What do Eastern Europe's booming sex trade, America's subprime mortgage lending scandal, China’s fake goods industry, and celebrity philanthropy in Africa have in common? With biopirates trolling the blood industry, fish-farming bandits ravaging the high seas, pornography developing virtually in Second Life, and games like World of Warcraft spawning online sweatshops, how are rogue industries transmuting into global empires? And will the entire system be transformed by the advent of sharia economics? With the precision of an economist and the narrative deftness of a storyteller, syndicated journalist Loretta Napoleoni examines how the world is being reshaped by dark economic forces, creating victims out of millions of ordinary people whose lives have become trapped inside a fantasy world of consumerism. Napoleoni reveals the architecture of our world, and in doing so provides fresh insight into many of the most insoluble problems of our era.
LORETTA NAPOLEONI is the author of the bestselling book Rogue Economics: Capitalism's New Reality, which has been translated into fourteen languages, Terrorism and the Economy, and Terror Inc.: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism, which has been translated into twelve languages. One of the world's leading experts on money laundering and terror financing, she has worked as London correspondent and columnist for La Stampa, Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, El País, and Le Monde. A former Fulbright scholar, she holds an MA in international relations and economics from Johns Hopkins University, and an MPhil in terrorism from the London School of Economics. For her work as a consultant for the commodities markets, she traveled regularly to Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and other Middle Eastern countries, where she has met top financial and political leaders. She lives in London.