Book Bits: 27 January 2024

Busting the Bankers’ Club: Finance for the Rest of Us
Gerald Epstein
Review via Kirkus Reviews
An economics professor catalogs the countless ways in which the financial system fails ordinary consumers while favoring the wealthy.
“Finance,” writes Epstein, “is an essential and highly productive part of our economic system; but the financial system can also be a source of stagnation, instability, inequality, and crisis.” The essential inequities in the system have been laid bare at several points, but especially in the financial crisis of 2007-2008, when many corporations and financial institutions walked away unscathed at a cost to taxpayers of $50,000 to $120,000 per household—and not the mega-wealthy households, you can be sure.

Chinafy: Why China is leading the West in innovation and how the rest of the world can catch up
Joanna Hutchins
Summary via publisher (Marshall Cavenendish)
Western business leaders make two key assumptions about China: that China is always copying the West, and that the West is the seat of innovation. The truth is surprising: China is both copying and innovating, and while Western businesses are busy looking for the next new thing, China is rapidly iterating on what’s already been done and pushing ahead. While businesses in the West are getting disrupted and left behind, the savvy leaders among them can learn, innovate, and excel – by copying China’s playbook!

No Worries: How to Live a Stress-Free Financial Life
Jared Dillian
Summary via publisher (Harriman House)
No Worries shows how anyone can live a stress-free financial life and build wealth for the long term. This is not about millions of tiny decisions that drain the joy from life, like skipping daily coffee to save a few bucks. And it’s not simply about having more money. The secret lies in adopting the right attitude to money and getting a small number of big things right. In his unique style, drawing on decades of expertise, finance expert Jared Dillian gives us the essential facts about personal finance that will help you see things as you never have before.

The Cancer Factory: Industrial Chemicals, Corporate Deception, and the Hidden Deaths of American Workers
Jim Morris
Review via Publishers Weekly
Journalist Morris debuts with a devastating and thorough critique of corporate greed, deception, and lack of concern for worker health, focusing primarily on Dupont Chemical and Goodyear Tire Company. Drawing on in-depth interviews with workers and their families, Morris documents how employees at the Goodyear factory in Niagara Falls, N.Y., have suffered from a high rate of bladder cancer for decades, and details the lack of an adequate response by corporate leaders and the U.S. government.

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