Global Finance

This brilliantly original book dismantles the underlying assumptions that drive the decisions made by companies and governments throughout the world, to show that our shared narrative of the global economy is deeply flawed. If left unexamined, they will lead corporations and countries astray, with dire consequences for us all.

On March 14, 2012, more than three million people read Greg Smith's bombshell op-ed in the New York Times titled Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs. The column immediately went viral, became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter, and drew passionate responses from former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, legendary General Electric CEO Jack Welch, and New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg.

The rising unhappiness that leaders didn’t see. That’s because while leaders pay close attention to measures like GDP or unemployment, almost none of them track their citizens’ well-being. The implications of this blind spot are significant and far-reaching—leaders missed the citizen unhappiness that triggered events ranging from the Arab uprisings to Brexit to the election of Donald Trump. What are they going to miss next?

After the bursting of the real-estate bubble, the US pushed a monetary and fiscal policy that is, at best, blatantly wrong, and, at worst, carries enormous financial risk. And because Washington knows this, America's greatest weapon - its propaganda machine - has been called into service, diverting attention away from the fact that it was and continues to be government interference in the market economy that's lead us to where we are now, namely at the end of one financial calamity and the beginning of yet another.

There is no single theory of what caused the Great Depression and never will be, Morris argues. Macreconomics is a social science, and such a massive event always takes its shape from a terrible confluence of factors. The mismanagement of the gold standard, the growth in consumer credit, the insistence on deflation, and the inability of the major European belligerents of World War I to agree on a reconstruction agenda are just a few of the shocks that pushed the world into an economic Armageddon.

John Perkins has seen the signs of today's economic meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiascos, the banking industry collapse, the rising tide of unemployment, the shuttering of small businesses across the landscape are all too familiar symptoms of a far greater disease.

The global finance system can be regulated to prevent massive credit fraud, tame capitalism, confront the sovereign debt crisis, and move towards investing in the real economy and full employment. "Obamanomics" and American reinvention can lead to a sustained economic recovery but only together with major domestic, European, and global monetary reforms in cooperation with emerging nations.

The ongoing tumult in financial markets and the global economy began when some of our most esteemed financial institutions, our government, and even average citizens abdicated their collective responsibilities, eventually selling out investors and selling off the American Dream itself.

Branko Milanovic presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that make inequality rise and fall within and among nations. He also reveals who has been helped the most by globalization, who has been held back, and what policies might tilt the balance toward economic justice.

Is the financial collapse just one of several signs that we are living in the final days of Earth's history? In The Coming Economic Armageddon, David Jeremiah says we can know the meaning behind what we see in the daily news - and understand and prepare for living in the New Global Economy.

In No Ordinary Disruption, the directors of the McKinsey Global Institute, the flagship think tank of the world's leading consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, dive deeply behind current headlines to analyze the key forces transforming the global economy over the next two decades - and most importantly, to explain what business and government leaders need to do to reset their intuitions and take advantage of the disruptions ahead.

Corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and acting ethically are all accepted business aims, but their meaning and implementation in a global context is far less clear-cut. Global Business Ethics cuts through the confusion to provide a coherent basis for ethical decision-making within the complications of the international business landscape.

In Connectography, visionary strategist Parag Khanna travels from Ukraine to Iran, Mongolia to North Korea, Pakistan to Nigeria, and across the Arctic Circle to explain the unprecedented changes affecting every part of the planet. He shows how militaries are deployed to protect supply chains as much as borders, and how nations are less at war over territory than engaged in tugs-of-war over pipelines, railways, shipping lanes, and Internet cables. The new arms race is to connect to the most markets.

Una frattura si allarga sempre di più. L'abbiamo ignorata, sottovalutata, creduta lontana, eppure da cinquant'anni si amplia e si ramifica, spalancando voragini tra i continenti, le nazioni e i cittadini stessi. È "The Divide", il divario economico tra ricchi e poveri del mondo: 4,3 miliardi di persone vivono con meno di 5 dollari al giorno mentre otto uomini posseggono la stessa ricchezza della metà più povera del pianeta.

The new world of results-driven aid that could put an end to extreme poverty. Drawing on two decades covering global development as editor in chief of Devex, Raj Kumar explores how nontraditional models of philanthropy and aid are empowering the world’s poorest people to make progress.

We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in which global industries are controlled by just a few giant firms - big banks, big pharma, and big tech, just to name a few. But concern over what Louis Brandeis called the "curse of bigness" can no longer remain the province of specialist lawyers and economists, for it has spilled over into policy and politics, even threatening democracy itself.

With staffs that are collectively larger than the Russian army and combined revenues of over $130 billion a year, the Big Four accounting firms - Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG - are a keystone of global commerce. But leading scholar Ian Gow and award-winning author Stuart Kells warn that a house of cards may be about to fall. This account of the past, present, and likely future of the Big Four is essential listening for anyone perplexed or fascinated by professional services.

Remember those summer vacations when you were a kid? Well, that’s what your retirement can feel like…but without returning to school anymore. Don’t feel guilty about using your savings to do as you wish or go wherever you want—the beautiful country of Costa Rica is ready to welcome you. The Baby Boomer's Guide to Costa Rica Retirement will show you how to settle down in Costa Rica in a cost-effective way, even if you think you need a hefty savings to afford the cost of living (which you definitely don’t!).

The climate is the fundamental issue of our time, and now we face a critical decision. Whether to be optimistic or fatalistic, whether to profess skepticism or to take action. Yet it seems we can barely agree on what is really going on, let alone what needs to be done. We urgently need facts, not opinions. Insights, not statistics. And a shift from thinking about climate change as a “me” problem to a “we” problem. The Carbon Almanac is a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration that focuses on what we know, what has come before, and what might happen next.

China's growing role in the global economy is showing no sign of retreat. Indeed, recent events have only increased China's influence - to the point where China is poised to edge out the United States and take the lead. For investors like you, this tectonic shift poses difficult challenges - along with tremendous opportunities. In China's Rise and the New Age of Gold, one of the 21st century's top economic experts, Stephen Leeb, lays out his compelling argument that explosive gains in gold lie ahead.