I’ve been somewhat distracted for the last three months. Family matters have taken up much time and mental focus. These have crowded out most work on the book.

Nevertheless, important progress has been made. I am finally happy with my grasp of the finance sector and financialization processes.

Further, I have come up with some concrete stories to illustrate some of the abstract phenomena that fill much of the book. Stories to put meat on the bones of monopolization, the misapplication of markets, private equity, and more.

So, I am back to work on the writing and editing.

After sharing a draft with a number of people over the summer I have received quite a few suggestions. Some touch on topics that need to be added or expanded. Work needs to be done to improve the visual quality of the graphs. Overall the suggestions lead to a better narrative structure. See the new outline. The total word count of the first draft was roughly 20,000 words. The final version will be about 30,000 words. Still a short book.

Now targeting completion and trial printing of a new draft by the end of 2022.