Vulture capitali$m : corporate crimes, backdoor bailouts, and the death of freedom / Grace Blakeley.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Longlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Nonfiction
A Next Big Idea Book Club Must-Read for March 2024

In the vein of The Shock Doctrine and Evil Geniuses , this timely manifesto from an acclaimed journalist illustrates how corporate and political power brokers have used planned capitalism to advance their own interests at the expense of the rest of us--and how we can take back our economy for all.

It's easy to look at the state of the world around us and feel hopeless. We live in an era marked by war, climate crisis, political polarization, and acute inequality--and yet many of us feel powerless to do anything about these profound issues. We've been assured that unfettered capitalism is necessary to ensure our freedom and prosperity, even as we see its corrosive effects proliferating daily. Why, in our age of unchecked corporate power, are most of us living paycheck to paycheck? When the economy falters, why do governments bail out corporations and shareholders but leave everyday people in the dust?

Now, economic and political journalist and progressive star on the rise Grace Blakeley exposes the corrupt system that is failing all around us, pulling back the curtain on the free market mythology we have been sold, and showing how, as corporate interests have taken hold, governments have historically been shifting away from competition and democracy and towards monopoly and oligarchy.

Tracing over a century of neoliberal planning and backdoor bailouts, Blakeley takes us on a deeply reported tour of the corporate crimes, political maneuvering, and economic manipulation that elites have used to enshrine a global system of "vulture capitalism"--planned capitalist economies that benefit corporations and the uber-wealthy at the expense of the rest of us--at every level, from states to empires. Blakeley exposes the cracks already emerging within capitalism, lighting a path forward for how we can democratize our economy, not just our politics, to ensure true freedom for all.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (vii)
• Part I Capitalism And Freedom
• 1 How to Get Away with Murder (3)
• Capitalism Isn't What You Think It Is (11)
• 2 The United States of Fordlandia (19)
• The Ungovernable Society (26)
• The Neoliberal Lie (31)
• 3 Disaster Capitalism (41)
• AIG: American Insurance Grifters (48)
• Making a Killing for McKinsey (53)
• The Cost-of-Greed Crisis (61)
• Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire (66)
• Part II The Planners
• 4 American-Made Sweatshops: How Big Business Plans (75)
• Black Box Businesses (81)
• Chemical Imbalances (90)
• Government 4 Sale (101)
• 5 Buying Time: How Big Banks Plan (109)
• Dr. Debt (114)
• Bernie's Bros (119)
• The King's Coin (124)
• Black Rock's Black Ops (132)
• 6 Capital's Cronies: How States Plan (139)
• The Highway Code (143)
• Shilling for Greensill (153)
• Nudged over the Edge (162)
• Ever-planned (167)
• 7 Money at Six Percent: How Empires Plan (173)
• Pacifying the Natives (179)
• Banana Republics (186)
• The People versus Chevron (194)
• The Human Right to Capital Flight (202)
• Part III Democratic Planning
• 8 The Architect and the Bee: How to Plan Democratically (215)
• Lord of the Lies (222)
• People-Powered Planning (226)
• 9 Taking Back Control: Democratic Planning at Scale (241)
• Making Capital Scream (247)
• Democratizing the Future (264)
• Conclusion (267)
• Notes (273)
• Index (343)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

"There is a deep contradiction between the belief that we are free and the reality of living under capitalism," according to this fiery treatise. Blakeley (The Corona Crash), a staff writer at Tribune magazine, argues that contrary to free market doctrine, capitalist economies rely on planning by bankers, large companies, and states. The capitalist imperative of constant growth leads big businesses to become monopolies that wield their power to circumvent market dynamics, Blakeley contends, noting how Amazon artificially depresses workers' wages by dominating regional economies in which residents have few other employment options. Successful businesses can even rival state power, as when in the early 1900s the United Fruit Company, whose banana plantations were based in Guatemala, assumed control of the country's postal service and propped up the presidential candidacy of autocrat Jorge Ubico, who "handed over tracts of land to the UFC" once in power. Blakeley makes a persuasive case that "corporations are political institutions" unaccountable to the employees, customers, and community members most affected by their decisions, and she details fascinating experiments that show what alternatives might look like (in the 1980s, a small Andalusian village won collective control of local land and continue to make decisions as a group about how to use it and what to do with the profits it generates). Impassioned and provocative, this will challenge readers' understanding of the fundamental forces that govern economic markets. Agent: Chris Wellbelove, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (Mar.)Correction: The author's last name was misspelled in an earlier version of this review.

Booklist Review

In today's world, the divide between the haves and have-nots continues to grow. Political and economic journalist Blakeley reveals how this inequality is driven by capitalism. She says that the public is persuaded to believe that capitalism and free-market society are one in the same. She explains through several chapters how this is untrue and describes what she calls vulture capitalism--planned, capitalist economies that benefit companies and the ultrarich at the expense of everyone else. Blakeley notes that this way of doing business keeps poor nations from developing while exploiting their raw materials and cheap labor to benefit capitalist societies and build the wealth of the few who make the rules. To make her point, she dives deep into history, including a wide variety of examples, like Henry Ford's Fordlandia, banana republics, the Enron collapse, the exploitation of Africa by Europe, and more. Her approach helps readers understand the impacts of capitalism in the United States and globally. Readers will appreciate this well-researched book on a complex topic.

Kirkus Book Review

A jeremiad against conventional "free market" wisdom and its reliance on oppressive, covert planning. British economics writer Blakeley offers a passionate argument that the interconnected crises of our time are "driven by a toxic melding of public and private power," resulting in profits and impunity for elites and in precarity for others. She connects these circumstances to the fact that "free market capitalism has never been as unplanned as its advocates have suggested." The author meticulously unpacks this secret history of planning, noting how principles of competition and innovation have become illusory, meaning "today's megafirms are barely constrained by the pressures of market competition." Blakeley connects the metastasizing social immunity of massive corporations with the gradual political triumph of neoliberalism. She then argues for transformative "democratic planning," citing attempts at alternative communities or reworked corporate structures "based on the democratic production of socially useful commodities," featuring worker input, which corporate managers abhor. Such plans were countered by politicians like Margret Thatcher to "ruthlessly reassert the power of capital over labor." Blakely concludes by proposing larger-scale organizing efforts, though she acknowledges that the few examples--e.g., Allende's Chile--suggest that "any attempt to democratize an economy will encounter massive resistance from capital." Nonetheless, the author's tone remains optimistic. "When we frame our political project in terms of collective empowerment," she writes, "we show that politics can't be reduced to elections--it's something we all do every day." This is a complex discussion, and Blakeley's structure alternates among dramatic flashpoints (e.g., the corporate debacles involving Enron and WeWork), narratives about disrupting public-private malfeasance, and arguments about economic theory that engage the views of many significant figures. Though these strands can seem abstract or repetitive, the author writes knowledgeably about the variety of intricacies involved. Engaging, occasionally unwieldy meditations on the relationship between social governance and late-stage capitalism. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.