The Hidden Nature of Finance: SABOTAGE

SABOTAGE: The Hidden Nature of Finance (on sale January 14, 2020) by professors Anastasia Nesvetailova and Ronen Palan, 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. Yet, 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. 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.SABOTAGE is two things. The first, a fierce denunciation of the practices and principles underlying the financial industry, and the second, a history of how we got here–from two professors whose expertise lies in the workings of financial markets and offshore tax havens. 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. 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.