Elon Musk to Taylor Swift - the four key figures who moved markets in 2024

Elon Musk: the MAGA king-maker

When Elon Musk threw in his lot with Donald Trump, “pumping money into the campaign and using X to megaphone MAGA views”, it was a turning point in the US election campaign, says Al-Jazeera. Subsequent victory has united the world’s most powerful man with the world’s richest. Markets have been celebrating a promised beanfeast of tax cuts and deregulation.

The South African-born entrepreneur has already done very nicely financially from the “bromance”. Shares in Tesla, having gained some 92.4% in three months, are now in “record territory”, notes MarketWatch. His privately held space and satellite company SpaceX, meanwhile, has doubled in value to $350 billion in a year. Musk’s personal wealth has mushroomed to $439.4 billion, according to Forbes. There’s probably more to come as his “bet for the ages” on Trump pays off.

Is Musk driven by pragmatism or ideology? It was long thought to be the former, but in recent years, his messaging – particularly on free speech and immigration – has become more pointed, says the Financial Times. Musk’s fight against what he calls “the woke virus” was partially fuelled by his anger over the transition of one of his children. Musk is already flexing his newfound political muscle elsewhere. He has a burgeoning friendship with Italian PM Georgia Meloni and a deepening interest in bankrolling Britain’s Reform Party. Musk is reportedly plotting “a mega-tunnel” linking the UK with New York. That may not come to fruition, but it’s a metaphor for his ambitions on this side of the pond.

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Rachel Reeves: the worst chancellor ever

Few British chancellors have started out in office with as much political capital as Rachel Reeves, whose pragmatic decision to “go for growth” carried widespread cross-party support. Few have squandered it quite so dramatically. After six months in charge, a popular poll in the Daily Express this week asked: “Is Rachel Reeves the worst chancellor ever?”

Reeves got off to “an awful start” with her decision to means-test pensioner winter fuel payments, while colleagues were partying at freebie Taylor Swift concerts, says the paper. Her “brutal” Budget in October “sparked further fury” – prompting large-scale demonstrations from farmers and a lethally slow-burning business rebellion against a hike in employers’ national insurance contributions, dubbed “a tax on jobs”. Reeves’ much-vaunted “£22 billion black hole” has become “a million black holes in company balance-sheets”, said James Reed, boss of recruitment firm Reed.

“Rarely in modern times has a Budget unravelled so spectacularly,” says The Telegraph. Rather than fostering growth, Britain is now on recession watch. There’s a sense of betrayal – Reeves wooed companies with her smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, and then turned on business. Even fans, while acknowledging the magnitude of the fiscal challenge Reeves inherited, think the dour chancellor could do with a more “positive narrative”. “No more doom and gloom,” says Mariana Mazzucato of UCL in the Financial Times. We can but hope.

Elvira Nabiullina: Putin’s right-hand banker

If Russia has so far defied expectations that US and EU-led sanctions would sink its economy, much of the credit lies with Vladimir Putin’s long-standing central bank chief, Elvira Nabiullina – “one of the few” whose “mere presence at the helm can be enough to calm markets”, says The Economist. “A bespectacled technocrat whose unassuming demeanour conceals a ferocious intellect and drive”, Nabiullina, 60, “used to wow the Western banking establishment”. More recently, “she’s dealt deftly with the dramas generated by Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical ambitions”.

Still, there are growing signs of trouble in Russia’s “war economy”, says the Financial Times. Not least, “rampant inflation of staple food prices” – reports of supermarket heists for packs of butter are an ominous sign. In October, Nabiullina raised interest rates to 21%, prompting the rouble to slide below the psychological watershed of 100 to the dollar. Some reckon Putin and the Russian state are sitting on top of a social powder keg.

Born into a working-class family of ethnic Tatars in Ufa, Bashkortostan, she got her big break when she won a place at Moscow State University in the early 1980s, says The Moscow Times. Once a confirmed liberal, her partnership with Putin has lasted 20 years, says The Economist. It’s hard to know what motivates her. But she is seen by some as a key “bridge” between Russia and the global economy when the Ukraine war ends. The question is, “can she keep the ship on course until then?”.

Taylor Swift: the force behind Swiftonomics

How influential is Taylor Swift? It was one of those questions capable of sparking family rows in 2024. But as “Tay Tay” quit the stage after the final concert of her two-year Eras tour in Vancouver, she could congratulate herself on setting another record, says The Guardian. The tour made $2.1 billion in sales – making it the highest-earning concert run in history, eclipsing the previous record of $939 million set by Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road. It was indeed an “era-defining tour”.

The phenomenon of “Swiftonomics” – the economic impact of the pop superstar – has been much discussed. This year, central bankers sounded the alarm over her impact on “sticky inflation” as tens of thousands of “Swifties” crowded out European hotel rooms. But it is perhaps Swift’s impact on the entertainment industry that will have the most lasting impact, says The Wall Street Journal.

“It’s time to break up Live Nation Ticketmaster. The American people are ready for it,” announced the US attorney-general, as he launched an anti-trust suit against the giant concert promoter with a reference to a Taylor Swift song. The company’s monopoly of the sector was highlighted when it botched her ticket sales. When her record company, Universal, boycotted TikTok in a battle over royalty payments, Swift defied it. There wasn’t much the label could do to stop her. Swift’s decision to endorse Kamala Harris in the US election came to nothing. But were she to spearhead the campaign to protect artists, and their incomes, from predatory AI “content-scrapers”, says the BBC, she would be doing the world a favour.

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