Political Finance

In a sweeping narrative about the people and the politics behind the budget, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter David Wessel looks at the 2011 fiscal year (which ended September 30) to see where all the money was actually spent, and why the budget process has grown wildly out of control.

The 1980s opened with the prime interest rate at an astonishing 21.5 percent, leading to a severe recession with unemployment reaching nearly 11 percent. Depression-like conditions befell the agricultural sector, a bubble burst in the energy sector, a rolling real estate recession swept the country, the entire thrift industry was badly insolvent and the major money center banks were loaded with third world debt.

America is in decline, and the rise of the East suggests a bleak future for the world’s only superpower - so goes the conventional wisdom. But what if the traditional measures of national status are no longer as important as they once were? What if America’s well-being was assessed according to entirely different factors? In The Upside of Down, Charles Kenny argues that America’s so-called decline is only relative to the newfound success of other countries.

In this incisive new book, Michael Mandelbaum argues that the era marked by an expansive American foreign policy is coming to an end. During the seven decades from the U.S. entry into World War II in 1941 to the present, economic constraints rarely limited what the United States did in the world. Now that will change. The country's soaring deficits, fueled by the huge costs of the financial crash and of its entitlement programs - Social Security and Medicare - will compel a more modest American international presence.

Bank Job is a white-knuckle ride into the dark heart of the global financial system. Discover how art hacks life as artist and filmmaker duo Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn bring a community together to buy up and abolish crippling debt by printing their own money in a disused bank in East London. Behind the opaque language of loans and the defunct diagrams of debt, they discover a system flawed by design and ripe for hacking.

Nadie esperaba mucho de ellos. Todos - políticos y sociólogos, analistas y politólogos - daban a los mayores españoles por amortizados y semienterrados. Habían sacado la cabeza entre las mareas de indignación que nos visitan de manera periódica, sobre todo desde el 11-M - los famosos yayoflautas - pero nadie esperaba que su función fuera más allá de la de meros comparsas.

In God We Trust delves deeply into current economic and market developments and reflects on how prosperity in the US returned in 2018, as capitalism has again been unleashed. The author says, "What a relief after eight years of economic stagnation and government over-regulation." Oddly, as the US economy has benefited from pro-growth policies, like tax rate cuts and deregulation, there exists a rising tide of sympathy for socialism among leftist politicians and young people.

Banker, Topanwälte, Wissenschaftler – ein perfides Netzwerk von Experten hat sich formiert, um deutsche Steuerzahler zu bestehlen. Die Beute: rund zwölf Milliarden Euro. Die Staatsanwältin Anne Brorhilker nimmt es seit Jahren mit der weltweiten Finanzelite auf, um den Cum-Ex-Skandal aufzuarbeiten. Dabei wird offenbar: Der Staat war keinesfalls ahnungslos. Zahlreiche Finanzbeamte, Steuerfahnder, Amtsträger wussten von diesem Diebeszug, doch niemand setzte ihm ein Ende.

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 this expert insider's account of the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s, William Black lays bare the strategies that corrupt CEOs and CFOs - in collusion with those who have regulatory oversight of their industries - use to defraud companies for their personal gain.

She’s working for a fae in finance, business plan, 6’ 5”, big wings… ​In this hilarious contemporary fantasy romance, an exasperated low-level investment banker is trapped in a magical realm by a faerie prince, where she must survive in a strange new world with only her wits—and a...

We pursue power, pleasure, and profit. We want as much as we can get, and we deploy instrumental reasoning-cost-benefit analysis-to get it. We judge ourselves and others by how well we succeed. It is a way of life and thought that seems natural, inevitable, and inescapable. As David Wootton reveals, it is anything but. In Power, Pleasure, and Profit, he traces an intellectual and cultural revolution that replaced the older systems of Aristotelian ethics and Christian morality with the instrumental reasoning that now gives shape and purpose to our lives.

“This urgent book offers not only a clear-eyed explanation of the forces that broke our politics, but a thoughtful and, yes, patriotic vision of how we create a government that’s truly by and for the people.”—DAVID DALEY, bestselling author of Ratf**ked and Unrigged In the vein of On...

A RESOUNDING CALL TO DEFEND AMERICA’S SOVEREIGNTY AND SAVE OUR NATION FROM GLOBAL ECONOMIC TAKEOVER— FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE OBAMA NATION AND THE LATE GREAT US Between George H. W. Bush’s “new world order” and the unprecedented governmental growth and...

EVER WONDERED WHY PEOPLE REALLY DO WHAT THEY DO? (AND WHAT WE COULD ACCOMPLISH IF WE ONLY KNEW?) We need a clear-eyed look at what’s happening in society right now. Misinformation, fake news, and politicization is affecting how we as a society come to grips with a global pandemic, economic...

When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, most experts expected the WTO rules and procedures would liberalize China and make it "a responsible stakeholder in the liberal world order". But the experts made the wrong bet. China today is liberalizing neither economically nor politically but, if anything, becoming more authoritarian and mercantilist. In this book, renowned globalization and Asia expert Clyde Prestowitz describes the key challenges posed by China and the strategies America and the Free World must adopt to meet them.

Trade was once an esoteric economic issue with little domestic policy resonance. Activists did not prioritize it, and grassroots political mobilization seemed unlikely to free trade advocates. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s was therefore expected to be a fait accompli. Yet, as Trade Battles shows, activists pushed back: They increased the public consciousness on trade, mobilized new constituencies against it, and demanded that the rules of the global economy protect the collective rights and common good of citizens.

In today's economic and political climate, protecting yourself means asking the right questions. You can't ask the right questions if your mind's encumbered by what you think you may understand. Who's the man behind the curtain? What's this thing we call money? It's not what you think. We've burdened government with all our problems but do they have the capacity to solve them? Do we want them to? What's the difference between freedom "of" and freedom "from" and why's it important? Why is this one of the most important questions you can ask?

This book brings unique perspectives to this key debate by exploring the history of green entrepreneurship since the nineteenth century, and its spread globally in industries including renewable energy, organic food, natural beauty, ecotourism, recycling, architecture, and finance. The book uses the lens of the extraordinary and often eccentric men and women who defied convention and imagined that business could help save the planet, rather than consume it. The social and religious beliefs that drove many of these individuals are explored.

America's middle class, the driver of so much of our economic success and political stability, is rapidly disappearing, forcing us to confront the fear that we are slipping as a nation - that our children and grandchildren will enjoy fewer opportunities and face a lower standard of living than we did. It's the dark flipside of the American Dream - an American Nightmare of our own making.