Risky business (Page 2)

Says Jonathan Webb, Naylor's editor at McClelland and Stewart, "Naylor's style is entertaining and non-academic, even though his background is academic." The claim is repeated by Dimitri Roussopoulos, editor at Black Rose Books, another of Naylor's regular publishers, who notes that "he is an unorthodox critic of the economic system, and he can write very well."

Roussopoulos adds that Naylor "really goes to the issues that lie at the base of many social problems." In Patriots and Profiteers, the relentlessness of Naylor's critique is not simply entertaining: it is also somewhat distressing, as it demonstrates the inefficiency, and sometimes the cruelty, of sanctions. "Blanket sanctions against Iraq are among the worst crimes against humanity in the last ten years," says Naylor. "It's a matter of pure expedience; the sanctions are meant to keep the oil off the market." Politically, sanctions only strengthen the authority of the ruling class while devastating the general population.

Corrupt governments, notes Naylor, have no problem avoiding the hardships inflicted by sanctions on the general population. They are the best situated, because of their practical experience in running shady networks, to dodge the restrictions. And, perhaps worse, other people also learn to create underground economies in the wake of sanctions, thereby giving birth to new criminal networks which will resist open and honest trade, and hamper any attempts to develop an open and democratic society. "These broad embargoes are there to make us feel good," Naylor argues, but at the same time they further corrupt the targeted society.

The importance of the issues Naylor deals with cannot be underestimated. As he observes, "Two of the people I depended upon for information in Hot Money and the Politics of Debt were murdered. I'm not likely to end up in that situation because I'm using information from the public domain. But these things have to be taken pretty seriously." He recalls that after the publication of Hot Money, he had some "dicey moments," although he won't go into details. And for course projects — the kind the student was getting "a bit excited" about — he warns his class that they are doing case studies, not police investigations. "These kids will try almost anything. I have them come to me saying they want to do investigations on biker gangs, and I tell them to stay the hell away from it." The warnings must work. "I've never lost a student yet," he grins.

But while students are warned away from taking such risks, Naylor, for his part, sees the dangers as part of his responsibility. "In the university we're protected, to some degree, and it's our job to stir up the hornet's nest. Why bother to write if you're not going to irritate somebody?" he asks. "For Hot Money and Patriots and Profiteers, 99% of the information is in the public domain, but you need the time and the background to find it. That's my job. If I cannot do that, I don't deserve tenure and a guaranteed salary. And that's why I happen to believe that many people in this place don't deserve it. Because they abuse it by not using it the way it should be used."

As one might imagine, Naylor's sharp and heterodox economic critiques do not always make him popular among other economists. In his lecture on prohibition, he comments that economists, as "believers in the free market, are always willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder." Occasionally, he says, students will enroll in his class "in order to learn how to become insider traders and launder money." Alas, they are disappointed. "They're all told I'm giving them state-of-the-art strategies but with trap doors, so if they ever try it they'll be sure to be caught." Should they really wish, students can live out their black-market fantasies through Naylor's board game, Hot Money, based on the course and his book. The student writing the top case study each term receives the "Pablo Escobar Memorial Award": a copy of the game.

Naylor started as an economic historian, the segue into crime and underground economies being, he says, "an accident." In the 1980s, he recounts, "I took a couple of years off and worked for a stock broker. It was a time of huge bank scandals." But, he explains, his 1975 publishing debut, The History of Canadian Business 1867-1914, is also a history of white collar crime, so the transition was not as big as it might seem. "Ultimately, I don't deal with street crime, but only with serious crime, which is committed by businesses." This concern has led him through a series of other books — Dominion of Debt (1985), Hot Money and the Politics of Debt (1987), Bankers, Bagmen and Bandits (1990), and the more academic Canada in the European Age (1987) — to the present Patriots and Profiteers. But his attention is slowly shifting to what he sees as the next logical transition: the environment.