It is also a crucial question for Australia, affecting our future economy and security.In this essential book, White considers the options for the Asian century.As China's economy grows to become the world's largest, America has three choices: it can compete, share power or concede leadership in Asia. The choice is momentous – as significant for America's future as any it has faced.White controversially argues that America's best option is to share power with China and relinquish its supremacy. As these two behemoths face off across the Pacific, the choice America makes will also have an enormous impact on Australia. The China Choice is an urgent intervention in the China debate and provides a blueprint for a peaceful future.'White brings erudition and a first-rate intellect, without the baggage of prejudice, to analyse the single most important issue that will determine whether Australia lives in a peaceable environment in the years ahead – a must-read.' —Bob Hawke'Hugh White's The China Choice is an exceptionally thoughtful synthesis of the arguments and influences which bear upon the coming shape of the Pacific.' —Paul Keating

    This highly accessible book is aimed at anyone who wants to improve their financial situation, from the financial novice who needs clear basic guidelines on how to deal with money to those who are more financially savvy but want to supplement their knowledge. Covering a range of topics, from saving, investing, debt management, buying a house to blunders to avoid, Become Your Own Financial Advisor provides people of all ages and levels of wealth with practical information on how to improve their finances. And, in the process, proves that financial freedom is possible for everyone.

     It is also a story of dramatic financial panics that defined the nation, created its political parties, and forced tens of thousands to escape their creditors to new towns in Texas, Florida, and California.  As far back as 1792, these panics boiled down to one simple question: Would Americans pay their debts—or were we just a nation of deadbeats? From the merchant William Duer’s attempts to speculate on post–Revolutionary War debt, to an ill-conceived 1815 plan to sell English coats to Americans on credit, to the debt-fueled railroad expansion that precipitated the Panic of 1857, Scott Reynolds Nelson offers a crash course in America’s worst financial disasters—and a concise explanation of the first principles that caused them all. Nelson shows how consumer debt, both at the highest levels of finance and in the everyday lives of citizens, has time and again left us unable to make good. The problem always starts with the chain of banks, brokers, moneylenders, and insurance companies that separate borrowers and lenders.  At a certain point lenders cannot tell good loans from bad—and when chits are called in, lenders frantically try to unload the debts, hide from their own creditors, go into bankruptcy, and lobby state and federal institutions for relief. With a historian’s keen observations and a storyteller’s nose for character and incident, Nelson captures the entire sweep of America’s financial history in all its utter irrationality: national banks funded by smugglers; fistfights in Congress over the gold standard; and presidential campaigns forged in stinging controversies on the subject of private debt. A Nation of Deadbeats is a fresh, irreverent look at Americans’ addiction to debt and how it has made us what we are today.

    But to the women locked up there it was something else. A Living Hell. More than 4,000 internees were held there from January 1942 until February 1945.'Living Hell' is their harrowing story. The book is based on the diaries of Isla Corfield. An Englishwoman whose comfortable life in Shanghai was suddenly disrupted by the outbreak of World War Two, she fled with her daughter Gill on an evacuee ship.But the ship was captured by the Japanese -- and Isla and Gill would have to struggle to survive as prisoners of war in both Santo Tomas and Los Banos internment camps.In the communities of the camps, Isla and her daughter experienced the extremes of both friendship and loss. Cut-off from information about the war and with no end to their internment in sight, the pair experience starvation, disease and desperation.Finally liberated by the Americans after four years, Isla's story is both humbling and life-affirming - the story of one brave Englishwomen's battle to survive against terrible odds.It is one of the great untold stories of World War Two. "An incredible story of bravery and will-power." - Robert Foster, best-selling author of 'The Lunar Code'. Celia Lucas is a writer of children’s fiction and biography. She is a journalist, feature writer and public relations consultant. Winner of Tir na Nog Prize 1988 she has also collaborated on a TV series with husband Ian Skidmore. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher.

    You’re probably reading this because, well, you feel the same way.Perhaps you’re worried about one specific scenario (the death of the banking system, hyperinflation or something else) but then again, maybe you’re not able to identify specific threats. Instead, you just feel “something” is wrong. You feel it deep down inside and it haunts you.Rightfully so, in my opinion!The Age of Anomaly is here to provide much-needed clarity. My name is Andrei Polgar but a lot of you might know me as “the One Minute Economics guy on YouTube” and I’ve never been an economist who desperately wants to sound intelligent.Instead, through my work, I’ve had one goal and one goal only: making economics easy to understand, something traditional education has failed at remarkably. As time passes, my work is featured in more and more universities all over the world. Students love it, people who already graduated feel the same way and even those who aren’t necessarily interested in economics become fascinated by this often misunderstood but amazing field.Why do people like what I do?For one simple reason: because it works.Through The Age of Anomaly, I’ve made it clear that understanding financial calamities and being prepared doesn’t have to involve rocket science. Anyone can do it and frankly, everyone should do it.I’ve provided a “from A to Z” perspective by:1) Analyzing quite a few hand-picked economic calamities of the past, from the tulip mania to the Great Depression, the Great Recession and even case studies pretty much nobody heard of such as the short domain mania of 2015-20162) Drawing parallels and finding common denominators so as to provide tips that help readers become better and better at spotting financial storms3) Explaining that becoming better at spotting financial storms is just not enough. Even I may very well end up being caught off-guard by the next crash and as such, it makes sense to dedicate just at much energy to becoming more resilient in general so as to better withstand anything life throws your wayBy becoming good at spotting financial storms as well as resilient, you’ll be multiple orders of magnitude (and I consider even this the understatement of the century) better off than the average individual, who blissfully chooses to live in a bubble of ignorance!

    Drawing from these practical, commonsense notions, The Cost of Rights provides a useful corrective to the all-or-nothing feel of much political debate nowadays (The Economist).

    Freeman tells the story of the factory and examines how it has reflected both our dreams and our nightmares of industrialization and social change. He whisks readers from the early textile mills that powered the Industrial Revolution to the factory towns of New England to today’s behemoths making sneakers, toys, and cellphones in China and Vietnam. Behemoth offers a piercing perspective on how factories have shaped our societies and the challenges we face now.

    

    In this linear construct, you go to work for a week and at week’s end you are compensated for that work. The next week you do more work and are compensated for that work, and so on. This is a common agreement between employers and employees in many countries, including the United States. The purpose of this book is to challenge that construct. It is the author's intent to suggest a more profitable arrangement for the creator of the product — the worker. The notion is that one could work on a project for a certain amount of time but the product of that project could pay dividends for a longer term. One might work for a week and be paid for the product of that work every week for many years. Imagine how this construct would compound income week after week, project after project. At some point, with numerous streams of income from a growing number of completed projects, one would be able to discontinue taking on new projects if he or she desired, living off the residuals of the projects he or she created to that point. Indeed, one could take a vacation, still earning income from work he or she completed long ago. With the help of Dr. Frederick Von Greensburg, Thaddeus Cooper breaks down the concept of passive income and outlines a strategy for creating streams of this revenue to supplement or replace traditional income. A self-help book for the masses and a manifesto for the most creative among us, Don't Give Your Work Away For Free: A free ebook by Thaddeus Cooper is a MUST READ!

    Now the retail banking business model looks set to be transformed too. In Bye Bye Banks? James Haycock and Shane Richmond describe these startups, and to which areas of the banking industry they are laying siege. It shows that this assault is already well underway and that many incumbents are poised to be displaced, diminished and disintermediated. It draws on extensive research and on-and-off the record interviews with senior executives in some of the biggest banks. Haycock and Richmond conclude with the recommendation that traditional banks need to reinvent themselves by launching a ‘Beta Bank’: a lean, stand-alone organisation fit for the future for which they provide a ten-point operating model. This short book is a bold, urgent and timely analysis of the forces shaping the future of financial services. Its message to industry leaders in the sector could not be more simple: adapt or prepare to be disrupted. “This work accurately and concisely captures the effects of the disruption brought to the banking industry by the digital revolution. The comments by other banking and innovation professionals about their own experiences are particularly intriguing.” - Alessandro Hatami, former Innovation Executive at Lloyds Banking Group “James Haycock is a key voice for how the banking industry should and will change.” - Tom Hopkins, Product Innovation Director, Experian Consumer Services “If you are an incumbent retail bank, read it, get on with it, make it happen.” - Lee Sankey, former Group Design Director, Barclays

    Should the blame fall on Wall Street, Main Street, or Pennsylvania Avenue? On greedy traders, misguided regulators, sleazy subprime companies, cowardly legislators, or clueless home buyers?According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America's most acclaimed business journalists, the real answer is all of the above-and more. Many devils helped bring hell to the economy. And the full story, in all of its complexity and detail, is like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Almost everyone has missed the big picture. Almost no one has put all the pieces together.All the Devils Are Here goes back several decades to weave the hidden history of the financial crisis in a way no previous book has done. It explores the motivations of everyone from famous CEOs, cabinet secretaries, and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers, analysts, and Wall Street traders. It delves into the powerful American mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature.Among the devils you'll meet in vivid detail:• Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, who dreamed of spreading homeownership to the masses, only to succumb to the peer pressure-and the outsized profits-of the sleaziest subprime lending.• Roland Arnall, a respected philanthropist and diplomat, who made his fortune building Ameriquest, a subprime lending empire that relied on blatantly deceptive lending practices.• Hank Greenberg, who built AIG into a Rube Goldberg contraption with an undeserved triple-A rating, and who ran it so tightly that he was the only one who knew where all the bodies were buried.• Stan O'Neal of Merrill Lynch, aloof and suspicious, who suffered from "Goldman envy" and drove a proud old firm into the ground by promoting cronies and pushing out his smartest lieutenants.• Lloyd Blankfein, who helped turn Goldman Sachs from a culture that famously put clients first to one that made clients secondary to its own bottom line.• Franklin Raines of Fannie Mae, who (like his predecessors) bullied regulators into submission and let his firm drift away from its original, noble mission.• Brian Clarkson of Moody's, who aggressively pushed to increase his rating agency's market share and stock price, at the cost of its integrity.• Alan Greenspan, the legendary maestro of the Federal Reserve, who ignored the evidence of a growing housing bubble and turned a blind eye to the lending practices that ultimately brought down Wall Street-and inflicted enormous pain on the country.Just as McLean's The Smartest Guys in the Room was hailed as the best Enron book on a crowded shelf, so will All the Devils Are Here be remembered for finally making sense of the meltdown and its consequences.

    In 2017, they face the problems of underemployment, unaffordable housing and economists who write crap columns telling them that it's their fault for taking an Uber to brunch.Today, the future's so dark, we need night vision goggles, not a few liberal guys shining a torch on a sandwich. Maybe today, we could use the light of Karl Marx.Marx may not have had much to say about brunch in the twenty-first century, but he sure had some powerful thoughts about where the system of capitalism would land us. Over time, it would produce a series of crises, he said, before pushing the wealth so decisively up, a top-heavy system would come crashing down with a push.Pushy old communist Helen Razer offers an introduction to the thought of Marx for Millennials, and anyone else tired of wage stagnation, growing global poverty and economists writing desperate columns saying everything would work better, if only we stopped eating sandwiches. Brunchers of the world must unite! They have nothing to lose but a life lived for the wealth of a few. Both for themselves and their comrades in the Global South, they have a world to win.

     The world is at a turning point similar to the fall of communism. Then, many focused on the collapse itself, and failed to see that a bigger trend, globalization, was about to take hold. The benefits of globalization--through the freer flow of money, people, ideas, and trade--have been many. But rather than a world that is flat, what has emerged is one of jagged peaks and rough, deep valleys characterized by wealth inequality, indebtedness, political recession, and imbalances across the world's economies. These peaks and valleys are undergoing what Michael O'Sullivan calls "the levelling"--a major transition in world economics, finance, and power. What's next is a levelling-out of wealth between poor and rich countries, of power between nations and regions, of political accountability from elites to the people, and of institutional power away from central banks and defunct twentieth-century institutions such as the WTO and the IMF.O'Sullivan then moves to ways we can develop new, pragmatic solutions to such critical problems as political discontent, stunted economic growth, the productive functioning of finance, and political-economic structures that serve broader needs.The Levelling comes at a crucial time in the rise and fall of nations. It has special importance for the US as its place in the world undergoes radical change--the ebbing of influence, profound questions over its economic model, societal decay, and the turmoil of public life.

    While development can use the productive resources of society to improve the living conditionsof the world's most vulnerable people, it can also form the basis of intense manipulative power on behalf of elites. This important new text surveys theleading theories and models of economic and social development. Chapters examine sociological, economic, neo-Marxist, poststructuralist, feminist, andradical democratic approaches, as well as an array of development models including modernization, dependency, and neoliberalism. Reaching conclusionsat odds with much of the recent literature, this volume is critical of neoliberal, market-driven economic growth, arguing instead that an alternative, democratic form of development remains a viable possibility.

    This ideology, Professor Lipset observes, defines the limits of political debate in the United States and shapes our society.American Exceptionalism explains why socialism has never taken hold in the United States, why Americans are resistant to absolute quotas as a way to integrate blacks and other minorities, and why American religion and foreign policy have a moralistic, crusading streak.