Commentary on the financial crisis has offered technical analysis, political finger pointing, and myriad economic and political solutions. But rarely do these investigations reach beyond the economic and political causes of the crisis to explore their underlying intellectual grounds. The essays in this volume delve deeper into the cultural and intellectual foundations, philosophical ideas, political traditions, and economic movements that underlie the greatest financial crisis in nearly a century. Moving beyond traditional economic and political science approaches, these essays engage thinkers from Hannah Arendt to Max Weber and Adam Smith to Michel Foucault. With Arendt as a catalyst, the authors probe the philosophical as well as the cultural origins of the great recession. Orienting the volume is Arendt’s argument that past financial crises and also totalitarianism are rooted, at least in part, in the tendency for capital to expand its reach globally without regard to political and moral borders or limits. That politics is made subservient to economics names a cultural transformation that, in the spirit of Arendt, guides these essays in making sense of our present world. Including articles, interviews, and commentary from leading scholars and business executives, this volume offers views that are as diverse as they are timely. By reaching beyond “how” the crisis happened to “why” the crisis happened, the authors re-imagine the recent financial crisis and thus provide fresh thinking about how to respond.

This timely book answers complex and perplexing questions raised by Wall Street's role in the financial crisis. What are the economic and moral connections between Wall Street and the overall economy? How did we arrive at this point in history where our most powerful financial institutions thwart rather than promote free markets, prosperity and even social cohesion? Can the fractured relationship between Wall Street and Main Street be repaired? Wall Street Values chronicles the transformation of Wall Street's business model from serving clients to proprietary trading and explains how this shift undermined the ethical foundations of the modern financial industry. Michael A. Santoro and Ronald J. Strauss argue that post-millennial Wall Street is not only 'too big to fail' but also a threat to the economy even when it succeeds.

Your Survival Guide to the Next Financial Storm

""Many commentators rant about budget deficits and the country's moral failings. Russ Koesterich calmly and objectively describes our downward economic spiral over the next 20 years and recommends the investments best suited for that journey.""
--Ron Kahn, Global Head of Research, BlackRock Scientific Active Equities, and coauthor of "Active Portfolio Management"

""A must-read for anyone who has ever touched currency or heard of money.""
--Vadim Zlotnikov, Chief Market Strategist, AllianceBernstein

""A useful book that underlines an essential reality: Americans will not be returning to the old normal. We must adapt to a changing world that presents us with new risks and opportunities. "The Ten Trillion Dollar Gamble" broadens and deepens a conversation we have to have.""
--Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group, and author of "The J Curve" and "The End of the Free Market"

""This book gives investors practical and easy-to-follow solutions on how to protect their investments and financial future.""
--Arthur B. Laffer, founder and CEO, Laffer Associates, and author of "The End of Prosperity"

""A superb book. Russ Koesterich's recommendations spanning financial and real assets are insightful, relevant, and pragmatic. Russ is among the select few veterans of the investment management profession who are able to project academic insights faithfully, offer compelling investment advice--and write a page-turner.""
--S. P. Kothari, Deputy Dean, MIT Sloan School of Management

"""The Ten Trillion Dollar Gamble" is a well-crafted book. At every turn the author explains the rationale for including or excluding particular assets in a portfolio, especially as they react to higher interest rates, slower growth, and possible inflation. The investor who is worried about protecting his wealth in the coming decade(s) would do well to consider Koesterich's advice.""
--SeekingAlpha.com"

""A helpful, methodical 'financial playbook' for realistic investors. Highly recommended for those planning to invest over the next five years or more. It is not easy to find books that combine debt macroeconomics with sound financial advice, but Koesterich manages it well.""
--"Library Journal"

About the Book:

The next financial disaster is around the corner. Are you prepared?

With the nation's deficit expanding into the trillions of dollars, investors need to be prepared for the inevitable--and potentially devastating--fallout. Most economists agree that interest rates will rise, inflation will likely be higher, and virtually every aspect of our economy will be affected. Smart investors need to ask themselves: "How should I invest today to survive the storm tomorrow?"

The answer is in this brilliantly calculated, forward-thinking investment guide from Black-Rock strategist Russ Koesterich. He'll show you exactly what to expect in the new deficit economy--and how to handle your finances smartly, safely, and securely . . . Stocks and Bonds How to Invest in a Rising Rate Environment Real Estate How the Deficit Will Affect the Market Commodities The Benefits of Owning Real Assets Portfolio Management What You Should Do Before It's Too Late

More than a collection of fascinating financial predictions, "The Ten Trillion Dollar Gamble" offers solid advice on a wide range of investment options. You'll discover which markets are hot--and which are not--when the storm finally hits.

You'll find out if Treasury bonds are right for youand why commodities will be even more important in the future. You'll learn the best ways to invest in real estate, how to handle your growing debt, and how to manage higher interest rates for everything from mortgages to savings accounts.

Most important, you'll be able to apply these professional insights into building a stronger portfolio for you and your family.

Just because the government is gambling with our future doesn't mean you should. "The Ten Trillion Dollar Gamble" offers a winning game plan to help you protect and build your wealth for the long term.

When the next storm hits, you won't just survive, you'll thrive.

Rising fees. Rampant foreclosures. Americans (and much of the rest of the world) are angry and fed up with banks. In this explosive book, Carol Realini reveals what afflicts today's biggest banks and how they can transform using disruptive innovation to reconnect with their customers. Today's vast superbanks are organizations that seem to operate by their own rules and trample their Main Street customers. BANKRUPT reveals what afflicts today's biggest banks, and shows how they nickel-and-dime the average customer even as they hold trillions of dollars in assets and government bailout funds. It's not about creating nostalgia for a golden age that is long past. It's about how today's banks can transform themselves to redefine banking. It's a call for leadership that lives by the motto "Do the right thing." To chart a path to the future, Realini draws upon her extensive personal experience in India, and reveals the amazing revolution in grassroots banking that is taking place right now. BANKRUPT is an optimistic book. It uses the crisis we are experiencing as a way to look forward to a very different kind of future for banking - one that will benefit both the banks and their millions of customers.

In Fault Lines, Rajan makes a case for looking beyond the short-sighted blame-game that targets only greedy bankers. There are serious flaws in the global economy, he writes, and an even more debilitating crisis awaits us if those faults are not addressed right now. Rajan demonstrates how the individual choices - made by bankers, government officials and ordinary homeowners - that collectively brought about the economic meltdown were rational responses to a defective global financial order: specifically, a mismatch between the incentives and the dangers involved in taking on risks. He traces the deepening fault lines in a world overly dependent on the indebted American consumer to power economic growth and stave off global downturns. In Fault Lines, Rajan outlines the hard choices that all nations must make to ensure greater stability and lasting prosperity. Importantly, he examines how the Indian development experience differs from that of other fast-growing economies. Despite India's recent successes, he argues that the country must act decisively to maintain its people-oriented growth. This unique development path, he contends, will be a compelling role model - a triumph of rapid growth in a flourishing democracy.

A deeper look at the issues raised by the acclaimed Four Horsemen film. As the global economy veers from crisis to catastrophe, people have finally had enough. Billions are denied effective access to an economy that has been hijacked by vested interests. The people who caused the financial crisis suffer no loss, while the innocent majority see their living standards fall, or pay with their jobs. But it doesn't have to be like this. By equipping ourselves with a better understanding of the crisis and its root causes in a fatally flawed economic system, not only will we be better prepared for the challenges ahead, but we will also find the motivation to work towards real change. The Survival Manual points the way to a saner future. The need for change has never been more urgent, but the conditions have never been more favourable. With hope and belief we can build a better world, and create a civilization fit for human beings.

During the 2008 financial crisis, the possible changes in remittance-sending behavior and potential avenues to alleviate a probable decline in remittance flows became concerns. This book brings together a wide array of studies from around the world focusing on the recent trends in remittance flows. The authors have gathered a select group of researchers from academic, practitioner and policy making bodies. Thus the book can be seen as a conversation between the different stakeholders involved in or affected by remittance flows globally. The book is a first-of-its-kind attempt to analyze the effects of an ongoing crisis on remittance flows globally. Data analyzed by the book reveals three trends. First, The more diversified the destinations and the labour markets for migrants the more resilient are the remittances sent by migrants. Second, the lower the barriers to labor mobility, the stronger the link between remittances and economic cycles in that corridor. And third, as remittances proved to be relatively resilient in comparison to private capital flows, many remittance-dependent countries became even more dependent on remittance inflows for meeting external financing needs. There are several reasons for migration and remittances to be relatively resilient to the crisis. First, remittances are sent by the stock (cumulative flows) of migrants, not only by the recent arrivals (in fact, recent arrivals often do not remit as regularly as they must establish themselves in their new homes). Second, contrary to expectations, return migration did not take place as expected even as the financial crisis reduced employment opportunities in the US and Europe. Third, in addition to the persistence of migrant stocks that lent persistence to remittance flows, existing migrants often absorbed income shocks and continued to send money home. Fourth, if some migrants did return or had the intention to return, they tended to take their savings back to their country of origin. Finally, exchange rate movements during the crisis caused unexpected changes in remittance behavior: as local currencies of many remittance recipient countries depreciated sharply against the US dollar, they produced a sale effect on remittance behavior of migrants in the US and other destination countries."

What did the global food, fuel, and financial crises of 2008-11 mean to people living in the developing world? How did people cope with the crisis and how effective were they at averting major impacts? These are the questions addressed by this book, which emerged out of qualitative crisis monitoring initiatives carried out by IDS and the World Bank. As such, this is not a book about the causes of the crisis or how to prevent future crises. Instead, this book is about how people lived through the severe economic turmoil of recent years, how they were affected, and what they did to cope, presenting the compelling perspectives of affected communities in developing and transition countries on shocks and coping, vulnerability and resilience. The book brings together qualitative crisis monitoring conducted during 2008-2011 in communities in sixteen countries, including eight country case studies that illustrate how people in specific localities were impacted by global shocks, what coping strategies they applied, and which sources of support proved helpful. The studies in this book reveal striking similarities in people s coping responses across otherwise different countries. They also reveal widespread concern over high and volatile food prices, suggesting that the still ongoing global food crisis needs far more attention from policymakers. As the most comprehensive qualitative research on crisis impacts and coping carried out in developing countries, the book also highlights the capacity for participatory research to pick up impacts and responses that other approaches may miss and contributing to the knowledge of how to qualitatively assess shocks, vulnerability, and resilience. This book will serve as an indispensable source of reference for future crisis monitoring efforts. Written in accessible language, this book will help specialists and non-specialists alike understand how large economic crises impact people and communities and what is the role of public policy in protecting against risk."

The choices facing the 112th Congress come at a time when the federal government's debt has increased dramatically in the past few years and when large annual budget deficits are projected to continue indefinitely under current laws or policies. Beyond the coming decade, the ageing of the U.S. population and rising health care costs will put increasing pressure on the budget. If federal debt continues to expand faster than the economy, as it has since 2007, the growth of people's income will slow, the share of federal spending devoted to paying interest on the debt will rise more quickly, and the risk of a fiscal crisis will increase. This book examines options that would reduce projected budget deficits covering an array of policy areas from defence to energy, to entitlement programs, to provisions of the tax code.

A leading economist contends that the recent financial crisis was caused not by the failure of mainstream economics but by corrupted monetary data constructed without reference to economics. Blame for the recent financial crisis and subsequent recession has commonly been assigned to everyone from Wall Street firms to individual homeowners. It has been widely argued that the crisis and recession were caused by "greed" and the failure of mainstream economics. In Getting It Wrong, leading economist William Barnett argues instead that there was too little use of the relevant economics, especially from the literature on economic measurement. Barnett contends that as financial instruments became more complex, the simple-sum monetary aggregation formulas used by central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, became obsolete. Instead, a major increase in public availability of best-practice data was needed. Households, firms, and governments, lacking the requisite information, incorrectly assessed systemic risk and significantly increased their leverage and risk-taking activities. Better financial data, Barnett argues, could have signaled the misperceptions and prevented the erroneous systemic-risk assessments. When extensive, best-practice information is not available from the central bank, increased regulation can constrain the adverse consequences of ill-informed decisions. Instead, there was deregulation. The result, Barnett argues, was a worst-case toxic mix: increasing complexity of financial instruments, inadequate and poor-quality data, and declining regulation. Following his accessible narrative of the deep causes of the crisis and the long history of private and public errors, Barnett provides technical appendixes, containing the mathematical analysis supporting his arguments.

The world spins in economic turmoil, and who can tell what will happen next? Cold numbers and simple statistical projections don't take into account social, financial, or political factors that can dramatically alter the economic course of a nation or a region. In this unique book, more than twenty leading economists and experts render thorough, rigorously researched prognoses for the world's major economies over the next five years. Factoring in such varied issues as the price of oil, the strength of the U.S. dollar, geopolitics, tax policies, and new developments in investment decision making, the contributors ground their predictions in the realities of current events, political conditions, and the health of financial institutions in each national economy.

The most comprehensive volume on the global economy available today, this book presents up-to-date research on Russia, Australia, Europe, sub-Saharan and South Africa, the major Asian economies, North America, and the largest economies of Latin America. With unsurpassed expertise, the authors explain what's going on in individual countries, how important current global issues will impact them, and what economic scenarios they most likely will face in upcoming years.

The macroeconomic development of most major industrial economies is characterised by boom-bust cycles. Normally such boom-bust cycles are driven by specific sectors of the economy. In the financial meltdown of the years 2007 2009 it was the credit sector and the real-estate sector that were the main driving forces. This book takes on the challenge of interpreting and modelling this meltdown. In doing so it revives the traditional Keynesian approach to the financial-real economy interaction and the business cycle, extending it in several important ways. In particular, it adopts the Keynesian view of a hierarchy of markets and introduces a detailed financial sector into the traditional Keynesian framework. The approach of the book goes beyond the currently dominant paradigm based on the representative agent, market clearing and rational economic agents. Instead it proposes an economy populated with heterogeneous, rationally bounded agents attempting to cope with disequilibria in various markets.

The deflation of the subprime mortgage bubble in 2006-7 is widely agreed to have been the immediate cause of the collapse of the financial sector in 2008. Consequently, one might think that uncovering the origins of subprime lending would make the root causes of the crisis obvious. That is essentially where public debate about the causes of the crisis began-and ended-in the month following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the 502-point fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in mid-September 2008. However, the subprime housing bubble is just one piece of the puzzle. Asset bubbles inflate and burst frequently, but severe worldwide recessions are rare. What was different this time? In What Caused the Financial Crisis leading economists and scholars delve into the major causes of the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression and, together, present a comprehensive picture of the factors that led to it. One essay examines the role of government regulation in expanding home ownership through mortgage subsidies for impoverished borrowers, encouraging the subprime housing bubble. Another explores how banks were able to securitize mortgages by manipulating criteria used for bond ratings. How this led to inaccurate risk assessments that could not be covered by sufficient capital reserves mandated under the Basel accords is made clear in a third essay. Other essays identify monetary policy in the United States and Europe, corporate pay structures, credit-default swaps, banks' leverage, and financial deregulation as possible causes of the crisis. With contributions from Richard A. Posner, Vernon L. Smith, Joseph E. Stiglitz, and John B. Taylor, among others, What Caused the Financial Crisis provides a cogent, comprehensive, and credible explanation of why the crisis happened. It will be an essential resource for scholars and students of finance, economics, history, law, political science, and sociology, as well as others interested in the financial crisis and the nature of modern capitalism and regulation.

The first three volumes of the series, available for purchase as a set now

The Possible Futures Series gathers together leading social scientists to address the significance of the global economic crisis in a series of short, accessible books. Each volume takes on the past, present, and future of this crisis suggesting that it has an informative history, that the consequences could be much more basic than the stock market declines, and that only fundamental changes -- not fiscal band-aids -- can head off future repetitions.

CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: Immanuel Wallerstein, David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, James Kenneth Galbraith, Manuel Castells, Nancy Fraser, Rogers Brubaker, David Held, Mary Kaldor, Vadim Volkov, Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly Silver, and Fernando Coronil.Volume I, Business as UsualThe Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown

Edited by Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian

Much more basic than the result of a few financial traders cheating the system, Business as Usualshows how the current financial crisis was made possible by both neoliberal financial reforms and a massive turning away from manufacturing things of value to make profits from trading financial assets. In original essays, the contributors establish how the Great Recession is related to crises of the past, and yet why this meltdown was different. The volume concludes by asking whether the crisis -- despite its severity -- contains seeds of a new global economy, what role the US will play, and whether China or other countries will rise to global leadership.Volume II, The Deepening CrisisGovernance Challenges after Neoliberalism

Edited by Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian

Response to financial meltdown is entangled with basic challenges to global governance. Environment, global security, ethnicity and nationalism are all global issues today. Focusing on the political and social dimensions of the crisis, contributors examine changes in relationships between the world's richer and poorer countries, efforts to strengthen global institutions, and dificulties facing states trying to create stability for their citizens.Volume III, AftermathA New Global Economic Order?

Edited by Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian

The global financial crisis showed deep problems with mainstream economic predictions, as well as the vulnerability of the world's richest countries and the enormous potential of some poorer ones. China, India, Brazil, and other counties are growing faster than Europe or America and have weathered the crisis better. Is their growth due to following conventional economic guidelines or to strong state leadership and sometimes protectionism? These issues are basic to the question of which countries will grow in comind decades, as well as the likely conflicts over global trade policy, currency standards, and economic cooperation.

The global financial crisis showed deep problems with mainstream economic predictions, as well as the vulnerability of the world's richest countries and the enormous potential of some poorer ones. China, India, Brazil, and other counties are growing faster than Europe or America and have weathered the crisis better. Is their growth due to following conventional economic guidelines or to strong state leadership and sometimes protectionism? These issues are basic to the question of which countries will grow in comind decades, as well as the likely conflicts over global trade policy, currency standards, and economic cooperation. Contributors include: Ha-Joon Chang, Piotr Dutkiewicz, Alexis Habiyaremye, James K. Galbraith, Grzegorz Gorzelak, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Manuel Montes, Vladimir Popov, Felice Noelle Rodriguez, Dani Rodrik, Saskia Sassen, Luc Soete, and R. Bin Wong. Aftermath is the third part of a trilogy comprised of the first three books in the Possible Future series. Volume 1: Business as Usual Volume 2: The Deepening Crisis Volume 3: Aftermath The three volumes are linked by a common introduction and can be purchased individually or as a set.

This revelatory work offers a blow-by-blow account of America's biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression. Drawing on 180 interviews, Lowenstein tells, with grace, wit, and razor-sharp understanding, the full story of the end of Wall Street.

From the international bestselling author of The Post-American World 'An intelligent, learned and judicious guide for a world already in the making' The New York Times Since the end of the Cold War, the world has been shaken to its core three times. 11 September 2001, the financial collapse of 2008 and - most of all - Covid-19. Each was an asymmetric threat, set in motion by something seemingly small, and different from anything the world had experienced before. Lenin is supposed to have said, 'There are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen.' This is one of those times when history has sped up. In this urgent and timely book, Fareed Zakaria, one of the 'top ten global thinkers of the last decade' (Foreign Policy), foresees the nature of a post-pandemic world: the political, social, technological and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. In ten surprising, hopeful 'lessons', he writes about the acceleration of natural and biological risks, the obsolescence of the old political categories of right and left, the rise of 'digital life', the future of globalization and an emerging world order split between the United States and China. He invites us to think about how we are truly social animals with community embedded in our nature, and, above all, the degree to which nothing is written - the future is truly in our own hands. Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World speaks to past, present and future, and will become an enduring reflection on life in the early twenty-first century.

In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, governments worldwide undertook massive fiscal interventions to stave off what otherwise would have likely been a system-wide financial and economic meltdown. The policy responses engendered significant shifts in growth trajectories and debt sustainability outlooks of both mature and developing economies. For Low Income Countries, post-crisis debt sustainability analyses show an average deterioration of 5-7 percentage points in the present value of public debt-to-GDP ratio in 2009-10 compared with pre-crisis projections, and stay in the area of 30 per cent until 2014. Among the LICs, 40 per cent face high risk of (or are in) debt distress. In the G20 countries, government debt-to-GDP ratios are expected reach 85 per cent by 2014. The magnitude of public liabilities incurred and the uncertainty surrounding the exit from unprecedented discretionary fiscal stimulus have become a major source of concern about a future crisis. Will the current stringent financial conditions lead to a wave of sovereign debt problems around the world? Or will countries, given their stronger fundamentals compared with previous crises' episodes, successfully muddle through the crisis? The objective of the book is to present and discuss policy-relevant research on the current debt challenges which developing, emerging market, and developed economies face. Its value added lies in the integrated approach of drawing on theoretical research and evidence from practitioners' experience in developing, emerging market, and developed countries. The study is partially funded by the Debt Management Facility for Low-Income Countries. Contributors involve World Bank staff, other international and multilateral institutions, external researchers.

The global financial crisis has changed finance and the global economy forever. The debate over its causes and consequences has only just begun. This book brings together VoxEU.org columns written during the height of the storm from June to December 2008, offering a glimpse of history in the making through the eyes of some of the world's leading economists. To help place individual contributions within this historical sequence, an appendix updates the timeline of events from our June publication up to December 2008. Another appendix provides a glossary of technical terms. The columns are grouped under three headings: / How did the crisis spread around the world? / How has the crisis upended traditional thinking about financial economics? / How should we fix the economy and financial system?

In "The Great American Stickup," celebrated journalist Robert Scheer uncovers the hidden story behind one of the greatest financial crimes of our time: the Wall Street financial crash of 2008 and the consequent global recession. Instead of going where other journalists have gone in search of this story--the board rooms and trading floors of the big Wall Street firms--Scheer goes back to Washington, D.C., a veritable crime scene, beginning in the 1980s, where the captains of the finance industry, their lobbyists and allies among leading politicians destroyed an American regulatory system that had been functioning effectively since the era of the New Deal.
This is a story largely forgotten or overlooked by the mainstream media, who wasted more than two decades with their boosterish coverage of Wall Street. Scheer argues that the roots of the disaster go back to the free-market propaganda of the Reagan years and, most damagingly, to the bipartisan deregulation of the banking industry undertaken with the full support of "progressive" Bill Clinton.
In fact, if this debacle has a name, Scheer suggests, it is the "Clinton Bubble," that era when the administration let its friends on Wall Street write legislation that razed decades of robust financial regulation. It was Wall Street and Democratic Party darling Robert Rubin along with his clique of economist super-friends--Alan Greenspan, Lawrence Summers, and a few others--who inflated a giant real estate bubble by purposely not regulating the derivatives market, resulting in the pain and hardship millions are experiencing now.
"The Great American Stickup" is both a brilliant telling of the story of the Clinton financial clique and the havoc it wrought--informed by whistleblowers such as Brooksley Born, who goes on the record for Scheer--and an unsparing anatomy of the American business and political class. It is also a cautionary tale: those who form the nucleus of the Clinton clique are now advising the Obama administration.

The recovery of the Asia-Pacific region from the global economic crisis of 2008-2009 is underway but incomplete. Risks range from slow growth and persistent unemployment to re-emerging international imbalances and financial volatility. While early policy responses to the crisis were successful in avoiding a larger calamity, new policy strategies are now needed to resolve imbalances among the United States, China, and other economies, and to build robust demand in the medium term. This report, drafted by an international team of experts for the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECe, provides a policy framework for completing the recovery and achieving sustained growth beyond it. The report identifies priorities for replacing stimulus programmes with structural reforms, and for launching new growth engines to drive investment and employment throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Led by Professor Peter Petri (Brandeis University/East-West Center), the team included eminent scholars from China, Japan, the United States and other countries. The report presents a regional strategy as well as separate, detailed analyses of the challenges facing China, Advanced Asia, Southeast Asia, North America, and South America. It concludes that inclusive, balanced, sustained growth in the region is feasible, but will require structural reforms that change economic relationships within economies and among them, and substantial international cooperation in implementing coherent national policies.

This book takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the great financial crisis of 2007-09. It combines the disciplines of economics, finance, sociology and politics to analyse the causes, consequences and challenges of the crisis. The authors propose that the causes of the crisis should be understood at three inter-related levels - the level of theory and ideology; the level of financial industry practices and malpractices; and finally the level of structural imbalances in the international economy. Above all, the book is historical and holistic in perspective. This book is an excellent read for the critical layman interested in understanding the causes that underlie the global financial crisis. The authors combine the inquisitive and critical mind of a scholar and the lucid writing style of a journalist. The book provides a perspective on the crisis that is both practical and down to earth and at the same time, rigorous and holistic. Khor Hoe Ee, Chief Economist, Abu Dhabi Council for Economic Development, and former Assistant Managing Director, Economics, Monetary Authority of Singapore The authors trace the rise of finance and its domination over the real economy, the consequences of financial innovation and deregulation for systemic fragility, and the failure of conventional economic and financial theory to analyse and anticipate the consequent dangers. Their main original contribution is to relate these Western market developments to recent trends in the East Asian region and to call for appropriate systemic reforms, not only to avoid similar future crises, but also to address other underlying development and analytical problems. K.S. Jomo, Assistant Secretary General, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations In linking wealth and income distribution to financial instability, this book makes an important point that is often missed in the debate on the crisis. Central Banks have become strongly opposed to the idea of accommodating wage demands with the help of monetary easing, but they have been increasingly tolerant, or even supportive, of debt-financed consumption and asset inflation. Indeed, by serving to concentrate wealth further in the hands of a small rentier class, while protecting that class from the risks of debt defaults, they are only adding to systemic pressures that give rise to serious financial crises. Yilmaz Akyuz, Special Economic Advisor, South Centre, and former Chief Economist at United Nations Conference for Trade and Development

Official Government Edition

The definitive report on what caused America's economic meltdown-- and who was responsibleThe financial and economic crisis has touched the lives of millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and their homes, but many have little understanding of how it happened. Now, in this very accessible report, readers can get the facts.Formed in May 2009, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) is a panel of 10 commissioners with experience in business, regulations, economics, and housing, chosen by Congress to explain what happened and why it happened. This panel has had subpoena power that enabled them to interview people and examine documents that no reporter had access to.The FCIC has reviewed millions of pages of documents, and interviewed more than 600 leaders, experts, and participants in the financial markets and government regulatory agencies, as well as individuals and businesses affected by the crisis.In the tradition of The 9/11 Commission Report, "The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report" will be a comprehensive book for the lay reader, complete with a glossary, charts, and easy-to-read diagrams, and a timeline that includes important events. It will be read by policy makers, corporate executives, regulators, government agencies, and the American people.

This book provides an unparalleled insider's look at the factors leading up to the 1997-98 crisis in South Korea and how the crisis unfolded over the next two years. Written by former finance minister Kyu-Sung Lee, this book traces the evolving situation across the key sectors and the series of policy and institutional measures the government deployed throughout the crisis. This book is a must-read for policymakers, scholars, students, and any reader interested in understanding the facts and circumstances surrounding the 1997-98 crisis, the policies undertaken at the time, and what the experience implies for preventing future crises.

Darryl Cunningham's latest graphic investigation takes us to the heart of free-world politics and the financial crisis, as he traces the roots of our age of selfishness to the right-wing thinkers of the previous century in three fascinating chapters - Ayn Rand, Supercrash, and The Age of Selfishness. Cunningham draws a fascinating portrait of the New Right and the charismatic Ayn Rand, whose soirees were attended by the young Alan Greenspan. He shows how the US Neo-Cons have hijacked the economic debate and led the way to a world dominated by apparently unstoppable market forces. Cunningham both explains the Supercrash of 2008 and shows us what led up to it. He examines the neurological basis of political thinking, and asks why it is so difficult for us to change our minds - even when faced with powerful evidence that a certain course of action is not working. He takes a fascinating look at research carried out on the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives and suggests how their traits have defined their specific political and economic policies.