Written not from a post-crisis perspective – but from a preventative point of view – this book traces the development of financial derivatives from bonds to credit default swaps, and shows how mathematical formulas went beyond pricing to expand their use to the point where they dwarfed the real economy. You'll learn how the deadly allure of their ice-cold beauty has misled generations of economists and investors, and how continued reliance on these formulas can either assist future economic development, or send the global economy into the financial equivalent of a cardiac arrest. Rather than rehash tales of post-crisis fallout, this book focuses on preventing the next one. By exploring the heart of the shadow economy, you'll be better prepared to ride the rough waves of finance into the turbulent future. Delve into one of the world's least-understood but highest-impact industries Understand the key principles of quantitative finance and the evolution of the field Learn what quantitative finance has become, and how it affects us all Discover how the industry's next steps dictate the economy's future How do you create a quadrillion dollars out of nothing, blow it away and leave a hole so large that even years of "quantitative easing" can't fill it – and then go back to doing the same thing? Even amidst global recovery, the financial system still has the potential to seize up at any moment. The Money Formula explores the how and why of financial disaster, what must happen to prevent the next one.

    And he demonstrates how much better off we'd be by making government much smaller. Most important, he provides a realistic blueprint for getting from where we are now to a small government and a freer, more prosperous society.

    17Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (South Holland, ...

    

    No one has bettered Keynes's description of the psychology of investors during a financial crisis: 'The practice of calmness and immobility, of certainty and security, suddenly breaks down. New fears and hopes will, without warning, take charge of human conduct... the market will be subject to waves of optimistic and pessimistic sentiment.' Keynes's preeminent biographer, Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick, brilliantly synthesizes from Keynes's career and life the aspects of his thinking that apply most directly to the world we currently live in. In so doing, Skidelsky shows that Keynes's mixture of pragmatism and realism - which distinguished his thinking from the neo-classical or Chicago school of economics that has been the dominant influence since the Thatcher-Reagan era and which made possible the raw market capitalism that created the current global financial crisis - is more pertinent and applicable than ever. Crucially Keynes offers nervous capitalists - and Keynes never wavered in his belief in the capitalist system - a positive answer to the question we now face: When unbridled capitalism falters, is there an alternative? "In the long run," as Keynes famously said, "we are all dead." We may not have time to wait for the perfect theoretical operation of capital as the neo-classicists insist will happen eventually. In the meantime, we have Keynes: more supple, more human and more magnificently real than ever.

    It shows him applying his classical economic theory to policy questions of lasting concern: the desirability of sustained growth of national wealth and population, the merits of capitalism versus socialism, and the suitable scope of government intervention in the competitive market economy. His answers to those questions have profound relevance today, and they serve to illustrate the enduring power and imagination of his distinctive liberal utilitarian philosophy. The lucid introduction and explanatory notes clarify Mill's philosophy in relation to his economic theory, and make full use of the most recent scholarship.

    Taxes arouse strong passions, fueled not only by conflicts of economic self-interest, but by conflicting ideas of fairness. Taking as a guiding principle the conventional nature of private property, Murphy and Nagel show how taxes can only be evaluated as part of the overall system of property rights that they help to create. Justice or injustice in taxation, they argue, can only mean justice or injustice in the system of property rights and entitlements that result from a particular regime. Taking up ethical issues about individual liberty, interpersonal obligation, and both collective and personal responsibility, Murphy and Nagel force us to reconsider how our tax policy shapes our system of property rights.

    It limps along with one foot in untested hypotheses and the other in untestable slogans. Here our task is to sort out as best we may this mixture of ideology and science.- With these provocative words, Joan Robinson introduces this lively and iconoclastic book. -In what follows, - she says, -this theme is illustrated by reference to one or two of the leading ideas of the economists from Adam Smith onwards, not in a learned manner, tracing the development of thought, nor historically, to show how ideas arose out of the problems of each age, but rather an attempt to puzzle out the mysterious way that metaphysical propositions, without any logical content, can yet be a powerful influence on thought and action.- Robinson is responsible for some of the most austerely professional contributions to economic theory, but here in effect she takes the reader behind the scenes and cheerfully exposes the dogmatic content of economic orthodoxy. In its place, she offers the possibility that with obsolete metaphysics cleared out of the way economics can make a substantial advance toward science. .

    It is how China and India began to embrace neoliberal ideas of economics and attributed a sense of dignity and liberty to the bourgeoisie they had denied for so long. The result was an explosion in economic growth and proof that economic change depends less on foreign trade, investment, or material causes, and a whole lot more on ideas and what people believe.Or so says Deirdre N. McCloskey in Bourgeois Dignity, a fiercely contrarian history that wages a similar argument about economics in the West. Here she turns her attention to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe to reconsider the birth of the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism. According to McCloskey, our modern world was not the product of new markets and innovations, but rather the result of shifting opinions about them. During this time, talk of private property, commerce, and even the bourgeoisie itself radically altered, becoming far more approving and flying in the face of prejudices several millennia old. The wealth of nations, then, didn’t grow so dramatically because of economic factors: it grew because rhetoric about markets and free enterprise finally became enthusiastic and encouraging of their inherent dignity.An utterly fascinating sequel to her critically acclaimed book The Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignity is a feast of intellectual riches from one of our most spirited and ambitious historians—a work that will forever change our understanding of how the power of persuasion shapes our economic lives.

    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.

    To mark the event, National Geographic magazine commissioned seven articles that explore the fascinating issues—including demographics, food security, climate change, fertility trends, managing biodiversity—surrounding this topic, which are collected for the first time in this special ebook.   Envi­ronment editor Robert Kunzig starts by sketching out a natural history of population. The issues associated with population growth seem endless: poverty, food and water supply, world health, climate change, deforestation, fertility rates, and more. In additional chapters Elizabeth Kolbert explores a new era—the “Anthropocene,” or the age of man—defined by our massive impact on the planet, which will endure long after our cities have crumbled; and takes us to the Mediterranean, where she delves into issues associated with increasing ocean acidification. In Bangladesh, Don Belt explores how the people of this crowded region can teach us about adapting to rising sea levels. In “Food Ark” we travel deep within the earth and around the globe to explore the seed banks that are preserving the variety of food species we may need to increase food production on an increasingly crowded planet. In Brazil, Cynthia Gournay explores the phenomenon of “Machisma” and shows how a mix of female empowerment and steamy soap operas helped bring down Brazil’s fertility rate and stoke its vibrant economy. Additionally we explore threats to biodiversity, and the return of cities—which may be the solution to many of our population woes. Join National Geographic on this incredible journey to explore our rapidly growing planet.

    Obama's team should read it - and soon. -George C. Lodge, professor emeritus, Harvard Business School " If people will listen, Fletcher's informed voice will help turn the country toward a more promising future. -William Greider, author of Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country. " This book is an excellent introduction to these realities and what can be done about them. -Dan DiMicco, Chairman and CEO, Nucor Steel Corporation; author of Steeling America's Future: a CEO's Call to Arms. " This book will be an essential guide to the emerging debate over the wisdom of 'free trade' as a sound policy. -Patrick A. Mulloy, Commissioner, U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission; former Assistant Secretary of Commerce. "Ian Fletcher has laid out a powerful critique of so-called 'free trade' theory. -John J. Sweeney, former President, AFL-CIO; author, America Needs a Raise. "A very powerful, passionate, and convincing critique of free trade in an accessible and engaging manner. -Ha-Joon Chang, Cambridge University, author, Kicking away the Ladder. "Up-to-date, comprehensive and very readable. -Jeff Faux, Distinguished Fellow, Economic Policy Institute; author, The Global Class War. "A devastating and powerful indictment of free trade economics. -Gavin Fridell, author, Fair Trade Coffee. This book is aimed at ordinary concerned citizens. It examines why free trade is slowly bleeding America's economy to death and what can be done. It explains why the economics free traders use is false, and what kind of economics justifies protectionism instead. It is critical of the current establishment, but from a bipartisan point of view, so it should satisfy progressives, conservatives, and everyone in between. See www.freetradedoesntwork.com for more information.

    Like everything he writes, it is new, stimulating and sparkles like champagne.Braudel's technique, it has been said, is that of a pointilliste. Myriads of separate details, sharp glimpses of reality experienced by real people, are seen miraculously to orchestrate themselves into broad rhythms that underlie and transcend the excitements and struggles of particular periods. Braudel sees the past as we see the present — only in a longer perspective and over a wider field.The perspective is that of the possible, of the actual material limitations to human life in any given time or place. It is the every¬day, the habitual — the obvious that is so obvious it has hitherto been neglected by historians — that Braudel claims for a new and vast and enriching province of history. Food and drink, dress and housing, demography and family structure, energy and technology, money and credit, and, above all, the growth of towns, that powerful agent of social and economic development, are described in all the richness and complexity of real life.The intensely visual quality of Braudel's understanding of history is brought into sharper focus by the remarkable series of illustrations that of themselves would make this book incomparableFERNAND BRAUDEL was born in 1902, received a degree in history in 1923, and subsequently taught in Algeria, Paris and Sao Paulo. He spent five years as a prisoner of war in Germany, during which time he wrote his grand thesis, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, which was published in 1949. In 1946 he became a member of the editorial board of Annates, the famous journal founded by Marc Bloch and Lucian Febvre, whom he succeeded at the College de France in 1949. He has been a member of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and since 1962 has been chief administrator of the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. Professor Braudel holds honorary doctor¬ates from universities all over the world.Jacket painting: Detail from Breughel the Elder's The Fall of Icarus, from the Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels. (Giraudon)"Braudel deserves a Nobel Prize. . . . [This is] the most remarkable picture of human life in the centuries before the human condition was radically changed by the growth of industry that has yet been presented. A book of great originality, a masterpiece."—J. H. Plumb, The Washington Post"Braudel's books enthrall. ... He is brilliant in demonstrating how most history is written on the backs of most people."—John Leonard, The New York Times"Even a preliminary glance at The Structures of Everyday Life shows a book that has no obvious compeer either in scope of reference or level of accessibility to the general reader. ... Its broad authority remains deeply impressive."—Richard Holmes, Harper's"Here is vast erudition, beautifully arranged, presented with grace of style, with humility before life's complexity and warm humanist feeling. Braudel's subject is nothing less than every¬day life all over the world before the industrial revolution.... He succeeds triumphantly in his first purpose: 'if not to see everything, at least to locate everything, and on the requisite world scale.'"—Angus Calder, The Standard"On neither side of the Atlantic does there live a man or woman with so much knowledge of the past as Braudel, or with a greater sense of its aptness to the intellectual occasion in hand....You can't pick up this big fat book without having your attention transfixed by something or other, if only the great gallery of pictures. They are a masterpiece in themselves."—Peter Laslett, The Guardian"This new book is unarguably a brilliant survey of demog¬raphy, urbanisation, transport, technology, food, clothing, housing, money and business, social classes, state power and international trade in the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries."—Theodore Zeldin, The Listener-----By examining in detail the material life of preindustrial peoples around the world, Fernand Braudel significantly changed the way historians view their subject. Volume I describes food and drink, dress and housing, demography and family structure, energy and technology, money and credit, and the growth of towns.

    This one is really my book, the others appear to me colourless and seem as if they could have been written by anyone else.' - Georg Simmel to Heinrich Rickert (1904) In The Philosophy of Money, Simmel provides us with a remarkably wide-ranging discussion of the social, psychological and philosophical aspects of the money economy, full of brilliant insights into the forms that social relationships take. He analyzes the relationships of money to exchange, the human personality, the position of women, individual freedom and many other areas of human existence. Later he provides us with an account of the consequences of the modern money economy and the division of labour, which examines the processes of alienation and reification in work, urban life and elsewhere. Perhaps, more than any of his other sociological works, The Philosophy of Money gives us an example of his comprehensive analysis of the interrelationships between the most diverse and seemingly connected social phenomena. This revised edition of the translation by Tom Bottomore and David Frisby, includes a new Preface by Davi

    This book presents a radically new answer, insisting that global society has only begun to realize its full potential. Author Howard Bloom argues that there’s a hidden mandate beneath the surface of capitalism: "It’s struggling to whisper and rumble its message to you and me. That hidden imperative can lift us from economic crisis, can make us a leader in the next-generation economy, and can dramatically upgrade our ability to empower our fellow human beings." Bloom sees crisis as opportunity, opportunity for the whole human race.In more than eighty short, fast chapters, insights appear suddenly, like the quick bursts of flashbulbs, taking the reader on a sweeping tour of human history, from the Stone Age to the present. Every chapter conveys a radically new way to see the astonishing mechanism we call "Western Civilization." Bloom marvels at how humans have turned toxic waste into food and fuel, trash into treasure, and garbage into gold. He shows how we've produced material miracles based on immaterial things—passion, persistence, and fantasy. He shows that what many regard as the end is just the beginning. The beginning of something you've never before imagined. The author explains why the secret to capitalism’s next great leap does not lie in new financial tricks, but in tapping things right under our noses in radically new ways—that is, tapping our imagination, our desire to feel useful, our desire to help others, and our desire to be recognized for contributing to the welfare of humanity. The key to next-generation capitalism lies in a big-picture view that's utterly unlike anything you've previously perceived. A big-picture view that will startle you. A big-picture view with which you can ignite the world, get a new handle on your life, and help transform society. This brilliant, inspirational work of daring ideas and breathtaking research offers more than hope. It offers unseen levels of understanding. Understanding that can literally redefine what it means to be a human being.From the Trade Paperback edition.