A book by Cwenga Sihle Peter · 2025
The Silent Ledger
The Human Cost of Economic Decisions
A searching examination of the forces that shape financial and economic reality—how policies, narratives and structures influence perception, personal autonomy and the distribution of opportunity and hardship.

The central argument
The ledger is never only financial.
Economic decisions are never only numerical. They allocate time, safety, possibility and risk across real lives.
The Silent Ledger examines the invisible assumptions that allow systems to appear neutral, even when their outcomes are not. It asks readers to look beyond stated intentions and follow the full chain of human consequences.
The result is not a rejection of institutions, markets or policy. It is an invitation to see them clearly—and to recover the agency required to question what has been presented as inevitable.
Print edition
ISBN 9781037067389
E-book edition
ISBN 9781037067396
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