“The eldest, Peter, wore blue jeans, plastic slippers, and a red shirt with the letters AIG stitched on the front. Imagine that on a remote hill deep in the Congo’s mining provinces, a child can be found digging for cobalt, wearing a muddy shirt with the logo of the behemoth American financial services company that had to be bailed out for $180 billion during the 2008 financial crisis. Imagine what even 1 percent of that money could do in a place like this, if it were spent on the people who needed it, not stolen by those who exploited them.”

Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara