While dry at times, this work overflows with valuable financial advice and fraud information.
A debut primer looks at the modern world of money laundering and similar crimes.
Suszek explains in the foreword to this educational work that in order to grasp money laundering, “one must understand the history of money laundering and the evolution of the inclusion of priceless items.” In the pages that follow, the author tackles topics such as the stages required to make funds gained by illegal means look legitimate (which is, of course, the point of laundering money), the ways in which the real estate market can aid criminals, and even the role of maritime piracy. In just over 200 pages, all is explained in a no-nonsense manner. Take, for instance, the idea of purchasing antiques that have been pilfered from a war zone. Many legitimate consumers are unaware that “the illegal trafficking of stolen antiquities provides financing for criminal and even terrorist operations.” Furthermore, the stolen antiquities market is a highly lucrative business with profits that “may range anywhere from $3.4 billion and $6.3 billion annually.” Certain chapters offer advice. The pages devoted to identity theft feature a bullet-point list on how the average person can stay safe. Tips include shredding sensitive documents and carefully reviewing bank account statements. Full of helpful information, the book covers the various subjects in a straightforward manner. Many examples are provided, including the case of Pedro David Pérez Miranda, the “Gold King of Peru,” which illustrates a gold laundering scheme. These cases tend to stick to the facts, albeit sometimes bland ones. Readers are told that Miranda was charged with exporting some $600 million of illicit gold out of Peru. But they will not find out a whole lot more about him. Miranda ultimately serves as an example without the sort of elaboration that would have painted a more vivid picture (for instance, how did he become such a big-time criminal?). Nevertheless, the volume’s primary focus is on instruction, and it skillfully does just that. Readers will come away with a useful understanding of the many diverse ways in which modern-day criminals perpetuate frauds.
While dry at times, this work overflows with valuable financial advice and fraud information.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2020
ISBN: 979-8-69-077872-9
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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