If you seek to grasp the intricacies of multinational life – run companies in high-cost countries, pay taxes in mini-statelets that don't trouble HMRC – then, again, the basic formulas are all on display.

If you want to understand how Jersey or the Bahamas work, this is the textbook you need. Shaxson, a seasoned financial journalist with a talent for asking awkward questions, details how lousy things happened, and why, with a sigh and a neat turn of phrase. And, of course, enter the tax havens that helped make the whole edifice possible: enter anywhere where transparency lay covered in mists and democracy was up for sale to the highest bidder: enter the havens of opportunity. Enter bright sparks who might have invented spaceships or life-saving drugs, but in fact invented the eurodollar market – a continent of opportunity without actual territory or policing, because it existed somewhere over there, somewhere offshore. The Swiss, sitting pretty, had lessons of neutrality, secrecy and cupidity to impart to a wider audience. The City of London, seeing its imperial glories fade, used the leftover connections of empire to construct a web of influence and cash around the globe (with the Bank of England playing head spider).

What happened 60 years ago, as the world that John Maynard Keynes believed in – a world where the nation, and national boundaries, offered economic control and fiscal discipline – fragmented in the wake of war? The United States had a generous Marshall Plan that burrowed its influence deep into the policy-making and recovering bourses of old, battered Europe.

Treasure island book