The Racket

While working for the Financial Times, investigative journalist Matt Kennard had unbridled access to the crème de la crème of the global elite. From slanging matches with Henry Kissinger to afternoon coffees with the man who captured Che Guevara, Kennard spent 4 years gathering unprecedentedly honest testimony from the horse's mouth on how the global economic system works at the coalface: namely, in ways that blatantly, overwhelmingly, almost exclusively serve the interests of those with big guns, big cash, and a reach much too close to home. Owing to the very nature of the Financial Times, however, Kennard was not able to publish these findings as part of his day job. Enter The Racket, now a classic of investigative journalism that exposes the rampant ethical and moral corruption at the heart of the US-led global economic order. Reporting not only from across the United States, but also from across the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, Kennard provides startlingly clear and concrete evidence of unchecked, high-level, interrelated systems of corruption all over the world. At the same time, through encounters with high-profile opponents of the racket such as Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn, and Gael García Bernal, Kennard offers a glimpse of what could be if human decency were allowed to return to global economic decision-making. Now more relevant than ever in the wake of Brexit's psuedo-protectionism, NATO, EU, and Russian sabre-rattling over international energy supplies, and Sino-American economic wars, this 2nd edition contains a new preface by the author and a new foreword by Chris Hedges.