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The Finance Curse: How Global Finance is Making Us All Poorer
https://www.amazon.ca/Finance-Curse-Nicholas-Shaxson/dp/0802128475
Nov. 15 2019 by Nicholas Shaxson (Author)
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, revised with chapters exclusive to this American edition, he takes us on a terrifying journey through the world economy, exposing tax havens, monopolists, megabanks, private equity firms, Eurobond traders, lobbyists, and a menagerie of scoundrels quietly financializing our entire society, hurting both business and individuals.
Shaxson shows we got here, telling the story of how finance re-engineered the global economic order in the last half-century, with the aim not of creating wealth but extracting it from the underlying economy. Under the twin gospels of “national competitiveness” and “shareholder value,” megabanks and financialized corporations have provoked a race to the bottom between states to provide the most subsidized environment for big business, have encouraged a brain drain into finance, and have fostered instability, inequality, and turned a blind eye to the spoils of organized crime. From Ireland to Iowa, Shaxson shows the insidious effects of financialization on our politics and on communities who were promised paradise but got poverty wages instead.
We need a strong financial system—but when it grows too big it becomes a monster. The Finance Curse is the explosive story of how finance got a stranglehold on society, and reveals how we might release ourselves from its grasp.
對全球金融的灼熱起訴，探索銀行業如何從業務支持者發展到世界上最大的業務，並展示社會如何與金融霸權作鬥爭
金融記者尼古拉斯·沙克斯森（Nicholas Shaxson）首先在研究“資源詛咒”的聲譽中，親眼目睹了安哥拉發現石油的災難性經濟和社會影響。 然後，他作為避稅天堂的專家獲得了突出，在巴拿馬和天堂論文的醜聞之前很久就揭示了這個世界的黑暗角落。 現在，在《金融詛咒》中，該章節的修訂是該美國版的獨有的章節，他帶我們踏上了世界經濟的恐怖旅程，暴露了稅收天堂，壟斷者，巨型商人，私募股權公司，私募股權公司，歐洲貿易商，遊說者，遊說者和Scoundrels的Menagrels。 悄悄地將我們整個社會的財政財務化，損害企業和個人。
Shaxson表明我們到了這裏，講述了在過去半個世紀中如何重新設計全球經濟秩序的故事，目的不是創造財富，而是從基本經濟中提取財富。 在“國家競爭力”和“股東價值”的雙福音書中，Megabanks和Financializatizations激發了各州之間的競賽，以提供最有補貼的大型企業的環境，鼓勵了腦海，並促進了不穩定的不穩定。 ，不平等，對有組織犯罪的戰利視而不見。 從愛爾蘭到愛荷華州，Shaxson展示了金融化對我們的政治和被許諾天堂但貧窮工資的社區的陰險影響。
我們需要一個強大的財務係統，但是當它變得太大時，它就會成為怪物。 金融詛咒是關於金融如何束縛社會的爆炸性故事，並揭示了我們如何從其掌握中釋放自己。
The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer – review
The author and journalist Nicholas Shaxson gives a chilling account of the financial sector’s stranglehold on the UK
在閱讀尼古拉斯·沙克森 (Nicholas Shaxson) 在金融詛咒中對倫敦金融城對我們經濟影響的嚴厲分析時，我想起了這個危險的陷阱。 在講述英國避稅天堂故事的開創性金銀島之後七年，這本新書擴大了他對現代全球化金融體係基礎的攻擊。
Shaxson 認為，金融部門已經變得如此龐大，以至於它的引力場扭曲了周圍的一切。 它現在不是為實體經濟服務，而是掠奪它。 我本來希望看到他聲稱倫敦金融城自 1990 年以來已花費英國 4.5 萬億英鎊的說法背後的工作原理，但宏大的分析完全令人信服：我們迷上了倫敦金融城及其帶來的熱錢，就像克裏姆林宮一樣 沉迷於鞭打自己的納稅人。
這本書從微觀層麵開始，首先是在 Trainline 應用程序上購買車票——這是大多數人沒有考慮太多的事情——然後是 75 便士的預訂費離開買家銀行賬戶後的旅程。 資金通過英國、澤西島、英國、澤西島、盧森堡和開曼群島的賬戶反彈，最後流入美國。
堆放在 Trainline 應用程序之上的這種上層建築的目的是盡可能多地從稅務人員那裏獲得利潤，從而使我們的政府缺乏維護鐵路所需的資金。 “企業老板和他們在金融領域的顧問已經從為經濟創造財富轉向從經濟中榨取財富，”沙克森寫道。
這本書廣泛討論了“競爭力議程”的哲學理由，即國家需要像公司一樣相互競爭的想法。 他進一步分析了越來越多的共識，即當戰後布雷頓森林體係在 70 年代離岸金融的重壓下崩潰時，現代世界的一個關鍵轉折點出現了。
倫敦金融城是破壞布雷頓森林體係資本控製的核心，一旦這些控製消失，它就可以更廣泛地出口其有利可圖的發明。 這導致“經濟增長放緩、不平等加劇、市場效率低下、公共服務受損、腐敗加劇、替代經濟部門空心化，以及對民主和社會的廣泛破壞”，在國內外。
在過去的幾年裏，人們普遍嘲笑那些說他們在政治上感到無家可歸的英國人（完全披露：我偶爾也是其中之一）但沙克森在我們的核心列出了激進主義形狀的洞的尺寸 政治，金融化通過它進入了我們國家的每一個角落。
兩個主要政黨都在這個問題的邊緣進行修補，但顯然未能理解解決扼殺社會的壟斷的緊迫性，以及聲稱對他們有利的銀行也對我們有利。 Shaxson 要求徹底透明以揭示誰擁有什麽，作為防止從中國、俄羅斯和其他地方流入的盜賊資本的核心防禦措施，以及征收土地價值稅以削弱避稅天堂，並徹底禁止一些熱錢。
這將需要在政治上做出艱難的決定：我們不會成為紐約市希望我們成為的人民幣的重要交易中心； 我們需要拆分四大會計師事務所； 科技巨頭需要受到監管，這樣他們才能為我們的利益而不是他們自己的利益行事。 從某種意義上說，這是用來證明減稅合理性的拉弗曲線的漸進版本：如果我們限製金融，我們都會有更多的錢。
金融詛咒是改善我們國家的激進、緊迫和重要的宣言，它從英國實際所在的地方開始——一個完全開放、高度脆弱的經濟體，完全被我們的金融業改變——而不是我們的主要政黨希望它成為的地方， 無論他們是回到 1950 年代還是 1890 年代。 這場爭論不應該是真正的政黨政治，但它挑戰了英國政治長達數十年的主旨，要贏得這場爭論將需要一場艱苦的鬥爭。 然而，如果我們不想重蹈蘇聯覆轍，那我們就必須打一場仗。
In its final decades, the Soviet Union was hooked on alcohol. It needed the revenue from selling vodka, and it needed the booze to keep its citizens happy. But there was a problem: the more Soviet citizens drank, the less they worked, and the more the economy withered. It was a vicious circle, with no clear exit, that helped doom the whole communist project.
I was reminded of this parlous trap while reading Nicholas Shaxson’s excoriating analysis of the City of London’s effect on our economy in The Finance Curse. Coming seven years after his groundbreaking Treasure Islands, which told the story of Britain’s tax havens, this new book broadens his assault on the foundations of the modern globalised financial system.
Shaxson argues the financial sector has become so big that its gravitational field has distorted everything around it. Instead of serving the real economy, it now preys on it. I would have liked to have seen the working behind his claim that the City has cost Britain £4.5tn since 1990, but the grand analysis is utterly convincing: we are hooked on the City and the hot money it brings in, just like the Kremlin was addicted to flogging spirits to its own taxpayers.
The book starts at the micro level, with the purchase of a ticket on the Trainline app – something most people do without giving it much thought – and then follows the 75p booking fee’s journey after it leaves the buyer’s bank account. The money bounces through accounts in the UK, Jersey, the UK again, Jersey again, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands, before ending up in the US.
The purpose of this superstructure piled on top of the Trainline app is to keep as much profits as possible away from the taxman, thus starving our government of the money it needs to – among other things – maintain the railways. “The corporate bosses and their advisers in the financial sector have moved away from creating wealth for the economy, and towards extracting wealth from the economy,” Shaxson writes.
The book roams widely through the philosophical justification for the “competitiveness agenda”, the idea that countries need to compete with one another in the same way companies do. And he adds further analysis to the growing consensus that a key inflexion point for the modern world came when the postwar Bretton Woods system collapsed under the weight of offshore finance in the 70s.
The City was central to the undermining of the capital controls of Bretton Woods and, once those controls were gone, could export its lucrative inventions ever more widely. That led to “lower economic growth, steeper inequality, inefficient markets, damage to public services, worse corruption, the hollowing out of alternative economic sectors, and widespread damage to democracy and to society”, abroad and at home.
Over the past couple of years, there has been widespread mockery of Brits who say they feel politically homeless (full disclosure: I’ve occasionally been one of them) but Shaxson lays out the dimensions of the radicalism-shaped hole at the heart of our politics, through which financialisation has entered every corner of our country.
Both major parties have tinkered around the edges of the issue, but signally failed to understand the urgency of tackling the monopolies that are strangling society, as well as the banks that claim what is good for them is also good for us. Shaxson demands radical transparency to reveal who owns what, as a core defence against kleptocratic capital flowing in from China, Russia and elsewhere, as well as a land-value tax to defang the tax havens, and outright bans on some hot money.
This would require politically difficult decisions: we would not become the great trading centre for China’s yuan that the City wants us to be; we would need to break up the big four accountancy firms; the tech giants would need to be regulated so they act in our interest, rather than their own. In a sense, this is a progressive version of the Laffer curve used to justify tax cuts: if we restrict finance, we’ll all have more money.
The Finance Curse is a radical, urgent and important manifesto for improving our country, starting from where Britain actually is – a wide-open, highly vulnerable economy utterly transformed by our finance industry – rather than where our major parties would like it to be, whether they’re harking back to the 1950s or to the 1890s. This argument should not really be party political, but it challenges the decades-long thrust of British politics, and winning it will require a hard fight. If we don’t want to go the way of the USSR, however, it’s a fight we need to have.
