Shadow markets

Here is a link to an excerpt from a just-published book, The Shadow Market: How a Group of Wealthy Nations and Powerful Investors Secretly Dominate the World, by business writer Eric Weiner:

http://www.ericjweiner.com/shadow-market-excerpt.html

Shadow markets defined by Weiner:

[t]he shadow market is a collection of unaffiliated, extremely wealthy nations and investors that effectively run the international economy through their prodigious holdings of stocks, bonds, real estate, currencies, and other financial instruments, which they keep in largely unregulated investment vehicles such as hedge funds, private equity funds, and government-run sovereign wealth funds, as well as in vast government-owned holding companies...

Given the enormous amount of money (approaching $20 trillion) in the shadow market, Weiner argues, the players in that market are beginning to exert significant influence in global politics.

Here's a link to a review of the book in today's New York Times: Hidden Tigers.

jd