But not the United States. America has dominated the world in a new, peaceful, and pervasive way -- through the continued creation of staggering wealth. In this authoritative, engrossing history, John Steele Gordon captures as never before the true source of our nation's global influence: wealth and the capacity to create more of it.This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

    . . . In setting out a defence of the best in economics, Rodrik has also provided a goal for the discipline as a whole.” —Martin Sandbu, Financial Times In the wake of the financial crisis and the Great Recession, economics seems anything but a science. In this sharp, masterfully argued book, Dani Rodrik, a leading critic from within, takes a close look at economics to examine when it falls short and when it works, to give a surprisingly upbeat account of the discipline. Drawing on the history of the field and his deep experience as a practitioner, Rodrik argues that economics can be a powerful tool that improves the world—but only when economists abandon universal theories and focus on getting the context right. Economics Rules argues that the discipline's much-derided mathematical models are its true strength. Models are the tools that make economics a science. Too often, however, economists mistake a model for the model that applies everywhere and at all times. In six chapters that trace his discipline from Adam Smith to present-day work on globalization, Rodrik shows how diverse situations call for different models. Each model tells a partial story about how the world works. These stories offer wide-ranging, and sometimes contradictory, lessons—just as children’s fables offer diverse morals. Whether the question concerns the rise of global inequality, the consequences of free trade, or the value of deficit spending, Rodrik explains how using the right models can deliver valuable new insights about social reality and public policy. Beyond the science, economics requires the craft to apply suitable models to the context. The 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers challenged many economists' deepest assumptions about free markets. Rodrik reveals that economists' model toolkit is much richer than these free-market models. With pragmatic model selection, economists can develop successful antipoverty programs in Mexico, growth strategies in Africa, and intelligent remedies for domestic inequality. At once a forceful critique and defense of the discipline, Economics Rules charts a path toward a more humble but more effective science.

    Former Economic Hit Man John Perkins goes behind the scenes of the current geopolitical crisis and offers bold solutions to our most pressing problems. Drawing on interviews with other EHMs, jackals, CIA operatives, reporters, businessmen, and activists, Perkins reveals the secret history of events that have created the current American Empire, including: How the defeats in Vietnam and Iraq have benefited big businessThe role of Israel as Fortress America in the Middle EastTragic repercussions of the IMF's Asian Economic CollapseThe current Latin American revolution and its lessons for democracyU.S. blunders in Tibet, Congo, Lebanon, and VenezuelaFrom the U.S. military in Iraq to infrastructure development in Indonesia, from Peace Corps volunteers in Africa to jackals in Venezuela, Perkins exposes a conspiracy of corruption that has fueled instability and anti-Americanism around the globe, with consequences reflected in our daily headlines. Having raised the alarm, Perkins passionately addresses how Americans can work to create a more peaceful and stable world for future generations.

    Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, offers an engrossing look at the new international system that is transforming world affairs today. Globalization has replaced the Cold War system with the integration of capital, technology, and information across national borders—uniting Brazilian peasants, Indonesian entrepreneurs, Chinese villagers, and Silicon Valley technocrats in a single global village. You cannot understand the morning news, know where to invest your money, or think about the future unless you understand this new system, which is profoundly influencing virtually every country in the world today. Friedman tells you what this electronic global economy is all about and what it will take to live within it.With vivid stories drawn from his extensive travels, he dramatizes the conflict of “the Lexus and the olive tree”—the tension between the globalization system and the ancient forces of culture, geography, tradition, and community. He also details the powerful backlash that globalization produces among those who feel brutalized by it, and he spells out what we all need to do to keep the Lexus and the olive tree in balance. For this new paperback edition, Friedman has substantially expanded and updated his provocative analysis, making it essential reading for all who care about how the world works now.

    Capitalisms Crisis Deepens

    Though their experiences and styles vary—Buffett is the canny stock market investor; Soros is the reader of shifting global tides in trade and currencies; and Volcker is the regulator and governor, sheriff and clean-up crew—they have very much in common.All three men have more than fifty years of deep involvement in markets. All are skeptical of Wall Street frenzies. They believe that markets tend to be right, but usually only over the medium term. They have seen too many cycles of herd-driven, emotion-riding booms and busts to make their views hostage to the sweeping and simplistic assumptions of “efficient-markets” models.With the benefit of his own deep understanding of markets and finance, Morris brilliantly analyzes the records of these men, distilling their wisdom and experience—and argues for the importance of consistent values in navigating the treacherous terrain of today’s globalized world.

    In The Enigma of Capital, he delivers an impassioned account of how unchecked neoliberalism produced the system-wide crisis that now engulfs the world. Beginning in the 1970s, profitability pressures led the capitalist class in advanced countries to shift away from investment in industrial production at home toward the higher returns that financial products promised. Accompanying this was a shift towards privatization, an absolute decline in the bargaining power of labor, and the dispersion of production throughout the developing world. The decades-long and ongoing decline in wages that accompanied this turn produced a dilemma: how can goods--especially real estate--sell at the same rate as before if workers are making less in relative terms? The answer was a huge expansion of credit that fueled the explosive growth of both the financial industry and the real estate market. When one key market collapsed--real estate--the other one did as well, and social devastation resulted. Harvey places today's crisis in the broadest possible context: the historical development of global capitalism itself from the industrial era onward. Moving deftly between this history and the unfolding of the current crisis, he concentrates on how such crises both devastate workers and create openings for challenging the system's legitimacy. The battle now will be between the still-powerful forces that want to reconstitute the system of yesterday and those that want to replace it with one that prizes social justice and economic equality. The new afterword focuses on the continuing impact of the crisis and the response to it in 2010. One of Huffington Post's Best Social and Political Awareness Books of 2010 Winner of the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize for 2010 Praise for the Hardcover: "A lucid and penetrating account of how the power of capital shapes our world."--Andrew Gamble, Independent "Elegant... entertainingly swashbuckling... Harvey's analysis is interesting not only for the breadth of his scholarship but his recognition of the system's strengths."--John Gapper, Financial Times

    While many of the mathematicians and software engineers on Wall Street failed when their abstractions turned ugly in practice, a special breed of physicists has a much deeper history of revolutionizing finance. Taking us from fin-de-siècle Paris to Rat Pack-era Las Vegas, from wartime government labs to Yippie communes on the Pacific coast, Weatherall shows how physicists successfully brought their science to bear on some of the thorniest problems in economics, from options pricing to bubbles.The crisis was partly a failure of mathematical modeling. But even more, it was a failure of some very sophisticated financial institutions to think like physicists. Models—whether in science or finance—have limitations; they break down under certain conditions. And in 2008, sophisticated models fell into the hands of people who didn’t understand their purpose, and didn’t care. It was a catastrophic misuse of science.The solution, however, is not to give up on models; it's to make them better. Weatherall reveals the people and ideas on the cusp of a new era in finance. We see a geophysicist use a model designed for earthquakes to predict a massive stock market crash. We discover a physicist-run hedge fund that earned 2,478.6% over the course of the 1990s. And we see how an obscure idea from quantum theory might soon be used to create a far more accurate Consumer Price Index.Both persuasive and accessible, The Physics of Wall Street is riveting history that will change how we think about our economic future.

    Why (and when) did he turn his legitimate business into a massive fraud? How did he fool so many smart investors for so long? Who among his family and employees knew the truth? The best person to answer these questions—and tell the full story of Madoff’s rise and fall—is Erin Arvedlund. In early 2001, she was suspicious of the amazing returns of Madoff’s hedge fund, which no one could explain. Her article in Barron’s, based on more than one hundred interviews, could have prevented a lot of misery, had the SEC followed up. But almost no one was willing to believe anything bad about “Uncle Bernie”—so nice, so humble, so generous to charities. As Arvedlund shows, Madoff was no ordinary liar, but a master of the type of lies people really wanted to believe. He kept his clients at a distance and allowed handsomely paid friends to solicit new ones for him; playing hard to get created an irresistible mystique. Now, Arvedlund tackles the tough questions that are still unanswered in the wake of Madoff’s collapse: Did he start off as a legitimate money manager or was he a fraud from the beginning? Were there indications of larceny at the very start of his career? Why did Madoff’s biggest supporters within the industry, such as Walter Noel of Fairfield Greenwich and Ezra Merkin of Gabriel Capital, ignore the warning signs that were so apparent? Did they choose to remain ignorant as long as their commissions rolled in? Why did SEC investigations fail to catch Madoff’s Ponzi scheme even though several people had voiced concerns about his operation? Who else helped Madoff carry out his scam? His family and close associates have denied any involvement, but was it possible for one man to engineer a heist of such scope? With her keen investigative eye, Arvedlund presents a sweeping narrative of Madoff’s career—from his youth in Queens, New York, to his early days working for his father-in-law, to his time as chairman of the NASDAQ exchange, and finally to infamy as the world’s most notorious swindler. She offers a riveting glimpse of Madoff the man—an indifferent student with little ambition who transformed himself into a star with a talent for trading, a reputation for innovation, and an unmistakably erratic nature. Readers will be fascinated by Arvedlund’s portrayal of Madoff, his empire, and all those who never considered that he might be too good to be true.

    Across the globe, it has become increasingly accepted dogma that economic activities should be dominated by market forces, not political concerns. With chapters on Europe, the US, Britain, the Third World, the Arab States, Asia, China, India, Latin America, and the former communist countries, Yergin and Stanislaw provide an incisive overview of the state of the economy, and of the battles between governments and markets in each region. Now updated throughout and with two new chapters, The Commanding Heights explains a revolution which is unfolding before our very eyes.

    Hayek is one of only a few social scientists over the past 200 years who thoroughly rethought the relationship between individual people and both the market and the state. While countless works have discussed the importance of Hayek and his ideas, none have focused on making his core ideas accessible to average people. This volume highlights and explains Hayek's basic insights in plain language to ensure that his critical ideas about the nature of society are both accessible and enduring.

    While stories of newly built but empty cities, white elephant state projects, and a byzantine shadow banking system, have all become a regular fixture in the press in recent years, McMahon goes beyond the headlines to explain how such waste has been allowed to flourish, and why one of the most powerful governments in the world has been at a loss to stop it.Through the stories of ordinary Chinese citizens, McMahon tries to make sense of the unique--and often bizarre--mechanics of the Chinese economy, whether it be the state's addiction to appropriating land from poor farmers; or why a Chinese entrepreneur decided it was cheaper to move his yarn factory to South Carolina; or why ambitious Chinese mayors build ghost cities; or why the Chinese bureaucracy was able to stare down Beijing's attempts to break up the state's pointless monopoly over the distribution of table salt.Debt, entrenched vested interests, a frenzy of speculation, and an aging population are all pushing China toward an economic reckoning. China's Great Wall of Debt unravels an incredibly complex and opaque economy, one whose fortunes--for better or worse--will shape the globe like never before.

    Sandel takes up one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets?In recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.In Justice, an international bestseller, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes a debate that's been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

    The very things done to make markets safer, have, in fact, created a world that is far more dangerous. From the 1987 crash to Citigroup closing the Salomon Arb unit, from staggering losses at UBS to the demise of Long-Term Capital Management, Bookstaber gives readers a front row seat to the management decisions made by some of the most powerful financial figures in the world that led to catastrophe, and describes the impact of his own activities on markets and market crashes. Much of the innovation of the last 30 years has wreaked havoc on the markets and cost trillions of dollars. A Demon of Our Own Design tells the story of man's attempt to manage market risk and what it has wrought. In the process of showing what we have done, Bookstaber shines a light on what the future holds for a world where capital and power have moved from Wall Street institutions to elite and highly leveraged hedge funds.

    But while most are looking at conventional barometers like unemployment rates and housing statistics, the smartest investors are following the curious and often ignored indicators that offer a true sense of where the economy is and where it's heading. These factors have been proven to provide the vital information needed to beat the market.Dow Jones columnist Simon Constable and respected financial historian Robert E. Wright offer valuable tips and insight to help investors forecast and exploit sea changes in the global macroeconomic climate. Unlike other investment handbooks, Constable and Wright’s guide explores the little-known economic indicators that the smartest investors watch closely in order to beat the stock market—from “Big Macs” to “zombie banks.” This valuable and informative read entertains and enlightens while offering essential advice on navigating the global economic climate.