Wages Of Crime: Black Markets, Illegal Finance, And The Underworld Economy [Paperback]

R. T. Naylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2005

"Never in history has there been a black market tamed from the supply side. From Prohibition to prostitution, from gambling to recreational drugs, the story is the same. Supply-side controls act to encourage production and increase profits. At best a few intermediaries get knocked out of business. But as long as demand persists, the market is served more or less as before. In the meantime, failure to ‘win the war’ [against crime] becomes a pretext for increasing police budgets, expanding law enforcement powers, and pouring more money into the voracious maw of the prison-industrial complex."—from the Introduction

R. T. Naylor specializes in the study of smuggling, black markets, and international financial crime. Wages of Crime takes the reader into the shadowy underworld of modern criminal business—arms trafficking, gold smuggling, money laundering, and terrorist financing. Naylor dissects the schemes by which illegal entrepreneurs disguise their acts, manage their take, and eventually enjoy the loot. The author asserts that much of what police, press, politicians, and the public understand about international crime is based on myth and misrepresentation.

Wages of Crime also outlines Naylor’s claim that some of the most popular modern law-enforcement fads are inefficient or useless and can do massive damage in eroding civil liberties. In the wake of recent tragedies, Naylor’s criticisms of contemporary anticrime policies and the confounding of criminal and national security issues have a sharper resonance.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

R. T. Naylor is Professor of Economics at McGill University and a consultant to tax authorities, law enforcement bodies, and the United Nations. He is the author of many books, including Economic Warfare: Sanctions, Embargo Busting, and Their Human Cost; Hot Money and the Politics of Debt; and Bankers, Bagmen, and Bandits: Business and Politics in the Age of Greed.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr; Revised edition (January 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801489601
• ISBN-13: 978-0801489600
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #546,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A better understanding of Black Markets than regulators have, January 10, 2006

By 

Temple A. Allen (Laredo, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wages of Crime: Black Markets Illegal Finance and the Underworld Economy (Hardcover)

R.T. Naylor has a better understanding of illicit markets, than most regulators have. He has obviously done extensive research, on the mechanics of money laundering for example, and knows the legitimate banking system, as well as the underground financial system. I suspect his thesis that organized crime is a myth, may be quite controversial. Nonetheless, he backs up his statements with convincing arguments. The only reason, I did not rate this book 5 stars, is that he slips in his political viewpoints, that are decidedly left of center. As an example, when speaking of Republican congressman Henry Hyde's attempt to reform how banks report questionable transactions to the government, he states, "And for a time, Representative Hyde shifted his energies to more pressing matters, leading the abortive move to impeach Bill Clinton-not because Clinton had gutted the social welfare system, capitulated to the medical establishment on health care, or committed mass murder in Iraq but because of his idiosyncratic taste in custom flavored cigars". (pp.277)These types of gratuitous statements, while rare in this book, take away some of the force of the dilemma most Western countries face in dealing with an underground economy. Still, this is an excellent book, that reads like a college textbook, with priceless insights on offshore banking, money laundering, the underworld gold economy, crime control, and other topics. I strongly suggest this book, as a social commentary of the black market and undergorund economy.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars cornell press, June 10, 2007

By 

Mr. Christopher W. Gullett "guhlitz" (newport beach) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wages Of Crime: Black Markets, Illegal Finance, And The Underworld Economy (Paperback)

Multi faceted and objective look at the underworld economy.
Many statitistics and and overwhelming amount of detailed historical
information. Some sources not sited in what could appear to be
biased editorializations, but these observations are few and far in
between. All in all a great overview.

2.0 out of 5 stars Too much politics with the economics, August 22, 2009

By 

M. Binfield (Maryland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wages Of Crime: Black Markets, Illegal Finance, And The Underworld Economy (Paperback)

This book was a bit disappointing. One issue was a deficit in theoretical foundation and analysis. Some sections did include a theoretical framework: for example, the chapter on insurgency finance divides insurgencies into several stages, with different funding methods available at different stages. But large sections of the book consist of interesting anecdotes, culled mostly from newspaper stories, and tied together by Naylor's opinions, assertions, and explanations. Where he does present any theoretical framework, he generally credits it to someone else.

As others here have mentioned, Naylor's political views are on full display, to the extent of inserting gratuitous jabs that have nothing to do with illicit finance, or in some cases even with economics. The breeziness with which he makes bold un-cited statements calls into question the overall quality of his scholarship. He takes others to task for putting too much confidence in facts and statistics about criminal markets, since the true extent of those markets and the secretive organizations that service them are inherently unknowable. This is a perfectly good point. Yet Naylor makes bald assertions about the role of intelligence agencies in the worldwide underworld, with no hint of how he gained such understanding of these equally secretive organizations.

Overall there must be better books on this subject, but while reading this one wasn't especially pleasant, it wasn't a waste of my time either. The anecdotes are interesting, there is a fair amount of general explanation, and I'm now confident that I'll never need to look up money laundering in a dictionary.