Being the mere mortal that I am, once in a while I too fall prey to the hype created by the well-meaning friends around me, at least when it comes to book recommendation. This year, this is the second such book which was sold to me – not literally though – with a huge hype, but which ended up as just another dull ones.
The book promises to show us how the world’s most powerful financial organizations and their bosses influence our lives by their decisions. I was sitting up eagerly hoping for an adventurous ride, able to get an inside view into the business intricacies of global finance and economy. But the book was filled up with the ostentatious parties and endless conferences that the finance bigwigs get to attend to all through the year. For a while, the book feels like it is trying to teach you the need for a good networking amongst your peers and superiors. Then it feels like a roster of who-is-who of the global finance and the parties they attend and the cabals they are parts of. I couldn’t control letting out an occasional yawn every now and then.
After striving to pay repeated, utter obeisance to the overlords of financial world, especially to people like George Soros and Nouriel Roubini, recalling their names with superior adjectives almost every other time they are mentioned, the author shifts gears at last, just as I was losing interest to even skim through the pages. She started talking about some serious topics like how exclusive and single dimensional these ‘super-hubs’ are, less represented by people of other gender and other races. She also started talking about the muck – corruption, arrogance & indifference to the plight of lesser mortals like us - that is covered up beneath all that veneer of opulence that shimmers on the high profile bankers.
Ironically though, just as the author improved the tempo, letting go of all the bragging and boring obsequiousness, she seemed to have lost interest. This was clearly seen in a bunch of spelling and grammatical errors that mar those pages. Imagine! Just as you start reading something worthwhile on those pages!
The author ends the book with a half-hearted call to reform the global financial network, and restrain the unbridled - often times unethical - pursuit of wealth. But who will bell the cat?! There is no definitive answer or any meaningful discussion.
So, just to sum it up all, it doesn’t contain any meaningful insights about how the global financial systems work or how they influence our lives, if that is what you were trying to learn as I initially did. This book is more about how the behemoths of finance mingle and mesh, with their unimaginable wealth and the relentless pursuit for more, especially when written by an insider who looks at them with a twinkle in her eyes!
Boring! Obsequious!! Boastful!!!
The book promises to show us how the world’s most powerful financial organizations and their bosses influence our lives by their decisions. I was sitting up eagerly hoping for an adventurous ride, able to get an inside view into the business intricacies of global finance and economy. But the book was filled up with the ostentatious parties and endless conferences that the finance bigwigs get to attend to all through the year. For a while, the book feels like it is trying to teach you the need for a good networking amongst your peers and superiors. Then it feels like a roster of who-is-who of the global finance and the parties they attend and the cabals they are parts of. I couldn’t control letting out an occasional yawn every now and then.
After striving to pay repeated, utter obeisance to the overlords of financial world, especially to people like George Soros and Nouriel Roubini, recalling their names with superior adjectives almost every other time they are mentioned, the author shifts gears at last, just as I was losing interest to even skim through the pages. She started talking about some serious topics like how exclusive and single dimensional these ‘super-hubs’ are, less represented by people of other gender and other races. She also started talking about the muck – corruption, arrogance & indifference to the plight of lesser mortals like us - that is covered up beneath all that veneer of opulence that shimmers on the high profile bankers.
Ironically though, just as the author improved the tempo, letting go of all the bragging and boring obsequiousness, she seemed to have lost interest. This was clearly seen in a bunch of spelling and grammatical errors that mar those pages. Imagine! Just as you start reading something worthwhile on those pages!
The author ends the book with a half-hearted call to reform the global financial network, and restrain the unbridled - often times unethical - pursuit of wealth. But who will bell the cat?! There is no definitive answer or any meaningful discussion.
So, just to sum it up all, it doesn’t contain any meaningful insights about how the global financial systems work or how they influence our lives, if that is what you were trying to learn as I initially did. This book is more about how the behemoths of finance mingle and mesh, with their unimaginable wealth and the relentless pursuit for more, especially when written by an insider who looks at them with a twinkle in her eyes!
Boring! Obsequious!! Boastful!!!
