BOOK REVIEW: The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources

Abstract

The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources sheds light on commodity traders, crucial yet often overlooked actors in the global economy. The book is a collection of stories about them, how they get involved in political affairs, where they get their power, and how they work in the shadows. These stories from different times and places show the immense power of commodity traders. Methodologically, the book is mainly based on interviews with more than a hundred traders. Blas and Farchy also collected thousands of pages that detail the finances, business networks, and structure of commodity traders’ organizations (p. 11-12). The book consists of 13 chapters. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are particularly important since they reveal how commodity traders operate by addressing the energy crisis that arose due to waves of nationalization in the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s. The book’s main purpose is to reveal the role of despots and tyrants in the global economy by pointing out the unsavory aspects of their businesses, such as bribery and offshore banking. Since most of these methods are illegal and cannot be used by official companies and institutions, such commodity traders come to the fore.

Keywords

Commodity traders, global economy, environmental problems

Citation

Hüseyin Pusat Kıldiş, “Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources (Oxford University Press, 2021)”, Uluslararasi Iliskiler, Advanced Online Publication, 23 May 2023, pp. 1-3.

Affiliations

• Hüseyin Pusat Kıldi̇ş, Ph.D. Student, Department of Political Science, University of Guelph, Ontario