You've heard the term, even if you don't use the tools. But just how big has social media become? Social media has officially surpassed pornography as the top activity on the Internet. People would rather give up their e-mail than their social network. It is so powerful that it is causing a macro shift in the way we live and conduct business. Socialnomics charts this shift from the forefront.Brands can now be strengthened or destroyed by the use of social media. Online networking sites are being used as giant, free focus groups. Advertising is less effective at influencing consumers than the opinions of their peers. If you aren't using social media in your business strategy, you are already behind your competition.Explores how the concept of "Socialnomics" is changing the way businesses produce, market, and sell, eliminating inefficient marketing and middlemen, and making products easier and cheaper for consumers to obtain Learn how successful businesses are connecting with consumers like never before via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social media sites A must-read for anyone wanting to learn about, and harness the power of social media, rather than be squashed by it Author Erik Qualman is a former online marketer for several Top 100 brands and the current Global Vice President of Online Marketing for the world's largest private education firm Socialnomics is an essential book for anyone who wants to understand the implications of social media, and how businesses can tap the power of social media to increase their sales, cut their marketing costs, and reach consumers directly.

    Using everyday terms and readily grasped concepts, Dr. Anthony M. Criniti IV, a former financial consultant and current university-level finance professor, sets out to detail the necessity of finance; to clarify the definition, purpose, and goals of both finance and economics; to explore financial concepts in a straightforward manner; and to stimulate interest and understanding that will lead to ongoing investigation. Finance, although highly interrelated with many subjects, is a separate field of study often confused with other areas, most notably economics. With world wealth accumulating to its highest point in history, the necessity to understand this subject on its own terms is crucial. The Necessity of Finance highlights the need to engage with finance as a separate science, clears up the confusion with related subjects, and coins the word "financialists" to identify the scientists in this dynamic field. Equipping the beginner to intermediate level financial student with vital information and a clear approach for continued study, its unique perspective will also be of value to the advanced student and the practitioner. Topics include: What is the difference between money and wealth? What is risk and return? What kinds of investments exist? What are the different techniques for selecting investments? What role does ethics play in finance? While The Necessity of Finance does not replace required textbooks, it is an indispensible supplemental learning tool that may clarify expectations of future financial journeys, whether in a university or in the marketplace. In this extremely useful overview, Dr. Criniti demonstrates that finance is a very promising science that will benefit those who commit themselves to its study and practice.

    Through stories of everyday people, Smith also shows how Americans are faring today--and explores what we can do, together, to re-create the American Dream. Fitting the pieces of a big puzzle together in the way only a veteran reporter can, Smith shows how events reported in many recent news stories--from the mortgage mess to 401(k) disasters, and including problems in housing, banks, pensions, legislation, jobs, and more--are the outcomes of the evolution of a political and economic dismantling that began in 1971 with Lewis Powell's provocative memo, and continued through the eras of Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush, up to today. With a deep and sophisticated understanding of recent American history, Smith interweaves into the decades-long story of our country's reconfiguration powerful, vivid portraits, both of some of the people who caused this change, and some of those affected by it. This book tells a story about modern America that has never been told this way before. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand America now, and why he or she can't get ahead. "Who Stole the American Dream?" explores how we can recapture lost hope--it is a masterful work about America today by one of our leading print and television journalists.

    The crisis seemed to expose the disaster of small-state, free-market liberalization and deregulation. Keynesian political economy, in contrast, could put the state back at the heart of the economy and arm it with the knowledge needed to rescue us. But what it was supposed to rescue us from was not so clear. Was it the end of capitalism or the end of the world? For Keynesianism, the answer is both. Keynesians are not and never have been out to save capitalism, but rather to save civilization from itself. It is political economy, they promise, for the world in which we actually live: a world in which prices are “sticky,” information is “asymmetrical,” and uncertainty inescapable. In this world, things will definitely not take care of themselves in the long run. Poverty is ineradicable, markets fail, and revolutions lead to tyranny. Keynesianism is thus modern liberalism’s most persuasive internal critique, meeting two centuries of crisis with a proposal for capital without capitalism and revolution without revolutionaries.If our current crises have renewed Keynesianism for so many, it is less because the present is worth saving, than because the future seems out of control. In that situation, Keynesianism is a perfect fit: a faith for the faithless.

    Revisionist in nature, it reaches the conclusion that monarchy is a lesser evil than democracy, but outlines deficiencies in both. Its methodology is axiomatic-deductive, allowing the writer to derive economic and sociological theorems, and then apply them to interpret historical events.A compelling chapter on time preference describes the progress of civilization as lowering time preferences as capital structure is built, and explains how the interaction between people can lower time all around, with interesting parallels to the Ricardian Law of Association. By focusing on this transformation, the author is able to interpret many historical phenomena, such as rising levels of crime, degeneration of standards of conduct and morality, and the growth of the mega-state. In underscoring the deficiencies of both monarchy and democracy, the author demonstrates how these systems are both inferior to a natural order based on private-property.Hoppe deconstructs the classical liberal belief in the possibility of limited government and calls for an alignment of conservatism and libertarianism as natural allies with common goals. He defends the proper role of the production of defense as undertaken by insurance companies on a free market, and describes the emergence of private law among competing insurers.Having established a natural order as superior on utilitarian grounds, the author goes on to assess the prospects for achieving a natural order. Informed by his analysis of the deficiencies of social democracy, and armed with the social theory of legitimation, he forsees secession as the likely future of the US and Europe, resulting in a multitude of region and city-states. This book complements the author's previous work defending the ethics of private property and natural order. Democracy - The God that Failed will be of interest to scholars and students of history, political economy, and political philosophy.

    Over the past two centuries or so, capitalism has undergone continual change - economic cycles that lurch from boom to bust - and has always emerged transformed and strengthened. Surveying this turbulent history, Paul Mason wonders whether today we are on the brink of a change so big, so profound, that this time capitalism itself, the immensely complex system by which entire societies function, has reached its limits and is changing into something wholly new.At the heart of this change is information technology: a revolution that, as Mason shows, has the potential to reshape utterly our familiar notions of work, production and value; and to destroy an economy based on markets and private ownership - in fact, he contends, it is already doing so. Almost unnoticed, in the niches and hollows of the market system, whole swathes of economic life are changing.. Goods and services that no longer respond to the dictates of neoliberalism are appearing, from parallel currencies and time banks, to cooperatives and self-managed online spaces. Vast numbers of people are changing their behaviour, discovering new forms of ownership, lending and doing business that are distinct from, and contrary to, the current system of state-backed corporate capitalism.In this groundbreaking book Mason shows how, from the ashes of the recent financial crisis, we have the chance to create a more socially just and sustainable global economy. Moving beyond capitalism, he shows, is no longer a utopian dream. This is the first time in human history in which, equipped with an understanding of what is happening around us, we can predict and shape, rather than simply react to, seismic change.