David Woo is the author, with Margalit Shinar, of the new novel Merry-Go-Round Broke Down: A Novel of Guilt, Greed & Globalization. He is an economist and global macro strategist.
Q: What inspired you and Margalit Shinar to write Merry-Go-Round Broke Down?
A: Globalization is the defining story of our lifetime. It touches everyone, everywhere, whether they know it or not. To understand globalization is to understand the forces shaping the world we live in today: income inequality, U.S.-China rivalry, populist nationalism.
Margalit and I set out to write a novel about globalization in the way The Great Gatsby captured the spirit of the Jazz Age. Because the globalization we know is not an abstraction. It is a web of human stories interconnected, unequal, and often unseen.
In The Plague, Camus explored how people behave when the world around them begins to break down. We wanted to do something similar in the context of globalization: to show how it binds us together and, at times, pulls us apart.
Whether we succeeded is for the reader to decide. But our goal was simple: to write a story that anyone could understand and, more importantly, relate to.
We felt uniquely placed to tell this story. I was born in Pittsburgh, Margalit in New York. I was raised in Taiwan, she in Israel. We spent 10 years in Europe, where I began my career. Between us, we speak five languages. My 25-year career at the International Monetary Fund and on Wall Street took me across continents and introduced me to people from many nations and walks of life.
This is a story about globalization told from the inside.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: We took the title Merry-Go-Round Broke Down from the 1937 Looney Tunes theme song, composed during the Great Depression, on the eve of World War II. Globalization was a lot like a carousel exhilarating and full of promise, until it spun out of control.
The title also reflects a deeper idea: once you are inside the global system, it keeps moving whether you are ready or not. People step on thinking they can steer their own path, but the structure has a momentum of its own. Getting off is not so easy.
It is also a story about repetition booms and busts, optimism and regret. The same patterns play out across countries and across time. Different characters, the same underlying forces.
There are unsettling parallels between today and the run-up to the Great Depression, including the rise of protectionism, which helped turn a downturn into a global collapse in the 1930s.
We worked closely with the renown graphic designer Noma Bar to bring that idea to life visually and I think he nailed it, creating an optical illusion of a man trapped within a horse’s bridle. It’s worth a look, even if you don’t read the book.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: It took us more than 10 years to write the book, including three years of research. We rewrote it again and again. But the ending was never in doubt. There was no happy ending.
After the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the writing was on the wall. The recession that followed was only the beginning. As someone who made a living on Wall Street predicting the future, it was clear to me that economic turmoil would give way to political turmoil and then to geopolitical turmoil.
We began working on the book 15 years ago. If it feels timely today, it is because the forces we set out to capture in our novel have since played out in real life. It makes me feel sad but not surprised.
Q: What do you hope readers take away about globalization?
A: Globalization has made the world smaller. We are connected in more ways than we realize. A decision made in one place can shape the life of someone far away who has no say in it.
Globalization has produced winners and losers, but not by design. It is not conspiracies but economic incentives that drive the process and those incentives, if left unchecked, can lead to outcomes that harm everyone.
Globalization is not new. It began thousands of years ago, during the Bronze Age, with the discovery of how to make bronze. Producing bronze required both copper and tin metals rarely found in the same place. Copper was abundant in Egypt and Greece, but tin had to be sourced from as far away as present-day Afghanistan.
That necessity gave rise to vast trade networks: land routes stretching across Eurasia and sea routes linking the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Along these routes traveled not just goods, but people, ideas, and culture.
Globalization, as old as civilization itself, has been a powerful force for progress. But history also shows that periods of rapid integration can reverse. The great wave of globalization in the late 19th century ultimately collapsed with the outbreak of World War I.
We wrote this book to make a complex subject accessible to anyone. Because the better we understand these forces, the better choices we can make about our shared future. Like it or not, we are in this together.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am currently focused on building and running my macro research platform, David Woo Unbound, where I deliver weekly analysis on global markets, geopolitics, and economic shifts. The platform provides structured investment insights, including trade ideas, daily briefings, and a system for translating macro views into specific stock picks.
I also produce regular content, including videos and reports, that challenge mainstream narratives and highlight major global inflection points across economics, politics, and technology.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: This book is not meant to tell people what to think about globalization. It is meant to show how complicated it is when you are inside it.
Many of the characters believe they are acting rationally, even responsibly. Some are. Some are not. But all of them are operating within constraints that limit their choices. That is the part that tends to get lost in public debate.
If readers come away with a better sense of that tension, then the book has done its job.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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