633. The Most Powerful People You’ve Never Heard Of

**Stephen Dubner** (0:02)
Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by WhatsApp. On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. So the calls with your mom, chats about the latest work drama, late night voice messages, and all those photos and videos of your dog, every personal message stays private, because no one, not even WhatsApp, can see or hear your personal messages. WhatsApp, message privately with everyone. Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by US. Bank. With the US. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card, you earn an unlimited 2% cash back on every purchase. Unlimited 2% cash back every purchase, that's earning more smartly. Visit usbank.com/smartlycard to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US. Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from VisaUSA Inc. Some restrictions may apply.
For the past couple of years, I've been letting a very good book collect dust on my shelf. A friend had told me about the book, and I did read the introduction, a wild introduction, about the CEO of a British company who flies his private jet into the middle of the Libyan civil war to make an oil deal with the rebel army, an army which happened to have the covert support of the governments of Britain, Qatar and the US. So yeah, I probably should have kept reading, but I had 30 other books I wanted to take a look at. A dirty little secret about me, there are a lot of books where I read only the introduction or a couple chapters, even books I like. This may strike some people as a wasteful practice, but I recommend it. Anyway, as fascinating as I found that introduction about the oil trader in Libya, the book didn't seem relevant at that moment, but at this moment, with the US signing a mineral deal with Ukraine, with Donald Trump expressing his appetite for the natural resources in Greenland and Canada, even at the bottom of the ocean, and of course, with an on-again, off-again trade war, the book is very relevant. It's called The World for Sale, Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources. So, I finally took it off the shelf, read it and, well, wow. The traders in this book are not the kind who sit at a desk in New York or London and buy and sell the options on commodities. These are the people who finance, procure and trade the actual commodities. Petroleum products, agricultural products and metals. This is high-stakes territory.

**Javier Blas** (2:51)
If you think about a commodity trader, it has to have a bit of the Wolf of Wall Street character. It has to have a bit of James Bond character. And it has to have a lot of the character of Pirates of the Caribbean.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:08)
The authors of this book are two Bloomberg journalists who also used to work together at the Financial Times, Javier Blas, whom you just heard, and Jack Farchy. The main subjects of their book are trading firms that you have likely never heard of. Glencore, VTOL, Trafigura, Gunvor Group, Mercuria, and Cargill. These firms operate all over the world and their reach is massive. Here is Jack Farchy.

**Jack Farchy** (3:33)
The revenues of the four largest is just under a trillion dollars last year, which in terms of global exports would make them, I think, the fourth largest country behind the US, China, and Germany, and ahead of Japan.

**Stephen Dubner** (3:50)
Have you ever thought that you really understood something, that you were looking into the heart of it, only to realize that you were just looking at the surface layer? That's the sensation I had while reading The World for Sale. These commodity traders are often at the center of big political and economic events. Civil wars and military coups seem to be a specialty, but they usually operate deep in the shadows. Today, on Freakonomics Radio, with the help of Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, we try to shine a light.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:33)
This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

**Stephen Dubner** (4:50)
Last year, there was a record $33 trillion in global trade. Commodities make up about a third of that. Here are the two journalists who try to follow that money.

**Jack Farchy** (5:01)
My name's Jack Farchy. I'm a senior reporter covering energy and commodities at Bloomberg News.

**Stephen Dubner** (5:05)
How did you get onto this beat?

**Jack Farchy** (5:07)
I started my journalism career at the FT. I started out in 2008, just as the financial crisis was happening.

**Stephen Dubner** (5:14)
Good timing for you, really.

**Jack Farchy** (5:15)
Yeah, much better than I had anticipated.
I thought I was interested in geopolitics, global affairs. I didn't think I was very interested in finance or business or markets or economics. Then I sat in the middle of the FT, not understanding half of what was going on, as the global financial system was collapsing and taking the world economy with it. I realized, actually, I was wrong. I was looking for my first reporting job and Gillian Tett, back then, was the Capital Markets Editor, said, why don't you go and work with Javier writing about commodities?