Licensed Larceny: Infrastructure, Financial Extraction and the Global South

Review

'Licensed Larceny is an extraordinary accomplishment. With stunning clarity, Hildyard reveals just how deeply financial power has penetrated our everyday lives - with devastating consequences. This is a tour de force political economy of financialization, and a remarkably accessible introduction to the sordid world of finance - for students, scholars, and activists alike.' Jason W. Moore, Associate Professor at Binghamton University and author of Capitalism in the Web of Life ‘Licensed Larceny is only about a hundred pages ― really more a monograph than a book ― but despite Hildyard’s economy of prose the book packs more information than many books three times that length.’ Kevin Carson , Center for a Stateless Society ‘Hildyard provides an impressive first step into the neglected area of infrastructural finance. Licensed Larceny is highly recommended for anyone, inside or outside universities, with an interest in mega-projects, infrastructure and industrial corridors.’ Alexander Dunlap, Interface: a journal for and about social movements Book reviews Volume 9 (1)

Product Description

Inequality is not just a problem of poverty and the poor; it is as much a problem of wealth and the wealthy. The provision of public services is one area which is increasingly being reconfigured to extract wealth upward to the 1%, notably through so-called Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). The push for PPPs is not about building infrastructure for the benefit of society but about constructing new subsidies that benefit the already wealthy. In other words, it is less about financing development than developing finance. Understanding and exposing these processes is essential if inequality is to be challenged. But equally important is the need for critical reflection on how the wealthy are getting away with it. What does the wealth gap suggest about the need for new forms of organising by those who would resist elite power?

From the Inside Flap

In country after country, the already vast gap between the rich and poor has widened dramatically over the past thirty years. The incomes of the rich are sky-rocketing, whilst those of poorer people stagnate or plummet; and the lion's share of global wealth is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Inequality is not just a problem of poverty and the poor; it is as much a problem of wealth and the rich. The growing wealth gap is best viewed as a proxy for how effectively elites have constructed institutions that extract value from the rest of society. Understanding the mechanisms through which wealth is extracted upwards to the one per cent is critical if they are to be challenged. One area that is currently being reconfigured to enhance such extraction is infrastructure development.For the rich, infrastructure is not primarily about bricks and mortar but about capturing subsidies and government-backed contracts that guarantee (yes guarantee) high rates of profits. Public Private Partnerships (PPP) are a lynch pin for this extraction. Now being pushed worldwide by multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, they have become a cornerstone for constructing multiple means of financial looting as infrastructure is transformed into an asset class. The trajectory is not only towards increased inequality: it is also profoundly undemocratic, elitist and unstable. Undemocratic because a handful of fund managers now increasingly determine what gets financed and what does not. Elitist because the facilities that would most benefit the poor do not get built, and unstable because infrastructure-as-an-asset class is a bubble that is set to burst.How have the rich got away with it? Is the growing wealth gap the result of a failure of activists to shout loudly enough against its iniquities? Or does it reflect a more fundamental problem, rooted as much in the ways that progressive activists are themselves organising as in the well-documented power of today's elites?

From the Back Cover

I