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A razor sharp dissection of the world of high finance ... Henwood has the natural-born teacher's ability to make the obscure transparent. * THE NATION * With a minimum of rhetoric once he gets rolling, Henwood does a regular Michael Jordan - making the devilishly difficult look easy, explaining the complications of high finance so lucidly that the system condemns itself. * SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN * Henwood has always been brilliant at the sort of unadorned insight that makes commerce come alive. Wall Street is brimming with such revelations, one after the other proving a central fact: capitalism is dirty. * VILLAGE VOICE * Wall Street mavens who hate challenges to their self-serving world view will not enjoy this book ... Anyone possessing an even slightly open mind will find its inventory of the financial instruments, players and consequences of the stock market a refreshing and informative break from the usual claptrap of financiers and financial journalists. * KIRKUS REVIEWS *

Wall Street mavens who hate challenges to their self-serving worldview will not enjoy this book. One of the most striking characteristics of the American financial world is its ideological rigidity. Backed by the intellectual legitimacy of neoclassical economics and the wealth of the upper classes, the managers of money resolutely cling to beliefs bordering on the absurd. The stock market is understood as a vehicle for raising capital (although it is primarily a place to buy and sell existing shares of stock) and allocating it rationally (although phenomena like panic buying and selling are common); capital is understood as a purely neutral entity independent of concerns such as power and justice. Henwood (editor of Left Business Observer and host of a weekly radio show on WBAI in New York City) rejects this orthodoxy and amplifies his sin by questioning both the market's value in the economy and its impartiality in society. Anyone not put off by his self-conscious performance as a gadfly and possessing an even slightly open mind will find his inventory of the financial instruments, players, and consequences of the stock market a refreshing and informative break from the usual claptrap of financiers and respectable journalists. This guy actually thinks that the distribution of wealth matters in a society, that there are legitimate concerns regarding incomes beyond keeping wages down and return on capital high, and that assessments of the financial system should not be divorced from such issues. Unfortunately, in the latter half of the volume he moves into theoretical territory that will not hold the neophyte's interest, and few insiders will be willing to seriously consider his analysis. As a result it's unlikely that Henwood's work will be widely read or cut through the prevailing dogma. Next assignment: Present the same ideas in a more accessible form to a wider audience. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Doug Henwood is a journalist who has contributed frequently to The Nation and broadcasts a weekly radio show covering economics and politics on New York's WBAI. He is the author of The State of the USA Atlas and the editor of Left Business Observer.

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