Private equity firms quietly buy up hospitals, housing, and infrastructure, while global financial markets move trillions through systems few truly understand. Yet these hidden forces shape the price of everyday life — from rent to energy — and even the stability of the planet.

In The Asset Class, Guardian journalist Hettie O’Brien exposes the rise of private equity: a debt-driven industry reshaping capitalism while hollowing out the institutions we rely on.

In The Global Casino, political economist Ann Pettifor expands the lens, revealing a vast, largely unregulated financial system in which speculation drives the cost of living—and fuels the climate crisis—while remaining beyond democratic control.

Together, they offer an urgent look at the machinery of modern finance—and ask what it would take to reclaim it.