The City: London and the Global Power of Finance by Tony Norfield

The last minute lifting done by the latter resulted in the continuation of the union but at the cost of it losing a large chunk of traditional progressive votes and political space in Scotland.

The referendum was the result of Cameron’s hubris emboldened by the Scottish independence referendum wherein the loss of the Union was averted not by the nationalist rhetoric of the Tories but the political acumen of the Labour party. The referendum conducted by the initially jubilant, later disgruntled former Prime Minister David Cameron threw Britain into the global economic gauntlet where it seems to be struggling to save its tattered loins. It calls for strange bedfellows at the same time leads to bedfellows becoming strange. If you imagine you don’t like “finance” but have no problem with the capitalist market system, think again: it turns out the two cannot be separated.Politics is a quirky affair. 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. Tony Norfield details, with shocking and insightful research, the role of the US dollar in global trading, the network of Britishlinked tax havens, the flows of finance around the world and the system of power built upon financial securities. 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. It is also, as this groundbreaking book reveals, a crucial part of the mechanism of power in the world economy.īased on the author’s twenty years’ experience of City dealing rooms, The City is an in-depth look at world markets and revenues that exposes how this mechanism works. The City, as London’s financial centre is known, is the world’s biggest international banking and foreign exchange market, shaping the development of global capital. Synopsis: Radical insider’s account of how the city of London really works

The City: London and the Global Power of Finance by Tony Norfield