The book’s revelations make Wall Street corruption seem tame by comparison.
Energy journalist Silverstein’s study of the routinely corrupt but immensely profitable world of oil “fixers.”
When it comes to democratic nations conveniently turning a blind eye to the human rights violations of dictatorial regimes around the world that also happen to be rich in oil, we’re not talking about a new story. Where Silverstein’s debut breaks new ground is through the exposure of the oil “fixers”—the middlemen serving as the all-important connection governments and corporations need for gaining a foothold in countries where there are newly exploitable oil resources. Silverstein’s book, however, is not only about these so-called fixers, but also about the corrupt dictators making billions of dollars from selling their country’s energy resources while putting nothing back into their respective economies. The “stars” of the book, so to speak, are dictators such as Equatorial Guinea’s Teodorin Obiang: The details of Obiang’s vast, oil-soaked wealth and ridiculously excessive playboy lifestyle are dizzyingly unreal and almost inhuman; he also advocates torture and murder in his own country. Yet, since banana republics like Equatorial Guinea have become oil-rich nations with American corporations on their soil, the American government has only paid lip service to these countries’ excessive human rights violations. Of the fixers, Silverstein spotlights kingpins like Ely Calil, who made untold millions from shady dealings with the Nigerian government. Just as importantly, he outlines the dirty deeds of peripheral figures such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his gun-for-hire PR business, which routinely propped up countless amoral Third World dictators with big-oil connections. Silverstein writes with keen reportorial objectivity but also understandable skepticism about these sketchy middlemen and the frighteningly tyrannical hold that oil has on the free (and not-so-free) world.
The book’s revelations make Wall Street corruption seem tame by comparison.Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78168-137-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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