What they Do with your Money
How the financial System Fails us and How to Fix it
Reviewer: Vicky Pryce, Board member of CEBR
A call to reboot capitalism and preserve $85 trillion in retirement savings for their owners-not for use as the financial industry's ATM. Each year we pay billions in fees to those who run our financial system. The money comes from our bank accounts, our pensions, our borrowing, and often we aren't told that the money has been taken. These billions may be justified if the finance industry does a good job, but as this book shows, it too often fails us.
Legislating instability
Adam Smith, Free Banking, and the Financial Crisis of 1772
Reviewer: William A Allen, Economic & Financial Consultant
From 1716 to 1845 Scotland's banks were among the most dynamic and resilient in Europe, effectively absorbing a series of economic shocks that rocked financial markets in London and on the continent. Legislating Instability explains the seeming paradox that the Scottish banking system achieved this success without the government controls usually considered necessary for economic stability.
Capital without Borders
Wealth Managers and the One Percent
Reviewer: Ian Bright
How do the one percent keep getting richer despite financial crises and the myriad of taxes on income, capital gains, and inheritance? Brooke Harrington interviewed professionals who specialize in protecting the fortunes of the world’s richest people: wealth managers. To gain access to their tactics and mentality, she trained to become one of them.
The Market As God
Reviewer: Rosemary Connell
The Market has deified itself, according to Harvey Cox’s brilliant exegesis. And all of the world’s problems—widening inequality, a rapidly warming planet, the injustices of global poverty—are consequently harder to solve. Only by tracing how the Market reached its divine status can we hope to restore it to its proper place as servant of humanity.
The Evolution of Money
Reviewer: Bridget Rosewell, Volterra Partners
The sharing economy’s unique customer to company exchange is possible because of the evolution of money. These transactions haven’t always been as fluid as they are today, but they are likely to become even more so in the future. It is therefore critical that we learn to appreciate money’s elastic nature as deeply as do Uber, Airbnb, Kickstarter, and other leading innovators, and that we better comprehend money’s transition from hard currencies to cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, to access their cooperative potential. The Evolution of Money illuminates this fascinating reality, focusing on the tension between currency’s real and abstract properties and advancing a vital theory of money rooted in this dual exchange.
Strained relations
US foreign exchange operations and monetary policy in the twentieth century
Reviewer: William A Allen, Economic & Financial Consultant
Drawing on a trove of previously confidential data, Strained Relations reveals the evolution of US policy regarding currency market intervention, and its interaction with monetary policy. The authors consider how foreign-exchange intervention was affected by changing economic and institutional circumstances - most notably the abandonment of the international gold standard - and how political and bureaucratic factors affected this aspect of public policy.
Welcome to the Poisoned Chalice
The Destruction of Greece and the Future of Europe
Reviewer: Vicky Pryce, CEBR Board Member
A world-renowned economist offers cogent and powerful reflections on one of the great avoidable economic catastrophes of the modern era The economic crisis in Greece is a potential international disaster and one of the most extraordinary monetary and political dramas of our time.
The Price of Prosperity
Why Rich Nations Fail and How to Renew Them
Reviewer: Matthew Whittaker, Chief Economist, Resolution Foundation
In this bold history and manifesto, a former White House director of economic policy exposes the economic, political, and cultural cracks that wealthy nations face and makes the case for transforming those same vulnerabilities into sources of strength—and the foundation of a national renewal.
Progress
Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
Reviewer: Ian Stewart, Chief Economist, Deloitte
It’s all over our televisions, newspapers and the internet. Every day we’re bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is – Brexit, financial collapse, unemployment, poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, war. Indeed, our world now seems to be on the brink of collapse, and yet contrary to what most of us believe, our progress over the past few decades has been unprecedented.
The political origins of inequality
Why a More Equal World is Better for Us All
Reviewer: Christine Shields, Shields Economics
Inequality is the defining issue of our time. But it is not just a problem for the rich world. It is the global 1% that now owns fully half the world's wealth-the true measure of our age of inequality. In this historical tour de force, Simon Reid-Henry rewrites the usual story of globalization and development as a story of the management of inequality.