Hot Money and the Politics of Debt / Edition 2

by R.T. Naylor, R. T. Naylor

Overview

A ball of hot money rolls around the world. It seeks anonymity and political refuge. It dodges taxes and sidesteps currency controls. It rolls through offshore shell companies and secret bank accounts, phoney charities and fraudulent religious foundations. It is kept rolling by white-collar criminals, gun-runners, drug dealers, insurgent groups, scam artists, tax evaders, gold and gem smugglers, and, not least, secret service agents plotting coups and financing revolutions. R.T. Naylor explains the origins of this pool of hot and homeless money, its origins, its uses and abuses, how the world of high finance, corporate and governmental, became hostage to it, and the price the world is paying and will continue to pay until the hostages are released. This book was one of the first, and remains the most comprehensive, to dissect the world of offshore finance, capital flight, money laundering, and tax evasion. Once a subject of concern principally to tax authorities and finance ministries, since the September 11, 2001 hot and homeless money has now become a central preoccupation for police forces and intelligence services around the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780773527430
Publisher:	Mcgill-Queens University Press
Publication date:	08/17/2004
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.47(d)

About the Author

R.T. Naylor is professor, economics, McGill University, and the author of many books, including Economic Warfare: Sanctions, Embargo Busting, and Their Human Cost, and Bankers, Bagmen, and Bandits: Business and Politics in the Age of Greed.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments to the First Edition	vii
	Introduction	ix
	Prologue	11
Part 1	The World According to Meyer Lansky
1	Capital Flight in the Jet Age	19
2	Eurodollars and Nonsense	31
3	Red Ink and Black Gold	47
4	Sheikhs in Sombreros?	60
Part 2	Parables of Peculiar Talents
5	Putting the Money Changers Back in the Temple	77
6	Of Dope, Debt, and Dictatorship	92
7	Playing Russian Roulette with the Polish Debt	106
8	Paradise Lost?	118
9	What Went Down with the Belgrano?	134
10	Born-Again Banking	150
Part 3	High Finance in Cocaine Country
11	On Coca-Collateral and the Andean Debt	165
12	Country of Convenience	186
Part 4	What Gets Washed in the Pacific Basin?
13	Some Like It Hot	199
14	Birds of a Feather ...	216
Part 5	What Flies into the Cuckoo's Nest?
15	Swiss Contributions to Economic Development	231
16	Good neighbor Switzerland	250
Part 6	The Grim Reaper
17	Economics for the Moral Majority	273
18	Buddy, Can You Spare a Billion?	285
19	What's Better in the Bahamas?	298
20	Ghost Companies and Haunted Banks	310
Part 7	Strange Harvest
21	Capital Punishment	327
22	Taking Stock	347
23	Flight of Fancy	368
	Postscript: The Permanent Bull Economy	381
	Afterword: On Whom the Toll Tells	402
	Final Acknowledgments	444
	Notes	446
	Bibliography and Sources	516
	Index	521

Editorial Reviews

"This book is terrific!" Clayton Ruby, The Globe and Mail

"Naylor outlines in convincing ... detail the controversial mechanisms by which international financial relations are conducted." MacLean's Magazine

"[Naylor's book] is both entertaining and though-provoking ... He leaves no doubt that there is a lot of hot and dirty money around and that it would be harder to shuffle around without the banks." Washington Post Book Review

From the Publisher