Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini electrified his profession and the larger financial community by predicting the current crisis well in advance of anyone else. Unlike most in his profession who treat economic disasters as freakish once-in-a-lifetime events without clear cause, Roubini, after decades of careful research around the world, realized that they were both probable and predictable. Armed with an unconventional blend of historical analysis and global economics, Roubini has forced politicians, policy makers, investors, and market watchers to face a long-neglected truth: financial systems are inherently fragile and prone to collapse. Drawing on the parallels from many countries and centuries, Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm, a professor of economic history and a "New York Times Magazine" writer, show that financial cataclysms are as old and as ubiquitous as capitalism itself. The last two decades alone have witnessed comparable crises in countries as diverse as Mexico, Thailand, Brazil, Pakistan, and Argentina. All of these crises-not to mention the more sweeping cataclysms such as the Great Depression-have much in common with the current downturn. Bringing lessons of earlier episodes to bear on our present predicament, Roubini and Mihm show how we can recognize and grapple with the inherent instability of the global financial system, understand its pressure points, learn from previous episodes of "irrational exuberance," pinpoint the course of global contagion, and plan for our immediate future. Perhaps most important, the authors-considering theories, statistics, and mathematical models with the skepticism that recent history warrants explain how the world's economy can get out of the mess we're in, and stay out. In Roubini's shadow, economists and investors are increasingly realizing that they can no longer afford to consider crises the black swans of financial history. A vital and timeless book, "Crisis Economics" proves calamities to be not only predictable but also preventable and, with the right medicine, curable."

    From war zones, natural disasters and failed states, to aging societies and the challenges of technological advancement, every life in this book has been hit by a seismic shock, violently broken or changed in some way.People living in these odd and marginal places are ignored by number crunching economists and political pollsters alike. Science suggests this is a mistake. This book tells the personal stories of humans living in extreme situations, and of the financial infrastructure they create. Here, economies are not concerned with the familiar stock market crashes, housing crises, or banking scandals of the financial pages.In his quest for a purer view of how economies succeed and fail, Richard Davies takes the reader off the beaten path to places where part of the economy has been repressed, removed, destroyed or turbocharged. By travelling to each of them and discovering what life is really like, Extreme Economies tells small stories that shed light on today’s biggest economic questions, with vital lessons for our future.

    One that will yield market-beating portfolio returns in both good times and bad. The Gone Fishin' Portfolio shows you what that strategy is, how it works, and why you should begin using it immediately.The innovative approach outlined throughout these pages will help investors enjoy a notably high probability of success by using an investment strategy based on the notion that nobody knows what the market is likely to do next, which, in effect, allows investors to capitalize on uncertainty.Details one of the safest and simplest ways to reach your long-term financial goals, and explores the financial and psychological challenges you're likely to face in the years ahead The "Gone Fishin' Portfolio" is based on a Nobel Prize-winning investment strategy that takes just twenty minutes to implement Discusses the relationship between risk and reward in financial markets, and reveals how the investment industry really works The Gone Fishin' Portfolio will allow you to reach your most important investment goals, beat Wall Street at its own game, and achieve the financial independence you deserve.

    

    The economic narratives that underpinned these eras—the gold standard, the Bretton Woods regime, the "Washington Consensus"—brought great success and great failure. In this eloquent challenge to the reigning wisdom on globalization, Dani Rodrik offers a new narrative, one that embraces an ineluctable tension: we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. When the social arrangements of democracies inevitably clash with the international demands of globalization, national priorities should take precedence. Combining history with insight, humor with good-natured critique, Rodrik's case for a customizable globalization supported by a light frame of international rules shows the way to a balanced prosperity as we confront today's global challenges in trade, finance, and labor markets.

    

    Now Solin offers the smartest guide to money management and financial planning yet.From managing your debt, boosting your savings, and owning (or renting) a home to buying insurance, maximizing investment returns, and retiring when you want to, The Smartest Money Book You'll Ever Read is your road map to financial freedom-and to enjoying yourself along the way.

    Bull By The Horns: Fighting To Save Main Street From Wall Street, by Bair, Sheila

    This "devastating rebuttal to Fatal Vision" (Boston Phoenix) demonstrates that the jury was not privy to crucial evidence in the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret Captain convicted of the murders of his wife and two young daughters.

    We have been through the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, unemployment remains stubbornly high, and talk of a double-dip recession persists. Americans are not pulling the world economy out of its sluggish state -- if anything we are looking to Asia to drive a recovery. Median wages have risen only slowly since the 1970s, and this multi-decade stagnation is not yet over. By contrast, the living standards of earlier generations would double every few decades. The Democratic Party seeks to expand government spending even when the middle class feels squeezed, the public sector doesn't always perform well, and we have no good plan for paying for forthcoming entitlement spending. To the extent Republicans have a consistent platform, it consists of unrealistic claims about how tax cuts will raise revenue and stimulate economic growth. The Republicans, when they hold power, are often a bigger fiscal disaster than the Democrats. How did we get into this mess? Imagine a tropical island where the citrus and bananas hang from the trees. Low-hanging literal fruit -- you don't even have to cook the stuff. In a figurative sense, the American economy has enjoyed lots of low-hanging fruit since at least the seventeenth century: free land; immigrant labor; and powerful new technologies. Yet during the last forty years, that low-hanging fruit started disappearing and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau and the trees are barer than we would like to think. That's it. That is what has gone wrong. The problem won't be solved overnight, but there are reasons to be optimistic. We simply have to recognize the underlying causes of our past prosperity-low hanging fruit-and how we will come upon more of it.

    Arthur Thompson proved them all wrong. For forty years Thompson ruled Glasgow's mean streets, always devising new terror.

    A clear and effective guide to policy analysis addressing the psychology, as well as the logic, of the analytical process Full of helpful hints, such as warnings about language traps, strategies for economizing on data collection, and checklists for generating solutions, this book is widely used by students, practicing policy officials in government, and professionals in executive-level training programmes.

    Studying the predictable things people do as they age is the ultimate tool for understanding trends. For instance, Dent can tell a client exactly when people will spend the most on potato chips. And he can explain why our economy has risen and fallen with the peak spending of generations, and why we now face a growing demographic cliff with the accelerating retirement of the Baby Boomers around the world.Dent predicted the impact of the Boomers hitting their highest growth in spending in the 1990s, when most economists saw the United States declining. And he anticipated the decline of Japan in the 1990s, when economists were proclaiming it would overtake the U.S. economy.But now, Dent argues, the fundamental demographics have turned against the United States and will hit more countries ahead. Inflation rises when a larger than usual block of younger people enter the workforce, and it wanes when large numbers of older people retire, downsize their homes, and cut their spending. The mass retirement of the Boomers won’t just hold back inflation; it and massive debt deleveraging will actually cause deflation—weakening the economy the most from 2014 into 2019.Dent explores the implications of his controversial predictions. He offers advice on retirement planning, health care, real estate, education, investing, and business strategies. For instance . . .BUSINESSES should get lean and mean now. Identify segments that you can clearly dominate and sell off or shut down others. If you don’t, the economy will do it for you, more painfully and less profitably.INVESTORS should sell stocks by mid-January 2014 and look to buy them back in 2015 or later at a Dow as low as 5,800.FAMILIES should wait to buy real estate in areas where home prices have gone back to where the bubble started in early 2000.GOVERNMENTS need to stop the endless stimulus that creates more bubbles and kills the middle class, and should assist in restructuring the unprecedented debt bubble of 1983–2008.Dent shows that if you take the time to understand demographic data, using it to your advantage isn’t all that difficult. By following his suggestions, readers will be able to find the upside to the downturn and learn how to survive and prosper during the most challenging years ahead.

    David Friedman's standpoint, known as 'anarcho-capitalism', has attracted a growing following as a desirable social ideal since the first edition of The Machinery of Freedom appeared in 1971. This new edition is thoroughly revised and includes much new material, exploring fresh applications of the author's libertarian principles. Among topics covered: how the U.S. would benefit from unrestricted immigration; why prohibition of drugs is inconsistent with a free society; why the welfare state mainly takes from the poor to help the not-so-poor; how police protection, law courts, and new laws could all be provided privately; what life was really like under the anarchist legal system of medieval Iceland; why non-intervention is the best foreign policy; why no simple moral rules can generate acceptable social policies -- and why these policies must be derived in part from the new discipline of economic analysis of law.

    Economics has things to say about AC/DC and Arthur Boyd, dating and dieting, Grange and Geelong, murder and poverty. Incentives matter, often in surprising ways, and seemingly simple everyday activities can have unexpected outcomes. Insights from behavioural economics can also help us make better decisions.If you like fresh facts and provocative ideas, this is great train and weekend reading. You'll soon see the world and the people around you in a new light.'Essential reading for the 21st century' - Karl Kruszelnicki'Economics isn't the only thing, but Andrew Leigh reminds us that it can explain almost everything.' - George Megalogenis'What do you get when you cross a politician with an economist? A captivating, charming, and nicely-written book. Who knew?' - Annabel CrabbAndrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, ACT. He has a PhD from Harvard, was a Professor of Economics at the Australian National University, appears regularly in the media, and is author of several books, including Battlers and Billionaires.