This work examines the role money and debt play in our economy. It shows why we went from the gold standard to fiat money, why that led to increasing inflation up to 1980, and why inflation has receded since 1980. In addition, it explains how today's economic problems arose, why governments cannot solve those problems, and where those problems will lead us. Challenging conventional wisdom, the author suggests that high real interest rates in the 1980s reduced business' ability to profit by expanding productive capacity and reduced the attractiveness of borrowing for consumption. The resulting drive to buy assets instead, such as stocks and real estate, caused rapidly rising prices in those areas. The author foresees a depression resulting from these economic forces--one which governments will be unable to prevent.

This work is unique for it neither espouses any theory nor uses inductive or deductive reasoning; rather, it observes. Its observations of how economic sectors, central banks, governments, business, and consumers can and do use money and debt are trenchant and alarming.

Early in 2007 Leigh Skene warned of the danger of a meltdown in global markets. Now, while governments spend furiously to rescue the global economy, he again challenges received wisdom. In The Impoverishment of Nations, he prescribes a different solution, outlining a plan to deal with a very different economic future, following the financial crisis that ended the longest period of prosperity for some five hundred years.
We have entered a period of uncertainty, which has placed a huge burden on public finances. Governments have spent $10 trillion on bailing out financial institutions and other firms, including General Motors. We are at a tipping point and the future will be unlike the past - one of the most dangerous economic stages any generation can face.
In his penetrating analysis, Leigh Skene traces how we got here and what has to happen for the global economy to recover the ground it has lost in less than two years. He looks at the shift of economic power to emerging nations, the inevitability of deflation, the unfitness for purpose of the financial markets, how governments' share of output must shrink, how solvency not liquidity caused the current crisis, and how it is wrong to think you can borrow your way to growth.