![]() ![]() ![]() Veblen, who coined the phrase ‘conspicuous consumption’, was among the first academics to expose, and to try to explain, malpractice in the worlds of business and finance. The authors begin by outlining the ideas of the largely forgotten Norwegian-American economist Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929). Many who work in the world of finance will say they don’t recognise such claims, but Nesvetailova and Palan make a convincing and well-evidenced case that such thinking is baked into the business models of most banks. They say that the companies Johnson is so determined to stick up for are today dependent for up to half of their profits on four types of sabotage: of clients, of competitors, of governments and of the market itself. The authors claim that at least half of what banks and other finance firms do is socially useless, if not actively destructive. Written by two academics at City, University of London, who also happen to be husband and wife – Belarusian-born Anastasia Nesvetailova and Israeli-born Ronen Palan – Sabotage is an astonishing indictment of a global finance industry that’s effectively gone rogue. Were the prime minister to read Sabotage, one would hope he might reconsider his stance. Earlier, while mayor of London, he described himself as ‘the champion of the City’. ![]() Sitting in a white leather armchair at a hustings event in June last year, Boris Johnson bragged that he had, more than any other politician, ‘stuck up for the bankers’ in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. ![]()
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