become a global system—a vast web of transactions that is fascinating precisely because it has no brand image, no physical presence—the task of depicting it has become more difficult. The big banks and mythical financiers of the nineteenth century were useful symbols dramatized in the novels of Dickens, Balzac and Zola. Since the 2008 crisis, global finance has stuck in the public imagination forever, and writers have again tried to capture its insipid totality. Zia Hyder RahmanIn light of what we know”, about a banker who watches a classmate dangerously stray from the path of prosperity, connected the illusory world of finance with the war on terror. John Lanchestercapital” Studied the street of London houses – literally the capital of the inhabitants of this row – to map out city life. For the most part, however, markets elude representation. How can the novel capture this opaque, omnipotent, and essential force?

IN “Trust”, Hernan Diaz takes a unique approach to the problem. The book, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and will soon be adapted into a TV series starring Kate Winslet, manipulates the mechanics of the story itself, presenting four narratives that are interconnected like birdhouses. Diaz’s title hints at his intentions: financially speaking, a trust is an agreement that allows a third party to hold assets for the beneficiary. (For example, a bank may manage an inheritance until the heir reaches a certain age.) This, of course, requires the belief that the bank is a stable and even benevolent institution. Diaz’s novel suggests that such a contract maintains the narrative world. History, like the dollar bill, can only do its job when we accept its value, when we know we are in good hands. Once we ask a question, things get more complicated.

“Trust” begins with a novel within a novel: a book by a writer named Harold Wanner called “The Bonds”. It tells the story of Benjamin Rusk, a descendant of a Golden Age New York family who “enjoyed nearly every advantage from birth”. Rask is a restless young man, indifferent to secular luxury; nothing seems to interest him until he discovers the magic of the stock market. Fascinated by the ticker, he turns his legacy into a financial juggernaut, a firm that trades in “gold and guano, currency and cotton, bonds and beef.”

Rusk is a taciturn character, devoid of personality and defined mostly negatively: he is “an inept sportsman, an apathetic club member, an unenthusiastic drinker, an indifferent gambler, an indifferent lover”. Even his interest in money is somewhat abstract. But this empty, barren quality reflects his vocation, an incomprehensible craft that remains almost monstrously real:

If asked, it would probably be difficult for Benjamin to explain what brought him into the world of finance. Yes, it was complexity, and also the fact that he regarded capital as an antiseptic living thing. It moves, eats, grows, reproduces, gets sick and can die. But it’s clean. This became clear to him over time. The larger the operation, the further he moved away from its specific details.

The fortune goes to Rusk easily; the question is what to do with it. In classic romance fashion, he decides to find a wife. Enter Helen Brevoort, the only daughter from a dysfunctional but respectable family, a mathematical prodigy who performs in the expatriate salons of Europe. Helen and Benjamin get married, but Helen cannot reciprocate Benjamin’s love – there is always a cold “distance” between them. Her talents and imagination are neutralized and then channeled into philanthropy, the classic pressure valve of capital accumulation. When Benjamin makes even more staggering profits by shortening the time of the 1929 crash, the Rusks become social outcasts and Helen falls ill with a mysterious illness. When the story comes to a tragic conclusion, the reader looks up and finds that they have only gotten through a quarter of the novel.

Diaz is an author who confidently, often gleefully, rejects literary trends. His first novelOn distance” (2017), was published when he was in his forties and was working as a scientist at Columbia University; the manuscript was recovered from a pile of slush and received a Pulitzer nomination. The book is an unusual western in which the protagonist, a clumsy Swede named Haukan, gets on the wrong boat – in San Francisco, not in New York. He spends the rest of the story traveling not west, but east to find his brother. The standard trails are present, from treacherous gold diggers to endless carts, but the form is jumbled; Diaz evokes the pleasure of recognition without falling into cliches. He creates a rich odyssey of American oddities: turn the page and a new mad scientist or religious cult might emerge.

Diaz does not endow Hakan with much inner peace; we rarely get access to his thoughts, and his conversations are hindered by a language barrier—a sly twist on the strong, silent type. In the same way, Bond, a novel within a novel, has no dialogue with its characters and can therefore be taken as a summary, a sketch waiting to be developed further. But this text is only the first piece of the puzzle. The next section is a manuscript entitled “My Life” written by one Andrew Bevel. Bevel’s life, told in the first person, is clearly reminiscent of Rusk’s – he is a wealthy New York financier who profited from the collapse, whose wife died of an illness – but the details begin to blur and diverge. Stranger still, a curious irregularity begins to appear in the text, as if the letter were taking notes to itself:

More examples of his business acumen.

Show his pioneering spirit.

There is something clever and rather funny about this maneuver – looking into the unfinished manuscript of the memoirs of a vain billionaire, one feels a surprising intimacy, even when one recognizes the flaws in the subject’s imagination. Understandably, Bevel’s Life exists to correct his fictionalization in The Bonds, which portrays him as callous at best and coldly villainous towards his wife at worst. Unfortunately, Bevel seems to be unable to find evidence of her compassion: “She touched everyone with her kindness and generosity. Examples.” The reader takes great pleasure in this detective work when he wonders how the two “books” are connected and why. Although their specifics differ, there is a common belief in the almost religious power of market forces. that runs through every aspect of life, it is truly the knot where all the disparate strands of human existence come together.” But how can we trust it, or even be sure that all the strands are connected?

LOS ANGELES — While time is rapidly running out, FIFA president Gianni Infantino seems a bit more optimistic about reaching what he sees as a viable deal for broadcast rights for the upcoming Women’s World Cup in five key European countries.

As Infantino walked the green carpet at Wednesday night’s gala event to launch the 2026 World Cup logo and branding at the historic Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, the FIFA chief briefly spoke about ongoing negotiations with broadcasters in France, Germany and Italy. , Spain and England for the right to broadcast the Women’s World Cup games in Australia and New Zealand two months later.

“Some discussions took place, I must say that they started at a slightly different level,” said Infantino. “So he’s moving.”

Infantino condemned the proposals made just a few weeks prior, saying they showed disrespect for women’s sport and FIFA’s ongoing efforts to level the financial playing field. FIFA more than tripled the prize money for this year’s Women’s World Cup winners from 2019 levels, but Infantino said months ago that some initial European TV rights offerings were about 1% of equivalent men’s broadcast rights.

Infantino said he remains determined to get more money from major European broadcasters because he claims it will benefit all of women’s sport.

“I think it’s important to understand where we’re coming from,” Infantino said. “We invest in women. We are now here in North America, in the United States, where it is the birthplace of world champions, where women have a completely different level of not only acceptance but also respect. … We just want the game to be treated with respect and paid the right money for it. Because everything that is paid is returned not only 100%, but also 150% to the development of the women’s game.

FIFA traveled to the Hollywood Hills to celebrate the branding of the 2026 event, which will take place in 16 cities across the US, Mexico and Canada, including SoFi Stadium in the Los Angeles area. Dozens of football celebrities gathered for the opening, including the great Brazilian Ronaldo.

Supporting Infantino’s quest is Jill Ellis, coach of the US team that won the last two women’s world championships.

While Ellis said she understands why negotiations have been difficult, the numbers being discussed are sometimes discouraging.

“Gone are the days when it was, you know, ‘Please, please respect us, please invest in us now,'” Ellis said. “Why don’t you invest in us? I think we have to show value to ourselves as a global sport, so I understand that (negotiations) must be frustrating given the ratings and the number of viewers where they are. The financial question is far from the same. …They will pay for men’s games, right? I think we have an amazing sport. In 19th we had over a billion hours. There are ratings. They are in the stadiums now. It’s a little hard to swallow.”

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