Dark Finance: Illiquidity and Authoritarianism on the Edges of Europe

In 2010, when much of the world had not yet recovered from the 2008 crisis, the government of the impoverished Macedonia unexpectedly announced the launch of a large-scale and expensive project to reconstruct the capital - “Skopje 2014”. How did the urban environment transform into a magical device for money laundering? What methods did people use to regain their agency in an atmosphere of financial illiquidity? Fabio Mattioli's book tells the stories of unsuccessful entrepreneurs, workers mired in debt, and ambitious bureaucrats - and shows how financial expansion on the edges of Europe turned identities, values, and hopes for economic well-being into instruments of subjugation.