Jacques Peretti's 'Done' covers behind-the-scenes deals impacting the world

From the tragedy that sparked the Arab Spring to the Rust Belt of America, this covers it all

The title of the book may have you believe that the world is, after all, a plutocracy where a select few decide the fates of the rest of us with the power of their billions. But the book, while it certainly holds fast to this premise, goes even further, claiming that nearly every major event of the last century has been the handiwork of a bunch of men (and it’s mostly men) who were far-sighted enough to spot opportunities and shrewd enough to pre-empt competition.

The book also points out that the creation of a rust belt in the US (above) did not prevent the spread of the ‘financialisation’ industry.

Consider the Arab Spring. A series of events roiled West Asia and north Africa from 2010 onwards, resulting in overthrow of regimes and the spread of unrest. The movement was sparked off in Tunisia, where a vegetable vendor immolated himself when he was barred from selling his produce in the local market.

Jacques Peretti, the author of the book, blames the agriculture cartel ABCD — ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus — for singlehandedly igniting the Arab Spring. Together controlling 90 per cent of the world’s wheat, the group raised the price of cereal in 2007 in spite of a bumper harvest. In Africa and West Asia, this had catastrophic consequences, leading to “bread riots”. In December 2010, the Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire.

It may seem a little too convenient to venture such a direct causal link between the decisions of food companies and a revolution, but Peretti is exact with his argument and his marshalling of data. Malcolm Gladwell has spoken of how, even when enabling conditions exist, things turn only when a tipping point is reached. Done is full of examples of how the tipping point in a number of recent crises as well as successes was the handiwork of a few.

Consider digital money. With governments all over the world looking to shift their populations away from cash, Peretti presents a fascinating account of how a couple of Silicon Valley upstarts first thought up the idea of going cashless for e-commerce transactions. It is telling that some of the most powerful names in tech today, such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, made their first millions through PayPal, the website that was to become the progenitor of all online transactions.

Done: The Secret Deals That Are Changing the World
Author: Jacques Peretti
Publisher: Hachette
Pages: 406
Price: Rs 50

Although Peretti is rarely judgmental about the brains behind these outsize inventions enjoying the fruits of their labour, he is less sanguine about the consequences. He reminds us of the hollowness of the “cash is dirty” motto when it was drug money, all unclean cash, that was used to prop up the Western finance system in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. He also points to the increasing security risks of digital money.

The book, thus, serves twin purposes: it first introduces the dramatis personae who have brought about some of the most powerful changes in modern society before proceeding to skewer the impact of these changes. So, we learn that the BMI index, the holy grail of all dieting plans, was invented by a statistician at Met Life who was looking to boost his health insurance sales. Or that F W Taylor, the revered father of scientific management, cooked up the data he used to come up with his widely followed findings. 
 

It is in discussing inequality that Peretti makes his most impactful point. A lot of what he says is public knowledge, such as the fact that eight people, Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet among them, hold as much wealth as the bottom 50 per cent of the world’s population. While those two names may represent the two ends of the old versus new economy divide, they have both benefitted from a system that has persisted in the United States for close to a century.

As part of the research for his book, Peretti met Arthur Laffer, the man behind the infamous “Laffer curve” that posited an inverse relationship between taxes and growth. He wielded great influence among members of the Reagan administration, men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, resulting in the institutionalisation of a system of tax avoidance whose baleful effects were witnessed most spectacularly in the last election.

Peretti goes all guns blazing in attacking the low-tax orthodoxy of an earlier era, bringing up comparisons with Germany and Sweden whose manufacturing sectors, in spite of higher tax rates than Britain and the US, survived both the onslaught of cheap labour from the east and automation. Even the creation of a rust belt did not prevent the spread of the “financialisation” industry. While corporate profit continued to be remitted overseas, Wall Street came up with ever-more complex products. And when the crash came, the titans were the first to escape.

While Peretti can be occasionally glib, too keen to locate links between disparate phenomena, Done ultimately makes edifying, if disturbing, reading. Recent events have shown us that capitalism, the great victor in the battle of economic systems, suffers deep malaises. Picking up examples from a wide swathe of topics, Peretti reminds us why a self-correction mechanism may have worked for Adam Smith’s simple market economy but is nearly not enough for the intensely connected global economy of today.