Produced by:
KBOO
Program::
Air date:
Wed, 04/13/2011 - 12:00am
Peter Mountford on his novel "A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism,"
Host Marianne Barisonek speaks with fiction writer Peter Mountford about his new novel A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism, which tells the story of Gabriel de Boya, a recent college graduate who works for an unscrupulous hedge fund while pretending to be a freelance journalist. Mountford drew on his own experience for the book. Just out of college, he was hired to write about the economy of Ecuador for a nonprofit think tank. He later discovered that the think tank was running a hedge fund out of its back office.
Jess Walters, author of "The Financial Lives of the Poets" describes "A Young Man's GUide to Late Capitalism" as a "parable of the voracious global economy."
- KBOO
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Comments
Peter Moutford discusses capitalism
This guy Peter Montford is boiling my blood--he's an apoligist--I don't know if he is just really naive or a complete hack. i would never buy his book. As marianne began to say, people make choices, and when theysee that those choices hurt people an the earth and yet continue to make these choices they beocome immoral and uneethical motivated by selfish, often self-righteous principles--which makes them bad people--the very definition of what we in a society--"society" a comunity define as 'evil'. We have words and conepts for a reason. When one acts agaisnt society--the betterment of the group, that one is actin in evil ways--he or it makes a deciion, a choice--and these very powerful groups and 'entities' have enough power, hindsight. knowledge and insight to know the difference. They act out of greed. Even when they know they are harming others, or that their actions kill. And they keep doing it without challenging the system or out of pleasure or out denial or out cowardness, etc...but they know, they know--they were resented with choices--some good, some not so good, somedownright evil--and it seems to me, most of these entities choose very questionable paths, even evil paths. Peter refuses to accept that he or friends or family and colleagues have responsibility. They refuse to accept responsibility, and choose to say its out of thier hands, when in realit-all it takes is a few good men or women or children or even one to stand up and challenge the status qou--and the mind works like a mirror--people will stand up with you. So long as people like him continue to make excuses--excuses are like stink holes every one has got one--and ignore that we have ethical choices to make all the time awlays in almost every situation. If you choose the girl over speaking up in an embarrasing situation that could potentially rescue a suffering human being--and then dismiss it as immaturity or well, you know, we boys have a strong inclination to get the girl and have sex and I didnt want to disturb the situation--th eboy still made a bad decision. When a pwerful man or acompany does that--or a nation--it is an act of indiffernt evil. I did not always make the right decisions in my life-but when i made the wrong one i was man enough to admit, and correct my behavior in the future. Im not a superhero, but powerful corporations have the ability to act lke superheroes, and need not fear personal harm that an individual might in any given situation on the ground. There are infinitly better alternatives to the structures we have in place now, and yet we continue to suppress them--thats evil.