Capitalism's Achilles Heel

Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System
1. Auflage 2005
ISBN: 978-0-471-64488-0
Verlag: Wiley

Buch, Englisch, 438 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 857 g

Throughout his career, Raymond Baker-a tough-as-nails businessman turned scholar -has been thoroughly committed to capitalism. He has seen it all, and now he offers careful analysis and gripping examples that illustrate the serious problems besetting the global free-market system. With this book, Baker provides a fascinating insider's look at the way criminals, terrorists, and businesspeople move dirty money around the world, impoverishing billions and corrupting capitalism's ideals of fair play. In this highly readable account, he links banking, commerce, law, economics, and philosophy with passionate advocacy of steps that must be taken to renew capitalism's mandate for the spread of global prosperity.

For over forty years in more than sixty countries, Baker has witnessed the free-market system operating illicitly and corruptly, with devastating consequences for scores of fragile nations. Now, in Capitalism's Achilles Heel, Baker-the internationally respected authority on money laundering, corruption, and development issues-takes you on a fascinating journey that winds its way across the global free-market system and reveals how dirty money, poverty, and inequality are inextricably intertwined.

You'll discover how small illicit transactions lead to massive illegalities used by drug kingpins, racketeers, terrorist masterminds, and multinational corporations. You'll learn how staggering global income disparities are worsened by the illegalities that have come to permeate international capitalism. And, you'll see how distorted philosophical underpinnings appear to justify flaws in the practice of capitalism.

Drawing on his experiences throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, 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-through transfer pricing, false documentation, fake corporations, tax havens, secrecy jurisdictions, and other tricks of the trade-and how these tactics negatively affect individuals, institutions, and countries.

Can anything be done? For capitalism to succeed on a global scale, we must fight rampant lawlessness, reduce inequality, and recast the free market's supporting structures around principles of global justice. Capitalism's Achilles Heel provides a place for us to start.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Baker, Raymond W

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Literatur für Manager
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft Wirtschaftliche Globalisierung
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaft: Sachbuch, Ratgeber
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftssysteme, Wirtschaftsstrukturen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Prologue.

Chapter 1: Global Capitalism: Savior or Predator?

PART I: Illegality: We Like the Money.

Chapter 2: Playing the Game.

The Dirty-Money User Manual.

You're in Business.

Chapter 3: Dirty Money at Work.

The Corruption Industry.

The Criminal Component: Drugs, Thugs, and Terrorists.

Global Commerce and Tax Evasion: Coin of the Realm.

Chapter 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.

Falsified Pricing Structure.

We Like the Money.

Challenge.

PART II: Inequality: The Gap Matters.

Chapter 5: The Global Divide.

The Quintile Canyon.

Measure for Measure.

It's an Uncertain World.

The Monkey Wrench.

Chapter 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?

Chapter 7: It's the 70 to 90 Percent that Matters.

It Can't Last.

Convergence?

The Gap Matters.

Challenge.

PART III: Disutility: Bentham KOs Smith.

Chapter 8: The Anguish of Adam Smith.

Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Wealth of Nations.

Invisible Hand.

Das Adam Smith Problem.

The Tears of Adam Smith.

Chapter 9: The Joys of Jeremy Bentham.

Jurisprudence.

Utilitarianism.

Related Interests.

John Stuart Mill.

Problems.

Chapter 10: Philosophy Becomes Culture.

The Great Infusion.

Twentieth-Century Utility.

Twentieth-Century Utilitarianism.

Inoperable Doctrine, Deadly Practice.

Disutility.

Challenge.

PART IV: Run It Right: Trust the System.

Chapter 11: Capitalism's Achilles Heel.

Chapter 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.

Chapter 13: Renewing Capitalism.

Acknowledgments.

Notes.

Index.

Über Autor(innen)

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.