FREE LUNCH THINKING

How Economics
Ruins the Economy

 

“An essential read if you want to know how economics has erred – and how it can do better.”
Gabriel Zucman, author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations
“Couldn’t put it down .. I loved it”
Arthur Laffer, creator of The Laffer Curve

FREE LUNCH THINKING

How Economics
Ruins the Economy

 

“An essential read if you want to know how economics has erred – and how it can do better.”
Gabriel Zucman, author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations
“Couldn’t put it down .. I loved it.”
Arthur Laffer, creator of The Laffer Curve

ABOUT TOM BERGIN

Tom Bergin is an investigative financial journalist for Reuters. His work has prompted parliamentary inquiries and won numerous awards in Britain, the United States and Asia, including a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism and the Orwell Prize for Journalism.
In 2013, he was named Business Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards. His previous book, Spills & Spin: The Inside Story of BP, was named a Sunday Times Politics Book of the Year in 2011.

 

Read full bio

ABOUT TOM BERGIN

Tom Bergin is an investigative financial journalist for Reuters. His work has prompted parliamentary inquiries and won numerous awards in Britain, the United States and Asia, including a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism and the Orwell Prize for Journalism.
In 2013, he was named Business Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards. His previous book, Spills & Spin: The Inside Story of BP, was named a Sunday Times Politics Book of the Year in 2011.

 

Read full bio

BOOKS

FREE LUNCH THINKING

Economic theories and models shape our everyday lives. They are relied on by politicians when tax rises or cuts are being considered. They inform debates about everything from bonuses for CEOs to minimum wage rates to the level of job protection enshrined in law. They determine what levels of tobacco or petrol duty are charged, and influence government approaches to issues as diverse as obesity and climate change.
The question is: are policy makers right to be so slavishly reliant on them? Tom Bergin is sceptical, and in Free Lunch Thinking he subjects eight of the most prevalent economic mantras to close scrutiny, assessing how they play out in practice. Again and again, he shows how individuals, companies and markets fail to respond to policy changes as theory predicts. He exposes the missed opportunities and wasted resources that result. And by tracing the development of key economic tenets, he demonstrates how their champions’ tendency to believe in phenomena for which they have little hard evidence leaves accepted economic wisdom frequently being more about faith than facts.
His book both exposes and challenges lazy thinking. It also sets out a path for more considered future.
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SPILLS AND SPIN

In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, working for BP, well exploded, killing 11 men and leading to a fireball that would rage for days. Over the next three months, amid tense scenes of corporate and political finger-pointing, millions of barrels of crude oil spilt across the Gulf of Mexico in what became one of the worst oil spills in history. The Macondo well blast wasn’t BP’s first or even its most deadly major accident.

In Spills & Spin: The Inside Story of BP, Tom Bergin, an oil broker turned Reuters energy reporter, charts the rise of British Petroleum, a staid also-ran of the oil industry in the 1980s, into the second-largest and most aggressive and commercially innovative oil giant by the turn of the twenty-first century. Bergin outlines how the slickest PR machine in the oil industry helped paper over wide cracks beneath BP’s socially responsible façade. Through unique access to key figures within the company, Bergin unpicks the strategic decisions and corporate blunders that made disasters like the Deepwater Horizon inevitable.

The Daily Telegraph described Spills & Spin as “Compelling” and the book was named a Sunday Times Politics Book of the Year in 2011.

“A gripping story of corporate hubris and incompetence.”
Sunday Times

Read more reviews

Buy From

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SPILLS AND SPIN

In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, working for BP, well exploded, killing 11 men and leading to a fireball that would rage for days. Over the next three months, amid tense scenes of corporate and political finger-pointing, millions of barrels of crude oil spilt across the Gulf of Mexico in what became one of the worst oil spills in history. The Macondo well blast wasn’t BP’s first or even its most deadly major accident.

In Spills & Spin: The Inside Story of BP, Tom Bergin, an oil broker turned Reuters energy reporter, charts the rise of British Petroleum, a staid also-ran of the oil industry in the 1980s, into the second-largest and most aggressive and commercially innovative oil giant by the turn of the twenty-first century. Bergin outlines how the slickest PR machine in the oil industry helped paper over wide cracks beneath BP’s socially responsible façade. Through unique access to key figures within the company, Bergin unpicks the strategic decisions and corporate blunders that made disasters like the Deepwater Horizon inevitable.

The Daily Telegraph described Spills & Spin as “Compelling” and the book was named a Sunday Times Politics Book of the Year in 2011.

“A gripping story of corporate hubris and incompetence“
The Sunday Times

Read more reviews

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JOURNALISM

trump's billion dollar golf course play

October, 2020

Donald Trump said his golf investments were part of a plan to make billions building houses but, in the past decade, his company hasn’t built a single home at any of its courses .

Whistle blower questioned bonds sold by metals tycoon

April, 2019

The value of bonds related to a Scottish aluminium smelter owned by an Indian tycoon has been questioned by a whistleblower.

Read follow up stories:
Scottish government guarantee

Greenshill issued false statement

Greenshill drops Reuters libel case

FOOTBALL LEAKS: HOW TOP CLUBS CLASHED WITH RULES ON FINANCIAL FAIR PLAY

November, 2018

Teams with super-rich Middle East owners – Manchester City and Paris St. Germain – have reaped tens of millions of euros from affiliated sponsors. Documents show football authorities ignored advice from independent experts to approve the arrangements.

Plus
Man City boosted its finances through creative plays, documents say.

Double Agents: How soccer clubs, players and advisers play the tax game.

Soccer exchange: How a super-agent and a Chinese billionaire planned to trade in players

grenfell tower, cladding fire risk

June, 2017

Tom Bergin was the first reporter to reveal that the manufacturer of the cladding panels used on Grenfell Tower did not recommend their use on high rise buildings.

Follow up stories:
Arconic knowingly supplied flammable panels for use in tower

Silence over whether Grenfell materials passed safety test

Damages for Grenfell fire victims may total just $5 mln

After Grenfell, same builders rehired to replace cladding

GERMAN COMPANY HIDES NEAR $1BILLION DEAL FROM INVESTORS

November 2017

German-listed furniture firm Steinhoff International did not tell investors about almost $1 billion in transactions with a related company despite laws that some experts believe require it to do so.

HOW BARCLAYS TURNED AT $10BILLION PROFIT INTO A TAX LOSS

April 2016

How Barclays managed to generate a tax loss from a tax exempt transaction by booking part of the proceeds of the deal in Luxembourg.

HOW UK COMPANY FORMATION AGENTS FUEL FRAUD

March 2016

British government efforts to crack down on money laundering and fraud through UK businesses are failing to tackle a key area – the role of company formation agents…

SEVEN BIG UK INVESTMENT BANKS PAID JUST $30MILLION IN TAX IN 2014

December, 2015

Seven of the biggest investment banks operating in London paid little or no tax in Britain last year (2014), despite reporting billions of dollars in profits, a Reuters analysis of corporate filings shows.

NICE TRUCK ATTACK - did the driver work alone?

July 2016

Reporting in collaboration with French Reuters colleagues Tom Bergin looks into the evidence that the attacker who left 84 dead after ploughing into them in a truck was acting as a lone wolf.

COMRADE CAPITALISM, FOLLOWING THE MONEY

November & December 2014

Two reports following the money trail of comrade capitalism.

The Kiev Connection

Opaque Middlemen Exact High Price in Russia’s Deals With the West

 

 

how google clouds its uk tax liabilities

May, 2013

Google said it didn’t have to pay tax on its UK ad sales because it didn’t do any selling in the UK but Tom Bergin found it advertised dozens of jobs for UK salespeople and that hundreds of Google staff described themselves as salespeople.

how starbucks avoids uk taxes

October, 2012

Starbucks’ coffee menu famously baffles some people. In Britain, it’s their accounts that are confusing. Starbucks has been telling investors the business was profitable, even as it consistently reported losses.

THE FRIDGES THAT CAUGHT FIRE

How Britain’s fragmented regulatory regime delays slows public notification of life-threatening defects in household appliances.

risk, reward and kurdistani oil

Eager to assert its autonomy from Baghdad, the Kurdish government signed contracts with Western oil companies worth billions of dollars but political uncertainty means the oil rush risks turning into a bust.

INSIDE BP'S WAR ROOM, THE OIL SPILL REACTION

As the world held its breath, BP engineers and the U.S. government’s best scientists gathered at BP’s disaster centre debated whether to attempt a risky technique to stem the flow of oil from the Macondo well. From the inside, Tom Bergin watched as it unfolded.