Government Money

According to Unintended Consequences, the conventional wisdom masks the real causes of our economic disruption and puts us at risk of a slew of unintended—and potentially dangerous—consequences. It’s a fascinating and contrarian case for how the economy really works, what went wrong over the past decade, and what steps we can take to start growing again.

In order to illuminate the fallacies of economism, James Kwak first offers a primer on supply and demand, market equilibrium, and social welfare: the underpinnings of most popular economic arguments. Then he provides a historical account of how economism became a prevalent mode of thought in the United States - focusing on the people who packaged Econ 101 into sound bites that were then repeated until they took on the aura of truth.

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.

Travis' vision for a Utopian world society is presented with new ideas as to how to run and organize the system. It is a different twist on what many others have tried to propose.

The tragedy of our Indian policies demands reexamination immediately - not only because they make the lives of millions of American citizens harder and more dangerous - but also because they represent a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with modern liberalism. They are the result of decades of politicians and bureaucrats showering a victimized people with money and cultural sensitivity instead of what they truly need-the education, the legal protections, and the autonomy to improve their own situation.

The idea that people are basically driven by individualism and economic incentives and that prosperity and good societies come from top-down leadership has dominated politics for the last 30 years (from some perspectives, much longer). This book shows that the age of homo economicus and centralisation is coming to an end. Instead, Collier and Kay argue that community and mutuality will be the drivers of successful societies in the future - as they are already in some parts of the world.

A Tale of Two Economies details the ongoing battle between the material and the monetary economies. The good news is that the development of modern technology in our material economy has us on the brink of prosperity. The bad news is that a turf war over the money supply in our monetary economy is destroying our prospects for enjoying this success. Thus, we have rampant inflation and a growing gap between the rich and the poor today.

Combining classical Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the new labor history pioneered by E. P. Thompson and Herbert Gutman, David Roediger's widely acclaimed book provides an original study of the formative years of working-class racism in the United States. This, he argues, cannot be explained simply with reference to economic advantage; rather, white working-class racism is underpinned by a complex series of psychological and ideological mechanisms that reinforce racial stereotypes, and thus help to forge the identities of white workers in opposition to Blacks.

With a nation seemingly more divided than ever, many worry that Americans risk losing ground on solving the complex, interrelated problems the country faces - including rising inequality, the specter of climate change, astronomical health care costs, and economic stagnation. The renowned economist Jeffrey D. Sachs offers a practical approach to move America toward a new consensus: sustainable development.

In a society marked by extreme inequality of income and opportunity, why should economists care about how people feel? The truth is that feelings of well-being are critical metrics that predict future life outcomes. In this timely and innovative account, economist Carol Graham argues for the importance of hope—little studied in economics at present—as an independent dimension of well-being.

Vladimir Lenin’s 1916 essay "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism", is a synthesis of Lenin's development of economic theories that Karl Marx formulated in Das Kapital. It attempts to account for the increasing importance of the global market in the 20th century. Lenin contends that colonialism and the First World War were the consequences of the global spread of the capitalist economy.

In Terror Incorporated, Loretta Napoleoni maps out the arteries of an international economic system that feeds armed groups the world over. Chasing terror money, she takes the reader from CIA headquarters to the smuggling routes of the far East, from the back rooms of Wall Street to hawala exchanges in the Middle East.

The first half of Chris Hughes's life played like a movie reel right out of the "American Dream". He grew up in a small town in North Carolina. His parents were people of modest means, but he was accepted into an elite boarding school and then Harvard, both on scholarship. There, he met Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz and became one of the co-founders of Facebook. In telling his story, Hughes demonstrates the powerful role fortune and luck play in today's economy. Through the rocket ship rise of Facebook, Hughes came to understand how a select few can become ultra-wealthy nearly overnight.

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.

What is wrong with today's banking system? The past few years have shown that risks in banking can impose significant costs on the economy. Many claim, however, that a safer banking system would require sacrificing lending and economic growth. The Bankers' New Clothes examines this claim and the narratives used by bankers, politicians, and regulators to rationalize the lack of reform, exposing them as invalid.

Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City.

Secrecy World offers a disturbing and sobering view of how the world really works and raises crucial questions about financial and legal institutions we may once have trusted. This audiobook discusses the fragile scaffolding upholding any tax haven, the flexible laws of banking, and the radiating impact of an international financial scandal.

In Viking Economics - perhaps the most fun economics audiobook you've ever listened to - George Lakey dispels these myths. He explores the inner-workings of the Nordic economies that boast the world's happiest, most productive workers, and explains how, if we can enact some of the changes the Scandinavians fought for, surprisingly recently, we too can embrace equality in our economic policy.

Any group of people expected to work synergistically needs a system that structures their interactions. That system is “governance.” The Pragmatist’s Guide to Governance takes a first principles approach to exploring the ways governance structures affect the humans living under them (and vice versa), with a special focus on how human psychology interacts with the structures that facilitate our interaction with other people.

In the passionate debate that currently rages over globalization, critics have been heard blaming it for a host of ills afflicting poorer nations, everything from child labor to environmental degradation and cultural homogenization. Now Jagdish Bhagwati, the internationally renowned economist, takes on the critics, revealing that globalization, when properly governed, is in fact the most powerful force for social good in the world today.