2026-02-25
9 分钟We all know the saying, it's not what you know, it's who you know.
And so for career advancement and business success, what matters more?
Honing our skills or building our network?
Well, it depends.
But the recently released Epstein files have shown in unprecedented detail how elite politicians,
business leaders, and celebrities profit from connections.
Case in point,
Jeffrey Epstein giving former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak advice on how to make money after leaving political office.
They will know more about what you can do for them than you can guess.
In other words,
private companies will know how they want to use ex-politicians for their reputations or for the doors they can open.
This is The Indicator from Planet Money, I'm Darian Woods.
And I'm Adrian Ma, today on the show Elite Power Brokering.
The Epstein files have revealed extraordinary details about how many top business people and politicians operate inside an economy of favors and implicit debts.
We'll learn just how much personal networks are valued compared to competency.
And we'll hear more of that conversation between Epstein and Ehud Barak.
In government, there's a concept called the revolving door.
That's when people in the private sector go to work for the government, maybe as a regulator.
Later, they go back to work for the industry, they were just regulating.
The door revolves around and around.