The Global Financial Crisis is acknowledged to be the most severe economic downturn since the 1930s, and one that is unique in its underlying causes, its scope, and its wider social, political and economic implications. This volume explores some of the ethical issues that it has raised.

'This is a most useful book which nicely combines theory and practice. In it the authors provide a framework which helps us better understand the nature of modern financial crises and how monetary and regulatory policies interact in delivering price and financial stability. Certainly worth reading by academics, policymakers and all those interested in deepening their knowledge of how modern financial systems work in both good and bad times.' - Jose Vinals, Standard Chartered, UK 'This collection of papers is a remarkable tour de force. Goodhart and Tsomocos have made pioneering steps toward understanding the causes of financial crises and showing how the financial system can be regulated to reduce and mitigate them. A must-read for anyone interested in financial stability.' - Doyne Farmer, University of Oxford, UK 'Today almost everyone realizes the crucial importance of liquidity, a painful lesson taught by the global financial crisis. This collection records that Goodhart and Tsomocos were early and persistent voices, initially in the wilderness but now almost mainstream, showing the way forward by clothing old wisdom in new modelling.' - Perry G. Mehrling, Columbia University, US Charles Goodhart and Dimitrios P. Tsomocos examine the interaction of monetary and regulatory policy to achieve the important goals of price and financial stability. Their focus is on the relationship between liquidity and default in the post-crisis context, with special emphasis on macroprudential regulation. Exploring how financial stability can be continually assessed and measured, Financial Regulation and Stability discusses the interrelationships between liquidity and default. Without default there would be no concern about liquidity. But the financial crisis was not just a liquidity problem, it requires a general equilibrium model. The authors' model delineates all the potential interrelationships between the real and financial sectors of the economy, with special emphasis on the interaction between liquidity and default. Economists and central bankers will greatly benefit from the practical advice offered in this book to aid financial stability. Advanced students of financial economics will also find this a vital read to understand the consequences of the 2007-8 financial crisis in more depth and the lessons to be learnt.

When the global financial system crashed, governments in America and Britain perfomed the greatest bailout in history. The legacy is record government debt, low growth and a new era of austerity. A stellar cast of contributors, including Tim Bale, Wyn Grant and Graham Wilson provide a sophisticated account of how the administrations are faring.

With the effects of the latest financial crisis still unfolding, this is a timely guide to the politics of international financial reform comparing the policies that the international community requested the IMF to follow in the aftermath of the Mexican, Asian, and subprime crisis.

This book examines the role of financial globalization in economic growth and derives corresponding implications for economic policy. Although economists have debated the importance of openness to international trade, they generally agree that in the market for goods, international openness is more favorable to growth than a largely closed economy. In contrast, whether external financial openness boosts or curbs growth has long been a controversial issue, and it has become even more so with the outbreak of the global financial crisis of 2007-09.The East Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s raised doubts on this issue, and helped spur a wave of empirical research on it. Supporters of financial globalization-such as Stanley Fischer and Lawrence Summers-maintained that, with the right policies, open capital markets continued to be a powerful means for enhancing growth. Critics, including Jagdish Bhagwati and Joseph Stiglitz, argued that the crisis demonstrated that, unlike free trade in goods, free mobility for capital is counterproductive for growth. In the past decade a large empirical literature has emerged examining this question. Overall it has tended to find that financial globalization has "positive marginal effects on growth." The US-led financial crisis of 2007-09 swept most of the developed and emerging-market economies into its vortex. The global crisis has set the stage for an intensification of the debate on financial openness. Some analysts and policymakers will be inclined to escalate calls for restrictions on capital flows. In the acute phase of the crisis that began in September 2008, major stock markets around the world plunged along with the US equity market, and many currencies fell sharply against the dollar (excluding the yen, which proved, like the dollar, to be a safe-haven currency). If countries had maintained closed capital markets, some may argue, they would not have been vulnerable to these shocks. Cline asserts that financial globalization represents a significant factor in economic growth of emerging-market economies. Further, he argues that a significant portion of current-day GDP can be attributed to the cumulative influence of financial openness, especially in industrial countries.This study surveys the extensive literature on this issue to arrive at a broad sense of the state of the evidence for and against the growth benefits of financial openness. The survey is critical in the sense that it seeks to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of the various studies in addition to summarizing their results. It then applies leading quantitative models from the literature to arrive at synthesis estimates of the contribution of financial openness to growth for major industrial and emerging-market economies over the past four decades. Finally, the book considers the preliminary evidence on whether the 2007-09 financial crisis constitutes grounds for a major change in the policy verdict on financial openness. As part of that reconsideration, the analysis reviews the causes of the global crisis, as well as its principal events and policy interventions.

Since the first edition there have been fundamental changes in the Irish growth model. The sudden collapse of the Irish economy in 2008 raises questions such as: why the sudden and deep decline in economic growth? What are the prospects for a return to growth? Answering these questions and more, this book is the definitive work on the Celtic Tiger.

Many books on the 2008 financial crisis and the current recession focus on the financial sector. Unlike them, this book takes the real economy as the starting point and it situates the downturn within the societal context over the last several decades. Important elements of the story include global manufacturing overcapacity and declining profitability, failure of advanced industrial economies to make a quantum jump in discoveries and innovations across a broad range of technologies, ascent of neo-liberalism after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Asian financial crisis, the Japanese "lost decade", and the dot-com boom. This provides the backdrop of the birth of a market society, deregulation, easy credit, and financial excesses.The financial crisis reveals much that has gone astray in the business world over the last few decades - short term thinking, manipulation of figures and image management at the cost of the basics. The financial sector has become an arena for accounting shenanigans and corporate skullduggery. It is also a symptom of deeper social and cultural change. Crisis of a very serious nature functions as a cleansing exercise. Already we have seen debates which re-examine values and ideas, state policy and business practices. If the world could rise to the challenge, history will view the crisis as a blessing in disguise and thus render it in positive terms.

'Robert Peston's compelling account of global financial meltdown is a must-read.' Observer What can we learn from the 2008 recession? ITV's political editor explains the global economic mess and how to escape it - in his characteristically straightforward way. 'How do we fix this mess? I don't know. But don't stop reading now. Perhaps if we have a clearer understanding of what went wrong, we'll have a better idea of what needs to be done. This book is a map of what needs to be fixed.' The record-breaking unbroken growth between 1992 and 2008 wasn't the economic miracle that it seemed. It was based on a number of dangerous illusions - most notably that it didn't matter that the UK and US year after year consumed more than they earned. But we couldn't go on increasing our indebtedness forever. The financial crash of 2007/8 and the subsequent economic slump in much of the west was the moment when we realised we had borrowed more than we could afford to repay. So who got it wrong? Bankers, investors and regulators? And were they greedy, stupid or asleep? What was the role of government? And what part did we, as consumers, play in all this? How do we get through this difficult period of transition to a more sustainable economy, one based on investment and exports, rather than on borrowing and consumption? With the same probing lucidity he brought to Who Runs Britain? and WTF?, Robert Peston takes us step-by-step towards a common sense way to fix this mess.

In his acclaimed book "American Theocracy," Kevin Phillips warned of the perilous interaction of debt, financial recklessness, and the spiking cost (and growing scarcity) of oil- warnings that are proving to be frighteningly accurate. Now, in his most significant and timely book yet, Phillips takes the full measure of this crisis. They are a part of what he calls "bad money"- not just the depreciated dollar, but also the dangerous attitudes and the flawed products of wayward mega-finance. His devastating conclusion: In its hubris, the financial sector has hijacked the American economy and put our very global future at risk-and it may be too late to stop it.

The Great American Recession resulted in the loss of eight million jobs between 2007 and 2009. More than four million homes were lost to foreclosures. Is it a coincidence that the United States witnessed a dramatic rise in household debt in the years before the recession - that the total amount of debt for American households doubled between 2000 and 2007 to $14 trillion? Definitely not. Armed with clear and powerful evidence, Atif Mian and Amir Sufi in House of Debt reveal how the Great Recession and Great Depression, as well as the recent economic malaise in Europe, were caused by a large run up in household debt followed by a significantly large drop in household spending. Mian and Sufi argue strongly with real data that current policy that is too heavily biased toward protecting banks and creditors, with the goal of increasing the flow of credit, a response that is disastrously counterproductive when the fundamental problem is actually too much debt. Thoroughly grounded in compelling economic evidence, House of Debt offers convincing answers to some of the most important questions facing the modern economy today: Why do severe recessions happen? Could we have prevented the Great Recession and its consequences? And what actions are needed to prevent such crises going forward?

Fascinating Insight into How the Financial System Works and How the Credit Crisis Arose
Clearly supplies details vital to understanding the crisis

Unravelling the Credit Crunch provides a clearly written, comprehensive account of the current credit crisis that is easily understandable to non-specialists. It explains how the financial system was drawn into the crunch and the issues that need to be addressed to prevent further disasters.

To enable an understanding of the credit crunch, the author first examines the rules that constrain how financial institutions operate. He discusses how these institutions do business, what products were central to the development of the crunch, and how they behave. He thoroughly describes how financial institutions raise money and the legal and regulatory frameworks under which they operate. After exploring how the system works, the book illustrates how to change the rules to make financial disasters less likely.

Focusing on the rules involved in the game of finance is essential if we want to figure out what happened that led to this financial debacle. This book shows us how the actions of many financial institutions, regulatory bodies, central banks, and investment managers adversely affected the entire financial system.

Crisis is everywhere: in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and the Congo; in housing markets, money markets, financial systems, state budgets, and sovereign currencies. In "Anti-Crisis," Janet Roitman steps back from the cycle of crisis production to ask not just why we declare so many crises but also what sort of analytical work the concept of crisis enables. What, she asks, are the stakes of "crisis"? Taking responses to the so-called subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008 as her case in point, Roitman engages with the work of thinkers ranging from Reinhart Koselleck to Michael Lewis, and from Thomas Hobbes to Robert Shiller. In the process, she questions the bases for claims to crisis and shows how crisis functions as a narrative device, or how the invocation of crisis in contemporary accounts of the financial meltdown enables particular narratives, raising certain questions while foreclosing others.

The 21st century marks a watershed in the history of the human economic condition. Income and wealth inequalities are now greater than ever before - and their role in the global financial crisis is one of the burning issues of today. Commodity looks at the great financial crisis from an entirely original perspective - that of the global commodity system as a newly operational totality. In the 19th century, the commodity system as defined by Karl Marx was limited to a few regions and embraced only the labour and capital capacities and their outputs. By the end of the 20th century, it encompassed the entire planet and embraced government capacity as well as private capacities, financial securities and material goods and services. This book shows how the financial crisis and its causes can only properly be understood as a result of this vast, unprecedented extension of the commodity system - a system which benefits the rich. The author makes the watertight case that it is only through the creation of a global tax authority - to coordinate national tax regimes and to implement a tax on global wealth - that we can avoid another crisis and create a fairer and more equitable world. Addressing a broad range of themes, Commodity offers a new perspective which will be of interest to political economists as well as researchers specialising in other related fields of social enquiry. Written in a clear and engaging way, the book's concise nature also makes it accessible for the non-specialist reader, and it will especially appeal to all those who want a more just society.

Recent world events have created a compelling need for new perspectives and realistic solutions to the problem of sovereign debt. The success of the Jubilee 2000 movement in raising public awareness of the devastating effects of debt, coupled with the highly publicized Bono/O'Neill tour of Africa, and the spectacular default and economic implosion of Argentina have helped spur a global debate over debt. A growing chorus of globalization critics, galvanized by the Catholic Church's demand for forgiveness and bolstered by recent defaults, has put debt near the top of the international agenda. Creditor governments and international financial institutions have belatedly recognized the need for more sustainable progress on debt as an inescapable step towards economic recovery in many parts of the world. This book is intended to advance the dialogue around these issues by providing a comprehensive overview of the problems raised by debt and describing new and practical approaches to overcoming them. It will be the first in more than a decade to bring together under one cover the voices of prominent members of the international debt community. It will include pieces from the most relevant constituencies: from creditors (the IMF/World Bank, government lenders, private investors) to critics (debtor representatives, activists, and academics) and analysis from economists, bankers, lawyers, social scientists, and politicians. As contributions come from such leading thinkers across a range of disciplines, this book will offer a timely guide for understanding and influencing the debt debate.

Being the first casualty of the international financial crisis, Iceland was, in many ways, turned into a laboratory when it came to responding to one of the largest corporate failures on record. This edited volume offers the most wide-ranging treatment of the Icelandic financial crisis and its political, economic, social, and constitutional consequences. Interdisciplinary, with contributions from historians, economists, sociologists, legal scholars, political scientists and philosophers, it also compares and contrasts the Icelandic experience with other national and global crises. It examines the economic magnitude of the crisis, the social and political responses, and the unique transitional justice mechanisms used to deal with it. It looks at backward-looking elements, including a societal and legal reckoning - which included the indictment of a Prime Minister and jailing of leading bankers for their part in the financial crisis - and forward-looking features, such as an attempt to rewrite the Icelandic constitution. Throughout, it underscores the contemporary relevance of the Icelandic case. While the Icelandic economic recovery has been much quicker than expected; it shows that public faith in political elites has not been restored. This text will be of key interest to scholars, policy-makers and students of the financial crisis in such fields as European politics, international political economy, comparative politics, sociology, economics, contemporary history, and more broadly the social sciences and humanities.

The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 shook the foundations of the global economy and what began as a localised currency crisis soon engulfed the entire Asian region. What went wrong and how did the Asian economies long considered 'miracles' respond? How did the United States, Japan and other G-7 countries respond to the crisis? What role did the IMF play?. Why did China, which suffers many of the same structural problems responsible for the crisis remain conspicuously insulated from the turmoil raging in its midst?. What explains the remarkable recovery now underway in Asia? In what fundamental ways did the Asian crisis serve as a catalyst to the current thinking about the "new international financial architecture"?. This book provides answers to all the above questions and more, and gives a comprehensive account of how the international economic order operates, examines its strengths and weaknesses, and what needs to be done to fix it. -- .

The 2008 global financial crisis affects everyone, but its root causes and potential cures - knowledge necessary in order to make strong financial decisions moving forward - are confusing to many. This compilation of expert views from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management navigates what went wrong, why, and the lessons that these events can teach business people, policy makers, and interested observers alike.

"The Finance Crisis and Rescue" features essays from ten leading Rotman professors and renowned journalist Michael Hlinka as well as a foreword by Rotman Dean Roger Martin. These intellectual leaders from the front lines of business thinking tackle the subject from varied perspectives, analyzing the crisis through their diverse backgrounds in fields such as structured finance, behavioural finance, value investing, pension plans, risk management, corporate governance, public policy, and leadership.

A timely and considered response to current events, "The Finance Crisis and Rescue" will be of interest to all those following recent global financial developments.

The subprime mortgage crisis has already wreaked havoc on the lives of millions of people and now it threatens to derail the U.S. economy and economies around the world. In this trenchant book, best-selling economist Robert Shiller reveals the origins of this crisis and puts forward bold measures to solve it. He calls for an aggressive response--a restructuring of the institutional foundations of the financial system that will not only allow people once again to buy and sell homes with confidence, but will create the conditions for greater prosperity in America and throughout the deeply interconnected world economy.

Shiller blames the subprime crisis on the irrational exuberance that drove the economy's two most recent bubbles--in stocks in the 1990s and in housing between 2000 and 2007. He shows how these bubbles led to the dangerous overextension of credit now resulting in foreclosures, bankruptcies, and write-offs, as well as a global credit crunch. To restore confidence in the markets, Shiller argues, bailouts are needed in the short run. But he insists that these bailouts must be targeted at low-income victims of subprime deals. In the longer term, the subprime solution will require leaders to revamp the financial framework by deploying an ambitious package of initiatives to inhibit the formation of bubbles and limit risks, including better financial information; simplified legal contracts and regulations; expanded markets for managing risks; home equity insurance policies; income-linked home loans; and new measures to protect consumers against hidden inflationary effects.

This powerful book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got into the subprime mess--and how we can get out. In a new preface to this powerful book, Shiller discusses the development of the crisis in relation to the ideas presented in "The Subprime Solution."

For the past two centuries, the great power sitting atop the international global financial system has enjoyed outsized rewards. As the saying goes, however, all good things come to an end. Providing insights into the evolution of the global political economy, From Malaise to Meltdown identifies the main instigators behind the global financial crises we've seen in the last two hundred years. Michael Lee shows that, in time, power diffuses from the leading economy to others, creating an intensely competitive push for global financial leadership. Hungry for the benefits of global leadership, declining leaders and aspiring challengers alike roll back long-standing regulatory safeguards in an effort to spark growth. Risks to global financial stability mount as a result of this rollback and waves of severe financial crises soon follow. As Lee deftly shows, the Long Depression of 1873-1896, the Great Depression of 1929-1939, and the financial crisis of 2008 are part of the same recurrent pattern: global competition disrupts the longstanding political equilibria, prompting a search for new, risky ideas among the most powerful states. From Malaise to Meltdown presents a sweeping but accessible historical narrative about the coevolution of power, ideas, and domestic politics, supported by archival research into the risky decisions that ushered in the worst financial crises in history.

The 2008 crash was the worst financial crisis and the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. It triggered a complete overhaul of the global regulatory environment, ushering in a stream of new rules and laws to combat the perceived weakness of the financial system. While the global economy came back from the brink, the continuing effects of the crisis include increasing economic inequality and political polarization. After the Crash is an innovative analysis of the crisis and its ongoing influence on the global regulatory, financial, and political landscape, with timely discussions of the key issues for our economic future. It brings together a range of experts and practitioners, including Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner; former congressman Barney Frank; former treasury secretary Jacob Lew; Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England; and Steve Cutler, general counsel of JP Morgan Chase during the financial crisis. Each poses crucial questions: What were the origins of the crisis? How effective were international and domestic regulatory responses? Have we addressed the roots of the crisis through reform and regulation? Are our financial systems and the global economy better able to withstand another crash? After the Crash is vital reading as both a retrospective on the last crisis and an analysis of possible sources of the next one.

China's economic growth is sputtering, the Euro is under threat, and the United States is combating serious trade disadvantages. Another Great Depression? Not quite. Noted economist and China expert Michael Pettis argues instead that we are undergoing a critical rebalancing of the world economies. Debunking popular misconceptions, Pettis shows that severe trade imbalances spurred on the recent financial crisis and were the result of unfortunate policies that distorted the savings and consumption patterns of certain nations. Pettis examines the reasons behind these destabilizing policies, and he predicts severe economic dislocations that will have long-lasting effects.

Demonstrating how economic policies can carry negative repercussions the world over, "The Great Rebalancing" sheds urgent light on our globally linked economic future.

Since 2008, Greece has been at the centre of European current affairs due to the financial and economic crisis. However, it should not be forgotten that before the current crisis the political upheavals of the early 1990s and the collapse of Marxist-inspired regimes had already radically transformed the face of the country. These transformations have been seen as a return of the Balkans' question, raising issues of border disputes and migration, minorities and national inclusion. They have had far-reaching consequences on the relations between Greek society and its peripheries, and what some have deemed to be its destabilising diversity. In this context, the material presented in this book examines the strengthening of discourses of belonging which draw legitimacy from a glorification of the past and tradition. The fieldwork carried out over the past 15 years on the fringes of Greece has focused on groups who were stigmatised and distanced from standard definitions of Greekness. It provides an original perspective on the changes that the country has undergone in recent decades. The question of the nation-state's future is raised through close observation on the local scale, leading to a debate about the relationship between areal and reticular territory within the framework of globalisation. This book also aims to provide non-Francophone readers with access to research carried out on these issues in France, shifting the focus of Balkan Anglophone specialists for whom French publications remain a distant province.