Book Review by Hazel Henderson
“The Age of Unproductive Capital: New Architectures of Power”
By Ladislau Dowbor
Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2019)
Hazel Henderson ©2019
Pre-eminent Brazilian economist Ladislau Dowbor accounts in excellent detail how Brazil’s homegrown banks were taken over by big European and US banks as “cash cows”! This takeover exacerbated structural inequities in the Brazilian economy by increasing already unnecessarily high interest rates. For example, they purposely promoted consumer lending by fraudulently advertising their exorbitant annual rates in monthly terms to deceive unwary buyers of durable household appliances.
Dowbor then extends his research to show how the global banking and financial system has become an extractor of value from main street economies worldwide.