Price Wars

A shattering account of the destabilising power of price, and a forceful critique of the free market philosophy that leaves the most vulnerable at the mercy of the commodities markets

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War in Ukraine, a global hunger crisis, the West's cost of living crisis - the eruptions of 2022 were all too predictable. In Price Wars, Rupert Russell lays out just how these crises are connected and how many such events plunged the 2010s into a decade of turmoil.

Entering the eye of the storm - from the trenches of Russian separatist-controlled Donbas to bomb disposal squads in Mosul to cattle raiders in Kenya - Russell discovers a butterfly effect of chaos in the real world being driven by chaos in the commodities markets. The price of food and oil has the power to bankroll foreign invasions, plunge continents into poverty and spark revolutions, civil wars and refugee crises. And these prices, whistle-blowing hedge fund managers and Nobel Prize winners told him, have become irrational. In this thrilling exposé of the dark financial forces that rule our world, Russell takes us on adventure into the inner workings of global disorder unlike any other.