Chapters 28 -35: Question #5

How is the kind of financial deception in The Coffee Trader like or unlike what we see in our own times? Is what happens on the Amsterdam Exchange similar to scandals like Enron or World- Com? Is the difference just a matter of scale?

Exactly like today.

Lie about assets and kite payments? Madoff

Influence peddling? Military contracts

Predatory pricing? Any of the big chains (how many local bookstores are still around you?)

Sell what you don't have? Enron

Insider trading? cast of thousands

Perhaps the only difference is that the perpetrators did not expect their fellow citizens to bail them out!

Yeah, lots more money involved now, but same problems.
--BJ

I, too, think it's the same, but without the personal vendettas. (At least as far as I know!)