PALAST, Greg. The best democracy money can buy; the truth about corporate cons, globalization, and high-finance fraudsters. Penguin Putnam. 370p. illus. index. c2002. 0-452-28391-4. $14.00.

Money can't buy democracy any more than it can buy happiness, but it does buy the assassins hired to kill any tenet of democracy that happens to get in the way of profit. First on the hit list is the pesky democratic system itself, an idea far too messy for that tripartite commission of villainy--political parties, corporations and churches--whose politicians, executives and ministers reap spoils from a nation they continue to plunder. That is the crux of Palast's thesis as he presents a sensationally disturbing brief on legal corruption fomented by deregulated, market-driven greed. Palast's long list of usual suspects begins with a well-documented indictment of the entire Florida election apparachik from Governor Bush to Katharine Harris to ChoicePoint, a sweetheart (no bid) contractor who at Harris's direction purged 57,700 legitimate names of blacks, Hispanic and other assorted Democratic voters from key Florida precincts long before George W. "won" by 537 votes. Every chapter of this book is a compendium of worst-case villainy: Enron gouges Californians with an overnight 600% increase in energy rates, all perfectly legal thanks to deregulation. Wal-Mart bulldozes forests, farms and hometown retailers "anchoring" malls, then exhorts customers to "buy American" products; not that easy to do since 83% of the stock on Sam's shelves is foreign made.

The U.S. also exports its laissez faire, market-driven policies worldwide through the rapacious triumverate of IMF, WTO and the World Bank. In return for loan "guarantees," this economic Trojan horse demands that client countries impose draconian "reforms" on their citizens. Argentina was required, along with other devastating economic measures, to cut worker's salaries 20%, payments to pensioners and the aged 13% and raise interest rate on loans to 90%. Argentina was then required to repay its loans to the usurious IMP at the prevailing U.S. Treasury interest rate plus a "whopping 16% risk premium." If you are puzzled by those demonstrations in the streets wherever these institutions meet, you need only remember Andy Grove, chairman of Intel Corp. who delivered a telling epithet of IMF policy in this succinct sound bite: "The purpose of the new capitalism is to shoot the wounded."