Useful reading for readers seeking a mostly accessible overview of the banking industry.
Two London-based economics professors argue that banks make much of their profit not by serving depositors and borrowers fairly but rather by cheating.
Nesvetailova (Financial Alchemy in Crisis: The Great Liquidity Illusion, 2010, etc.) and Palan (The Offshore World: Sovereign Markets, Virtual Places, and Nomad Millionaires, 2003, etc.) explain that they chose the title after extensive consideration about its explosive implications. As the authors clearly show, the institutions highlighted in the book—Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bear Stearns, Deutsche Bank, among others—act dishonestly with their clients, their competitors, and their national governments as a matter of everyday operations. Even if they observe the letter of the law, they rarely observe the spirit of the law. At times, note the authors, the cheating crosses into the realm of criminal conduct. Of course, greed underlies much of this behavior; operating honestly can lead to lower-than-desired earnings and limited bonuses. Government regulators become so focused on maintaining the financial stability of the banks—an admirable goal—that unsavory practices go unnoticed or at least mostly unpunished. The authors look backward for much of their evidence, relying heavily on the economic theories of American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen and on a congressional investigation from the 1930s led by Sen. Ferdinand Pecora. Nesvetailova and Palan state that the findings from the Pecora investigation closely resemble banking industry sabotage that is widespread in the current markets. As the authors consider reform, they insist that everybody involved must abandon the traditional binary dichotomy of “market vs. regulation.” The dilemma of excessive profitability should become the core of how to proceed with reform. They close with a series of “simple but important intellectual steps towards a more adequate regulatory framework.” The last step is “to stop thinking about finance as a business for managing ‘other people’s money.’ Finance is the business of creating and managing our wealth, and it needs to be understood and regulated as such.”
Useful reading for readers seeking a mostly accessible overview of the banking industry.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61039-968-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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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