Black Market Capital

In this extraordinary new book, Andrew Konove traces the history of illicit commerce in Mexico City from the seventeenth century to the twentieth, showing how it became central to the economic and political life of the city. The story centers on the untold history of the Baratillo, the city’s infamous thieves’ market. Originating in the colonial-era Plaza Mayor, the Baratillo moved to the neighborhood of Tepito in the early twentieth century, where it grew into one of the world’s largest emporiums for black-market goods. Konove uncovers the far-reaching ties between vendors in the Baratillo and political and mercantile elites in Mexico City, revealing the surprising clout of vendors who trafficked in the shadow economy and the diverse individuals who benefited from their trade.

On the eve of the Civil War, the estimated value of the U.S. enslaved population exceeded $3 billion--triple that of investments nationwide in factories, railroads, and banks combined, and worth more even than the South's lucrative farmland. Not only an object to be traded and used, the slave was also a kind of currency, a form of value that anchored the market itself. And this value was not destroyed in the war. Slavery still structured social relations and cultural production in the United States more than a century after it was formally abolished. As Aaron Carico reveals in Black Market, slavery's engine of capital accumulation was preserved and transformed, and the slave commodity survived emancipation. Through both archival research and lucid readings of literature, art, and law, from the plight of the Fourteenth Amendment to the myth of the cowboy, Carico breaks open the icons of liberalism to expose the shaping influence of slavery's political economy in America after 1865. Ultimately, Black Market shows how a radically incomplete and fundamentally failed abolition enabled the emergence of a modern nation-state, in which slavery still determined--and now goes on to determine--economic, political, and cultural life.

Foreword / Malgorzata Mazurek (Columbia University) -- Terms and methods -- Shortage, greed, protest : a short course in the history of the black market in the first half of the 20th century -- The Polish (anti) speculation curve : 1944-1989 -- The (historical) geography of the black market in the Polish People's Republic -- Meat -- Alcohol -- Gasoline -- Dollar and gold -- The tourist trade in communist Poland -- Closing remarks: Through the back door ... or the front? -- Glossary

This book is a history of everyday life and explains how and why Berlin became the symbolic capital of the Cold War. Paul Steege anchors his account of this emerging global conflict in the terrain of a city literally shattered by World War II.

“How African-American artists and intellectuals sought greater liberty in Paris while also questioning the extent of the freedoms they so publicly praised.” —American Literary History Paris has always fascinated and welcomed writers. Throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, writers of American, Caribbean, and African descent were no exception. Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic considers the travels made to Paris—whether literally or imaginatively—by black writers. These collected essays explore the transatlantic circulation of ideas, texts, and objects to which such travels to Paris contributed. Editors Jeremy Braddock and Jonathan P. Eburne expand upon an acclaimed special issue of the journal Modern Fiction Studies with four new essays and a revised introduction. Beginning with W. E. B. Du Bois’s trip to Paris in 1900and ending with the contemporary state of diasporic letters in the French capital, this collection embraces theoretical close readings, materialist intellectual studies of networks, comparative essays, and writings at the intersection of literary and visual studies. Paris, Capital of the Black Atlantic is unique both in its focus on literary fiction as a formal and sociological category and in the range of examples it brings to bear on the question of Paris as an imaginary capital of diasporic consciousness. “Demonstrate[s] how Black writers shaped history and contributed to conflicting notions of modernity hosted in Paris . . . The wide range of writers and scholars from American and Francophone studies makes this collection very original and an exciting adventure in concepts, movements, and ideologies that could be acceptable to non-specialists as well.” —American Studies

This book puts the illegal economy of the German capital during and after World War II into context and provides a new interpretation of Germany's postwar history. The black market, it argues, served as a reference point for the beginnings of the two new German states.

“A riveting account that reaches beyond the market landscape to say something universal about risk and triumph, about hubris and failure.”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BUSINESSWEEK In this business classic—now with a new Afterword in which the author draws parallels to the recent financial crisis—Roger Lowenstein captures the gripping roller-coaster ride of Long-Term Capital Management. Drawing on confidential internal memos and interviews with dozens of key players, Lowenstein explains not just how the fund made and lost its money but also how the personalities of Long-Term’s partners, the arrogance of their mathematical certainties, and the culture of Wall Street itself contributed to both their rise and their fall. When it was founded in 1993, Long-Term was hailed as the most impressive hedge fund in history. But after four years in which the firm dazzled Wall Street as a $100 billion moneymaking juggernaut, it suddenly suffered catastrophic losses that jeopardized not only the biggest banks on Wall Street but the stability of the financial system itself. The dramatic story of Long-Term’s fall is now a chilling harbinger of the crisis that would strike all of Wall Street, from Lehman Brothers to AIG, a decade later. In his new Afterword, Lowenstein shows that LTCM’s implosion should be seen not as a one-off drama but as a template for market meltdowns in an age of instability—and as a wake-up call that Wall Street and government alike tragically ignored. Praise for When Genius Failed “[Roger] Lowenstein has written a squalid and fascinating tale of world-class greed and, above all, hubris.”—BusinessWeek “Compelling . . . The fund was long cloaked in secrecy, making the story of its rise . . . and its ultimate destruction that much more fascinating.”—The Washington Post “Story-telling journalism at its best.”—The Economist

This book presents new data to give an overview of shadow economies from OECD countries and propose solutions to prevent illicit work.