by Nicholas Shaxson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019
A vivid demonstration of how corruption and greed have become the main organizing principles in the finance industry.
A sharp attack on global financiers who are destroying the livelihoods of the nonwealthy.
In an apt follow-up to his 2012 book, Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens, Germany-based reporter Shaxson uses a variety of economic theories to examine the many perils of wealth accumulation. The theories are often complex, but the author aids understanding by employing helpful analogies and metaphors. He skillfully bolsters the big-picture elements of the narrative with compelling examples of painful microeconomic consequences for the 99 percent of world citizens who struggle with financial issues. Shaxson’s indictees are mostly leaders of large banks, hedge funds, private equity firms, and government entities that enable predatory capitalism through wealth extraction. The author begins around 1900 with oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, who, at the height of his power, “controlled over 90 percent of the oil refined in the United States, extracting vast wealth from consumers and generating fountains of profit, which were funneled beyond the core business into railroads, banking, steel, copper, and more.” As antidotes to the greed of Rockefeller and other robber barons, Shaxson offers the examples of muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell and renegade economist Thorstein Veblen, whose The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) was “a vicious exposé of a world where productive workers toiled long hours and parasitic elites fed off the fruits of their labors.” Unfortunately, their work, revelatory as it was, did not bring about lasting economic justice. The author offers a host of instructive discussions of a variety of elements to bolster his argument, including corrupt financiers in London and New York City, geographically obscure tax havens, the bizarre realm of wealth managers in South Dakota, a ravaged newspaper in New Jersey, and a shattered farm economy in Iowa. “Financialization,” writes the author, “hasn’t just sucked money and power away from rural communities; it has extracted their dignity.”
A vivid demonstration of how corruption and greed have become the main organizing principles in the finance industry.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2847-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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BOOK REVIEW
by Erin Meyer ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 27, 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
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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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