Book Bits: 12 October 2024

● The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Review via The New York Times
The rise and spread of these “extraterritorial domains” is the subject of Atossa Araxia Abrahamian’s new book, “The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World.” Abrahamian, a journalist who grew up in Geneva, a city rife with enclaves “bound by some Swiss laws, but immune from others,” traces the development of such zones, talking to some of the people who made them happen, including a few who regret their role in helping countries excise pieces of themselves in the name of allowing the already privileged to become even wealthier.

● Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower
Mary Bridges
Summary via publisher (Princeton U. Press)
The dominance of US multinational businesses today can seem at first like an inevitable byproduct of the nation’s superpower status. In Dollars and Dominion, Mary Bridges tells a different origin story. She explores the ramshackle beginnings of US financial power overseas, showing that US bankers in the early twentieth century depended on the US government, European know-how, and last-minute improvisation to sustain their work abroad. Bridges focuses on an underappreciated piece of the nation’s financial infrastructure—the overseas branch bank—as a brick-and-mortar foundation for expanding US commercial influence.

● What Can We Learn from the Great Depression?: Stories of Ordinary People & Collective Action in Hard Times
Dana Frank
Summary via publisher (Penguin Random House)
Four stories of resilience, mutual aid, and radical rebellion that will transform how we understand the Great Depression. Drawing on little-known stories of working people, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? amplifies voices that have been long omitted from standard histories of the Depression era. In four tales, Professor Dana Frank explores how ordinary working people in the US turned to collective action to meet the crisis of the Great Depression and what we can learn from them today.

● The Peace Formula: Voice, Work and Warranties, Not Violence
Dominic Rohner
Summary via publisher (Cambridge U. Press)
Economic forces play a major role in the outbreak and perpetuation of violence, but they also hold the key for positive change. Using a non-technical and accessible style, The Peace Formula attacks a series of misconceptions about how economics has been used to foster peace. In place of these misconceptions, this book draws on rich historical anecdotes and cutting-edge academic evidence to outline the ‘peace formula’ – a set of key policies that are crucial ingredients for curbing armed conflict and achieving transition to lasting peace and prosperity. These policies include providing jobs (work), democratic participation (voice), and guaranteeing the security and basic functions of the state (warranties). Investigating specific political institutions and economic policies, this book provides the first easily accessible synthesis of this work and explains how ‘smart idealism’ can help us get the incentives of our leaders right. The stakes could hardly be higher.

● Good as Gold: How to Unleash the Power of Sound Money
Judy Shelton
Summary via publisher (Independent Institute)
With clarity and moral courage, Shelton charts the course to a brighter future. She’s one of the few economists bold enough to challenge the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve, emphasizing how today’s policies enrich elites at the expense of—you guessed it—poor and middle-class Americans. This, Shelton insists, must end. And it can end—easily. But Shelton doesn’t stop there. Her vision is for not only America but also for people around the world. Global, economic upliftment, she insists, need not come at the expense of domestic prosperity. We can have both—but not without a sound and stable U.S. currency. And history is very clear on this point. When the U.S. dollar is backed by gold, America prospers, and so does the rest of the world. In this book, Shelton casts a powerful vision that is as revolutionary as it is time-tested…a vision that shows how the future American dollar can perform as good as gold… or even better.

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