Sabotage : the hidden nature of finance / Anastasia Nesvetailova and Ronen Palan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nesvetailova, Anastasia, author.

Palan, Ronen, 1957- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Financial crises.

History.

Recessions.

United States--Economic policy.

United States.

Economic policy.

Monetary policy--United States--History.

Monetary policy.

Finance--United States--History.

Finance.

Recessions--United States--History.

Financial crises--United States--History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

x, 260 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : PublicAffairs, 2020.

Summary:

"The fundamental motive for financial innovation is not to make the system work better, but to avoid regulation and oversight. This is not a bug of the financial system, but a built-in feature. The president of the US is not a tax avoider because he is an especially fraudulent financier; he's a tax avoider because he is a wealthy man in a system premised on such deceit. Finance is an industry of sabotage. This book is a brilliant, intellectual detective story that traces the origins of financial sabotage, starting with the work of a prescient American economist who saw the capacity for banks and businesses to dissemble and profit as early as the 1920s. What was accomplished modestly in the first half of the 20th century became a booming global industry in the 1980s. Financialization took over everything, culminating in instruments so complex and confusing their own creators were being destroyed by them in 2008. With each financial bust, people expect to hear who the culprit was, and cynically know to not expect much punishment to ever reach them. But the innovation of this book is to show that each individual gaming the system isn't a crook--the whole system is sabotage"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Part 1 Sabotage as an Economic Concept p. 17

1 Sabotage in the Financial System p. 19

2 We All Are in It Together: Sabotage and the Cycle of Debt p. 40

3 Be First, Be Smarter and Cheat: Sabotage by Financial Innovation p. 60

Part 2 'No Conflict, No Interest' Sabotaging the Clients p. 79

4 Dead Souls at the Royal Bank of Scotland p. 83

5 'Our People Are Our Greatest Asset': Goldman's Abacus p. 95

6 'A Simple Premise:' Wells Fargo p. 102

Part 3 Hosticide: Sabotaging Each Other p. 107

7 Who Let the Bear Down? p. 111

8 What Goes Around Comes Around: The Rise and Fall of RBS p. 120

9 Beware Good Advice: Deutsche's Helping Hand in Iceland p. 129

Part 4 The Big, the Bad and the Crypto: Sabotaging the State p. 137

10 The Big: Too-Big-to-Fail (and Jail) Banking p. 139

11 The Bad: Derivatives, Tax Avoidance and Evasion p. 148

12 The Crypto: Mining the Money p. 157

13 Old News p. 173.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781610399685

1610399684

OCLC:

1111650547