The World for Sale

Originally published Feb 25, 2001

Publisher: Oxford University Press April 21,2022

Number of pages: Paperback 416

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources’ reflect on the power concentrated in the hands of a small number of commodity trading houses, with some warnings for investors

The modern world is built on commodities – from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones.

We rarely stop to consider where they come from. But we should.

In The World for Sale, two leading journalists lift the lid on one of the least scrutinised corners of the economy: the workings of the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard and sell the earth’s resources.

It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets: enabling an enormous expansion in international trade, and connecting resource-rich countries – no matter how corrupt or war-torn – with the world’s financial centres. Crucially, the book argues, their influence is not limited to the economy, adding “the commodity traders’ control over the flow of the world strategic resources has also made them powerful political actors”. We learn about various changes in government policy, or indeed of governments, allegedly engineered for their own interests.

And it is the story of how some traders acquired untold political power, right under the noses of Western regulators and politicians helping Saddam Hussein to sell his oil, fuelling the Libyan rebel army during the Arab Spring, and funnelling cash to Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin in spite of strict sanctions.

The result is an eye-opening tour through the wildest frontiers of the global economy, as well as a revelatory guide to how capitalism really works. Farchy and Blas pen an informed, interesting journalistic expose on the trading of commodities, mostly oil, from the days of Marc Rich to the present, targeting the big traders, Glencore, Vitol, Trafigua and others. The first half of the book starting with Rich tends to be repetitious and formulaic; “so many commodities, so few traders,” similar structures and predictable revelations. The second half examines mostly trading oil and its impact on the politics of countries; e.g. Russia, Chad, Libya; the influence of China on world trade, the standard corruptions and payoffs, the use of American law to crack down on corruption. The last chapter is particularly informative as a basis on the future of commodity trading in the age of instant communication and information on prices.

In a chapter entitled ‘Hunger and Profit’, the authors allege that the head of Glencore’s Russian grain business publicly called for an export ban just weeks after “Glencore had been quietly placing a bet that grain prices would rise”. They authors note that Glencore reported earnings of $659 million in 2010.

In the midst of the bloody conflict in Bosnia, Vitol allegedly paid the infamous Serbian warlord Arkan $1m to sit in on a meeting as a security precaution, without apparently knowing who he was. One Glencore executive, who was stopped at London’s Heathrow airport with half a million pounds in cash, told the authors there are countries where bribes are simply not possible, such as Japan and most of Western Europe, but “in China it was very corrupt.”

It was only in 2016, that Switzerland declared that “bribery payments to private individuals should no longer be allowed as expenses that are justified for business purposes”, The authors recount how the public workers’ pension funds of Pennsylvania, South Carolina and West Virginia were all drawn into high-risk investments in Kurdistan. “A parable for the modern-day financial system, where money is passed between anonymous vehicles in low tax, low scrutiny, jurisdictions.” And, the book adds, “in a world waking up to the reality of climate change, the traders have been slow to reform a business that still relies heavily on commodities that pollute the environment”. And they decry that “consumers increasingly care about traceability and ethical 4ourcing of their products” The World For Sale is the definitive, eye-opening story of the most powerful and secretive traders in the world. These commodity traders, including all manner of cutthroats, eccentrics and amoral corruptors, play a major role in the global economy, one that few people understand. Javier Blas and Jack Farchy illuminate it perfectly, helped by their decades of experience covering the beat from the ground up.