Press release by Verso Books
The City. London and the Global Power of Finance. By Tony Norfield. Publication: 26th April 2016 / 978 1 78478 3 662 / £20 / 352 pages
The City of London is the world’s biggest international banking and foreign exchange market whose immense influence has shaped the development of global capital. It is also, as this groundbreaking book reveals, a crucial part of the mechanism of power in the world economy.
Based on the author’s twenty years’ experience of City dealing rooms, The City is both an easy-to-grasp introduction to how finance works today as well as an in-depth look at world markets and revenues which exposes the power of the financial sector. All big international companies — not just the banks — utilise this system, and The City shows how the operations of the City of London are critical both for British capitalism and for world finance.
Tony Norfield details, with shocking and insightful research, the role of the US dollar in global trading, the network of British-linked tax havens, the flows of finance around the world and the system of power built upon financial securities. Why do just fifty companies now have control of a large share of world economic production? The City explains how this situation came about, examining the history of the world economy from the postwar period to the present day.
About the author
For nearly twenty years, Tony Norfield worked in bank dealing rooms in the City of London. For ten years he was an Executive Director and the Global Head of FX Strategy in a major European bank, travelling to some forty countries on business, negotiating with finance ministries, central banks and major corporations. He was frequently quoted in the Financial Times, Wall StreetJournal, Guardian and Telegraph, and on news services such as Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN and CNBC. In 2014, he was awarded a PhD in Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
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By GlobalDataReviews
"Tony Norfield has provided a strikingly original take on the international financial system by placing it systematically within the world imperialist structure of power. His unusual clarity as both an analyst and expositor is reflected in his ability to lay out for his readers an easy-to-grasp introduction to how finance works today in the process of offering a detailed historically-rooted account of the multiple hierarchies and privileged relationships through which global economic domination is constructed and reproduced. The City is a tour de force, which will soon be recognized as a formidable challenge to conventional wisdom and an essential contribution in its own right."- Robert Brenner, author of The Economics of Global Turbulence
"This book does the seemingly impossible: rendering finance’s mysteries transparent to the average reader, and at the same time delivering a penetrating analysis of the global economic system that will enlighten even experts. Tony Norfield has written a truly exciting and important book." – Paul Mattick, author of Business as Usual
"The City is a valuable addition to the critical analysis of the financialisation of our world. And Tony Norfield is an experienced and radical guide to London’s role in this process. This book should be required reading for both bankers and activists alike." – Joris Luyendjik, author of Swimming with Sharks: My Journey into the World of the Bankers
