Despite our fitful attempts over decades at reform, the global financial system seems caught in cycles of boom and bust, instability, and scandal. In this timely new book, Joel Magnuson builds on the classic works of E. F. Schumacher and other kindred spirits to provide a Buddhist economics perspective on this recurring pattern, and offers new possibilities for real change. The book centers on the belief that greed, aggression, and delusion (Buddhism's "three poisons") are embedded within our financial institutions and that they perpetuate the continued widespread attachment to endless economic growth and financial accumulation that are responsible for social and ecological malaise. Arguing that mainstream economics fails to adequately address this cycle, Magnuson presents a new framework of Buddhist economics, helping readers gain a deeper understanding of current economic problems and offering a course toward genuine wellbeing.

As we tour the 400 year history of capitalism through its various phases of development, financial system instability is always there lurking in the shadows. The historical record attests that the processes of aggregating capital for real investment are inescapably vulnerable to risk, manic speculation, unserviceable debt, and crises; and with each episode of instability, a trail of devastation follows. Economic historians such as Hyman Minsky, Charles Kindleberger and others have studied this history and have exposed certain boom-bust patterns that have a way of stubbornly repeating themselves. This book posits that the large-scale financial crises that the world has experienced over the last 30 years are more or less the latest segments in this narrative, but with some distinct characteristics. In the period spanning the stock market crash of 1987 to the banking crisis of 2008 and its aftermath - the Greenspan Era - there were key institutional and ideological developments rooted in contemporary neoliberalism that have reshaped the historic rise-and-fall patterns to become more severe and widespread. In this important volume, Magnuson suggests the next episode will be a massive financial cyclone that will send us all tumbling toward a perilous future.

From personal finance and consumer spending to ballooning national expenditures on warfare and social welfare, debt is fundamental to the dynamics of global capitalism. The contributors to this volume explore the concept of indebtedness in its various senses and from a wide range of perspectives. They observe that many views of ethics, citizenship, and governance are based on a conception of debts owed by one individual to others; that artistic and literary creativity involves the artist s dialogue with the works of the past; and that the specter of catastrophic climate change has underscored the debt those living in the present owe to future generations."

Joel Magnuson's visionary insights into the decline of the Oil Age and life afterward combine sobering warnings with genuine hope. The facts are hard: global oil deposits will soon peak if they haven't already and the violent race to secure what's left has already begun. Meanwhile, our culture of consumption continues its heedless dependence on this and other scarce and fast-disappearing resources including other fossil fuels, water, topsoil, and basic metals. The consequences won't just be expensive gasoline. The very nature of life as we've come to know it will change and Magnuson explains how compounding factors like global warming, skyrocketing debt, and ill-prepared governments stand to turn this inevitable change into a needless catastrophe. But the hope is real: individuals and communities around the world have already begun taking action to shift away from consumer culture. Drawing on the visionary work of E.F. Schumacher, John Ruskin, and other pioneering thinkers, Magnuson argues that mindful and concerted action can shape the future. With an emphasis on current transitional projects like B Corporations and LETS projects, he shows that the true great transformation is already underway and it's up to us to continue it. With a foreword by Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC).

This book defends and articulates an "Engaged Buddhist" approach to economics as a response to the destructive effects of global capitalism. The author posits that Buddhist understandings of the distortions of greed, aversion, and ignorance can be read to apply not only to mental states but also to socio-political ones, and that such a reading suggests rational responses to current social and environmental challenges. The book proposes that we engage both "inner and outer" modes of transformation through which to free ourselves from our current human-made, dysfunctional systems: the former, by examining the workings of our own minds, the latter by criticizing and reforming our economic systems. Since traditional Buddhism provides few sources to build a Buddhist economic vision, this work brings together Buddhist notions of skillful practice, John Dewey's pragmatic principles for social provisioning, and institutional economics. The author provides two case studies for experiments in Buddhist-based socioeconomic policies, Thailand and Bhutan. Of special interest is the implied parallel between worldviews emerging from modern socially-engaged Buddhism and Dewey's notion of a human existential drive to shape the world in collectively beneficial ways.

From personal finance and consumer spending to ballooning national expenditures on warfare and social welfare, debt is fundamental to the dynamics of global capitalism. The contributors to this volume explore the concept of indebtedness in its various senses and from a wide range of perspectives. They observe that many views of ethics, citizenship, and governance are based on a conception of debts owed by one individual to others; that artistic and literary creativity involves the artist s dialogue with the works of the past; and that the specter of catastrophic climate change has underscored the debt those living in the present owe to future generations."