Davos man How the billionaires devoured the world

Peter S. Goodman

Book - 2022

"From the New York Times's Global Economics Correspondent, a masterwork of reporting and explanatory journalism that exposes how billionaires' systematic plunder of the world has transformed 21st century life and dangerously destabilized democracy"--

Saved in:

2nd Floor Show me where

305.5234/Goodman
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 305.5234/Goodman Checked In
Subjects
Published
New York, NY : Custom House [2022]
Language
English
Main Author
Peter S. Goodman (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
viii, 472 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [413]-458) and index.
ISBN
9780063078307
9780063078314
  • Prologue "They Write the Rules for the Rest of the World"
  • Part I. Global Pillage
  • Chapter 1. "High Up in the Mountains"
  • Chapter 2. "The World that Our Fathers in World War II Wanted Us to Live In"
  • Chapter 3. "Suddenly, the Orders Stopped"
  • Chapter 4. "Our Chance to Fuck them Back"
  • Chapter 5. "It Had to Explode"
  • Chapter 6. "Every Stone I Looked Under was a Blackstone"
  • Chapter 7. "They are Now Licking their Lips"
  • Part II. Profiteering Off a Pandemic
  • Chapter 8. "They Are Not Interested in Our Concerns"
  • Chapter 9. "There's Always a Way of Making Money"
  • Chapter 10. "Grossly Underfunded and Facing Collapse"
  • Chapter 11. "We are Actually All One"
  • Chapter 12. "We're Not Safe"
  • Chapter 13. "This is Killing People"
  • Chapter 14. "Is this a Time to Profit?"
  • Chapter 15. "We Will Get 100 Percent of Our Capital Back"
  • Part III. Resetting History
  • Chapter 16. "Not Somebody Who is Going to Disrupt Washington"
  • Chapter 17. "The Money is Right there in the Community Now"
  • Chapter 18. "Put Money in People's Pockets"
  • Chapter 19. "At War against Monopoly Power"
  • Chapter 20. "Taxes, Taxes, Taxes. The Rest is Bullshit."
  • Conclusion "Our Cup Runneth Over"
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Tax dodging, chicanery, and deceit are the stock-in-trade of supposedly humanitarian plutocrats according to this sardonic denunciation. Goodman (Past Due), a New York Times reporter, takes aim at billionaires who attend World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland, to fret over global crises while sidestepping their own responsibility for them. These "Davos men," he writes, "not only prosper but profiteer off everyone else's suffering." He admonishes Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos for failing to give workers adequate personal protective equipment and paid sick leave, for example, and Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman for "jacking up rents in a pandemic." But the main charges are simple greed and hypocrisy: while Davos billionaires extol philanthropy and social justice, Goodman writes, they lobby against taxes and regulations that would trim their fortunes--and thus deny governments the capacity to solve problems by redistributing wealth, improving public services, and taming capitalism's excesses. Goodman's reportage doesn't skimp on irony--attendees at one Davos event virtue-signaled on refugee issues by being "led around in the dark while blindfolded as angry officials demand papers"--but his critique is overbroad and unoriginal, with billionaires being cast into the roles of all-purpose villains. It's colorful, but the rehash of wealthy men's perfidy falls short of a cogent or fair analysis of their influence. (Jan.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

The consequences of unfettered avarice. New York Times global economics correspondent Goodman mounts a scathing critique of the greed, narcissism, and hypocrisy that characterize those in "the stratosphere of the globe-trotting class," many of whom gather at the annual World Economic Forum held in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos. Davos Man--an epithet coined by political scientist Samuel Huntington--is "an unusual predator whose power comes in part from his keen ability to adopt the guise of an ally." The "relentless plunder" perpetrated by Davos Man, Goodman argues persuasively, "is the decisive force behind the rise of right-wing populist movements around the world," leading to widening economic inequality, intense public anger, and dire threats to democracy. The author closely examines five individuals: private equity magnate Stephen Schwarzman; JPMorgan Chase executive Jamie Dimon; asset manager Larry Fink; Amazon's Jeff Bezos; and Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, who promotes himself as "the most empathetic corporate chieftain." At the same time that these men broadcast their concern for social justice, they enrich themselves by manipulating economies, lobbying politicians, eviscerating regulations, weakening government oversight, and extracting huge tax benefits. Fink's professed concern for the environment, for example, is really an alarm about risk to investments: "In a world under assault by rising seas and turbulent weather, how safe was real estate, and what were the implications for mortgage-backed securities?" During the mortgage crisis, Schwarzman's company bought foreclosed properties, amassing a large inventory that it leased to desperate renters. With their yachts, multiple mansions, and private islands, they prove themselves "unmoored from the rest of human experience." Reining in Davos Man, Goodman asserts, "can happen only through the exercise of democracy--by unleashing strategies centered on boosting wages and working opportunities, by erecting new forms of social insurance, by reviving and enforcing antitrust law, by modernizing the tax code to focus on wealth." An urgent, timely, and compelling message with nearly limitless implications. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.