A capable, eye-opening account of laissez faire financial laws and practices that serve the interest of criminals alone.
A revealing look at the web of financial chicanery that puts the U.S. at the head of places in which to hide ill-gotten gains.
Where to go when you’ve robbed your citizens blind or sold a boatload of Fentanyl? Not Turks and Caicos or Liberia or Bermuda: No, the thing to do is cultivate the right kinds of allies, financial and political, in the U.S., and voilà, money laundered and riches secured. Financial journalist Michel serves up his first exhibit: Teodorin Nguema Obiang Mangue, a son of the murderous Equatorial Guinean dictator, who spent mountains of his compatriots’ money on mansions and, in time, Michael Jackson collectibles even as those compatriots starved. His vast fortune was not technically illegal, owing to laws his father promulgated. As Michel chronicles, to protect it, Teodorin went to “a country that had perfected the biggest system of transforming dirty, suspect money into perfectly legitimate finances and assets, obscuring its illicit origins in the process.” That’d be the U.S., where Ukrainian crime lords, Colombian cartel leaders, and their ilk have found a welcome haven. Criminal cash was ever more welcome with the presidency of Donald Trump, whose “efforts to dismantle America’s anticorruption program took place almost as soon as he entered the White House.” The author shows how Trump figured out all kinds of ways to skim the flood of illegal cash that flowed into the country—e.g., selling one of his Trump Tower apartments to the daughter of another African dictator who, like most of Trump’s business associates, operated behind a shell corporation. Michel’s diligent dissection is maddening to read, all the more so when he recounts how nonprofits and universities flock to accept dirty money in exchange for bestowing legitimacy on donors. Happily, since Biden came into office, the tide has turned, but the kleptocracy of which Michel writes, which “can be understood…as capitalism as its worst,” will be difficult to uproot.
A capable, eye-opening account of laissez faire financial laws and practices that serve the interest of criminals alone.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-27452-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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