Necessary Evil: How to Fix Finance by Saving Human Rights

ISBN-13: 9780190691127 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 288 str.

David Kinley

Opis

Finance governs almost every aspect of modern life. Every day, we use the financial system to mortgage our homes, to insure our health, to invest in our futures through education and pension funds, to feed and clothe ourselves, to be paid for our labor, and to help others in need. As the fuel of capitalism, finance has been a major force for human progress for centuries. Yet it has periodically generated disasters too, from the Great Depression to the recent sub-prime mortgage crisis.

In writing Necessary Evil, eminent human rights law scholar David Kinley spent ten years immersed in researching finance's many facets-from how it is raised and what it is spent on, to when it is gambled and who wins and who loses-to produce this unique account of how finance works from a human rights perspective. He argues that while finance has historically facilitated many beneficial trends in human well-being, a sea change has occurred in the past quarter century. Since the end of the Cold War, the finance sector's power has grown by leaps and bounds, to the point where it is now out of control. Oversight of the sector has been weakened by deregulation, as powerful lobbyists have persuaded our leaders that what is good for finance is good for the economy as a whole. Kinley shows how finance has become society's master rather than its servant, and how, as a consequence, human rights concerns are so often ignored, sidelined or crushed. Using episodes of financial malfeasance from around the globe-from the world's banking capitals to the mines of central Africa and the factories of East Asia-Kinley illustrates how the tools of international finance time and time again fail to advance the human condition. Kinley also suggests policies that can help finance protect and promote human rights and thereby regain the public trust and credibility it has so spectacularly lost over the past decade.

An authoritative account of the extraordinary social consequences of the financial system at the heart of the world's economy, Necessary Evil will be an essential tool for anyone committed to making global capitalism a fairer and more effective vehicle for improving the lives of many, and not just providing for the comfort of a few.

Recenzje

A challenging and engagingly written book. Kinley's analysis is impressively wide-ranging, encompassing private and public finance issues including investment, tax and aid; risk and financial regulation; and human rights-impacting shortcomings in global financial architecture. He sets out a convincing blueprint for rendering the global financial system supportive rather than subversive of human rights.

O autorze

David Kinley is Professor and Chair in Human Rights Law at the University of Sydney, and an Academic Expert member of Doughty Street Chambers in London. He is a former Fulbright Senior Scholar at American University Washington College of Law, and has taught at Oxford and George Washington Universities as well as the Sorbonne. He is a co-author of The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (winner of an American Society of International Law Best Book Award) and author of Civilizing Globalization: Human Rights and the Global Economy. Born in Ireland and somewhat educated in England, he now lives in Australia.