"Financial journalist Nicholas Shaxson first made his reputation as a war reporter studying the 'resource curse,' seeing first-hand the disastrous economic and societal effects that followed the discovery of oil in Angola. He then gained prominence as an expert on tax havens, revealing the dark corners of that world long before the scandals of the Panama and Paradise Papers. Now, in The Finance Curse, revised with chapters exclusive to the American edition, he brings his broad knowledge to bear in an eye-opening investigation of how finance has overbalanced the economies of Western democracies, exerting an outsize effect on policy-making and effecting a brain drain of the brightest and best to the financial industry and its offshoots, much to the detriment of both the business sector and broader society. Shaxson explores the transmogrification of banks over the twentieth century from relatively small institutions that did well for themselves by serving the needs of business to unfettered global behemoths. These megabanks now spread the fiscal gospel that business must be taxed as little as possible to achieve unconstrained profits. It has encouraged a race to the bottom between states to provide the most subsidized environment for big business that rides on the toil and taxes of everyone else, all in the name of a bogus 'competitiveness.' We need strong financial institutions-but when finance grows too big it becomes a curse. The Finance Curse is the explosive story of how finance got a stranglehold on society and provides powerful new insights into how we might release ourselves from its grasp. It is a book that none of us can afford to ignore"--