For over forty years in more than sixty countries, Raymond Baker has witnessed the free-market system operating illicitly and corruptly, with devastating consequences. In "Capitalism's Achilles Heel", Baker takes readers on a fascinating journey through the global free-market system and reveals how dirty money, poverty, and inequality are inextricably intertwined. Readers will discover how small illicit transactions lead to massive illegalities and how staggering global income disparities are worsened by the illegalities that permeate international capitalism. Drawing on his experiences, Baker shows how Western banks and businesses use secret transactions and ignore laws while handling some $1 trillion in illicit proceeds each year. He also illustrates how businesspeople, criminals, and kleptocrats perfect the same techniques to shift funds and how these tactics negatively affect individuals, institutions, and countries.
This is one of the best books I've ever read on economics. It's well-constructed, well written, interesting and engaging and full of primary source research supported by charts and lists that are a fascinating view into the underbelly of the global economic system.Baker peels back a corner of the secrecy that conceals the vast oceans of hidden, dirty, corrupt money in the world and you can see the roots of war, terror, monarchies and suffering, among many plagues on Humanity. The first part of the book focuses on topic like banking secrecy, and explains the mechanics. Then, he covers the corruption in the world and the suffering it produces. Finally, he offers some hope: a bit of guidance to policymakers who might take a sudden interest in human rights. The personal touches at the beginning and end really bookend the whole presentation beautifully.I buy a copy of this book every year and give it to someone I love. If I were King of the World, I would designate if a basic international economics textbook. Baker, and the many people who funded and assisted in the production of this piece of scholarship, all deserve major kudos.
2. Playing the Game
- The Dirty-Money User Manual
- You're In Business
3. Dirty Money at Work
- The Corruption Industry
- The Criminal Component: Drugs, Thugs and Terrorists
- Global Commerce and Tax Evasion: Coin of the Realm
4. Magnitudes and Misunderstandings
- How Much Money?
- A Failure Rate of 99.9 Percent
- Well-Intentioned Efforts
- The Patriot Act
- Dirty Money Is on the Rise
- Chasing Terrorists' Money
- Ill-Intentioned Loopholes
- Haven and Secrecy Structure
- We Like the Money
- Challenge
PART II: INEQUALITY: THE GAP MATTERS
5. The Global Divide
- The Quintile Canyon
- Measure for Measure
- It's An Uncertain World
- The Monkey Wrench
6. "I don't Understand" and "Don't Tell Anyone"
- Myths
- "Don't Tell Anyone"
- Corruption-At Long Last!
- Filling Western Coffers: Mum's the Word
- Debtor's Prison
- What If?
- Intellectual Gap or Character Gap?
7. It's the 70 to 90 Percent That Matters
- It Can't Last
- Convergence?
- The Gap Matters
PART III: DISUTILITY: BENTHAM KOs SMITH
8. The Anguish of Adam Smith
- Theory of Moral Sentiments
- Wealth of Nations
- Invisible Hand
- Das Adam Smith Problem
- The Tears of Adam Smith
9. The Joys of Jeremy Bentham
- Jurisprudence
- Utilitarianism
- Related Interests
- John Stuart Mill
- Problems
10. Philosophy Becomes Culture
- The Great Infusion
- 20th-Century Utility
- 20th-Century Utilitarianism
- Inoperable Doctrine, Deadly Practice
- Disutility
- Challenge
PART IV: RUN IT RIGHT: TRUST THE SYSTEM
11. Capitalism's Achilles Heel
12. Spreading Prosperity
- Delegitimizing Dirty Money
- Tougher on Corruption
- Reining in the Support Structure
- Mispricing and Transfer Pricing
- Capitalism's Contribution to Slashing Inequality
- "...When You Pay Me What You Owe Me"
- Reconstitute the World Bank
- Justice First
Raymond W. Baker, after a long career in international business, is a guest scholar at The Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy, both located in Washington, D.C. He appears often on television and radio in the United States and overseas and often testifies before House and Senate committees. Baker has an MBA from Harvard, lived in Africa for many years, and has done business across much of the developing world.
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