The Finance Curse

How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer

By: Nicholas Shaxson

Narrated by: Simon Mattacks

Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

Financial journalist Nicholas Shaxson first made his reputation studying the “resource curse,” seeing first-hand the disastrous economic and societal effects of the discovery of oil in Angola. He then gained prominence as an expert on tax havens, revealing the dark corners of that world long before the scandals of the Panama and Paradise Papers. Now, in The Finance Curse, he brings his knowledge to bear in an eye-opening investigation of how banks have overbalanced the economies of Western democracies, exerting an outsize effect on policy-making and effecting a brain drain of the brightest and best to the financial industry and its offshoots, much to the detriment of both business and broader society.

How did we get to this situation? Shaxson describes the transformation of banks over the twentieth century as they changed from relatively small institutions that did well for themselves by serving the needs of business, to unfettered global behemoths. As the world reeled from World War II, the banks grew bigger in the post-war restructuring, experimenting with esoteric financial instruments like the Eurobonds in the 1960s, and then in the 1970s and ’80s taking increasingly high risks in order to compete with each other to return more profit to their demanding shareholders. Now these megabanks spread the fiscal gospel that business must be taxed as little as possible, that corporations need rights previously granted to humans, and encourage a fight to the bottom between states to provide the most subsidized environment for big business, in the name of “competitivity.”

We need strong financial institutions - but when finance grows too big it becomes a curse. The Finance Curse is the explosive story of how finance got a stranglehold on society and how we might release ourselves from its grasp.

©2019 Nicholas Shaxson (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

This actually sucks

Dude maybe it’s not finance that’s the problem but all of these politicians getting into the mix, this books honestly sucks but at least I read his awful argument

Brilliant!...The Finance Curse reveals

this competitiveness agenda as a billionaire- friendly hoax, intellectual house of cards ready to fall!

Nicholas Shaxson

Awesome! A must read!!!!

Shaxson's book should be required reading starting in highschool for all Americans. For too long we've been walking around with our eyes wide shut!

Eye opening

Great explanation of modern financial manipulations around the world, of all sorts and how it hurts us.

Well argued, well researched and well read

I found the arguments convincing with good research, examples and explanations. The narration was also good making it an easy listen.

Every voter should read this book

The author draws together evidence from all corners of the global financial system to show how financialisation methods operate like a cancer destroying the health of local economies and communities. He has powers of exposition that enable him to throw light on complex and obscure features of monopolies and their impact. You will understand today’s world much better when you have read or listened to this shocking exposure of abuses that affect the lives of all of us

great for me, a novice in economics. eye opening

Well paced, clear and eye opening. I really enjoyed the picture being told from different angles.

Must read for anyone researching the finance industry

Captivating and comprehensive review of the state of the Global financial industry. From Tax Havens to trusts.

Equally insightful and insidious view of finance

Excellent book, full of reasoned investigations and fact based evidence. The chapters covering tax havens and other people's money are particularly interesting

A must read!

A forensic insight into the world of global finance that perpetuates greed, establishment wealth and power.

Disturbing account marred by too much rhetoric

Shaxson recounts a diverse range of finance capital misdeeds and dysfunction, arguing generally persuasively that many of the world's ills, especially growing inequality, are caused by global financialization.

The book kept me focused most of the time. However Shaxson drifts too easily into outrage, detracting from the excellent grounded research he has done. I wasn't always convinced either that all the examples he gave fit into an overall narrative as cleanly as he claims. Finally, it would have been interesting to delve a little deeper into both the impacts of dismantling finance and the alternatives. It is always possible to make things even worse...

Brilliant

Thought I new it and now know it to be true. Changed completely how I see the world.