But much of their work is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst.Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab, is being carried out in dozens of countries. Drawing on this and their 15 years of research from Chile to India, Kenya to Indonesia, they have identified wholly new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and the way that aid or financial investment can affect their lives. Their work defies certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning, that poverty at the level of 99 cents a day is just a more extreme version of the experience any of us have when our income falls uncomfortably low.This important book illuminates how the poor live, and offers all of us an opportunity to think of a world beyond poverty.Learn more at www.pooreconomics.com

    The sources range from Dr. Sowell's letters, books, newspaper columns, and articles in both scholarly journals and popular magazines. The topics range from late-talking children to "tax cuts for the rich," baseball, race, war, the role of judges, medical care, and the rhetoric of politicians. These topics are dealt with by sometimes drawing on history, sometimes drawing on economics, and sometimes drawing on a sense of humor.The Thomas Sowell Reader includes essays on:* Social Issues* Economics* Political Issues* Legal Issues* Race and Ethnicity* Educational Issues* Biographical Sketches* Random Thoughts "My hope is that this large selection of my writings will reduce the likelihood that readers will misunderstand what I have said on many controversial issues over the years. Whether the reader will agree with all my conclusions is another question entirely. But disagreements can be productive, while misunderstandings seldom are." -- Thomas Sowell

    The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.

    The term "Liberty" is so commonly used in our country that it has become a mere cliche. But do we know what it means? What it promises? How it factors into our daily lives? And most importantly, can we recognize tyranny when it is sold to us disguised as a form of liberty? Dr. Paul writes that to believe in liberty is not to believe in any particular social and economic outcome. It is to trust in the spontaneous order that emerges when the state does not intervene in human volition and human cooperation. It permits people to work out their problems for themselves, build lives for themselves, take risks and accept responsibility for the results, and make their own decisions. It is the seed of America. This is a comprehensive guide to Dr. Paul's position on fifty of the most important issues of our times, from Abortion to Zionism. Accessible, easy to digest, and fearless in its discussion of controversial topics, Liberty Defined sheds new light on a word that is losing its shape.

    Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.   This book is about how the money system will have to change—and is already changing—to embody this transition. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics explores avant-garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative-interest currencies, local currencies, resource-based economics, gift economies, and the restoration of the commons. Author Charles Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with "right livelihood" and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen.Sacred Economics official website: http://sacred-economics.com/About the Imprint: EVOLVER EDITIONS promotes a new counterculture that recognizes humanity's visionary potential and takes tangible, pragmatic steps to realize it. EVOLVER EDITIONS explores the dynamics of personal, collective, and global change from a wide range of perspectives. EVOLVER EDITIONS is an imprint of North Atlantic Books and is produced in collaboration with Evolver, LLC.

    All four volumes—Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and the special expanded edition of The Bed of Procrustes, updated with more than 50 percent new material—are now together in one ebook bundle.  ANTIFRAGILE  “Startling . . . richly crammed with insights, stories, fine phrases and intriguing asides.”—The Wall Street Journal   Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. What is crucial is that the antifragile loves errors, as it incurs small harm and large benefits from them. Spanning politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine in an interdisciplinary and erudite style, Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world.  THE BLACK SWAN “The Black Swan changed my view of how the world works.”—Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate   A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random and more predictable. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows that black swan events underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives, and yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them.  FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS “[Fooled by Randomness] is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses were to the Catholic Church.”—Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker   Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? Fooled by Randomness is about luck: more precisely, about how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill—the markets—Fooled by Randomness is an irreverent, eye-opening, and endlessly entertaining exploration of one of the least understood forces in our lives.  THE BED OF PROCRUSTES “Taleb’s crystalline nuggets of thought stand alone like esoteric poems.”—Financial Times   This collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses Taleb’s major ideas in ways you least expect. The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical views of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.

    Rather, they are symptoms of a much deeper malaise which can be traced all the way back to the Great Crash of 1929, then on through to the 1970s: the time when a ‘Global Minotaur’ was born. Just as the Athenians maintained a steady flow of tributes to the Cretan beast, so the ‘rest of the world’ began sending incredible amounts of capital to America and Wall Street. Thus, the Global Minotaur became the ‘engine’ that pulled the world economy from the early 1980s to 2008.Today’s crisis in Europe, the heated debates about austerity versus further fiscal stimuli in the US, the clash between China’s authorities and the Obama administration on exchange rates are the inevitable symptoms of the weakening Minotaur; of a global ‘system’ which is now as unsustainable as it is imbalanced. Going beyond this, Varoufakis lays out the options available to us for reintroducing a modicum of reason into a highly irrational global economic order.An essential account of the socio-economic events and hidden histories that have shaped the world as we now know it.

    Federal Election Commission trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature.With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic-and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left-Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted-but redeemable-representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness. While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In REPUBLIC, LOST, he not only makes this need palpable and clear-he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it.

    Nicholas Shaxson, a former correspondent for the Financial Times and The Economist, argues that tax havens are a central cause of all these disasters.In this hard hitting investigation he uncovers how offshore tax evasion, which has cost the U.S. 100 billion dollars in lost revenue each year, is just one item on a long rap sheet outlining the damage that offshoring wreaks on our societies. In a riveting journey from Moscow to London to Switzerland to Delaware, Shaxson dives deep into a vast and secret playground where bankers and multinational corporations operate side by side with nefarious tax evaders, organized criminals and the world's wealthiest citizens. Tax havens are where all these players get to maximize their own rewards and leave the middle class to pick up the bill.With eye opening revelations, Treasure Islands exposes the culprits and its victims, and shows how:*Over half of world trade is routed through tax havens*The rampant practices that precipitated the latest financial crisis can be traced back to Wall Street's offshoring practices*For every dollar of aid we send to developing countries, ten dollars leave again by the backdoorThe offshore system sits much closer to home than the pristine tropical islands of the popular imagination. In fact, it all starts on a tiny island called Manhattan. In this fast paced narrative, Treasure Islands at last explains how the system works and how it's contributing to our ever deepening economic divide.

    A master storyteller as well as a leading energy expert, Yergin shows us how energy is an engine of global political and economic change. It is a story that spans the energies on which our civilization has been built and the new energies that are competing to replace them. From the jammed streets of Beijing to the shores of the Caspian Sea, from the conflicts in the Mideast to Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley, Yergin takes us into the decisions that are shaping our future.The drama of oil-the struggle for access, the battle for control, the insecurity of supply, the consequences of use, its impact on the global economy, and the geopolitics that dominate it-continues to profoundly affect our world.. Yergin tells the inside stories of the oil market and the surge in oil prices, the race to control the resources of the former Soviet empire, and the massive mergers that transformed the landscape of world oil. He tackles the toughest questions: Will we run out of oil? Are China and the United States destined to come into conflict over oil? How will a turbulent Middle East affect the future of oil supply?Yergin also reveals the surprising and sometimes tumultuous history of nuclear and coal, electricity, and the "shale gale" of natural gas, and how each fits into the larger marketplace. He brings climate change into unique perspective by offering an unprecedented history of how the field of climate study went from the concern of a handful of nineteenth- century scientists preoccupied with a new Ice Age into one of the most significant issues of our times.He leads us through the rebirth of renewable energies and explores the distinctive stories of wind, solar, and biofuels. He offers a perspective on the return of the electric car, which some are betting will be necessary for a growing global economy.The Quest presents an extraordinary range of characters and dramatic stories that illustrate the principles that will shape a robust and flexible energy security system for the decades to come. Energy is humbling in its scope, but our future requires that we deeply understand this global quest that is truly reshaping our world.

    Williams applies an economic analysis to the problems black Americans have faced in the past and still face in the present to show that that free-market resource allocation, as opposed to political allocation, is in the best interests of minorities. Contrasting the features of market resource allocation with those of the political arena, he explains how, in the political arena, minorities cannot realize a particular preference unless they win the will of the majority. In the market, he shows, there is a sort of parity (nonexistent in the political arena) in which one person’s dollar has the same power as the next person’s. Williams debunks many common labor market myths and reveals how the minimum wage law has imposed incalculable harm on the most disadvantaged members of our society. He explains that the real problem is that people are not so much underpaid as underskilled and that the real task is to help unskilled people become skilled. The author also reveals how licensing and regulation reduce economic opportunities for people, especially those who might be described as discriminated against and having little political clout. Using the examples of the taxi cab and trucking industries before and after deregulation, he illustrates how government regulation closes entry and reinforces economic handicaps, whereas deregulation not only has helped minorities enter industries in greater numbers but also has benefited consumers.

    There is no deeper mystery, and we must not allow our mind to be repelled. Only then can we properly address the much more significant question: Of all the possible alternative ways in which we could create new money and allocate purchasing power, is this really the best?

    Woods, Jr. offers the first critical analysis of the 2010 mid-term elections and answer the #1 question on conservatives’ minds: How do we roll back the liberal policies and big government programs that Obama/Pelosi/Reid rushed through Congress before the mid-terms? From getting rid of wasteful and inefficient federal agencies to abolishing the income tax to repealing health care reform and all of Obama’s "green” policies, Woods outlines a bold plan for dramatically overhauling the government and restoring our Founding Fathers vision for America.

    While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of unpaid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have “depoliticized” it, or removed it from the realm of political critique. Employment is now largely privatized, and work-based activism in the United States has atrophied. We have accepted waged work as the primary mechanism for income distribution, as an ethical obligation, and as a means of defining ourselves and others as social and political subjects. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation. Work, she contends, is a legitimate, even crucial, subject for political theory.

    The world is in economic crisis, and there are no easy fixes to our predicament. Unsustainable trends in the economy, energy, and the environment have finally caught up with us and are converging on a very narrow window of time--the Twenty-Teens. The Crash Course presents our predicament and illuminates the path ahead, so you can face the coming disruptions and thrive--without fearing the future or retreating into denial. In this book you will find solid facts and grounded reasoning presented in a calm, positive, non-partisan manner.Our money system places impossible demands upon a finite world. Exponentially rising levels of debt, based on assumptions of future economic growth to fund repayment, will shudder to a halt and then reverse. Unfortunately, our financial system does not operate in reverse. The consequences of massive deleveraging will be severe.Oil is essential for economic growth. The reality of dwindling oil supplies is now internationally recognized, yet virtually no developed nations have a Plan B. The economic risks to individuals, companies, and countries are varied and enormous. Best-case, living standards will drop steadily worldwide. Worst-case, systemic financial crises will toss the world into jarring chaos.This book is written for those who are motivated to learn about the root causes of our predicaments, protect themselves and their families, mitigate risks as much as possible, and control what effects they can. With challenge comes opportunity, and The Crash Course offers a positive vision for how to reshape our lives to be more balanced, resilient, and sustainable.

    The first was Chile's experiment with peaceful socialist change under Salvador Allende; the second was the simultaneous attempt to build a computer system that would manage Chile's economy. Neither vision was fully realized--Allende's government ended with a violent military coup; the system, known as Project Cybersyn, was never completely implemented--but they hold lessons for today about the relationship between technology and politics. Drawing on extensive archival material and interviews, Medina examines the cybernetic system envisioned by the Chilean government--which was to feature holistic system design, decentralized management, human-computer interaction, a national telex network, near real-time control of the growing industrial sector, and modeling the behavior of dynamic systems. She also describes, and documents with photographs, the network's Star Trek-like operations room, which featured swivel chairs with armrest control panels, a wall of screens displaying data, and flashing red lights to indicate economic emergencies. Studying project Cybersyn today helps us understand not only the technological ambitions of a government in the midst of political change but also the limitations of the Chilean revolution. This history further shows how human attempts to combine the political and the technological with the goal of creating a more just society can open new technological, intellectual, and political possibilities. Technologies, Medina writes, are historical texts; when we read them we are reading history.

    This is the story of the corporate vultures that feed on the weak and ruin our planet in the process-a story that spans the globe and decades.For Vultures' Picnic, investigative journalist Greg Palast has spent his career uncovering the connection between the world of energy (read: oil) and finance. He's built a team that reads like a casting call for a Hollywood thriller-a Swiss multilingual investigator, a punk journalist, and a gonzo cameraman-to reveal how environmental disasters like the Gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, and lesser-known tragedies such as Tatitlek and Torrey Canyon are caused by corporate corruption, failed legislation, and, most interestingly, veiled connections between the financial industry and energy titans. Palast shows how the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and Central Banks act as puppets for Big Oil.With Palast at the center of an investigation that takes us from the Arctic to Africa to the Amazon, Vultures' Picnic shows how the big powers in the money and oil game slip the bonds of regulation over and over again, and simply destroy the rules that they themselves can't write-and take advantage of nations and everyday people in the process.

    economy has become dependent on financial activities has been made abundantly clear. In "Capitalizing on Crisis," Greta Krippner traces the longer-term historical evolution that made the rise of finance possible, arguing that this development rested on a broader transformation of the U.S. economy than is suggested by the current preoccupation with financial speculation.Krippner argues that state policies that created conditions conducive to financialization allowed the state to avoid a series of economic, social, and political dilemmas that confronted policymakers as postwar prosperity stalled beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s. In this regard, the financialization of the economy was not a deliberate outcome sought by policymakers, but rather an inadvertent result of the state's attempts to solve other problems. The book focuses on deregulation of financial markets during the 1970s and 1980s, encouragement of foreign capital into the U.S. economy in the context of large fiscal imbalances in the early 1980s, and changes in monetary policy following the shift to high interest rates in 1979.Exhaustively researched, the book brings extensive new empirical evidence to bear on debates regarding recent developments in financial markets and the broader turn to the market that has characterized U.S. society over the last several decades.

    Users hold the crypto keys to their own money and transact directly with each other, with the help of a P2P network to check for double-spending.https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

    A big reason is that so little of the news . . . addresses the private, government-approved mechanisms by which price gouging is employed to redistribute income upward.”You are being systematically exploited by powerful corporations every day. These companies squeeze their trusting customers for every last cent, risk their retirement funds, and endanger their lives. And they do it all legally. How? It’s all in the fine print.David Cay Johnston, the bestselling author of Per­fectly Legal and Free Lunch, is famous for exposing the perfidies of our biggest institutions. Now he turns his attention to the ways huge corporations hide sneaky stipulations in just about every contract, often with government permission.Johnston has been known to whip out a utility bill and explain line by line what all that mumbo jumbo actually means (and it doesn’t mean anything good, unless you happen to be the utility company). Within all that jargon, disclosed in accordance with all legal requirements, lie the tools these companies use to rob you blind. Even worse is what’s missing—all the contractually binding clauses that companies hide elsewhere yet still enforce and abuse. Consider, for example, how:An insurance company repeatedly delayed paying for a paralyzed man’s vital care despite court orders to pay up. Laws in nineteen states let companies like Goldman Sachs, General Electric, and Procter & Gamble pocket the state income taxes withheld from their workers’ paychecks for up to twenty-five years. A little-known government rule gives safety waiv­ers to deadly industrial facilities secretly located underneath schools and playgrounds. The “FCC Charge” on your phone bill, which appears to be a government fee, actually goes straight to the phone company.Johnston shares solutions you can use to fight back against the hundreds of obscure fees and taxes that line the pockets of big corporations, and to help end these devious practices once and for all.

    Why are experts so bad at making predictions? Why do rich people take outsized risks to reach for money they don't need? Is America's manufacturing base really dwindling? What did we learn about risk after 9/11? Those questions and many more are tackled in these 21 irreverent and contrarian essays, which will have readers thinking differently about the conventional wisdom.

    Anxious incredulity replaces intellectual torpor and a puzzled public strains its antennae in every possible direction, desperately seeking explanations for the causes and nature of what just hit it. 2008 was such a moment. Not only did the financial system collapse, and send the real economy into a tailspin, but it also revealed the great gulf separating economics from a very real capitalism. Modern Political Economics has a single aim: To help readers make sense of how 2008 came about and what the post-2008 world has in store. The book is divided into two parts. The first part delves into every major economic theory, from Aristotle to the present, with a determination to discover clues of what went wrong in 2008. The main finding is that all economic theory is inherently flawed. Any system of ideas whose purpose is to describe capitalism in mathematical or engineering terms leads to inevitable logical inconsistency; an inherent error that stands between us and a decent grasp of capitalist reality. The only scientific truth about capitalism is its radical indeterminacy, a condition which makes it impossible to use science's tools (e.g. calculus and statistics) to second-guess it. The second part casts an attentive eye on the post-war era; on the breeding ground of the Crash of 2008. It distinguishes between two major post-war phases: The Global Plan (1947-1971) and the Global Minotaur (1971-2008). This dynamic new book delves into every major economic theory and maps out meticulously the trajectory that global capitalism followed from post-war almost centrally planned stability, to designed disintegration in the 1970s, to an intentional magnification of unsustainable imbalances in the 1980s and, finally, to the most spectacular privatisation of money in the 1990s and beyond. Modern Political Economics is essential reading for Economics students and anyone seeking a better understanding of

    'That would be the death of all existing retirees.'"It's no secret that hundreds of companies have been slashing pensions and health coverage earned by millions of retirees. Employers blame an aging workforce, stock market losses, and spiraling costs- what they call "a perfect storm" of external forces that has forced them to take drastic measures.But this so-called retirement crisis is no accident. Ellen E. Schultz, award-winning investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, reveals how large companies and the retirement industry-benefits consultants, insurance companies, and banks-have all played a huge and hidden role in the death spiral of American pensions and benefits.A little over a decade ago, most companies had more than enough set aside to pay the benefits earned by two generations of workers, no matter how long they lived. But by exploiting loopholes, ambiguous regulations, and new accounting rules, companies essentially turned their pension plans into piggy banks, tax shelters, and profit centers.Drawing on original analysis of company data, government filings, internal corporate documents, and confidential memos, Schultz uncovers decades of widespread deception during which employers have exaggerated their retiree burdens while lobbying for government handouts, secretly cutting pensions, tricking employees, and misleading shareholders.

    But now, we are beset on all sides by propaganda promoting a radically different viewpoint. According to this idea, human beings are a cancer upon the Earth, a horde of vermin whose aspirations and appetites are endangering the natural order. This is the core of antihumanism.Merchants of Despair traces the pedigree of this ideology and exposes its pernicious consequences in startling and horrifying detail. The book names the chief prophets and promoters of antihumanism over the last two centuries, from Thomas Malthus through Paul Ehrlich and Al Gore. It exposes the worst crimes perpetrated by the antihumanist movement, including eugenics campaigns in the United States and genocidal anti-development and population-control programs around the world.Combining riveting tales from history with powerful policy arguments, Merchants of Despair provides scientific refutations to all of antihumanism’s major pseudo-scientific claims, including its modern tirades against nuclear power, pesticides, population growth, biotech foods, resource depletion, and industrial development.

    Meanwhile, the public sector is systematically wrecking the physical world in sneaky and petty ways that really do matter. Jeffrey Tucker, in this follow-up to his Bourbon for Breakfast, draws detailed attention to both. He points out that the products of digital capitalism are amazing, astounding, beyond belief-more outrageously advanced than anything the makers of the Jetsons could even imagine. With this tiny box in hand, we can do a real-time video chat with anyone on the planet and pay nothing more than my usual service fee. This means that anyone on the planet can do business with and be friends with any other person on the globe. The borders, the limits, the barriers-they are all being blasted away. The pace of change is mind-boggling. The world is being reinvented in our lifetimes, every day. Email has only been mainstream for 15 years or so, and young people now regard it as a dated form of communication used only for the most formal correspondence. Today young people are brief instant messaging through social media, but that's only for now, and who knows what next year will bring. Oddly, hardly anyone seems to care, and even fewer care about the institutional force that makes all this possible, which is the market economy. Instead, we just adjust to the new reality. We even hear of the grave problem of "miracle fatigue"-too much great stuff, too often. Truly, this new world seems to have arrived without much fanfare at all. And why? It has something to do with the nature of the human mind, Tucker argues, which does not and This book will inspire love for free markets - and loathing of government.

    The result was a long series of fantastic scholarly articles taking on every error of the day, and our day too. Together they form a volume 2 of his great work. This is Economic Controversies. He covers the same range of topics in Man, Economy, and State. Most all have been published, but they are strewn out among journals that are hard to access or books that are out of print. Some have never been published. Rothbard gives his all in these critiques of the opponents of Austrian theory and policy, slicing through fallacies with breathtaking virtuosity. It's a model of intellectual combat, page after page of razor-sharp thinking and crystal-clear prose. To have this all in one place, beautifully organized, creates a treasure in the history of economic ideas. Gene Epstein of Barron's writes the outstanding introduction. The price is thrillingly affordable for this gigantic hardback. Introduction by Gene Epstein ..

    Building on the foundations of E. F. Schumacher's revolutionary "economics as if people mattered," this book examines the true cost of confusing money with wealth. By analyzing the mistakes of contemporary economics, it shows how an economy centered on natural capital—the raw materials that support human life—can move our society toward a more productive relationship with the planet that sustains us all.The Wealth of Nature suggests public policy initiatives and personal choices that can help alleviate the economic impact of Peak Oil. These strategies must address not only financial concerns, but the issues of resource depletion and pollution as well. Examples include:Adjusting tax policy to penalize the use of natural nonrenewable resources over recycled materialsPlacing public welfare above corporate interestsEmpowering individuals, families, and communities by prioritizing local, sustainable solutionsBuilding economies at an appropriate scaleProfoundly insightful and impeccably argued, this book is required reading for anyone interested in the intersection of the environment and the economy as we enter the twilight of the Age of Abundance.John Michael Greer is a scholar of ecological history, an award-winning author, and an internationally renowned peak oil theorist whose blog The Archdruid Report has become one of the most widely cited online resources dealing with the future of industrial society.

    So hold your nose, kiss the babies, and just think how good you would look on a stamp.Now, before we go into your media responsibilities, you must understand the true history of political power, so you don't accidentally act on the naive idealism you are required to project to the general public.The reality of political power is very simple: bad farmers own crops and livestock -- good farmers own human beings...

    In his latest book, Econometrics by Example, Gujarati presents a unique learning-by-doing approach to the study of econometrics. Rather than relying on complex theoretical discussions and complicated mathematics, this book explains econometrics from a practical point of view, with each chapter anchored in one or two extended real-life examples. The basic theory underlying each topic is covered and an appendix is included on the basic statistical concepts that underlie the material, making Econometrics by Example an ideally flexible and self-contained learning resource for students studying econometrics for the first time. The book includes:- a wide-ranging collection of examples, with data on mortgages, exchange rates, charitable giving, fashion sales and more- a clear, step-by-step writing style that guides you from model formulation, to estimation and hypothesis-testing, through to post-estimation diagnostics- coverage of modern topics such as instrumental variables and panel data- extensive use of Stata and EViews statistical packages with reproductions of the outputs from these packages - an appendix discussing the basic concepts of statistics - end-of-chapter summaries, conclusions and exercises to reinforce your learning- companion website containing PowerPoint slides and a full solutions manual to all exercises for instructors, and downloadable data sets and chapter summaries for students.

    Many economists, Marxists among them, have dismissed this theory out of hand, but Andrew Kliman’s careful data analysis shows that the rate of profit did indeed decline after the post-World War II boom and that free-market policies failed to reverse the decline. The fall in profitability led to sluggish investment and economic growth, mounting debt problems, desperate attempts of governments to fight these problems by piling up even more debt – and ultimately to the Great Recession.Kliman's conclusion is simple but shocking: short of socialist transformation, the only way to escape the ‘new normal’ of a stagnant, crisis-prone economy is to restore profitability through full-scale destruction of existing wealth, something not seen since the Depression of the 1930s.

    The common thread for oligarchs across history is that wealth defines them, empowers them, and inherently exposes them to threats. The existential motive of all oligarchs is wealth defense. How they respond varies with the threats they confront, including how directly involved they are in supplying the coercion underlying all property claims, and whether they act separately or collectively. These variations yield four types of oligarchy: warring, ruling, sultanistic, and civil. Oligarchy is not displaced by democracy but rather is fused with it. Moreover, the rule of law problem in many societies is a matter of taming oligarchs. Cases studied in this book include the United States, ancient Athens and Rome, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, medieval Venice and Siena, mafia commissions in the United States and Italy, feuding Appalachian families, and early chiefs cum oligarchs dating from 2300 BCE.

    Attributing achievements to a combination of long hours of practice, strong community support, and just being born at the right time, Gladwell analyzes the small factors which lead to success. If you want to learn everything you want to know about Outliers without reading more than 300 pages, our Quicklet book and eBook is for you - fast, fun, and the best material up front!CHAPTER OUTLINEQuicklet On OutliersIntroductionList Of Important PeopleKey Terms & DefinitionsIntroduction Summary: The Roseto Mystery...and much more

    

    They are all 'debtors,' guilty and responsible in the eyes of capital, which has become the Great, the Universal, Creditor."—from The Making of the Indebted ManDebt—both public debt and private debt—has become a major concern of economic and political leaders. In The Making of the Indebted Man, Maurizio Lazzarato shows that, far from being a threat to the capitalist economy, debt lies at the very core of the neoliberal project. Through a reading of Karl Marx's lesser-known youthful writings on John Mill, and a rereading of writings by Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault, Lazzarato demonstrates that debt is above all a political construction, and that the creditor/debtor relation is the fundamental social relation of Western societies.Debt cannot be reduced to a simple economic mechanism, for it is also a technique of “public safety” through which individual and collective subjectivities are governed and controlled. Its aim is to minimize the uncertainty of the time and behavior of the governed. We are forever sinking further into debt to the State, to private insurance, and, on a more general level, to corporations. To insure that we honor our debts, we are at once encouraged and compelled to become the “entrepreneurs” of our lives, of our “human capital.” In this way, our entire material, psychological, and affective horizon is upended and reconfigured.How do we extricate ourselves from this impossible situation? How do we escape the neoliberal condition of the indebted man? Lazzarato argues that we will have to recognize that there is no simple technical, economic, or financial solution. We must instead radically challenge the fundamental social relation structuring capitalism: the system of debt.

    The text offers a strong finance foundation focusing on Internet resources and sample number problems, cases, and calculator solutions using a Microsoft Excel appendix. The text introduces the time value of money using three approaches to reinforce the concept--interest tables, financial calculator keystrokes, and investment analysis calculator software created specifically for the Mayo books.

    He traces the common roots of British and American liberty, and describes how both countries are losing their inheritance as government crowds out the private sphere. He calls for a renewed commitment to the Anglosphere: the alliance of free, English-speaking nations which has preserved freedom in our time.

    It has established itself as a must read for aspirants appearing for various competitive examinations and also the Central and state services examinations. It is extrem. Table of Contents 1 Introduction 2. Basic Concepts & Principles 3. Theories of Adminstration 4. Administrative Behaviour 5. Accountability & Control 6. Administrative Systems 7. Personnel Administration 8. Financial Administration 9. Union Government & Administration in

    This will be as different from the information economy as that was from the industrial economy before it. Last century we popularized knowledge work, transforming from an industrial economy dependent on child labor to an information economy dependent on adult education. This century we will popularize entrepreneurship, changing what it means to be an employee. Since medieval times, the West has been defined by agricultural, industrial, and information economies. These three economies have transformed religion, politics, and finance. An emerging entrepreneurial economy promises to transform business. Perhaps the most interesting prediction is that social invention will be as common for the next generation as technological invention became in the last century. The Fourth Economy: Inventing Western Civilization is a wildly optimistic book that will change how you think about the past and your future.

    The bill was for several hundred thousand dollars--and Medicare paid it. These circumstances left Goldhill angry and determined to understand how it was possible that world-class technology and well-trained personnel could result in such simple, inexcusable carelessness--and how a business that failed so miserably could be rewarded with full payment. Catastrophic Care is the eye-opening result. Goldhill explicates a health-care system that now costs nearly $2.5 trillion annually, bars many from treatment, provides inconsistent quality of care, offers negligible customer service, and in which an estimated 200,000 Americans die each year from errors. Above all, he exposes the fundamental fallacy of our entire system--that Medicare and insurance coverage make care cheaper and improve our health--and suggests a comprehensive new approach that could produce better results at more acceptable costs immediately by giving us, the patients, a real role in the process.

    Shows how our economic system perpetuates injustice & inequality and Proposes a new system based on the values of human dignity, compassion and sustainability.

    Along with his friends Bill, Sheila, and Amy, Striker must use his wits to solve the many intriguing puzzles - and even crimes - that come his way. Unlike most boys, however, he draws upon his knowledge of basic economics to solve each mystery.This funny, classic kids detective novel will teach your children economic concepts like incentives, risk, supply and demand, and trade-offs. But we promise - there's no jargon, only fun!Named "Recommended Reading" by the Mamie Eisenhower Library Project, the Midwest Book Review calls Striker Jones a "fun and rollicking series" with "effortless teaching of both cooperation values and basic economics."Teachers and homeschooling parents, check out the Teacher's Companion, and read reviews by real educators at elementaryecon.com/teacher-editions.html.

    Umair Haque argues that just as positive psychology revolutionized our understanding of mental health by recasting the field as more than just treating mental illness, we need to rethink our economic paradigm. Why? Because business as we know it has reached a state of diminishing returns—though we work harder and harder, we never seem to get anywhere. This has led to a diminishing of the common wealth: wage stagnation, widening economic inequality, the depletion of the natural world, and more. To get out of this trap, we need to rethink the future of human exchange. In short, we need to get out of business and into betterness.HBR Singles provide brief yet potent business ideas, in digital form, for today's thinking professional.

    But beyond this very legitimate exercise, there are deeper questions that need to be answered. These questions relate to why the Irish made the decisions they did, not just in the last 10 years, but over the last 80. How did certain industries become prominent at the expense of others, banking as opposed to fisheries, international markets as opposed to indigenous industry and job creation? Are the problems structural in nature, and most importantly, what do the Irish need to know to make sure that this crisis does not happen again? These are the questions set by this book. It will look at the development of the Irish economy over the past eight decades, and will argue that the 2008 financial crisis, up to and including the IMF bailout of 2010 and the subsequent change of government, cannot be explained simply by the moral failings of those in banking or property development alone. The problems are deeper, more intricate, and more dangerous if people remain unaware of them, but also potentially avoidable in the future if the cycle is broken.

    We can end the threats to our environment, and aid dramatically in its restoration. We can help provide meaningful work for all, with opportunities that enhance and replenish the world around us. We can effectively address fundamental urban and rural concerns and the many diverse and often divergent needs of developing and developed nations alike. We can create a better world where life and all living systems flourish. This is not an idealistic dream, but is rather a pragmatic attainment, achievable within our very own lifetime. So write Bernard Lietaer and Stephen Belgin, authors of the much anticipated book New Money for a New World. Mr. Lietaer is a principal architect of the euro and author of the acclaimed international best seller The Future of Money, which has been translated into sixteen languages. Mr. Belgin is the founder and president of Qiterra Press and author of the upcoming City of Light Chronicles. New Money for a New World examines a previously unexamined culprit for the many issues we face today-the monopoly of our centuries old monetary system. This book also provides many ways and means that are now readily available to stop the current juggernaut towards global self destruction. Many of the solutions offered within this book are more than theory. Communities from around the world have successfully addressed a myriad of issues without the need to raise taxes, redistribute wealth, or depend upon enlightened self interest from corporate entities. Rather the improvements were realized simply and effectively by rethinking money. With such a shift everything is possible.

    Bettina Bien Greaves was there taking shorthand. Mises on Money and Inflation is the result of her effort to transcribe those notes.Ms. Greaves explains:"Upon the establishment of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in 1946, Ludwig von Mises became a part-time adviser. Whenever FEE held a seminar in Irvington, if he was in town he would drive out from New York City … to speak to the participants. His topic was quite often inflation. I attended all those lectures, took them down in shorthand and later transcribed them. The thought occurred to me that eight to ten of his lectures on inflation, delivered in the 1960s, might be integrated, with the duplications deleted, and turned into a single piece."Hence this paper."Mises did not like to have his oral remarks quoted or published because, obviously, they did not represent the care and precision he devoted to his writings. However, it does not seem to me that these lectures, as I have edited them, misrepresent his ideas in any way. Moreover, they reveal his unpretentious manner and the informal simple style he used when talking to students. He often rephrased an idea in several different ways, repeating it for emphasis. He was frequently accused of being 'simplistic,' of making economic subjects appear too clear and simple, but it was this very approach that made it possible for persons, even those without any background in economics, to understand and appreciate what he was saying."To have this work is like having Mises as your private tutor, telling you about money and inflation in a casual setting and in plain language. He is the prophet of the 20th century on these topics, and here he presents his entire apparatus.True, this book is not technically by Mises, or officially sanctioned by him. But they are his lectures, providing a glimpse into the workings of an incredible mind on a topic that is crucial to our future.To search for Mises Institute titles, enter a keyword and LvMI (short for Ludwig von Mises Institute); e.g., Depression LvMI

    With stunning clarity, Charles Ferguson delivers an uncompromising accounting of how a new economic oligarchy has wrested control of our politics and the prospects for real recovery.

    Moffett have written a nontechnical book to help readers with technical backgrounds better understand the business of oil and gas. They describe and analyze the global oil and gas industry, focusing on its strategic, financial, and business aspects and addressing a wide range of topics organized around the oil and gas industry value chain, starting with exploration and ending with products sold to consumers.The Global Oil & Gas Industry is a single source for anyone interested in how the business of the world�s largest industry actually works: business executives, students, government officials and regulators, professionals working in the industry, and the general public.

    Unexpected atrocity coexists alongside the quiet subtleties of mercy, and people and nations currently encounter a world in which not even the certainties of existence remain even as grace can sometimes arise under the most difficult circumstances. Ultimately, Forgiveness and Power in the Age of Atrocity is a book about the alienation and intimacy at war within us all. Ferch speaks to categorical human transgressions in the hope that readers will be compelled to examine their own prejudices and engage the moral responsibility to evoke in their own personal life, work life, and larger national communities a more humane and life-giving coexistence. In addition to a primary focus on servant leadership, the book addresses three interwoven aspects of social responsibility: 1) the nature of personal responsibility 2) the nature of privilege and the conscious and unconscious violence against humanity often harbored in a blindly privileged stance, and 3) the encounter with forgiveness and forgiveness-asking grounded in a personal and collective obligation to the well-being of humanity. Modernist and postmodernist notions of the will to meaning are considered against the philosophical notion of the will to power. The book examines the everyday existence of human values in a time when we inhabit a world filled as much with unwarranted cruelty as with the disarming nature of authentic and life-affirming love. The book asks the question: Can ultimate forgiveness change the heart of violence? In Forgiveness and Power, people are challenged not only by the work of profound thought leaders such as Mandela, Tutu, but also Simone Weil, Vaclav Havel, Emerson, Mary Oliver, Martin Luther King, Paulo Freire, bell hooks, and Robert Greenleaf. The hope of the book is that people of all ages and creeds come to a deeper understanding and of personal and collective responsibility for leadership that helps heal the heart of the world.

    It is a journey encompassing a Dutch-owned model farm in Ethiopia; a conference in Riyadh, where representatives of Third World governments compete to attract Saudi investors; meetings in Rome where the fate of nations is decided; and the headquarters of the Movement of Landless Workers in São Paulo.Since the food crisis of 2007–8, when the cost of staples such as rice and corn went through the roof, the race to acquire land in the southern hemisphere has become more intense than ever. Land Grabbing is the shocking story of how one half of the world is starved to feed the other.

    Specialists in banking, however, tell a story with less emotional resonance but a better correspondence to the evidence: the crisis was sparked by the international regulatory accords on bank capital levels, the Basel Accords.In one of the first studies critically to examine the Basel Accords, Engineering the Financial Crisis reveals the crucial role that bank capital requirements and other government regulations played in the recent financial crisis. Jeffrey Friedman and Wladimir Kraus argue that by encouraging banks to invest in highly rated mortgage-backed bonds, the Basel Accords created an overconcentration of risk in the banking industry. In addition, accounting regulations required banks to reduce lending if the temporary market value of these bonds declined, as they did in 2007 and 2008 during the panic over subprime mortgage defaults.The book begins by assessing leading theories about the crisis--deregulation, bank compensation practices, excessive leverage, too big to fail, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--and, through careful evidentiary scrutiny, debunks much of the conventional wisdom about what went wrong. It then discusses the Basel Accords and how they contributed to systemic risk. Finally, it presents an analysis of social-science expertise and the fallibility of economists and regulators. Engagingly written, theoretically inventive, yet empirically grounded, Engineering the Financial Crisis is a timely examination of the unintended--and sometimes disastrous--effects of regulation on complex economies.

    While teachers, guidance counselors and even parents are afraid to tell you the truth in an effort to spare your feelings, "Worthless" delivers a blunt and real-world assessment about the economic realities and consequences of choosing various degrees with a necessary and tough fatherly love. Don't lie to yourself. And certainly don't waste four years of your youth and thousands of dollars in tuition on a worthless degree. Buy this book and understand why it is important you choose the right major. The book itself could be the wisest investment you ever make.

    Either they collapsed in chaos, or society returned to commodity money before that could happen. Drawing upon novel new research, "Paper Money Collapse" conclusively illustrates why paper money systems--those based on an elastic and constantly expanding supply of money as opposed to a system of commodity money of essentially fixed supply--are inherently unstable and why they must lead to economic disintegration.These highly controversial conclusions clash with the present consensus, which holds that elastic state money is superior to inflexible commodity money (such as a gold standard), and that expanding money is harmless or even beneficial for as long as inflation stays low. Contradicting this, "Paper Money Collapse" shows that: The present crisis is the unavoidable result of continuously expanding fiat moneyThe current policy of accelerated money production to "stimulate" the economy is counterproductive and could lead to a complete collapse of the monetary systemWhy many in financial markets, in media, and in the policy establishment are unable (and often unwilling) to fully appreciate the underlying problems with elastic moneyThis compelling new book looks at the breakdown of modern economic theory and the fallacy of mathematical models. It is an analysis of the current financial crisis and shows in very stark terms that the solutions presented by paper money-enthusiasts around the world are misguided and inherently flawed.

    Its vast reach and lingering effects have made it difficult to pinpoint its exact cause, and while some economists point to the risks inherent in the modern financial system, others blame long-term imbalances in the world economy. Into this debate steps Paul Mattick, who, in Business as Usual, explains the global economic downturn in relation to the development of the world economy since World War II, but also as a fundamental example of the cycle of crisis and recovery that has characterized capitalism since the early nineteenth century.Mattick explains that today’s recession is not the result of a singular financial event but instead is a manifestation of long-term processes within the world economy. Mattick argues that the economic downturn can best be understood within the context of business cycles, which are unavoidable in a free-market economy. He uses this explanation as a springboard for exploring the nature of our capitalist society and its prospects for the future.Although Business as Usual engages with many economic theories, both mainstream and left-wing, Mattick’s accessible writing opens the subject up in order for non-specialists to understand the current economic climate not as the effect of a financial crisis, but as a manifestation of a truth about the social and economic system in which we live. As a result the book is ideal for anyone who wants to gain a succinct and jargon-free understanding of recent economic events, and, just as important, the overall dynamics of the capitalist system itself.

    Over the next three months, amid tense scenes of corporate and political finger-pointing, millions of barrels of crude oil dispersed across the Gulf of Mexico in what became one of the worst oil spills in history.But there is more to BP's story than this. Tom Bergin, an oil broker turned Reuters reporter, watched the 'two-pipeline company' of the early 1980s grow into a dynamic oil giant and PR machine by the turn of the twenty-first century. His unique access to key figures before, during and after the spill - including former CEO Tony Hayward - has enabled him to piece together this compelling account of a corporation in crisis, and to examine how crucial decisions made during BP's remarkable turnaround paved the way for its darkest hour.

    And it's much easier than you probably think. In fact, creating a candlestick chart demands no more information than traditional charting requires. With candle pattern analysis, the payoff is a deeper look into the minds of investors and a clearer view of supply and demand dynamics.In this companion volume to his bestselling "Candlestick Charting Explained," Gregory L. Morris delivers hands-on knowledge you need to make candlestick charting and analysis a key element of your portfolio-building strategy. With this book you will be able to: Identify candle patterns and quickly see what traders and investors are thinking Use reversal patterns to enter or reverse your positions Identify continuation patterns to establish additional positions Utilize charting software to recognize patterns automaticallyPacked with study questions, data tables, diagnostic tools, terminology, sample charts, and market analyses, "Candlestick Charting Explained Workbook" helps you speed up the learning process and ramp up the profits.

    To make the book accessible to a broad range of readers, the analysis is diagrammatic rather than mathematical. Although nontechnical, the book relies on rigorous economic reasoning. In contrast to the cursory theoretical development often found in other textbooks, Lectures on Urban Economics offers thorough and exhaustive treatments of models relevant to each topic, with the goal of revealing the logic of economic reasoning while also teaching urban economics.Topics covered include reasons for the existence of cities, urban spatial structure, urban sprawl and land-use controls, freeway congestion, housing demand and tenure choice, housing policies, local public goods and services, pollution, crime, and quality of life. Footnotes throughout the book point to relevant exercises, which appear at the back of the book. These 22 extended exercises (containing 125 individual parts) develop numerical examples based on the models analyzed in the chapters. Lectures on Urban Economics is suitable for undergraduate use, as background reading for graduate students, or as a professional reference for economists and scholars interested in the urban economics perspective.

    It also explores their uses in everyday language and action, how they are understood in psychology, and how they figure in philosophical reflection on action and morality. The book clarifies and for the most part defends the way in which economists invoke preferences to explain, predict, and assess behavior and outcomes. Hausman argues, however, that the predictions and explanations economists offer rely on theories of preference formation that are in need of further development, and he criticizes attempts to define welfare in terms of preferences and to define preferences in terms of choices or self-interest. The analysis clarifies the relations between rational choice theory and philosophical accounts of human action. The book also assembles the materials out of which models of preference formation and modification can be constructed, and it comments on how reason and emotion shape preferences.

    government, under the banner of peace, freedom, and democracy, sponsored wars that blocked local efforts for change. Two decades later, the poor of Central America continue to experience the effects of these wars and to struggle for basic subsistence with little hope that their children will have schools, health care, or even adequate nutrition. Many U.S. citizens still do not recognize the role the U.S. government played in stopping these movements towards democracy.From early 1985 through mid 1990, Paul Dix used his camera to document the effects of the U.S.-funded Contra War on the poor of Nicaragua. In 2002, from the thousands he had photographed, Paul selected approximately 100 Nicaraguans for follow-up. He and Pam Fitzpatrick had amazing luck when they returned to Nicaragua on four separate trips for a total of seventeen months, and located nearly all of these individuals. They were able to share the earlier photos with family members, take new photographs and record testimonies.Paul and Pam shared this material in colleges across the U.S. for two academic years and have put their material into book form. Their bilingual book includes photos and testimonies from approximately thirty of the nearly one hundred Nicaraguans they re-contacted.

    The highly acclaimed manual for changing everyday habits now in an all-newthird edition!"

    The text provides an intuitive but rigorous treatment of two state-of-the-art methods used in contemporary microeconomic research. The numerous end-of-chapter exercises are an important component of the book, encouraging the student to use and extend the analytic methods presented in the book. This manual contains advice for answering selected problems, new examples, and supplementary materials designed by the author, which work together to enhance the benefits of the text. Users of the textbook will find the manual a necessary adjunct to the book.

    In this perpetual motion of interactions between firms that produce and households that consume, little or no accounting is given of the flow of energy and materials from the environment and back again. In the standard economic model, energy and matter are completely recycled in these transactions, and economic activity is seemingly exempt from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As we enter the second half of the age of oil, and as energy supplies and the environmental impacts of energy production and consumption become major issues on the world stage, this exemption appears illusory at best.In "Energy and the Wealth of Nations," concepts such as energy return on investment (EROI) provide powerful insights into the real balance sheets that drive our petroleum economy. Hall and Klitgaard explore the relation between energy and the wealth explosion of the 20th century, the failure of markets to recognize or efficiently allocate diminishing resources, the economic consequences of peak oil, the EROI for finding and exploiting new oil fields, and whether alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar power meet the minimum EROI requirements needed to run our society as we know it. This book is an essential read for all scientists and economists who have recognized the urgent need for a more scientific, unified approach to economics in an energy-constrained world, and serves as an ideal teaching text for the growing number of courses, such as the authors own, on the role of energy in society.

    dollars per person per day. Studies have shown repeatedly that the main and often the sole asset of the poor is their labor. It follows that to understand global poverty one must understand labormarkets and labor earnings in the developing world. Excellent books exist on ending world poverty that discuss in depth many important aspects of economic development but do not focus on employment and self-employment, work and non-work. Working Hard, Working Poor fills in where the other booksleave off.Issues of analyzing poverty and low earnings in the developing world are quite different from those in the developed world. The discourse in the developed world is about incentive effects of social welfare programs, cultures of poverty, single-parenthood, homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, illhealth, mental illness, domestic violence, and the like. But in the developing world, different issues predominate, such as own-account work and household enterprises, agricultural work, casual employment, and informal work. And some of the policy issues--stimulating economic growth, harnessing theenergies of the private sector, increasing paid employment, and raising the returns to self-employment--take a different twist. This book shows how people in poverty work, what has been effective in helping the poor earn their way out of poverty, and how readers might help.

    It is an outline of an analysis of capitalism: what it is, how it works, how we might dis-mantle it. And the book and the analysis are outgrowths of something more a movement of people determined to fight it. So this book isn't just an attempt to describe reality but also a tool with which to change it. If any of the words or illustrations resonate with you, don't leave them trapped on these pages write them on the wall, shout them over the intercom at your former workplace, change them as you see fit and release them into the world.This project is the combined effort of a group of people who have already spent many years in pitched struggle against capitalism. What qualifies us to write this? Some of us used to be students or pizza deliverers or dishwashers; others still are construction workers or graphic designers or civic-minded criminals. But all of us have lived under capitalism since we were born, and that makes us experts on it. The same goes for you. No one has to have a degree in economics to understand what's happening: it s enough to get a paycheck or a pink slip and pay attention. We re suspicious of the experts who get their credentials from on high, who have incentives to minimize things that are obvious to everyone else.Like every attempt to construct a scale model of the world, this one is bound to be partial in both senses of the word. To present the whole story, it would have to be as vast as history. There s no way to be unbiased, either: our positions and values inevitably influence what we include and what we leave out. What we offer here is simply one perspective from our side of the counter and our side of the barricades. If it lines up with yours, let's do something about it.

    The fundamental maxim of this summary is that by making a few alterations to what we believe, each one of us has the power to take fate into our hands and to get exactly what we want in any area of our lives. The summary devotes one page to the subject of identity – how we see ourselves and how others see us. Our personal identity has a huge influence on our future actions, and this too is something that Robbins believes we have the power to choose and selfcorrect. The final section of the summary is entitled "A lesson in destiny". It invites us to take full advantage of our time on earth, living each day as if it were the last. It may sound cliché, but it's true. Replete with inspiring quotes by famous thinkers – from Marcus Aurelius to Benjamin Disraeli – this is an inspiring read which will empower you with the right attitude and actions to master your destiny.

    Despite the obviousness of their failures, however, economists continue to rely on the same methods and to proceed from the same underlying assumptions. Andr� Orl�an challenges the neoclassical paradigm in this book, with a new way of thinking about perhaps its most fundamental concept, economic value.Orl�an argues that value is not bound up with labor, or utility, or any other property that preexists market exchange. Economic value, he contends, is a social force whose vast sphere of influence, amounting to a kind of empire, extends to every aspect of economic life. Markets are based on the identification of value with money, and exchange value can only be regarded as a social institution. Financial markets, for example, instead of defining an extrinsic, objective value for securities, act as a mechanism for arriving at a reference price that will be accepted by all investors. What economists must therefore study, Orl�an urges, is the hold that value has over individuals and how it shapes their perceptions and behavior.Awarded the prestigious Prix Paul Ricoeur on its original publication in France in 2011, The Empire of Value has been substantially revised and enlarged for this edition, with an entirely new section discussing the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

    . . . This book makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing examination of our current debt crisis, one that deserves our full attention.--Publishers WeeklyThere is a growing consensus that the planet is heading toward environmental catastrophe: climate change, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, global freshwater use, loss of biodiversity, and chemical pollution all threaten our future unless we act. What is less clear is how humanity should respond. The contemporary environmental movement is the site of many competing plans and prescriptions, and composed of a diverse set of actors, from militant activists to corporate chief executives.This short, readable book is a sharply argued manifesto for those environmentalists who reject schemes of "green capitalism" or piecemeal reform. Environmental and economic scholars Magdoff and Foster contend that the struggle to reverse ecological degradation requires a firm grasp of economic reality. Going further, they argue that efforts to reform capitalism along environmental lines or rely solely on new technology to avert catastrophe misses the point. The main cause of the looming environmental disaster is the driving logic of the system itself, and those in power--no matter how "green"--are incapable of making the changes that are necessary.What Every Environmentalist Needs To Know about Capitalism tackles the two largest issues of our time, the ecological crisis and the faltering capitalist economy, in a way that is thorough, accessible, and sure to provoke debate in the environmental movement.

    The Company introduced easily transferable shares, and within days buyers had begun to trade them. Soon the public was engaging in a variety of complex transactions, including forwards, futures, options, and bear raids, and by 1680 the techniques deployed in the Amsterdam market were as sophisticated as any we practice today.Lodewijk Petram's eye-opening history demystifies financial instruments by linking today's products to yesterday's innovations, tying the market's operation to the behavior of individuals and the workings of the world around them. Traveling back to seventeenth-century Amsterdam, Petram visits the harbor and other places where merchants met to strike deals. He bears witness to the goings-on at a notary's office and sits in on the consequential proceedings of a courtroom. He describes in detail the main players, investors, shady characters, speculators, and domestic servants and other ordinary folk, who all played a role in the development of the market and its crises. His history clarifies concerns that investors still struggle with today, such as fraud, the value of information, trust and the place of honor, managing diverging expectations, and balancing risk, and does so in a way that is vivid, relatable, and critical to understanding our contemporary financial predicament.

    But while the threat or use of military force may sometimes be necessary, it cannot keep us as safe as we would be by building relationships that replace hostility with a sense of mutual purpose and mutual gain. Economic relationships, says Lloyd J. Dumas, can offer a far more effective, and far less costly, means of maintaining security. After defining the right kind of economic relationship—one that is balanced and nonexploitative, emphasizes development, and minimizes environmental damage—Dumas then addresses some practical concerns in establishing and maintaining these relationships. He also considers the practical problems of the transition from military-based security arrangements to "economic peacekeeping," and the effects of demilitarized security on economic development and prosperity.

    It has created a cowardly state: a state that sees responsibility and then runs away from it. Worse, the weak politicians who run our cowardly state want power solely to ensure that as much tax revenue as possible is used to benefit the private sector that they idolise. But neoliberal theory is wrong - it has created the crises we're suffering. And it has no solution to them. The Courageous State argues powerfully for a new economic model. That model is based on a very different idea of what the role of the state is. The Courageous State is driven by its desire to work on behalf of the people of this country. And that means a Courageous State is populated by politicians who believe in government and in the power of the office they hold. They believe that office exists for the sake of the public good. They know what that public good is. They think it is their job to help each and every person in their country to achieve their potential, sustainably, in a strong mixed economy. And they believe they can command the resources to fulfil this task - whether through tax or other means. A Courageous State offers hope; our existing, cowardly, state does not. Which is why building a Courageous State is essential if we want to both solve our current problems and build a sustainable future. The question is, are you willing to be that Courageous? "Since the 2008 crash conventional economists have run out of ideas. But Richard Murphy abounds with them. He writes with electric clarity about what went wrong and what could be done to put things right. He is a new economic thinker, no mere theoretician but guided by a sharp and practical accountant's eye. He knows where the money is hidden, who has it and how to release it. Murphy is the closest thing to a one-man think tank and he is as courageous as he says our politicians should be." Polly Toynbee, The Guardian newspaper columnist and economics commentator "Rich individuals, corporations, well-funded special interest groups and much of Fleet Street is on one (the wrong) side and then there is Richard Murphy.. . the heroic figure. Tireless and forensic, driven by an admirable moral fervour, I take my hat off to a campaigner with Duracell batteries." Kevin Maguire, Sunday Mirror

    Offering inspiration and vision in the wake of financial Armageddon, it is the story of ordinary people who share the ownership of the businesses where they work. * The enterprises come in all sizes: from companies employing just a few dozen people, to large corporations: John Lewis in the UK, employing 70,000 'partners'; Mondragon, a highly entrepreneurial group of over 100 businesses in Spain, employing more than 100,000; and many examples in the US, some employing tens of thousands. It would be hard to imagine a better informed, more involved or more enthusiastic set of employees - sharing the efforts of making their companies successful, and sharing all of the rewards. Unusually in the corporate world, they control their own destinies - a situation beyond the dreams of most working people. * Erdal takes a hard look at those who insist, in the teeth of the evidence, that shared ownership will never work - a sorry tale, he argues, of prejudice masquerading as economic thinking. The book contains detailed case studies as well as interviews with a range of people, whose inspiring stories of success fly in the face of received wisdom. These successes include: high levels of productivity; sustained rapid growth; fast-moving, innovative responses to changing worlds; high levels of investment aimed at long-term prosperity; and, above all, the sheer happiness employees experience in working together in businesses that they own together, sharing the wealth that they create. * At a time when the 'orthodox' corporate economy has been badly shaken, Beyond the Corporation makes essential reading.

    At the same time, the imposition of neoliberal “reforms” in the African continent has led to greater unemployment, spiraling debt, land and livestock losses, reduced per capita food production, and decreased nutrition. Arguing that political stability hangs in the balance, this book calls for labor-intensive small-scale production, new thinking about which agricultural commodities are produced, the redistribution of the means of food production, and increased investment in rural development. The combined effort of African and Indian scholarly work, this account demands policies that defend the land rights of small producers and allow people to live with dignity.

    ...

    For millions, the color of a person's skin still decides their destiny. In its wide-ranging, in-depth and provocative analysis, South Africa Pushed to the Limit shows that although the legacies of apartheid and colonialism weigh heavy, many of the strategic choices made since 1994 have compounded those handicaps. The economy remains dominated by a handful of large conglomerates that are now entwined in the circuitry of the global economy. The government, meanwhile, has squandered its leverage over their decisions in a series of miscalculations and errors. The social costs have been punishing.  Marais explains why those choices were made, where they went awry, and why South Africa's vaunted formations of the left failed to prevent or alter them.Shedding light on a variety of South Africa's most pressing issues -- from the real reasons behind President Jacob Zuma's rise and the purging of his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki to a devastating critique of the country's continuing AIDS crisis -- South Africa Pushed to the Limit provides a unique, benchmark analysis of the long journey beyond apartheid.

    He offers a deeper understanding of financial market behavior and investment processes by recognising the role played by unconscious needs and fears in all investment activity

    That's the central argument of The Case for a Carbon Tax, a clear-eyed, sophisticated analysis of climate change policy.   Shi-Ling Hsu examines the four major approaches to curbing CO2: cap-and-trade; command and control regulation; government subsidies of alternative energy; and carbon taxes. Weighing the economic, social, administrative, and political merits of each, he demonstrates why a tax is currently the most effective policy. Hsu does not claim that a tax is the perfect or only solution-but that unlike the alternatives, it can be implemented immediately and paired effectively with other approaches.   In fact, the only real barrier is psychological. While politicians can present subsidies and cap-and-trade as "win-win" solutions, the costs of a tax are immediately apparent. Hsu deftly explores the social and political factors that prevent us from embracing this commonsense approach. And he shows why we must get past our hang-ups if we are to avert a global crisis.

    Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, published in 2009. This book is also published in the US by Bloomsbury Press (December, 2009) with new sub-title: "why greater equality makes societies stronger." It was then published in a paperback second edition in the UK in February 2010 with the different sub-title, "Why Equality is Better for Everyone," which included an Appendix of some of the statistical data which had previously only been available on the Equality Trust website. The book claims that there are "pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption." It claims that for each of eleven different health and social problems: physical health, mental health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity, social mobility, trust and community life, violence, teenage pregnancies, and child well-being, outcomes are substantially worse in more unequal rich countries.

    It has been widely argued that the crisis and recession were caused by "greed" and the failure of mainstream economics. In Getting It Wrong, leading economist William Barnett argues instead that there was too little use of the relevant economics, especially from the literature on economic measurement. Barnett contends that as financial instruments became more complex, the simple-sum monetary aggregation formulas used by central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, became obsolete. Instead, a major increase in public availability of best-practice data was needed. Households, firms, and governments, lacking the requisite information, incorrectly assessed systemic risk and significantly increased their leverage and risk-taking activities. Better financial data, Barnett argues, could have signaled the misperceptions and prevented the erroneous systemic-risk assessments.When extensive, best-practice information is not available from the central bank, increased regulation can constrain the adverse consequences of ill-informed decisions. Instead, there was deregulation. The result, Barnett argues, was a worst-case toxic mix: increasing complexity of financial instruments, inadequate and poor-quality data, and declining regulation.Following his accessible narrative of the deep causes of the crisis and the long history of private and public errors, Barnett provides technical appendixes, containing the mathematical analysis supporting his arguments.

    Whether you need to retrieve hallowed memories or just want to familiarize yourself with the mathematics underlying this degree, this unique book offers a terrific return on investment.? --Peter Carr, PhD Global Head of Modeling, Morgan Stanley; Director of the Masters Program in Mathematical Finance, Courant Institute, NYU ``This is the book I always recommend to people who ask about their mathematics before doing an MFE, and a few people could do with reading it after as well." --Dominic Connor Director, P&D Quantitative Recruitment Every exercise from the Second Edition of the Math Primer (175 exercises in total) is solved in detail in this Solutions Manual. The Solutions Manual to the Second Edition of "A Primer for the Mathematics of Financial Engineering" offers the reader the opportunity to undertake a rigorous self-study of the mathematical topics presented in the Math Primer, with the goal of achieving a deeper understanding of the financial applications therein. The First Edition of the Solutions Manual proved to be an important resource for prospective financial engineering graduate students. Using the Solution Manual as a companion to the Math Primer is an efficient way to glean a more advanced perspective on financial engineering applications by studying the solutions of the many challenging exercises. Studying the material from the Math Primer in tandem with the Solutions Manual provides the solid mathematical background required for successful graduate studies.

    First hailed as a great advance in science, The Limits to Growth was subsequently rejected and demonized. However, with many national economies now at risk and global peak oil apparently a reality, the methods, scenarios, and predictions of The Limits to Growth are in great need of reappraisal. In "The" "Limits to Growth Revisited," Ugo Bardi examines both the science and the polemics surrounding this work, and in particular the reactions of economists that marginalized its methods and conclusions for more than 30 years. The Limits to Growth was a milestone in attempts to model the future of our society, and it is vital today for both scientists and policy makers to understand its scientific basis, current relevance, and the social and political mechanisms that led to its rejection. Bardi also addresses the all-important question of whether the methods and approaches of The Limits to Growth can contribute to an understanding of what happened to the global economy in the Great Recession and where we are headed from there."

    However it was written long before Facebook, or even the web, existed so it explains the principles of networks by examples in biology -- like a beehive, a rain forest, or immune system. It tells the story of how feedback loops can create new phenomena and govern old ones, and why letting innovations like a social network be "out of control" is a good thing. The author also visits technological labs and reports on what they discover as they try to create artificial intelligence from dumb chips, or robots from insect-like parts, or complex organizations from simple ones. If you want to understand how the hive-mind of Twitter or Wikipedia works, this is the best book on the subject. It is an abridged version of the original, Out of Control, edited to focus on the chapters that tell how to "bootstrap" large complex systems and to engineer governance in non-governable networks. While written 18 years ago, the examples and wisdom are timeless.

    But what do people know about their environments? The study of information choice seeks to answer this question, explaining why economic players know what they know--and how the information they have affects collective outcomes. Instead of assuming what people do or don't know, information choice asks what people would choose to know. Then it predicts what, given that information, they would choose to do. In this textbook, Laura Veldkamp introduces graduate students in economics and finance to this important new research.The book illustrates how information choice is used to answer questions in monetary economics, portfolio choice theory, business cycle theory, international finance, asset pricing, and other areas. It shows how to build and test applied theory models with information frictions. And it covers recent work on topics such as rational inattention, information markets, and strategic games with heterogeneous information. Illustrates how information choice is used to answer questions in monetary economics, portfolio choice theory, business cycle theory, international finance, asset pricing, and other areas Teaches how to build and test applied theory models with information frictions Covers recent research on topics such as rational inattention, information markets, and strategic games with heterogeneous information

    

    Women's acceptance of their lesser claim on household resources like food, their positive attitudes toward clitoridectemy and infibulations, their acquiescence to violence atthe hands of their husbands, and their sometimes fatalistic attitudes toward their own poverty or suffering are all examples of adaptive preferences, wherein women participate in their own deprivation.Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment offers a definition of adaptive preference and a moral framework for responding to adaptive preferences in development practice. Khader defines adaptive preferences as deficits in the capacity to lead a flourishing human life that are causally related todeprivation and argues that public institutions should conduct deliberative interventions to transform the adaptive preferences of deprived people. She insists that people with adaptive preferences can experience value distortion, but she explains how this fact does not undermine those people'sclaim to participate in designing development interventions that determine the course of their lives. Khader claims that adaptive preference identification requires a commitment to moral universalism, but this commitment need not be incompatible with a respect for culturally variant conceptions ofthe good. She illustrates her arguments with examples from real-world development practice.Khader's deliberative perfectionist approach moves us beyond apparent impasses in the debates about internalized oppression and autonomous agency, relativism and universalism, and feminism and multiculturalism.

    They were delivered between March and October 2009, that is, between six months and just more than a year after the Crash of 2008, which nearly provoked a meltdown of the entire financial system.The crisis of 2008 became the occasion for a historically unprecedented government bailout of the banks, as world governments, led by the Obama administration (elected in November 2008), handed out trillions of dollars to ensure the bad debts of the financial speculators. At the same time, the financial crisis set off the deepest world recession since the 1930s, leading to the destruction of tens of millions of jobs around the world.As explained in these lectures, the crisis of 2008 was an expression of deep contradictions in the world capitalist system, which are centered in the long-term decline of the United States. The events of the summer of 2011, including a renewed global downturn, stock market panics, and the emergence of working class struggle internationally provide further confirmation of this analysis.

    Yavlinsky explores the widespread disregard for moral values in business decisions and calls for restoration of principled behavior in politics and economic practices. The unwelcome alternative, he warns, will be a twenty-first-century global economy in the grip of unending crises.

    Whether you want to do it yourself, or get an overview of the basics so you can understand the experts, this book gives you the answers. Up to date with all the latest changes to UK pension, tax and legal rules, it covers everything you need to know in one easy to read guide.

    What if they aren’t true? What impact does relying on something that isn’t true have on your financial future?For example, we have all accepted the miracle of compound interest. If the exponential growth potential were the only factor in play – anyone nearing retirement would be wealthy.

    Emphasizing powerful American ideals, including teamwork, pragmatism, and equality, de Graaf and Batker set forth a simple goal for any economic system: The greatest good for the greatest number over the longest run. Drawing from history and current enterprises, we see how the good life is achieved when people and markets work together with an active government to create a more perfect economy-one that works for everyone.Beginning by shattering our fetish for GDP, What's the Economy For, Anyway? offers a fresh perspective on quality of life, health, security, work-life balance, leisure, social justice, and perhaps most important, sustainability. This sparkling, message-driven book is exactly what those lost in the doldrums of partisan sniping and a sluggish economy need: a guide to what really matters, and a map to using America's resources to make the world a better place.

    We now take for granted that economic growth is good, necessary, and even inevitable, but also feel a sense of unease about the simultaneous growth of complexity in the processes and institutions that generate and manage that growth. As societies grow more complex through the bounty of cheap energy, they also confront problems that seem to increase in number and severity. In this era of fossil fuels, cheap energy and increasing complexity have been in a mutually-reinforcing spiral. The more energy we have and the more problems our societies confront, the more we grow complex and require still more energy. How did our demand for energy, our technological prowess, the resulting need for complex problem solving, and the end of easy oil conspire to make the Deepwater Horizon oil spill increasingly likely, if not inevitable? This book explains the real causal factors leading up to the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history, a disaster from which it will take decades to recover.

    This book offers an accessible and engaging introduction to the business environment, covering the economic, political, social, legal, cultural, technological and financial dimensions to provide a comprehensive overview of the global environment within which businesses operate.

    Drucker's insights were nothing short of remarkable, and Rick Wartzman pays high tribute to that fact while adding a few of his own." --Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times bestsellers MOJO And What Got You Here Won't Get You There"Rick Wartzman has accomplished what I didn't think was possible: a tapestry of ideas drawn from Wartzman's observations and personal experiences, woven together with the wisdom of the most important management thinker of this or any other age." --Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Management, the University of Southern California, and author of the recently published Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership"Peter Drucker's thinking has had an enduring impact on consumer-driven companies like Macy's. . . . [What Would Drucker Do Now?] serves as a compendium of the very best ideas that can help all of our companies win in a highly competitive marketplace for products, services, and customer experiences." --Terry Lundgren, Chairman, President, and CEO, Macy's Inc."This collection of essays . . . will broaden you as a manager, a leader, and as a human being. . . . Rick Wartzman has done the world a great service by collecting the most incisive observations of a beautiful mind and linking them to problems that face leaders and organizations everywhere." --Brian Walker, President and CEO, Herman Miller, Inc."If Peter Drucker is the master, Rick Wartzman is the prized pupil. Drucker would be delighted to see his theories applied in such a cogent, thoughtful fashion." --Jim Weddle, Managing Partner, Edward Jones, and consulting client of Peter DruckerAbout the Book: As technology, globalization, and business innovation advance at breakneck speed, the question "What would Drucker do now?" becomes more relevant by the day. More than anyone of his time, Peter Drucker understood how the individual, the organization, and society are interrelated. And no one better recognized and articulated the challenges facing all three--or came up with more practical solutions to those challenges.Since 2007, the Drucker Institute's executive director, Rick Wartzman, has been asking what Drucker would do on a regular basis-- in his popular online column for Bloomberg Businessweek. In each piece, Wartzman introduces a current issue and provides a view of it through the eyes of Peter Drucker, based on his deep knowledge of Drucker's ideas and ideals.What Would Drucker Do Now? culls Wartzman's best, most timely columns into a single volume, offering a perspective on business and society you won't find anywhere else. Featuring more than 80 articles, the book is organized into seven thematic sections:Management as a DisciplineThe Practice of ManagementManagement Challenges for the Twenty-First CenturyOn Wall Street and FinanceOn Values and ResponsibilityThe Public and Social SectorsArt, Music, and SportsCovering everything from the federal bailout of GM and the scandal at Goldman Sachs to the roles religion and race relations play in a well-functioning society, What Would Drucker Do Now? explores a range of subjects as broad as Drucker's remarkable mind. Wartzman provides a smart, original, and provocative look at a world being buffeted by change and in which all organizations--private, public, and nonprofit--are searching for answers. What would Drucker do now, indeed?

    After decades when the Keynesian revolution seemed to have been forgotten, the great British theorist was suddenly everywhere. The New York Times asked, "What would Keynes have done?" The Financial Times wrote of "the undeniable shift to Keynes." Le Monde pronounced the economic collapse Keynes's "revenge." Two years later, following bank bailouts and Tea Party fundamentalism, Keynesian principles once again seemed misguided or irrelevant to a public focused on ballooning budget deficits. In this readable account, Backhouse and Bateman elaborate the misinformation and caricature that have led to Keynes's repeated resurrection and interment since his death in 1946.Keynes's engagement with social and moral philosophy and his membership in the Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers helped to shape his manner of theorizing. Though trained as a mathematician, he designed models based on how specific kinds of people (such as investors and consumers) actually behave--an approach that runs counter to the idealized agents favored by economists at the end of the century.Keynes wanted to create a revolution in the way the world thought about economic problems, but he was more open-minded about capitalism than is commonly believed. He saw capitalism as essential to a society's well-being but also morally flawed, and he sought a corrective for its main defect: the failure to stabilize investment. Keynes's nuanced views, the authors suggest, offer an alternative to the polarized rhetoric often evoked by the word "capitalism" in today's political debates.

    This publication documents the discussion event held on 19 Feb 2011, The Medium of Contingency.The event brought together in discussion Robin Mackay (director of Urbanomic), Reza Negarestani (author of Cyclonopedia), Elie Ayache (author of The Blank Swan), Matthew Poole (freelance curator, writer, and director of The Centre for Curatorial Studies at The University of Essex), gallerist Miguel Abreu and artist Scott Lyall.The publication includes presentations by each of the participants and an edited transcript of the discussion.

    Some of these major issues are environmentalism and its claim of global warming; the danger from terrorism generated by Islamic fundamentalism; and affordable, quality health care. Additionally, education in America remains an unresolved dilemma contributing to America's lack of economic competitiveness.Andrew Bernstein argues that the US government is pushing the nation toward socialism in its attempt to resolve America's problems. The government's increasing control of the banking industry, its massive bailouts of auto makers, and its proposal of emissions legislation are also examples of the expansion of government's power. Bernstein argues that whatever the intentions of the government, or its illusions about the workability of its proposals, morally upright and practical solutions can only come from moving to the opposite end of the political-economic spectrum: the establishment of laissez-faire capitalism.In Atlas Shrugged, and in her non-fiction works, Ayn Rand developed a systematic body of thought, a comprehensive philosophy she dubbed "Objectivism." This philosophy has been neglected by most professional intellectuals, but it is now beginning to be seriously studied in academic philosophy departments. Objectivism provides the moral and philosophic validation of the political-economic principles of individual rights and free markets. Analysis of today's gravest social and political issues within this philosophic framework, as undertaken by Bernstein in this volume, constitutes a unique way of identifying rational solutions to these pressing issues.

    It provides new arguments for why it is important that people genuinely trust others-even those whom they know don't particularly care about them-because in keycircumstances institutions are incapable of combating opportunism. It then identifies specific characteristics that moral beliefs must have for the people who possess them to be regarded as trustworthy. When such moral beliefs are held with sufficient conviction by a sufficiently high proportion ofthe population, a high trust society emerges that supports maximum cooperation and creativity while permitting honest competition at the same time. Such moral beliefs are not tied to any particular religion and have nothing to do with moral earnestness or the set of moral values-what matters is howthey affect the way people think about morality. Such moral beliefs are based on abstract ideas that must be learned so they are matters of culture, not genes, and are therefore able to explain differences in economic performance across societies.

    Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that the involvement of Borneo’s native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful and that processes of globalization began millennia ago. Dove’s analysis replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out.

    

    This might be his most compelling book: lectures delivered over the course of an entire career, covering both general and specific economics problems. This one-volume works actually consists of two volumes from the original, which has been long out of print. It is a fat 570 pages. All hail Wicksell!

    Then one day God started speaking to me, which forced me to reevaluate my position.” So begins Eileen Workman’s stunning, spiritual reevaluation of the world’s most popular monetary system. Workman draws on nearly twenty successful years in the U.S. financial services industry as she dissects the underpinnings of our current economic system. She approaches the historical challenges and inequities of capitalism by grounding the reader solidly in the evolution of money, from its original inception through its current-day uses and abuses. In revealing capitalism’s absurdities and probing our unexamined beliefs around the contemporary global exchange of capital, she exposes the tangled ghost roots of a system in which we cannot hope to avoid continual financial crises unless we change how we relate to the world that supports us. Redesigning our economic system is a challenging proposition, but Workman guides the reader toward an understanding of how the scarcity and greed of capitalism can be transformed into a system of abundance.