The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources

by Javier Blas, Jack Farchy

Overview

Shortlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
An Economist Book of the Year

The modern world is built on commodities - from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones.

We rarely stop to consider where they have come from. But we should.

The World for Sale lifts the lid on one of the least scrutinized corners of the world economy: the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard, and sell the earth's resources. It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets, enabling an enormous expansion in international trade and connecting resource-rich countries - no matter how corrupt or war-torn - with the world's financial centers. The result is an eye-opening tour through the wildest frontiers of the global economy, as well as a revelatory guide to how capitalism really works.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197651537
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/21/2022
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	78,715
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Javier Blas and Jack Farchy are two of the world's best-known journalists covering energy, commodities, and trading houses. They both work for Bloomberg, where Blas is a columnist specializing in energy and commodities and Farchy is a senior reporter covering natural resources. The World for Sale is their first book.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Last Swashbucklers

Chapter 1: The Pioneers
Chapter 2: The Godfather of Oil
Chapter 3: The Last Bank in Town
Chapter 4: Paper Barrels
Chapter 5: The Fall of Marc Rich
Chapter 6: The Biggest Closing-Down Sale in History
Chapter 7: Communism with Capitalist Influences
Chapter 8: Big Bang
Chapter 9: Petrodollars and Kleptocrats
Chapter 10: Destination Africa
Chapter 11: Hunger and Profit
Chapter 12: The Billionaire Factory
Chapter 13: Merchants of Power

Conclusion: A Lot of Skeletons
Acknowledgements
Appendices
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

"A colorful and alarming exposé of the shadowy world of global commodity trading... Hair-raising anecdotes... An engrossing look at an obscure yet consequential corner of the financial world." —Publishers Weekly

"A virtuoso depiction of the globe's top oil, food and metals traders... Javier Blas and Jack Farchy should be awaiting the call from Hollywood. The World For Sale contains at least half a dozen narrative threads that would form the basis of a good thriller. But the authors' main achievement is to subject the biggest commodity players, and their impact on the real world, to proper critical scrutiny... The depth of the reporting by the Bloomberg journalists, who previously worked for the Financial Times, is impressive... Fascinating." —Reuters

"Some of the stories beggar belief... A fascinating story, it's just incredible some of the routes that the money takes." —Lawrence Pollard, BBC Newsday

"Could there be a better moment for Javier Blas and Jack Farchy's rollicking new account of [commodity] markets' recent history to land on investors' desks? ...This high level narrative is gripping enough. But it is the details of what these freewheeling companies actually got up to that give the book a thriller-like quality. The World For Sale opens with the private jet of [the late chief executive of Vitol] making corkscrew turns into Benghazi airport in 2011 so he can dodge hostile missiles and strike a deal to supply the rebel forces with oil in the middle of the Libyan civil war. That turns out to be one of the more conventional deals that pepper the narrative... Educational and entertaining..." —Felix Martin, Financial Times

"If you have the slightest interest in how the modern world was made, by whom, at what price, and at what profit, this is the book for you... Superbly researched and tidily written... A clean, compelling chronicle of the central role that commodity traders have played in the global economy from the end of World War II to the present. What they found isn't pretty — but it's plenty illuminating. —Foreign Policy

"A highly readable study in world economics and a valuable primer for would-be oil barons." —Kirkus

"Blas and Farchy shine light on what's long been the financial market's darkest corner the crucial, yet underappreciated, role commodity traders play in global finance and geopolitics. The characters are fascinating and their impact cannot be understated. The World For Sale is a fascinating, eye-opening read." —Gregory Zuckerman, New York Times-bestselling author of The Man Who Solved the Market

"Javier Blas and Jack Farchy deftly peel back the curtain on the amoral swashbucklers of capitalism who trade in commodities natural resources like oil, coal and aluminium. The World For Sale is a gripping account of how they achieved their stranglehold over the world economy, and their troubling influence on global politics to this day." —Brad Stone, New York Times-bestselling author of The Everything Store

"The World For Sale is the definitive, eye-opening story of the most powerful and secretive traders in the world. These commodity traders, including all manner of cutthroats, eccentrics and amoral corruptors, play a major role in the global economy one that few people understand. Javier Blas and Jack Farchy illuminate it perfectly, helped by their decades of experience covering the beat from the ground up." —Bradley Hope, New York Times-bestselling author of Billion Dollar Whale

From the Publisher

01/25/2021

Bloomberg News journalists Blas and Farchy debut with a colorful and alarming exposé of the shadowy world of global commodity trading. Willing to go “where others fear to set foot” in order to barter the essential staples of the world (grain, oil, minerals), some commodity traders are impervious to politics, patriotism, or principles, according to the authors. They describe the chief executive of “the world’s largest oil-trading company” landing in Benghazi during the Libyan civil war to do a deal with Libyan rebels, detail how a Marc Rich + Co employee pretended to be a representative of Burundi in order to buy oil at a discount, and note that traders who violated sanctions in order to do business with South Africa in the 1980s helped to sustain and prolong apartheid. Blas and Farchy also detail how the U.S. Justice Department under attorney general Eric Holder aggressively prosecuted and curtailed the activities of rogue traders. Hair-raising anecdotes about “swashbuckling” traders “walking on the edge of the knife” keep the pages turning, but Blas and Farchy sometimes get caught between glamorizing their subjects and condemning their actions. Still, this an engrossing look at an obscure yet consequential corner of the financial world. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

2020-12-22
Behind-the-scenes look at the world of commodity traders, “essential cogs in the modern economy.”

The work of commodity traders, write financial journalists Blas and Farchy, is shadowy—and the traders prefer it that way. The authors open their anecdotally rich narrative with the role of one firm in supplying oil to rebels against the regime of Muammar Qaddafi. “Without $1 billion of fuel in their moment of need, the rebels would have certainly been defeated,” they write, adding that the incident was far from isolated in the history of oil trading in the region. That Libya later descended into civil war gave a moment for pause before the traders went on to their next task. As Blas and Farchy note, if anyone represents Adam Smith’s vaunted “invisible hand,” it is those brokers who move goods around the world. Without them, the authors hold, the global economy would grind to a halt; thus, it’s interesting that so essential an activity would be so little chronicled, making news “when prices surge or when scandals break.” Some traders have become mega-wealthy in the bargain while others occasionally have to take a bath. It’s a long game of risk and reward that sometimes plays out in surprising ways. In the authors’ telling, the oil market during the pandemic has been so topsy-turvy that some oil producers have actually paid traders to take oil off their hands, with the traders storing it until prices begin to return to something approaching normal. What makes the system work is credit, “the lifeblood of commodity trading,” which itself entails no small amount of risk. Some companies and traders fail while some succeed beyond all expectation, as with Glencore, which is “no longer just the world’s largest trader of commodities, but also one of the largest producers of natural resources on the planet.”

A highly readable study in world economics and a valuable primer for would-be oil barons.

Kirkus Reviews