Bad Samaritans, The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

Ha-Joon Chang gently shatters many of our western economic ideals and specifically our motivations for aid to the third word. With a sweetness of tone, bordering on being endearing, he destroys the last hope we may have had that the IMF and World Bank are anything other than fascist organizations with no other goals than to keep the third world in an ever deepening despair. To me, the central argument is summed up by the question posed by Chang, why does the IMF require every county they fund to "balance their books" at the end of every calendar year? It is a simple requirement to get IMF "adjudication". This is a high standard that even the US does not hold itself to. When we were in dire straits after 9/11 what did we do? Spent our way out of it, going more in debt than ever. What do we do in good times? Balance our books? No way, we just keep racking up more and more debt. So how can we possibly force small developing countries to be better than us?

Anyway, there are a ton a great examples in this great book. Bottom line, everything is fake, the government is out to get you, the news lies and even the very economic system we depend on is rigged against 99% of people on the planet for the benefit of a very select few Western European and North American well meaning plutocrats.