The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources

As a former commodity trader, who traded with every major commodity house covered in this book, I was very skeptical that any journalists could do a good job on this subject. Boy, was I wrong! Javier Blas and Jack Karchy did a stellar job! Painstakingly researched (with sixty pages of reference notes), well-written, engaging and the authors should be commended for their success in conducting personal interviews with many traders and key players. Great read! It will be a permanent addition to my library.

I thought this was a fantastic book on international commodities trade and finance. It is written in a style that makes it easy and fun to read. You don’t need any knowledge of commodities accounting to understand and appreciate it.The book tells of the individuals who created the very concepts of international commodities trading in the 1950s and then moved to establish private partnership companies specializing in certain commodities such as coal, oil, copper, ferrous ores, nickel, cobalt, and now in the 21st century the rare earth metals necessary for cellphones and computers. By the 1990s or early 21st century the profits were in the billions of dollars.There are many stories how a trader rescued an entire country or government from potential bankruptcy. There are also stories of how one or more of these trading companies were complicit in aiding a local dictator to raid his country of resources for him to become fabulously wealthy.

I work in the shipping industry and have been dealing with commodity traders for 20 years. Now I finally get to understand their mentality and the way they do business (and make a lot of money)

I have the paperback which is 328 pages not including acknowledgements and footnotes. If you're interested in the global trade in oil, minerals and grains, this book gives an excellent introduction, with the principal focus on oil. The Introduction is entitled "The Last Swashbucklers" and the Conclusion is entitled "A Lot of Skeletons." This gives a good sense of the book's thrust, an ethos of "how can I make really, really large amounts of money" without worrying about the consequences to third parties. Sometimes those consequences could be helpful and sometimes not. The book elaborates on both with the emphasis on the political effects of trading, which has the effect of propping up all sorts of political elites, some you may like and some you may not.The first roughly 1/3rd of the book details the rise and fall of Marc Rich, who started his career at Philipp Brothers, but left to go his own way in a dispute over how much he should be paid. Marc Rich was a colorful figure who, for a while, exercised a lot of power over the oil market. Mr. Rich's downfall led to the creation of several major trading houses. The book discusses this.Glencore, Vitol, and Trafigura are successors to Marc Rich and they operated as swashbucklers too. They traded in other commodities besides oil and the book looks at some of these trades as well. According to the authors, much of the success of the traders came from superior information gleaned from having people and offices in many nooks and crannies of the world that many "respectable" companies didn't have. Even with superior information sources, the traders were still gambling and their gambles, at times, didn't pay off. But many times their trades did pay off and spectacularly so.The authors also elaborate on how for much of the time the traders had no real governmental regulation. They operated globally and made their own rules. The rise of China as an economic power in the 1980s through the early 2010s enabled many very profitable trades for these global players.The book finishes with a review of some of the changes that have diminished, but not eliminated, the power of these global players. China, and others, began to set up their own trading arms to go around the Glencore, Vitol, etc., grip on trading. China also has had its own economic challenges. The US and Europe have begun to exercise some regulatory authority over the traders and information, with the internet has become more widely available, all of which has eroded the edge of the traders, but I don't think they're going away.If the subject interests you, I recommend the book highly. It's highly readable and I got through on a part-time basis in a few days.

This book captures the reader’s attention while explaining the evolution of commodities trading. The authors describe the history and corporate battles within the commodity trading houses and provide the political-economic context that shaped the trading houses, and that the houses also shaped.For a reader interested in economics and without much background reading in commodities trading, this book was intellectually exciting and entertaining.For those interested in the dirtier and corrupt side of commodities trading, I recommend pairing this book with the Looting Machine and The Dictator’s Handbook. This book does discuss the role corruption has had in commodities trading, and structurally why traders have the incentive to bribe, but corruption has a relatively small role in it.

A surprisingly engaging book about a lesser-known business: the commodity traders.Blas and Farchy’s book starts in the middle of the 20th century, and details how a group of entrepreneurial men (yes, it’s a men-dominated business) leveraged information asymmetries to (very) profitably trade oil, grains and metals.The authors uncover many fascinating stories about the traders and their willingness to take risks, going to where no one else wants to go and negotiating with the outcasts of the world.This is a cool book. The subject is not on everybody’s radar screen. And that’s what makes it even more interesting.

Met all expectations.

The book provides a very comprehensive overview of the large commodity traders, their history, their business, and rates amd narrates little known anecdotes, which are probably closer home than most of us realize