Restructuring the balance sheets of Western governments, banks and households is an important issue in the recovery after the recent crisis. Chorafas' latest book focuses on sovereign debt, sovereign risk and the developing economic and financial business climate and explains why the year of the big crisis may fall in the middle of this decade.

"The financial crisis is destroying wealth but is also a remarkable opportunity to uncover the ways by which debt can be used to regulate the economic system. This book uses four case studies of cooperatives to give an in-depth analysis on how they have braved the crisis and continued to generate wealth"--

The financial crisis hit the global economy unexpectedly from August 2007 producing consequences comparable to the ones experienced in the course of the 1930s. This book provides a comprehensive interdisciplinary account of the events leading to the financial crisis, its institutional causes and consequences, its economic characteristics and its socio-political implications.
This book represents a unique opportunity to gather the opinions of established experts on financial markets from different academic disciplines and from a different academic traditions debating over the future of the global financial order. Leading economists are confronted with leading political scientists in an effort to assess the future of global financial stability and to propose solutions to the problems envisaged.
This book is essential reading for all interested in macroeconomics, political economy, globalization studies and political science.

Hans van Zon analyzes the financialization of developed capitalism, and argues that the emergence of finance as a dominant force has contributed to the relative decline of the West. He demonstrates that the neo-liberal model is inherently unstable and undermines capitalist economies, which can only function if they are embedded in institutions that are non- or even pre-capitalist. He shows how a toxic combination of financialization, corporate globalization, and a deregulated and parasitic financial industry have led to structural economic stagnation in both the USA and the greater part of the EU.

This book surveys 'thrift' through its moral, religious, ethical, political, spiritual and philosophical expressions, focussing in on key moments such as the early Puritans and Post-war rationing, and key characters such as Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Smiles and Henry Thoreau. The relationships between thrift and frugality, mindfulness, sustainability, and alternative consumption practices are explained, and connections made between myriad conceptions of thrift and contemporary concerns for how consumer cultures impact scarce resources, wealth distribution, and the Anthropocene. Ultimately, the book returns the reader to an understanding of thrift as it was originally used - to 'thrive' - and attempts to re-cast thrift in more collective, economically egalitarian terms, reclaiming it as a genuinely resistant practice. -- .

Born in Massachusetts, Jared Bibler relocated to Iceland in 2004 only to find himself in the middle of an unprecedented financial crisis a handful of years later. Personally wiped out and seeking to uncover the truth about a collapse that brought the pastoral country to its knees, he became the lead investigator into some of the largest financial crimes in the world. This work helped Iceland to famously become the only country to jail its bank CEOs in the wake of the 2008 crisis. But the real story behind that headline is far more complex - and sinister. A decade after the investigations, the story can be told at last and in full. The crisis, barely understood inside or outside of Iceland even today, is a cautionary tale for the world: an inside look at the high crimes that inevitably follow Wild West capitalism. With the next global financial meltdown just around the corner, this untold tale is as timely as ever.

The idea was simple: pack a suitcase, go to another city where you have no connections and try to find a job, anonymously. That was the idea that took Florence Aubenas - one of France's most accomplished undercover journalists - on a journey into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Day after day she searched for work, one unemployed worker among others, with no special skills or qualifications. She immersed herself in the crowd of job seekers, going from one employment office to another, eventually managing to cobble together a few hours working as a night cleaner on a ferry that crossed the English Channel. For many people the global financial crisis seems real enough but remote from their daily lives. They have little sense of what it really means to be unemployed in the midst of a recession. Florence Aubenas was determined to find out. This book is the story of her journey. The Night Cleaner became an instant number one bestseller in France and has subsequently become a bestseller in many countries throughout the world. Better than any academic treatise on the topic, this book shows what recession means today.

This text comprises a selection of papers that provide state of the art insights into bank performance, risk and firm financing post crisis that were presented at the European Association of University Teachers of Banking and Finance Conference (otherwise known as the Wolpertinger Conference) held at Bangor University, Wales, 2010.

Maritime Piracy and its Control develops an economic approach to the problem of modern-day maritime piracy with the goal of assessing the effectiveness of remedies aimed at reducing the incidence of piracy.

This text comprises a selection of papers that provide state-of-the-art insights into research focusing on dimensions of bank strategy, governance and the role of credit rating agencies that were presented at the European Association of University Teachers of Banking and Finance Conference, September 2010.

This book evaluates the salient features of Japanese relation-based banking, particularly in the post war period, and Anglo-American mode of banking to explain the nature and extent of transition failure that caused prolonged financial and economic slump in Japan.

Christopher Dow was one of the most accomplished British economists of the post-war generation. His influence - and relative anonymity - came from devoting his exceptional abilities to public service for most of his career, notably in the Bank of England.

The memoirs that he wrote during his time at the Bank shed an extraordinarily revealing light on what is widely recognised to have been one of the most difficult times for the UK economy since the 1930s, and many of these policy debates are re-emerging today in the wake of the 2007 recession. These memoirs are not only informative and topical for current economic policy, but also explore the nature of life at the top of the Bank during those troubled times, painting detailed portraits of key protagonists at the head of government.

This book approaches the question of the relation between financial crises and earnings management from two philosophical perspectives: positivism and critical realism. The results obtained using the positivist approach indicate that financial crises tend to have no consistent effect on earnings quality since managers' earnings behavior does not differ from the pre-crisis to the crisis period. The author accordingly argues against the existence of a causal law based on a constant conjunction model (i.e., whenever a financial crisis happens, earnings management occurs) and concludes that financial crises cannot be seen as the cause of earnings management. The critical realism perspective, on the other hand, casts light on managers' reasons for acting like an earnings manager; in conjunction with the more traditional positivist approach, it assists in refuting the idea of financial crises as a generative mechanism for earnings management. The author concludes by exploring other structures at work that might be responsible for earnings management. This book will be of interest to both academics and a wide range of professionals.

The 2008 financial crisis has turned a spotlight on the role of financial reporting in periods of economic downturn. In analysing the financial crisis, many commentators have attributed blame to fair value accounting (FVA) because of the pro-cyclical effect it potentially introduces in banks' financial statements. This book discusses how FVA affects financial reporting during a financial crisis. It provides an in-depth analysis of the key benefits and negatives of FVA, and discusses the controversial practice of trade-offs with historical cost accounting (HCA). It provides an overview of the principles and applications of FVA, and explains its impact on banks' financial statements. Investigating the effect of FVA on the volatility of earnings and regulatory capital in European banks, the book asks whether incremental volatility is indeed reflected in bank share prices. It examines empirical evidence to quantify the role that FVA may have played in times of stress in the banking sector, both in Europe and elsewhere. Fair Value Accounting explores the criticism FVA has received despite its perceived merits, and summarizes the various opposing views of parties in this major policy debate, which has involved banking and accounting regulators from across the globe.

This book analyzes the foundations and means of overcoming the current crisis in the broader area of Southeast Europe. The contributions make proposals from both theoretical and empirical points of view and discuss the concept, determinants and policies of competitiveness in these countries. The financial crisis became a prolonged fiscal crisis, a bank confidence crisis, and economic recession, and the book discusses the European and national policies implemented to resolve it. It also investigates the internal conflicts generated by institutional arrangements and policy measures, both within the nation states and the eurozone. Economic competitiveness is a key topic for policymakers, as they have to secure economic growth and improve their populations' standards of living. This volume sheds light on what constitutes economic competitiveness, as well as on the policies and economic and institutional structures that improve competitiveness.

First published in 1919, Taxation in the New State explores the practical application of tax policy to the financial situation of post-World War I Britain. Hobson assesses policy according to the tax payer's ability to bear the burden and draws a distinction between 'cost' and 'surplus'. He proposes a number of reforms and considers the pitfalls of attempting the find required revenue using ordinary taxation in a post-war financial crisis.

The book explores how, to what extent and with what consequences the international crisis of 2007-2008 and the recession which followed have affected European SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in both the well established market economies of the old member countries and in the post-transformation new member countries, and what can be done at the institutional and political level to uphold them.

What are the conditions that gave rise to the change in central banks? Without recourse to ideological arguments, Chorafas derives lessons from current economic and financial challenges as well as failures in confronting them. Through this approach, The Changing Role of Central Banks brings into perspective financial, political and social reactions to major economic problems of the last ten years, particularly those pertaining to money and initiatives taken by central banks, and the parallel challenge of bank regulation.

In the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2008 it is important to ask what ethics has to say to the many stakeholders in the U.S. economy. The crisis in the financial industry, precipitated by the bursting of a bubble in the housing sector, brought the U.S. economy to the brink of a major depression. Government officials, economists and financial executives intervened to implement measures to mitigate the damage, applying their expertise and using their best judgments to rescue the economy. The actions they took required technical competence, pragmatic judgments and controversial decisions. They worked through a crisis to try to prevent a very bad situation from becoming a catastrophe. As events played out in the autumn of 2008, there was little time to reflect on how immoral conduct contributed to the crisis and how financial recovery needs to be built on an ethical foundation. The purpose of this book is to examine the role of ethics in setting things right. In taking a close look at the events of 2008 this book makes an important contribution to business ethics.

The book aims at offering a comparative, multi-perspective analysis of the different, at times parallel, at times with varying degrees of interdependence, macroeconomic and structural adjustments in the two continents against the backdrop of important processes of regional integration. Its reading offers a multifaceted appreciation of the reality emerging from the mixing up of longer run tendencies deepened by the brute force of the financial and then industrial crisis.

The 2007-09 financial crisis and economic downturn inflicted considerable hardship on the U.S. population. This book argues that the financial crisis and ensuing recession reflected not just a malfunctioning of the financial system -- but also inequalities and insecurities in access to livelihoods that favor well-off groups and leave ordinary people shouldering undue burdens of downside risk. This book, a collection of original papers by leading social economists and scholars in related fields, examines social, distributional, and ethical dimensions of the downturn. It should be of broad interest to the social-science and economic-policy communities.

This book seeks to bridge the gap between what is well known in economic research but has become long forgotten in practise. Focusing on the recent banking crisis, Cao looks at why the existing regulatory regime failed to prevent the financial meltdown, and emphasizes the impact of regulatory policies on the risky activities undertaken by individual financial institutions. The systemic risks in the financial system that need to be avoided by the regulatory rules are examined in detail, and Cao establishes a framework of evaluating the instruments in the regulator 's toolbox.

The author covers a range of important issues such as endogenous systemic liquidity risk, the failure of liquidity regulation with Lender of Last Resort policy or capital requirement and the impact of macro policy on micro incentives.

This book discusses contemporary banking and monetary policy issues from the perspective of the Austrian School of Economics. Based on the heritage of the Austrian school, leading scholars and practitioners offer a coherent diagnosis and analysis of the factors leading to Europe's current financial crisis. The first part of the book discusses Ludwig von Mises's and Friedrich August von Hayek's ideas on banking and monetary policy from both historical and economic standpoints. It includes contributions on Austrian monetary dynamics and micro-foundational business cycle theory, von Mises's concepts of liquidity and solvency of fractional-reserve banks, and liberalism of Austrian economics. The second part analyzes the measures taken by the European Central Bank (ECB) in light of the ideas of von Mises and Hayek. It includes contributions on non-neutrality of money, ECB monetary policy, and the future of the ECB. The third and final part presents discussions on monetary reforms, including contributions on Bitcoins, Cryptocurrencies and anti-deflationist Paranoia.

Since 2008, Emerging Europe has been in the grip of a severe economic and financial crisis. The region is now gradually recovering but the speed and sustainability of this recovery and the prospects for economic reconvergence with the rest of the EU are still uncertain. Against this background, policy makers, high-level practitioners and experts from central banks, international institutions and academia identify the main reasons for the crisis and the main challenges for the recovery process. Essays highlight the significant cross-country differences within Emerging Europe, focusing on the region's growth model as well as the pros and cons of financial integration and the challenges to financial stability. Particular focus is placed on the prospects and challenges for economic recovery in the Western Balkans and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The current global financial crisis has raised awareness of the impact the world of finance has on the economy and the future of democracy. Following the crisis, this book aims at a deep understanding of the human psycho-social dynamics beneath the surface of the financial industry, its markets and institutions. It seeks to understand why the seemingly rational world of economic behavior, with its calculated models and predictions, at times goes horribly wrong.

This book uses the discipline of socio-analysis to explore the meaning of money, markets and the broad financial world that so strongly affects our daily lives. Socio-analysis contributes to an awareness and understanding of underlying unconscious desires, fantasies and illusions that bring about the irrational inflation of faith and trust in the world of money, finance and capital(ism). The insight that the financial crisis OCywas essentially psychological in originOCO (Robert Shiller) and that the world of finance is broadly shaped if not determined by irrational often unconscious factors is not yet broadly shared. This book appears to be one of the first, if not the first contribution that explicitly focuses on what is beneath the surface of money, finance and capital. It invites the reader to explore the financial world in depth.

The aim of this book is to provide businesses, organizational consultants, students, researchers and interested persons more broadly with a detailed exploration of the psycho-social dynamics of the financial industry as it exists currently within the capitalist system. The contributors to this book come from Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, The Netherlands, UK, and USA."