Government Money

From thriving Motor City to the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history, Detroit has become the nation's cautionary tale. But what led to the fateful day of the filing, and how did the city survive this crisis? Journalist Nathan Bomey delivers the inside story of Detroit's decline and the people who fought to save it against impossible odds: Governor Rick Snyder, a self-proclaimed nerd; emergency manager Kevyn Orr, a lawyer with singular dedication; Judge Steven Rhodes, the city's conscience; and retirees who fought to ensure that Detroit kept its promises.

For over a decade now, the American economy has been on a rollercoaster - an economic boom between 2003 and 2008, followed by a severe economic downturn, and with a historically slow and weak recovery from 2009 until the present. The recession of 2008-2009 had its origin in years of monetary mismanagement by the Federal Reserve System and misguided economic policies emanating from Washington, DC.

Writing with wit and verve, Mike Veseth (a.k.a. the Wine Economist) tells the compelling story of the war between the market trends that are redrawing the world wine map and the terroirists who resist them. Wine and the wine business are at a critical crossroad today, transformed by three powerful forces. Veseth begins with the first force, globalization, which is shifting the center of the wine world as global wine markets provide enthusiasts with a rich but overwhelming array of choices.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, one economic model emerged triumphant. Capitalism - spanning a spectrum from laissez-faire to authoritarian - shapes the market economies of all the wealthiest and fastest-growing nations. The trouble is cracking its shiny veneer. In the US, economic growth is no longer matched by economic development. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, natural resources are exploited for short-term profits, and good jobs are hard to find.

Where fresh water appears to be abundant and generally accessible, chronic pollution may be relatively ignored as a public issue. Yet there are those whose lives, livelihoods, and traditions are touched directly by the destructive albeit essential relationship between humans and water.

While America is still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis, a high unemployment rate, and a surge in government debt, China's economy is the second largest in the world, and many predict it will surpass the United States' by 2020. President Obama called China's rise "a Sputnik moment" - will America seize this moment or continue to treat China as its scapegoat? Mainstream media and the U.S. government regularly target China as a threat. Rather than viewing China's power, influence, and contributions to the global economy in a negative light, Ann Lee asks, "What can America learn from its competition?"

American politics has been hijacked. Not by "neocons" or "theocons", but by a fringe group of economic extremists obsessed with radical ideas that favor no one but themselves and their business interests. With dark and engaging wit, Jonathan Chait shows how over the past three decades these canny zealots have gamed the political system and the media.

In this gripping expose from nationally best-selling author Michelle Malkin, you'll learn that the immigration crisis is no accident. Powerful special interest groups are pulling strings behind the scenes to keep US borders open so that a flood of cheap labor can enrich our nation's elite and new generations of Democratic voters can steal our political future. Who is funding America's immigration crisis? Who is profiting off of our vulnerability? In Open Borders, Inc., Malkin follows the money and motives to show that how we're falling victim to a massive immigration scam.

Cybersecurity incidents make the news with startling regularity. Each breach makes headlines, inspires panic, instigates lawsuits, and is then forgotten. The cycle of alarm and amnesia continues with the next attack, and the one after that. Cybersecurity expert Josephine Wolff argues that we shouldn't forget about these incidents, we should investigate their trajectory, from technology flaws to reparations for harm done to their impact on future security measures. We can learn valuable lessons in the aftermath of cybersecurity breaches.

With the global economy recovering from a steep recession, and with that recovery challenging our long-held ideas about what careers and the market can be, learning the basics of economics has never been more essential. Principles such as gains from trade, the role of profit and loss, and the secondary effects of government spending, taxes, and borrowing risk continue to be critically important to the way America's economy functions, and critically important to understand for those hoping to further their professional lives - even their personal lives.

Dexter Roberts lived in Beijing for two decades working as a reporter on economics, business and politics for Bloomberg Businessweek. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Roberts explores the reality behind today's financially-ascendant China and pulls the curtain back on how the Chinese manufacturing machine is actually powered.

The Chinese government has more control over more wealth than any other government in world history. With the Communist Party controlling the "commanding heights" of the world's second-largest economy, China appears ideally structured to pursue economic statecraft, using economic resources to advance its foreign policy goals. Yet as this book shows, domestic complications frequently constrain Chinese leaders. They have responded with a distinctive approach to economic statecraft: orchestration.

Ryan Hass charts a path forward in America's relationship and rivalry with China rooted in the relative advantages America already possesses. Hass argues that while competition will remain the defining trait of the relationship, both countries will continue to be impacted - for good or ill - by their capacity to coordinate on common challenges that neither can solve on its own, such as pandemic disease, global economic recession, climate change, and nuclear nonproliferation.

The Chinese economy appears destined for failure, the financial bubble forever in peril of popping, the real estate sector doomed to collapse, the factories fated for bankruptcy. Orlik games out what will happen if the bubble that never pops finally does. The magnitude of the shock to China and the world would be tremendous. For those in the West nervously watching China's rise as a geopolitical challenger, the alternative could be even less palatable.

Governments have always struggled to tax in ways that are effective and tolerably fair. Sometimes they fail grotesquely, as when, in 1898, the British ignited a rebellion in Sierra Leone by imposing a tax on huts - and, in repressing it, ended up burning the very huts they intended to tax. Sometimes they succeed astonishingly, as when, in 18th-century Britain, a cut in the tax on tea massively increased revenue. Two leading authorities on taxation provide a fascinating and informative tour through these and many other episodes in tax history, both preposterous and dramatic....

Revolution & Counter Revolution is an account of what happened in Prussia, Austria, and other German states during 1848, describing the impact on both middle-class and working-class aspirations and on the idea of German unification. Events in Austria and Prussia are discussed, along with the role of the Poles and Czechs and Panslavism, which Engels was against.

The current conventional-wisdom view of our soon-to-be future is rose-tinted: Automation will free millions of people from the drudgery of work, then by taxing the robots doing all the work, we can pay everyone universal basic income (UBI), enabling a life of leisure and artistic pursuit for all. The result: a future of universal happiness. But is this accurate? Is this what UBI is actually capable of doing? More importantly, is this what we want? And even more importantly: Will this “future” be our best future? Listen to find out more.

Das deutsche Wirtschaftsmodell ist unausgewogen und hochgradig riskant. Der Grund: Die starke Abhängigkeit von der Droge Exportismus. Andreas Nölke zeigt die aktuellen Gefahren der Exportlastigkeit der deutschen Wirtschaft und liefert ein fulminantes Plädoyer für ein neues Wirtschaftsmodell, das nachhaltiger, stabiler und im globalen Kontext ausgewogener balanciert ist.

China ist keine ferne Bedrohung mehr, China ist da! Politisch und wirtschaftlich. Das Reich der Mitte ist ehrgeizig, schnell und gut organisiert, es ist innovativ wie das Silicon Valley und bestimmt zunehmend die internationalen Spielregeln. China setzt auf Wachstum und digitale Technologien und hält sich nicht mit dem westlichen Demokratiemodell auf. Auf allen Kontinenten investiert es in Bodenschätze, Schlüsselindustrien und Infrastruktur - auch bei uns.

Die Weltwirtschaft steht vor einer Zeitenwende: Asien ist dabei, endgültig die Vorherrschaft im globalen Wettbewerb zu übernehmen. Der Kontinent, auf dem über die Hälfte aller Menschen lebt, setzt sich als Technologiechampion an die Spitze - flankiert von den neuen Seidenstraßen, einem der ehrgeizigsten Infrastrukturprogramme in der Geschichte der Menschheit.