A powerful argument that transcends left vs. right to address one of the most pressing problems of our eraWe are all swamped in debt. Households, corporations, governments—debt has become so ingrained in our culture, it is an unquestioned fact of life. But it has not always been this way. And there is increasing evidence that this model is damaging both business and society. Debt leaves control and ownership in the hands of too few: it is a direct source of extreme ...

The finance sector of Western economies is too large and attracts too many of the smartest college graduates. Financialization over the past three decades has created a structure that lacks resilience and supports absurd volumes of trading. The finance sector devotes too little attention to the search for new investment opportunities and the stewardship of existing ones, and far too much to secondary-market dealing in existing assets. Regulation has contributed more to the problems than th...

Nearly forty percent of humanity lives on an average of two dollars a day or less. If you've never had to survive on an income so small, it is hard to imagine. How would you put food on the table, afford a home, and educate your children? How would you handle emergencies and old age? Every day, more than a billion people around the world must answer these questions. Portfolios of the Poor is the first book to systematically explain how the poor find solutions to their everyday fin...

Developed from a study commissioned by the European Capital Markets Institute, this book examines the impact of private equity and capital markets on the development of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the United States and the European Union. It also seeks to understand the nature of institutional policy towards SMEs and the extent to which it can aid development.This volume offers a strong introduction, glossary and international case-studies to aid the reader's unders...

The Great Financial Crash had cataclysmic effects on the global economy, and took conventional economists completely by surprise. Many leading commentators declared shortly before the crisis that the magical recipe for eternal stability had been found. Less than a year later, the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression erupted.In this explosive book, Steve Keen, one of the very few economists who anticipated the crash, shows why the self-declared experts were wrong and h...

“Economists and the Powerful: Convenient Theories, Distorted Facts, Ample Rewards” explores the workings of the modern global economy – an economy in which competition has been corrupted and power has a ubiquitous influence upon economic behavior. Based on an array of empirical and theoretical studies by a series of distinguished economists, this book reveals a stark and unpleasant truth: that the true workings of capitalism are very different from the popular myths that mainstream economi...

The corporation is one of the most important and remarkable institutions in the world. It affects all our lives continuously. It feeds, entertains, houses and, employs us. It generates vast amounts of revenue for those who own it and it invests a substantial proportion of the wealth that we possess. But the corporation is also the cause of immense problems and suffering, a source of poverty and pollution, and its failures are increasing. How is the corporation failing us? Why is it happeni...

We live in an age of serial asset bubbles and spectacular busts. Economists, policymakers, central bankers and most people in the financial world have been blindsided by these busts, while investors have lost trillions. Economists argue that bubbles can only be spotted after they burst and that market moves are unpredictable. Yet Marathon Asset Management, a London-based investment firm managing over $50 billion of assets has developed a relatively simple method for identifying and potenti...

Why are house prices in many advanced economies rising faster than incomes? Why isn't land and location taught or seen as important in modern economics? What is the relationship between the financial system and land?In this accessible but provocative guide to the economics of land and housing, the authors reveal how many of the key challenges facing modern economies - including housing crises, financial instability and growing inequalities - are intimately tied to the land economy....

How John Maynard Keynes became one of the greatest stock investors of all time--and how you can replicate his successJOHN MAYNARD KEYNES indelibly made his mark on global economics...Few people know, however, that he was also a daring, steel-nerved investor who built a multimilliondollar fortune in the stock market while providing financial counsel to the likes of Winston Churchill and FDR. Now, you can learn from--and imitate--Keynes's success by examining the story of h...

After the crisis of 2008, the social contract between the financial industry and everyone else was badly broken-perhaps, it seemed, irrevocably. Since then, banks have paid out billion-dollar settlements and Congress has passed some new laws, but a deeper rapprochement is still missing. John Taft has gathered some of the greatest financial minds of our time to explore how Wall Street can harness the same creative energy that invented credit default swaps and channel it towards the public g...

The Basic Income is, for many people, a very appealing idea: Pay every citizen a fixed, non-means-tested amount every week, sufficient to pay for essentials.The potential advantages of such a system are enormous. The basic income could replace a wide range of existing means-tested benefits and result in a massive reduction in bureaucracy, huge cost-savings and greatly improved economic incentives. And it would be a kinder, more civilised way to help people out of poverty.Un...