Bankers, Bagmen and Bandits: Business and Politics in the Age of Greed

Vincent di Norcia is an associate professor of philosophy and business
ethics at Laurentian University.

Naylor, a well-known business historian, has written an eminently
readable book, with outré insights into the corrupt underside of world
affairs in each chapter. He has an especially good nose for the putrid
rot in world finance. This book builds on his earlier book Hot Money,
which linked global money flows, including North America’s, to drugs,
the mob, terrorists, and other not-quite-respectable groups, like banks.
Here, he takes aim at numerous puffed-up idols of conventional commerce
and politics: the oil companies’ trade in pesticides; the criminally
and stupidly wasteful economic and financial boondoggles of the Reagan
era; Reagan’s support of Ollie North’s criminality and his
friendship with the Contra terrorists; Bush’s coziness with General
Noriega; and, in general, the all-too-well-documented ties between
Washington and Israel, with its sleazy underworld of cocaine and arms
trading.

Naylor whiplashes the paper-shifting, job- and asset-destroying
mergermania on Bay Street. He shows a common-sense disdain for old
(John) Crow’s mad remedy for inflation—ever higher interest and
exchange rates—and for the truly horrendous fallout this financial
nuclear strike has caused for Canadian workers and businesses.
Montreal’s devastating poverty is painted in stark contrast to the
power-lust of Quebec’s elite for more and ever more—along with other
provincial potentates, all greedily seeking their share of the spoils
from Ottawa’s decaying carcass. Canada, one of the best societies in
the world in which to live, comes across as overburdened with a venal,
mean, and power-grabbing lot of so-called leaders. The people deserve
better, far better.

Naylor leaves few hot-air balloons unburst. Indeed, he attacks
Israel’s penchant for terrorist prime ministers (Begin and Shamir) and
its secret dealings with terrorists and druglords, as well as the
media’s timidity in publicizing such chicanery.

All in all, this sardonic book is just what the title promises: a
breezy trip through the fetid slums of the global political economy.
Read it, wake up, and weep.