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Money Makes The World Go Around

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Money Makes The World Go Around

One Investor Tracks Her Cash Through The Global Economy, From Brooklyn to Bangkok and Back

Penguin Group (USA),

15 min read
10 take-aways
Text available

What's inside?

Don’t know where your money is going? Deposit it at home; seek it around the globe. Just one drop in the economic storm.

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

Some books set out to accomplish the impossible and come admirably close. Barbara Garson’s volume is a prime example. Can you deposit money in a little rural bank and really trace its spread across the global monetary system? How do you know that a multi-million dollar loan to, say, shrimp exporters in Thailand, really has anything to do with the actual dollars you deposited? But that’s not the point of this book. The author embarks on a whirlwind, worldwide tour of the global financial juggernaut, and shows how money falls like a drop in a pond and emits waves of disruption that seemingly spread out forever. Garson concludes that deregulation needs to be reigned in, a reasonable anticipation of the Enron mess. getAbstract.com highly recommends her book to business people and consumers who want a better feel for what the "global economic order" is all about, why people are protesting at each meeting of the WTO and whether you should be steamed as well.

Summary

New World Disorder?

Is the New World Economic Order such a great idea? That may be a question the World Trade Organization ponders every day. Utopian visions of a worldwide monetary system date back to Woodrow Wilson and The League of Nations. However, today’s global village was created according to the ethos of Rupert Murdoch, rather than Eleanor Roosevelt. Considering the current economic difficulties, this is an apt time to consider the effect of the worldwide free flow of capital without regard to national borders or barriers.

What happens when you deposit money in, say, the Bank of Millbrook in rural horse country, about an hour and a half up the Hudson from New York City? Where does the money travel? Whose efforts and initiatives will it support? Will it be invested evenly, fairly and efficiently? Can anyone really track where the money goes?

To begin to answer that question, first remember that by law, no US bank can lend more than 15% of its capital to one borrower. Large corporations, however, do require large loans. When this demand occurs, a lead institution such as Citibank or Chase, associates with other banks in a “syndicated loan.” All banks have...

About the Author

Barbara Garson has written for The New York Times, Harpers, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe and Newsweek. Her nonfiction writing has earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a National Press Club Citation. She wrote a best-selling book, MacBird!, two well-known volumes about the workplace, All the Livelong Day and The Electronic Sweatshops, and several plays, including Security and the Obie Award-winning children’s play, The Dinosaur Door.

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