Host Per Fagereng interviews economist and best-selling author Loretta Napoleoni about her new book, "How the War on Terror is Bankrupting the World," which traces the link between the finances of the war on terror and the global economic crisis, finding connections from Dubai to London to Las Vegas that politicians and the media have at best ignored.
In launching military and propaganda wars in the Middle East, America overlooked the war of economic independence waged by Al-Qaeda. The Patriot Act boosted the black market economy, and the war on terror prompted a rise in oil prices that led to food riots and distracted governments from the trillion-dollar machinations of Wall Street. Consumers and taxpayers, spurred by propaganda fears, were lured into crushing global debt. Napoleoni shows that if we do not face up to the many serious connections between our response to 9/11 and the financial crisis, we will never work our way out of the looming global recession that now threatens our way of life.
Loretta Napoleoni is the best selling author of "Terror Incorporated" and "Insurgent Iraq". She is an expert on financing of terrorism and advises several governments on counter-terrorism. She is senior partner of G Risk, a London based risk agency. As an economist she worked for several banks and international organizations in Europe and the US. In the early 1980s she worked at the National Bank of Hungary on the convertibility of the forint that became the blue print for the convertibility of the ruble a decade later.
Ms Napoleoni is also a journalist and has worked as a foreign correspondent for several Italian financial papers. Her work appears regularly in many journals and publications, including several European newspapers. She lectures regularly on the financing of terrorism. She has written novels, guide books in Italian and translated and edited books on terrorism; her most recent novel, Dossier Baghdad, is a financial thriller set during the Gulf War.