Counterfeit Crime: Criminal Profits, Terror Dollars, and Nonsense

by R.T. Naylor

In Counterfeit Crime, economist, historian, and criminologist R.T. Naylor dissects the costs - economic, social, and political - of the seemingly never-ending wars on the grossly exaggerated menaces of Crime and Terror and how most things politicians do to combat them make matters worse - for the public and the public good. He explains how the post-World War II welfare state, with its commitment to building public infrastructure, maintaining social security, and providing accessible education, gave way to the modern executive state, with its focus on guaranteeing corporate welfare, dropping bombs on countries too weak to fight back, and manipulating the thoughts and actions of populations kept in line by the carrot of glitzy toys and the stick of ever-heavier legal sanctions. He dissects how the canons of free-market fundamentalism, backed by the cannons of state power, paved the road toward a soft form of totalitarianism, which march hand in hand with millennial Christianity and a military-security-industrial complex in search for new - mostly imaginary - enemies. Counterfeit Crime is savage in its critique of the political and judicial status quo and outraged at an economy rife with corruption.

Genres: Nonfiction

308 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2013

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a chapter or two before I was able to get into the flow of this book, and then I’m not sure if it really sucked me in or if I just tolerated the book. There is a lot of information in this book, but some of it is unclear about how it really relates to counterfeit crime.

I would have expected this book to mainly be about counterfeit crime (that is what the title is) but this book includes so much more information than just that information focusing strictly on counterfeit crime. This book holds information on a wide variety of topics, from terror dollars to religion, and everything in between. While some of the topics in the book I was able to understand the connection to counterfeit crime, other ideas in the book were more abstract and harder to tie into the overlying topic of counterfeit crime.

Even though I felt that some of the information in this book didn’t relate cleanly to counterfeit crime, there was so much information packed into this book that by the time I was finished reading I felt that I had learned a lot about a broad area of topics. This is definitely one of those books that seems like it’s going to educate the reader on one specific topic and then ends up educating the reader on a wide variety of ideas.

The writing in this book was a little challenging to read at times. I consider myself generally adept at reading nonfiction books, but this one really challenged me. I had to force myself to pay close attention as I was reading as the author didn’t always clearly explain how topics related to one another, so there were times when I had to draw the connections for myself.

I also noticed that the author refers to a lot of current events without giving much back-story on the events themselves. If one wasn’t keeping up with the events of the world, this would be a challenging book to read. Although I consider myself relatively up-to-date with current events, there were some events mentioned in this book that I had to look up in order to understand the connection the author was drawing to that event.

In the end I would only recommend this book to someone who is already interested in counterfeit crime and the impact it has on the United States (and globally). I would also only recommend this book if the person wanting to read it already has a good grasp on the basic information and really understands the workings of the financial world.

I received this book for review purposes via NetGalley.