From the Publisher
Praise for The Finance Curse :
“[A] deeply researched cri de coeur . . . His urgent tone cuts through the financial jargon to produce clear, commonsense arguments . . . This impassioned account will be championed by progressives.” — Publishers Weekly
“A sharp attack on global financiers who are destroying the livelihoods of the nonwealthy . . . 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 . . . A vivid demonstration of how corruption and greed have become the main organizing principles in the finance industry.” — Kirkus Reviews
“’Big Finance’ is such a ubiquitous talking point that its intricate history has often been blotted out by the rhetoric of those today who are either ‘for’ or ‘against’ everything it represents. For a time, the Panama and Paradise Papers reignited interest in the shadowy universe of offshore tax havens. In The Finance Curse , Nicholas Shaxson explores what happens when finance goes unfettered and the drive for competition becomes something sinister, taking away wealth instead of creating it.” — Literary Hub
“Excoriating . . . Shaxson argues the financial sector has become so big that its gravitational field has distorted everything around it. Instead of serving the economy, it now preys on it . . . The Finance Curse is a radical, urgent and important manifesto.” —Oliver Bullough, Guardian
“A splendid polemic against modern finance, in general, and the City of London, in particular . . . Hard-hitting, well written and informative.” —Martin Wolf, Financial Times
“A superbly written overview and update of today’s globalized ‘oil tanker’ . . . It is Shaxson’s chapters detailing the corruption and inevitable impoverishment of societies that are the most gripping, and, surprisingly, entertaining.” —Ann Pettifor, Times Literary Supplement
“With forensic accounting analysis, sharp reporting and interviews, [Shaxson] demonstrates how individual company leaders, private equity advisers and the big banks, aided and abetted by government and the large audit firms, structure their businesses to increase their and their investors’ share of the economic spoils in good times, while offloading risk and the costs of failure in bad times on staff, customers and the public at large . . . Shaxson leavens the mix with some great writing.”— John Arlidge, Sunday Times
“The problem outlined in this book has deep roots and it shows no signs of going away. The ‘finance curse’ pervades many Western economies, from tiny tax havens to big countries like Britain with outsize financial sectors . . . Shaxson offers plenty of examples which take the breath away. In an engagingly chatty style he reels off anecdotes and thumbnail sketches of the most villainous: from John D. Rockefeller and John Pierpont Morgan at the start, to more modern examples, such as Michael Milken the junk bond king and the geniuses at JP Morgan who first devised credit derivatives . . . Shaxson believes that financialization and the finance curse should be stopped, and that finance should be returned to its proper place, serving society. After reading his book few of us would disagree.” —David Shirreff, Brave New Europe
“This superbly written book shows definitively how global finance has been grossly mis-sold to us all. It’s a must-read for anyone who lives, works and spends in this country.” —Misha Glenny, author of McMafia
“If you want to understand why walls of money can be bad for an economy like Britain’s, and what we should do about it, the The Finance Curse is essential reading.” —Yanis Varoufakis, author of And the Weak Suffer What They Must?
“A powerful call to arms against a self-serving, over-bearing and growth-sapping global finance system.” —Stewart Lansley, author of A Sharing Economy and The Cost of Inequality
Praise for Treasure Islands :
“A fascinating, chilling book.” —Paul Krugman, New York Times
“Perhaps the most important book published in the UK so far this year.” ― Guardian (UK)
“A vigorous and well-researched polemic.” — Foreign Affairs
“Shaxson combines meticulous research with amusing anecdotes, resulting in a very readable account of the murky world of offshore and a strong moral message that the system needs to be changed.” — Financial Times (UK)
“[A] seminal book.” — Economist (UK)
“A gripping read . . . Shaxson shows us that the global financial machine is broken and that very few of us have noticed.” — New Statesman (UK)
“Engrossing . . . Eye-opening . . . First-rate forensic work.” — Independent (UK)
“Excellent . . . Despair is not an option, [Shaxson] argues, because so much is at issue. Offshore needs to be put back in its cage, and in his final chapter he suggests how that can be done.” — Irish Times
“Shaxson’s story of offshore banking is nothing short of Shakespearean, a drama full of secrecy, treachery and corruption.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Not just a crucial exposé of the corrupt systems endemic in the global economy, but also a rousing call to do something about them.” — Sunday Telegraph (UK)
Praise for Poisoned Wells :
“A good read . . . Advances and documents the now-popular view that Africa’s oil is mostly a curse on its economy and people, as the wealth it procures has unleashed greed and venality and produced growing inequality and environmental disaster.” — Foreign Affairs
“ Poisoned Wells , a distillation of Shaxson’s fifteen years of reporting from Africa on the oil business, offers a gloomy view of oil, politics, and the international financial system . . . A critical contribution to the growing awareness and understanding of the ‘resource curse’: that we in the developed world, as oil’s primary consumers and financiers, are at the heart of the problem.” — Columbia Journalism Review
Kirkus Reviews
2019-08-18
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.
