The Globalization of Tobacco |
| Last week, the bear hurricane hit the stock market. In the space of 24 hours, world stock exchanges fell one after the other, like dominoes, and a large slice of global profits went up in smoke. The sole exception: the tobacco industry. “Ever since 1973, financial crises don’t touch it” reads a weekly bulletin from J.P. Morgan, the American investment bank. Are cigars and cigarettes investment safe-havens whenever the market seas get choppy? It certainly appears that way! Continue… |
Globalization’s Aftershocks - Q&A with Loretta on NewsweekApril 23, 2008 |
| What’s the collapse of the Eastern bloc got to do with America’s credit crisis? Author Loretta Napoleoni explains. Read the full Article… |
Publishers Weekly Reviews Rogue EconomicsApril 21, 2008 |
| After looking into how terrorism gets paid for (Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism), Napoleoni tackles the whole of capitalism’s dark side: the economics of illegal, criminal and terrorist activities worldwide. There’s no shortage of material, including the sex trade of Eastern Europe, internet fraud, piracy (both nautical and intellectual), human slavery, drugs and even the subprime mortgage lending scandal. Unsettling, eye-opening statistics abound—one third of all fish eaten in the UK is illegally poached; today, 27 million slaves worldwide generate annual profits of $31 billion; up until 9/11, 80 percent of the $1.5 trillion underworld economy was laundered through the US (the Patriot Act moved much of this business to Europe)—and Napoleoni’s bold analysis begs controversy. From page one, she ties the illegal business boom directly to the spread of democracy, pointing to the fall of the Berlin Wall as the moment when “rogue economics” were unleashed in their current, globe-enveloping iteration. Timely and fascinating, Napoleoni’s top-notch reporting, in which her attention turns from Viagra to blood diamonds to the banana price wars in a few pages, works in the vein of Freakonomics and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, but much grimmer. Like those, this volume doesn’t provide many answers, but the questions it raises are profound. |
Loretta speaks with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! |
ROGUE ECONOMICS
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| “Rogue Economics offers a fascinating view of how terribly wrong things have gone. Loretta Napoleoni’s book is an alarm, warning us to wake up immediately and head down a new path.” –John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit ManIt was called “The Freedom Bug.” In the early 1990’s church bells rang while the Iron Curtain came down across Europe. In less than a decade the number of democratic countries went from 69 to 118. As democracy spread, so did slavery. Within two decades, politics has lost control, and economics has become a dark force in the hands of ruthless new entrepreneurs. From the European sex trade to the rise of Islamic finance, from the Chinese counterfeit industry to fish pirates of the Baltic Sea, Rogue Economics is turning the global market into our worst nightmare. Trapped inside the ‘Market Matrix’, a web of economic and commercial illusions, consumers are at the mercy of this new force.In ROGUE ECONOMICS (Seven Stories Press; April 2, 2008) Loretta Napoleoni, economist, Fulbright Scholar and an expert on terror financing, lays out a brilliant assessment of the dark forces unleashed by globalization. The global subprime crisis, the swift rise of the super-rich and illegal businesses ranging on the Internet, all are part of this phenomenon which flourishes during times of great upheaval. As in the Gold Rush and the Industrial Revolution, Rogue Economics exposes the paradoxical economic connections of the global market and the making of a new world order.LORETTA NAPOLEONI’s first book, the bestselling Terror Inc: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism, has been translated into 12 languages; her second, Insurgent Iraq was an early look at the growing insurgency led by al-Zarqawi (and came out just as American media and government were recognizing his power). Napoleoni holds an MA in international relations and economics from Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD in terrorism from the London School of Economics. For her work as a consultant for the commodities markets, she met often with officials of many Middle Eastern nations.Foreign rights to Rogue Economics have been sold in nine countries and it is a bestseller in Italy. |
Rogue Economics - Booktrailer |
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