Musaraj frequently mentions Bernie Madoff’s $18 billion Ponzi scheme to show that losing

your life savings to a massive con isn’t the exclusive territory of Albanians emerging from
communism. And in the decade since Madoff, the Securities and Exchange Commission has
brought charges against Ponzi schemes accounting for over $31 billion in losses. But the
Albanian pyramid schemes remind one less of individual brazen Ponzi crimes and more of
the speculative financial logic inherent to our economic system. It is impossible to read
Musaraj’s book without thinking of Silicon Valley start-up culture and the ruinous
speculative boondoggles that were Theranos and WeWork. Even less overtly fraudulent
companies begin to resemble “the pyramid way.” Uber, for example, benefits from breaking
local livery regulations and offloading risk onto its drivers, who suffer under an ambiguous
legal status. Its future profitability is based on unrealizable projections of monopolizing all
road transport. And its existence depends on its backers’ willingness to watch billions of
dollars evaporate every quarter, a patience afforded to them by a rapid expansion of capital.

There is a vogue in Balkan studies to argue that the wars of the 1990s weren’t a relic of the
past, as they’ve often been portrayed, but a sign from the future. The violent nationalism that
destroyed Yugoslavia is the precursor to what Trumpism, Brexit, and rising right-wing
populism across Europe have in store for the rest of us. Musaraj wouldn’t argue anything
quite so crude, but her book makes the convincing case that places on the margins of global
capital have an urgent lesson for the center—if only we can hear it.

The pandemic effected a historic upward concentration of wealth in the United States at a
time when tens of millions lost their jobs and hundreds of thousands succumbed to the virus.
Total catastrophe was held off with eviction moratoriums, stimulus checks, and emergency
unemployment payments. But we watched as death, layoffs, and the stock market all
perversely skyrocketed in seeming unison. With college degrees and employment less and
less certain to provide a life of financial security and common dignity, why not pour some
Trumpbucks into a hive-mind pump-and-dump scheme facilitated by a loosely regulated
stock trading app? Why not bet on a cryptocurrency of ambiguous legality? Why not sell
your apartment to invest in this hot new firm Vefa that everyone’s been talking about? Why
not pour your yogurt into the lake? It might not work, but what if it does? What other options
do we have?