'Pettifor was always the ideal author of a book that shatters the fantasy of apolitical money and the toxic myth that monetary policy must remain a democracy-free zone.'
——Yanis Varoufakis

'In language we can all understand, Ann Pettifor explains the issues and the debates around money, shadow banking, QE and ‘helicopter money.’ A must-read.'
——Caroline Lucas

From the price of food to the devastation of climate change, what is the cost of the global financial system? Best-selling author of The Case for the Green New Deal on how finance underpins the fossil economy, and what we can do about it.

For readers of Brett Christophers, Yanis Varoufakis and Grace Blakeley, Pettifor unpacks the hidden world of shadow banking and show how global markets really work.

Wall Street controls the price of anything. Larger than the national economies, and almost invisible, it nevertheless determines the international costs of everyday things - from the cost of oil to household goods and most importantly of all, credit. Unless we understand how the money system works we will never be able to face the challenges of the climate crisis.

We can not hope to face climate catastrophe until we have taken control of the financial system. It is the pursuit of profit, wherever in the world it can be leveraged, that makes it impossible for national governments to impose restrictions on carbon. Pettifor charts the vast networks that ensnare us, and shows that prices are more than supply and demand. She shows us that the rise in the price of oil in 2022 had little to do with Russia. And why the global price of copper is determined by an exchange in Chicago. Understanding these networks matter, and turning them towards the common good, if we have any hope for the future.

Ann Pettifor is a political economist with a focus on finance and sovereign debt. She is director of Prime: Policy Research in Macroeconomics, an Honorary Research Fellow at City University, a fellow of the New Economics Foundation, and has an honorary doctorate from Newcastle University. She is known for her leadership of a campaign that resulted in massive debt cancellation for more than 30 countries – Jubilee 2000. She has served on the board of the UN Development Report and in 2015 was invited onto the economic advisory board by the British Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. She is the author of ‘The Real World Economic Outlook’, and 'The Coming First World Debt Crisis', and co-authored The Green New Deal and The Economic Consequences of Mr. Osborne.