From the very first line where Raymond bundles criminals, terrorists and multinational corporations as one, got me hooked, but his much hyped up self-profile about his work and life experience slightly put me off as well. Raymond has tried to employ a sarcastic style, where he tries to belittle various corporations making gains from loopholes in government financial laws. Most of what he lists is common knowledge for me as their nefarious activities are pretty blatant in third world countries. Similarly, the corruption of Pakistani politicians, Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif as well as the Pakistan military is also common knowledge as it is widely reported in the local press. For not only do politicians think locally while criminals think globally, most third world media can only report locally as well. None of the local politicians in the third work really care about what gets reported in their local media as long as the global media giants don't pick up on their story.
Most of the book is about ways to improve free market economy by stemming out all known ills from it in order to reduce the gap between rich and poor. But I fail to see how and who will actually implement such global changes. Raymond makes economy sound like religion claiming that free market based capatilism isn't bad, it is actually the people running it who are actually to blame. I wish it was as simple as that. The only way economy will improve is protectionism all over again. Transparent Protectionism that is, as I believe most corruption occurs when deals are shrouded in secrecy hidden away from all stakeholders. This is where the local medias can play a role in bringing the details of every deal promptly to the people for effective scrutiny.
The book was a pretty difficult read for me as most economic books are generally. Will economics ever make sense to me?
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