From shuttered factories to look-alike high streets and shopping centres, the Western world has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low prices. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of today - the engine of globalisation, outsourcing, planned obsolescence and economic instability in an increasingly unsettled world. In this myth-shattering, closely reasoned and exhaustively reported investigation, Shell exposes the astronomically high cost of living "cheap".