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.

    Each time, the experts have chimed, "this time is different"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes--from medieval currency debasements to today's subprime catastrophe. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, leading economists whose work has been influential in the policy debate concerning the current financial crisis, provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations. The authors draw important lessons from history to show us how much--or how little--we have learned. Using clear, sharp analysis and comprehensive data, Reinhart and Rogoff document that financial fallouts occur in clusters and strike with surprisingly consistent frequency, duration, and ferocity. They examine the patterns of currency crashes, high and hyperinflation, and government defaults on international and domestic debts--as well as the cycles in housing and equity prices, capital flows, unemployment, and government revenues around these crises. While countries do weather their financial storms, Reinhart and Rogoff prove that short memories make it all too easy for crises to recur. An important book that will affect policy discussions for a long time to come, This Time Is Different exposes centuries of financial missteps.

    Coggan's account of the rise of the world economy is accessible and mercifully free of jargon'Sunday TimesMore tracks the development of the world economy, starting with the first obsidian blades that made their way from what is now Turkey to the Iran-Iraq border 7000 years before Christ, and ending with the Sino-American trade war that we are in right now.Taking history in great strides, More illustrates broad changes by examining details from the design of the standard medieval cottage to the stranglehold that Paris's three belt-buckle-making guilds exercised over innovation in the field of holding up trousers. Along the way Coggan reveals that historical economies were far more sophisticated than we might imagine - tied together by webs of credit and financial instruments much like the modern economy.Coggan shows how, at every step of our long journey, it was connections between people - allowing more trade, more specialisation, more ideas and more freedom - that always created the conditions of prosperity.

    The Boys' Club is the must-read inside story behind the power and politics of AFL, Australia's biggest sport.Revealing how the fledgling state administrative body evolved into the Australian Football League and its meteoric rise to become one of the richest and most powerful organisations in the land, award-winning investigative journalist Mick Warner delivers a fascinating insight into key figures and their networks.Tracking the rise of the game and the AFL figureheads, The Boys' Club lifts the lid on the scandals, secrets and deal making that have shaped the Australian game.

    The world is changing dramatically and in an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads, where ties are being strengthened and mutual cooperation established.This prescient contemporary history provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. Following the Silk Roads eastwards from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, Peter Frankopan assesses the global reverberations of continual shifts in the centre of power – all too often absent from headlines in the west.The New Silk Roads asks us to re-examine who we are and where we stand in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihoods depend.The Silk Roads, a major reassessment of world history, has sold over 1 million copies worldwide.

    Digital monopolies like Google, Facebook and Amazon act as gatekeepers to the digital world. Amazon is capturing almost all online shopping dollars. We have the illusion of choice, but for most critical decisions, we have only one or two companies, when it comes to high speed Internet, health insurance, medical care, mortgage title insurance, social networks, Internet searches, or even consumer goods like toothpaste. Every day, the average American transfers a little of their pay check to monopolists and oligopolists. The solution is vigorous anti-trust enforcement to return America to a period where competition created higher economic growth, more jobs, higher wages and a level playing field for all. The Myth of Capitalism is the story of industrial concentration, but it matters to everyone, because the stakes could not be higher. It tackles the big questions of: why is the US becoming a more unequal society, why is economic growth anemic despite trillions of dollars of federal debt and money printing, why the number of start-ups has declined, and why are workers losing out.

    Over the course of the next 47 years, the company's reach grew until almost all of India south of Delhi was effectively ruled from a boardroom in the city of London.

    As such, I believe that it is of value to anyone who is interested in understanding accounting, from high school students to undergrads to MBAs to business executives." – Professor Paul Healy, Harvard Business SchoolFor anyone who has struggled with accounting comes this quick read like no other. Using a breakthrough visual system called Color Accounting™ this best-seller makes learning accounting easy. The book engages you in the story of an ambitious man being taught accounting and business by his wise grandfather. The parable brilliantly simplifies how accounting and business truly work, in such a way that anyone can really ‘get it’. Color Accounting strips away obscure detail and jargon – leaving you to focus on the essence of what you really need to know.You will literally see how accounting works in the many colorful diagrams that lead you through the setting up and running of a business - clarifying principles that you can apply to your own life and workplace. By reading The Color Accounting Parable you will learn to read and interpret Balance Sheets and Income Statements with confidence. Plus you will learn how to avoid 5 fatal mistakes that business owners often make. The authors are two certified accountants who worked for the largest accounting firm in the world. They draw on their experiences teaching at some of the most reputable universities, corporations, banks, law firms, not-for-profit organizations and government agencies in the United States and around the world.

    Everything else can be made, bought or created. Our life is made up of around 600,000 hours and every second is of infinite value. We live in an attention economy where corporations are fighting for our time with the goal of monetizing our every second. The money we use loses value and devalues our time through inflation. When we work, we are exchanging our limited time for money whose quantity increases every year. It hasn’t always been this way. People used gold as money for a reason; it was also a limited resource. Now, what does the future hold?Valuing your time is the first step to improving your life. Knowing that your time is the only limited resource makes you more selective about the things you do, the people you spend your time with and the assets you choose to store your wealth in. Once you learn to appreciate your time, you will get busy doing the things you love and start making better financial choices.

    In the four decades between 1969 and 2008, these economists played a leading role in reshaping taxation and public spending and clearing the way for globalization. They reshaped the government's approach to regulation, assigning a value to human life to determine which rules are worthwhile. Economists even convinced President Nixon to end military conscription.The United States was the epicenter of the intellectual ferment, but the embrace of markets was a global phenomenon, seizing the imagination of politicians in countries including the United Kingdom, Chile and New Zealand.This book is also a reckoning. The revolution failed to deliver on its central promise of increased prosperity. In the United States, growth has slowed in every successive decade since the 1960s. And the cost of the failure was steep. Policymakers traded well-paid jobs for low-cost electronics; the loss of work weakened the fabric of society and of democracy. Soaring inequality extends far beyond incomes: Life expectancy for less affluent Americans has declined in recent years. And the focus on efficiency has come at the expense of the future: Lower taxes instead of education and infrastructure; limited environmental regulation as oceans rise and California burns.

    Economic and political forces are preventing markets from correcting themselves, and we're now living in an unprecedented age of oversupply.Governments and central banks across the developed world have tried every policy tool imaginable, yet our economies remain sluggish or worse. Howdid we get here, and how can advanced nations compete and prosper once more?In this bold call to arms, economic policy expert Daniel Alpert argues that a global labor glut, excess productive capacity, and a rising ocean of cheap capital have kept the economies of the first world, and notably the United States, mired in underemployment and anemic growth.Distracted by a technology boom and a massive debt bubble in the 1990s and early 2000s, advanced nations failed to assess the ultimate impact of the torrent of labor and capital unleashed by formerly socialist economies. After the financial crisis of 2008, the United States and Europe joined an already sclerotic Japan in dire economic straits. Today, as the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and others poach jobs from Western Europe, the United States, and Japan, household incomes in the developed world continue to decline. Many policymakers believe in outdated supplyside economic remedies. They miss the connection between global oversupply and the lack of domestic investment and growth. But Alpert shows how they are intertwined: We cannot understand the housing bubble and the financial crisis without appreciating how the rise of the emerging nations distorted the economies of rich countries. And we can’t chart a path for growth in the developed world without recognizing that many of these distorting forces are still at work.The Age of Oversupply offers a bold, fresh approach to fixing the West’s economic woes through large-scale fiscal stimulus measures, investments in infrastructure, and an aggressive private debt reduction plan. It also delivers a vigorous challenge to proponents of austerity economics.

    Weiner reveals how foreign countries and private investors are increasingly controlling the global economy and secretly wresting power from the United States in ways that our government cannot reverse and about which the average American knows nothing. The most potent force in global commerce today is not the Federal Reserve, not the international banks, not the governments of the G7 countries, and certainly not the European Union. Rather, it is the multi-trillion-dollar network of super-rich, secretive, and largely unregulated investment vehicles—foreign sovereign wealth funds, government-run corporations, private equity funds, and hedge funds—that are quietly buying up the world, piece by valuable piece. As Weiner’s groundbreaking account shows, the shadow market doesn’t have a physical headquarters such as Wall Street. It doesn’t have a formal leadership or an index to track or a single zone of exchange. Rather, it comprises an invisible and ever-shifting global nexus where money mixes with geopolitical power, often with great speed and secrecy.   Led by cash-flush nations such as China, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and even Norway, the shadow market is hiring the brightest international financial talent money can buy and is now assembling the gigantic investment portfolios that will form the power structure of tomorrow’s economy.   Taking advantage of the Great Recession and subsequent liquidity problems in the United States and Europe, the major players of the shadow market are deploying staggering amounts of cash, controlling the capital markets, and securing not only major stakes in multinational companies but huge tracts of farmland and natural resources across the world. Yet that’s not all; they’re also pursuing political agendas made possible by their massive wealth and are becoming increasingly aggressive with the United States and other governments.   Highly informative and genuinely startling, Eric J. Weiner’s up-to-date account gets out in front of daily events, with proof of his argument destined to appear in the news for years to come. The Shadow Market moves the conversation from “international competition” to “global financial warfare,” and stands as an urgent must-read for anyone interested in the future of the global economy, America’s position in the world, or how and where to invest money today. DID YOU KNOW? ***The Pentagon has run elaborate simulations of global financial war. Result: America lost, and the shadow market won. ***The U.S. dollar is under siege as a global currency; oil-producing nations have already begun secret discussions about replacing it in oil trading. ***While Greece was burning in the spring of 2010, the shadow market nations were spending hundreds of billions of dollars all over the world rather than helping to fix the European crisis. Why? Because it wasn’t their problem. ***With its wealth of natural resources, Brazil may be more powerful than Germany, France, and Great Britain put together, and may soon rival the United States for economic supremacy in the Western Hemisphere. ***In April 2009, China told the International Monetary Fund to sell 3,217 tons of gold. How much did China buy? That’s a secret. What else is China buying? As many of the oil reserves in non–Middle Eastern countries as it can, including in Canada. It has bought so many Australian natural resource companies that Australia is getting nervous. And some would say that China has, in effect, already purchased Taiwan. ***Many of the shadow market countries are racing to improve their food-security risks by buying large swaths of farmland in other countries, potentially at the risk of starving the local citizens. Saudi Arabia has a farm the size of Connecticut in Indonesia, and Korean industrial giant Daewoo controls half the arable land of Madagascar. ***Iran is China’s third largest oil supplier and in return receives significant protection from Chinese diplomats, who are increasingly important players on the geopolitical stage. ***The shadow market countries will soon control nearly $20 trillion in assets, a sum greater than the gross domestic product of the United States.

    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.

    The original and bestselling 2000 edition of Irrational Exuberance evoked Alan Greenspan’s infamous 1996 use of that phrase to explain the alternately soaring and declining stock market. It predicted the collapse of the tech stock bubble through an analysis of the structural, cultural, and psychological factors behind levels of price growth not reflected in any other sector of the economy. In the second edition (2005), Shiller folded real estate into his analysis of market volatility, marshalling evidence that housing prices were dangerously inflated as well, a bubble that could soon burst, leading to a “string of bankruptcies” and a “worldwide recession.” That indeed came to pass, with consequences that the 2009 preface to this edition deals with. Irrational Exuberance is more than ever a cogent, chilling, and astonishingly far-seeing analytical work that no one with any money in any market anywhere can afford not to read–and heed.

    A timely exploration of the life and work of world-changing thinkers--from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes--and how their ideas would solve the great economic problems we face today.