The World For Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources

It also required the traders to be creative, finding ways to turn a profit from countries that had little ability to pay them for their services or their commodities. It was a time of furious bartering – few countries or companies had cash on hand, and so the traders became experts in exchanging one good for another.

The Kurdish troops secured the fabled site of Baba Gurgur, whose name means ‘father of fire’ in Kurdish. For thousands of years, fire has burnt from the ground there, fed by natural gas escaping from a giant oilfield beneath the surface. Some believe the flames of Baba Gurgur are the fiery furnace of the Old Testament, into which Nebuchadnezzar, ki