The Global Casino: How Wall Street Gambles with People and the Planet -- Ann Pettifor, Hardcover

How everything from the price of food to energy and housing costs is fixed by remote, unregulated financial markets, and what can be done about it

The global market in money - housed in the offshore 'shadow' banking system - holds $217 trillion in financial assets and operates beyond the reach of any nation's taxman. Asset managers, private equity firms, and pension and sovereign wealth funds scoop up the world's savings for investment and manage them as they choose, unaccountable to politicians or the citizens who elect them.

In this brilliant, accessible and incisive introduction to the murky world of glo­balized finance, Ann Pettifor links the activities of remote mobile financial markets to both the cost-of-living and climate crises. In an insane global casino, bankers are gambling with our future. When we foot the bill, no one but a few economists understands what has happened. The result is volatile, unpre­dictable and uncontrollable speculation in global commodities, pension, energy, and housing.

Pettifor argues that societies and gov­ernments can take back control of the global financial system. We have done it before and can do it again. Indeed, it is imperative that we do so if we are to manage the twin threats of climate breakdown and biosphere collapse.

Author: Ann Pettifor
Publisher: Verso
Published: 01/27/2026
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
ISBN: 9781804297223

About the Author
Ann Pettifor is Director of Prime (Policy Research in Macroeconomics) and a Fellow of the New Economics Founda­tion. She has honorary doctorates from Newcastle University, Helsinki University and SOAS. She is known for predicting the global financial crisis of 2007-9 and for her leadership of a campaign that resulted in massive debt cancellation for more than thirty countries - Jubilee 2000. She is the author of The Coming First World Debt Crisis, The Production of Money and The Case for the Green New Deal. Her Substack is System Change.