Ideas Podcast | Spiderweb Capitalism
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is a leading independent publisher of trade and scholarly books by the world's experts.
In 2015, the anonymous leak of the Panama Papers brought to light millions of financial and legal documents exposing how the superrich hide their money using complex webs of offshore vehicles.?Spiderweb Capitalism?takes you inside this shadow economy, uncovering the mechanics behind the invisible, mundane networks of lawyers, accountants, company secretaries, and fixers who facilitate the illicit movement of wealth across borders and around the globe.
Kimberly Kay Hoang traveled more than 350,000 miles and conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with private wealth managers, fund managers, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, bankers, auditors, and other financial professionals. She traces the flow of capital from offshore funds in places like the Cayman Islands, Samoa, and Panama to special-purpose vehicles and holding companies in Singapore and Hong Kong, and how it finds its way into risky markets onshore in Vietnam and Myanmar. Hoang reveals the strategies behind spiderweb capitalism and examines the moral dilemmas of making money in legal, financial, and political gray zones.
About the Author
Kimberly Kay Hoang?is associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. She is the author of?Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work. She lives in Chicago. Twitter @kimberlykhoang
Sr. Content Writer | Independent Researcher | Diagrammer | Content Writer - Buopso
2 年Thanks Prof. K K Hoang, Prof. Dimitrios, and ofcourse @ Princeton University Press
Emeritus Professor, the University of Kansas; Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA; Masters, Washington University, St. Louis, MO. Author, editor, researcher, teacher, thinker
2 年One wonders what, exactly, is the point of the book? We know that more than 2% (and possibly as much as 10%) of the value of all traded commodities (something between two and ten trillion US Dollars) is directly associated with illicit drugs. A very conservative lower bound (of about US$320 billion) is given in this paper: https://www.unodc.org/pdf/WDR_2005/volume_1_chap2.pdf Moreover, this very rough estimate does not account for the illicit drug trade's multiplier effect, i.e., the value of goods and services that are employed to support and service this illicit trade flow. The Real Estate market of certain major metropolitan areas around the globe is closely linked to money laundering from that trade. What exactly is this book recommending in terms of public policy (beyond vacuous moral imperatives) to deal with this volcano type of an issue? Illicit drug production, trade and consumption have deep roots and causes, and far deeper links to politics. These links make it next to impossible to effectively deal with this explosive large scale social issue, unfortunately. Academia, being what it is, has been (again, unfortunately) incapable of closely analyzing and examining this topic, let alone offering any recommendations.