Sabotage: The Hidden Nature of Finance

I don't like the word 'sabotage',"--a former Goldman Sachs trader admitted. "It's just harsh.... Though, frankly, how else do you make money in this business...I mean, real money."

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.

Author: Anastasia Nesvetailova, Ronen Palan
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 01/28/2020
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.80w x 1.00d
ISBN13: 9781610399685
ISBN10: 1610399684
BISAC Categories:
- Business & Economics | Economic History
- Business & Economics | Banks & Banking
- Business & Economics | Industries | Financial Services

About the Author
Anastasia Nesvetailova is Professor of International Political Economy at City, University of London, where she also directs City Political Economy Research Centre (CITYPERC). Her main research focuses on the structure of the global financial system and processes of financialization, financial crises and governance. Her publications include Financial Alchemy in Crisis: The Great Liquidity Illusion (2010) and Shadow Banking Scope, Origins Theories (2017). She is based out of London.
Ronen Palan is an Israeli-born economist and Professor of International Political Economy at City, University of London. His work focuses on offshore financial centers and tax havens. He is the author or editor of a number of books, including The Imagined Economies of Globalisation (with Angus Cameron, Sage, 2004) and Tax Havens: How Globalization Really Works (with Richard Murphy and Christian Chavagneux, Cornell University Press, 2010). He is based out of London.