An incisive, expert-level analysis of financial crime in free verse.
Akinyemi explores risk, corruption, and accountability in this book, which blends financial crime investigation, sociopolitical commentary, and poetry.
In this unusual collection, Akinyemi opens with a refrain of “Know Your Customer,” a poem that weaves personal identity (e.g., a mother’s maiden name) with financial industry regulatory standards, such as “identify and verify.” In “Holes,” the speaker looks for red flags indicating money laundering. These illicit funds seek shelter and erasure of their origins. Next, the speaker must untangle the “ownership chain” to reveal the person benefitting from unlawful transactions. “Risk Appetite” considers variable risk tolerance thresholds; at its extreme, risk tolerance “hits imaginary roofs / and catapults into sinking sands.” The work notes that mitigating risk is crucial for companies, lest they face losing their reputations or going broke paying regulatory fines. Sanctions are mocked as ineffective, “a comedy show.” In “Slave of the Tax Master,” the speaker calls out the hypocrisy of a system that taxes everyday people “to the bones” while policymakers take advantage of offshore tax havens. Akinyemi likens “dirty money” to a river that crosses borders before merging with “clean money.” The poet concludes with “Compliance Poet,” which reflects on the convergence of his professional paths as an anti-money laundering specialist and author. Akinyemi’s unconventional, intriguing collection combines technical subject matter with poetic style in lines like, “Come to this compliance table cleaner / than sparkling water. / We are tilling the soil / for suspicious activity.” Most poems also include helpful footnotes. However, industry-specific acronyms (FATF, AML, and CFT) and financial regulation lingo—for example, “The three lines of defence (or 3LOD) model is an accepted regulated framework designed to facilitate an effective risk management system”—may lose readers.
An incisive, expert-level analysis of financial crime in free verse.Pub Date: June 22, 2023
ISBN: 9781913636449
Page Count: 84
Publisher: The Roaring Lion Newcastle
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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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