Public Finance

Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy - but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged.

Shortly after arriving in the White House in early 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard. His opponents thought his decision unwise at best and ruinous at worst. But they could not have been more wrong. With The Money Makers, Eric Rauchway tells the absorbing story of how FDR and his advisors pulled the levers of monetary policy to save the domestic economy and propel the United States to unprecedented prosperity and superpower status.

Understanding the rise of state capitalism and its threat to global free markets, The End of the Free Market details the growing phenomenon of state capitalism, a system in which governments drive local economies through ownership of market-dominant companies and large pools of excess capital, using them for political gain. This trend threatens America's competitive edge and the conduct of free markets everywhere.

The United States has two separate banking systems today - one serving the well-to-do and another exploiting everyone else. How the Other Half Banks contributes to the growing conversation on American inequality by highlighting one of its prime causes: unequal credit. Mehrsa Baradaran examines how a significant portion of the population, deserted by banks, is forced to wander through a Wild West of payday lenders and check-cashing services to cover emergency expenses and pay for necessities - all thanks to deregulation that began in the 1970s.

Blending history and cutting-edge economic analysis, and writing in lively and jargon-free prose, Saez and Zucman dissect the deliberate choices (and sins of indecision) that have brought us to today: the gradual exemption of capital owners; the surge of a new tax avoidance industry; and the spiral of tax competition among nations. With clarity and concision, they explain how America turned away from the most progressive tax system in history to embrace policies that only serve to compound the wealth of a few.

In The Body Economic, Stuckler and Basu mine data from around the globe and throughout history to show how government policy becomes a matter of life and death during financial crises. In a series of historical case studies stretching from 1930s America, to Russia and Indonesia in the 1990s, to present-day Greece, Britain, Spain, and the U.S., Stuckler and Basu reveal that governmental mismanagement of financial strife has resulted in a grim array of human tragedies.

The Great Recession, institutional dysfunction, a growing divide between urban and rural prospects, and failed efforts to effectively address immigration have paved the way for a populist backlash that disrupts the postwar bargain between political elites and citizens. Whether today's populism represents a corrective to unfair and obsolete policies or a threat to liberal democracy remains up for debate. To respond to today's crisis, good leaders must strive for inclusive economic growth while addressing social and cultural issues, including demographic anxiety, with frank attention.

This book is designed to help fiduciary based advisors compete in the public school employee financial and retirement planning market. Very few competent and fiduciary based advisors have the background knowledge to work with public school employees. This book will help complete the training needed to provide top-notch advice to an underserved market.

Treasury sits in a unique position in the organization, and excelling as treasurer requires unique strategy and the proper mindset across multiple areas. With insights covering everything from important steps for the new treasurer to leading practices for securing resources, overcoming blind spots, staff development, metrics, technology, working capital, and more, the Guide to Excellence in Treasury eBook offers strategies and fine-tuned approaches to major areas of challenge for treasurers.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Licence to be Bad by Jonathan Alred. Over the past 50 years, the way we value what is 'good' and 'right' has changed dramatically. Behaviour that to our grandparents' generation might have seemed stupid, harmful or simply wicked now seems rational, natural, woven into the very logic of things. And, asserts Jonathan Aldred in this revelatory new book, it's economics that's to blame.

An insider of both the Bush and Obama administrations offers an irrefutable indictment of the mishandling of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program bailouts and the extreme degree to which our government officials—from both parties—served the interests of Wall Street at the expense of the public. From his first day on the job as the special inspector general in charge of overseeing the distribution of the bailout money, Neil Barofsky found that the officials at the Treasury Department in charge of the bailouts were in thrall to the interests of the big banks.

The Economics of Belonging argues that we should step back and take a fresh look at the root causes of our current challenges. In this original, engaging book, Martin Sandbu argues that economics remains at the heart of our widening inequality and it is only by focusing on the right policies that we can address it. He proposes a detailed, radical plan for creating a just economy where everyone can belong. Sandbu demonstrates that the rising numbers of the left behind are not due to globalization gone too far.

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.

Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy. They are the biggest job creators and offer a path to the American dream. But for many, it is difficult to get the capital they need to operate and succeed. In the Great Recession, access to capital for small businesses froze and in the aftermath, many community banks shuttered their doors and other lenders that had weathered the storm turned to more profitable avenues. For years after the financial crisis, the outlook for many small businesses was bleak. But then a new dawn of financial technology, or 'fintech', emerged.

The Austrian School of Economics - a movement that has had a vast impact on economics, politics, and society, especially among the American right - is poorly understood by supporters and detractors alike. Defining themselves in opposition to the mainstream, economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Joseph Schumpeter built the School’s international reputation with their work on business cycles and monetary theory. In this collective biography, Janek Wasserman brings these figures to life....

Society embraces regulations that limit physical harm to others, as when smoking restrictions are defended as protecting bystanders from secondhand smoke. But we have been slower to endorse parallel steps that discourage harmful social environments, as when regulators fail to note that the far greater harm caused when someone becomes a smoker is to make others more likely to smoke. In Under the Influence, Robert Frank attributes this regulatory asymmetry to the laudable belief that individuals should accept responsibility for their own behavior.

How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels—they are accelerating, dramatically—and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification.

A guide to crafting unforgettable, attention-grabbing business communications – from speeches and letters to business plans - using stories from the world's top business leaders. The world's foremost business leaders are also great storytellers. For example, industry titan Jack Welch has told how his mother instilled enough tough love and confidence in him to overcome the fact that he was the shortest kid in his class and had a severe stutter.

Proper stewardship of natural assets and liabilities is a matter of planetary urgency: natural resources have the potential either to transform the poorest countries or to tear them apart, while the carbon emissions and agricultural follies of the rich world could further impoverish them. The Plundered Planet charts a course between unchecked profiteering on the one hand and environmental romanticism on the other to offer realistic and sustainable solutions to dauntingly complex issues.

The growing wealth inequality continues to dominate headlines. The divide between the haves and have nots in America is increasingly political and tensions are rising. On one side, the wealthy wield power and advantage, keeping the system operating in their favor, all while retreating into enclaves that separate them further and further from the poor and working class.