Martin Wolf

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pages: 524 words: 143,993

The Shifts and the Shocks: What We've Learned--And Have Still to Learn--From the Financial Crisis by Martin Wolf

air freight, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, bonus culture, break the buck, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, diversification, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global rebalancing, global reserve currency, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, Les Trente Glorieuses, light touch regulation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandatory minimum, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, market fragmentation, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, vertical integration, very high income, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

O’Rourke, ‘Coping with Shocks and Shifts: The Multilateral Trading System in Historical Perspective’, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 1759, November 2011, www.nber.org. PREFACE: WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK 1. Hyman P. Minsky, Inflation, Recession and Economic Policy (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1982), p. xi. 2. Martin Wolf, Fixing Global Finance (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press and Yale University Press, 2008 and 2010). 3. Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), ch. 13. 4. The ‘great moderation’ was coined in 2002 by James H. Stock of Harvard and Mark Watson of Princeton as a way of describing the reduced volatility of US output.

Letter to Her Majesty the Queen, 22 July 2009, http://media.ft.com/cms/3e3b6ca8-7a08-11de-b86f-00144feabdco.pdf. 6. The NEC, founded under President William Jefferson Clinton, is distinct from the Council of Economic Advisers, founded in 1946 under President Harry Truman. 7. Lawrence Summers and Martin Wolf, ‘A Conversation on New Economic Thinking’, Bretton Woods Conference, Institute for New Economic Thinking, 8 April 2011, http://ineteconomics.org/video/bretton-woods/larry-summers-and-martin-wolf-new-economic-thinking. 8. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, also stressed the intellectual debt of central bankers to the journalist, Walter Bagehot, in a lecture on the Federal Reserve’s response to the crisis.

See Paul Krugman, ‘Conventional Wisdom’, 27 May 2010, New York Times, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/conventional-madness. See also Bank for International Settlements, 83rd BIS Annual Report 2012/2013, 23 June 2013, http://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2013e.htm. 27. See on this Martin Wolf, ‘The Role of Fiscal Deficits in De-leveraging’, 25 July 2012, http://blogs.ft.com/martin-wolf-exchange/2012/07/25/getting-out-of-debt-by-adding-debt. 28. Robert Kuttner, Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), p. 206. 29. McKinsey Global Institute, Debt and De-leveraging: Uneven Progress on the Road to Growth, January 2012, http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/global_capital_markets/uneven_progress_on_the_path_to_growth. 30.


pages: 389 words: 98,487

The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor, and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car by Tim Harford

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, business cycle, collective bargaining, congestion charging, Corn Laws, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, Fall of the Berlin Wall, George Akerlof, Great Leap Forward, household responsibility system, information asymmetry, invention of movable type, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, market design, Martin Wolf, moral hazard, new economy, Pearl River Delta, price discrimination, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, random walk, rent-seeking, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, sealed-bid auction, second-price auction, second-price sealed-bid, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, special economic zone, spectrum auction, The Market for Lemons, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, Vickrey auction

Is it worth paying? Economists like Paul Krugman, Martin Wolf, and Jagdish Bhagwati have repeatedly tried to argue that Chinese sweatshops beat the alternatives. This is not a popular view. After Martin Wolf ’s book, Why Globalization Works, was reviewed in the Guardian Weekly, the paper published an outraged letter from a reader who fantasized with glee about Wolf himself being forced to work in a sweatshop. This response is about as vicious as wishing that anyone who wears a “Mao” T-shirt be condemned to starvation—but less logical. Martin Wolf is correct to suggest that the sweatshops are better than the horrors that came before them, and a step on the road to something better.

At the Financial Times, Pilita Clark, Andy Davis, Chris Giles, Andrew Gowers, John Kay, John Willman, and Martin Wolf gave me opportunities and then made sure I didn’t waste them. At the World Bank, Michael Klein and Suzanne Smith are wonderful colleagues and every day with them is an education. David Bodanis, Felicity Bryan, Penny Dablin, Moore Flannery, Juri Gabriel, Mark Henstridge, Diana Jackson, Oliver Johnson, John Kay, Cho Khong, Paul Klemperer, Stephen McGroarty, Doug McKay, Fran Monks, Dave Morris, Rafael Ramirez, Jillian Reilly, John Robinson, Tim Savin, Martin Wolf, and Andrew Wright improved the book with their comments. Sally Holloway, my agent, has been superb.

Foreign investment is widely recognized to be good for economic growth in poor countries: it is an excellent way for them to create • 212 • B E E R , F R I E S , A N D G L O B A L I Z A T I O N jobs, learn cutting-edge techniques, and do so without having to invest their own scarce money. Unlike investments in shares, currency, or bonds, foreign direct investment cannot quickly be reversed in a panic. As economics journalist Martin Wolf puts it, “factories do not walk.” Although trade with and investment in poor countries has risen rapidly in recent years, we should be clear that both trade and foreign investment overwhelmingly takes place between the richest countries, not between rich and poor. People look at their Nike shoes and assume, perhaps, that everything is made in In-donesia and China.


pages: 318 words: 77,223

The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse by Mohamed A. El-Erian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, break the buck, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, collapse of Lehman Brothers, corporate governance, currency peg, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, friendly fire, full employment, future of work, geopolitical risk, Hyman Minsky, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, income inequality, inflation targeting, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, liquidity trap, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Norman Mailer, oil shale / tar sands, price stability, principal–agent problem, quantitative easing, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, yield curve, zero-sum game

Writing in the Financial Times back in October 2010, shortly after then-chairman Bernanke had signaled the new stage in Fed activism, Martin Wolf observed that “the U.S. is seeking to impose its will, via the printing press. The U.S. is going to win this war, one way or the other: it will either inflate the rest of the world or force their nominal exchange rates up against the dollar.”13 Either the Fed’s experimental stimulus policy would serve as an example for other countries to follow immediately, or it would be the exception, thereby forcing the dollar to weaken against other currencies and allowing the United States to steal growth from elsewhere. Martin Wolf was right, though both issues transpired, in a sequential fashion.

El-Erian, When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008). PART II: CONTEXT: THE RISE, COLLAPSE, AND RESURRECTION OF CENTRAL BANKING 1. Martin Wolf, “We Are Trapped in a Cycle of Credit Booms,” Financial Times, October 8, 2014, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1a9f058e-4d43-11e4-bf60-00144feab7de.html#axzz3Lfv9pY4D. For a detailed analysis, see Martin Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks: What We Have Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis (New York: Penguin Press, 2014). CHAPTER 5: THE GOLDEN AGE OF CENTRAL BANKS AND “BUBBLISH FINANCE” 1.

Zucker, adapted for eBook Cover design and illustration: Pete Garceau v4.1 ep Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Preamble Part I: The Why, How, and What of This Book Chapter 1: Setting the Stage Chapter 2: The Only Game in Town Chapter 3: Central Banks’ Communication Challenge Chapter 4: How and Why This Book Is Organized Part II: Context: The Rise, Collapse, and Resurrection of Central Banking Chapter 5: The Golden Age of Central Banks and “Bubblish Finance” Chapter 6: Cascading Failures Chapter 7: Central Bank Resurrection Part III: From the What to the So What Chapter 8: Setting the Stage Chapter 9: The Quest of a Generation Chapter 10: Reducing the Risk of the Unemployed Becoming Unemployable Chapter 11: The Inequality Trifecta Chapter 12: The Persistent Trust Deficit Chapter 13: National Political Dysfunction Chapter 14: The “G-0” Slide into the “International Economic Non-System” Chapter 15: The Migration and Morphing of Financial Risks Chapter 16: The Liquidity Delusion Chapter 17: Bridging the Gap Between Markets and Fundamentals Chapter 18: It Is Hard to Be a Good House in a Challenged Neighborhood Part IV: The Desirable Way Forward Chapter 19: Addressing the Ten Big Challenges Chapter 20: The Reduced-Form Approach to a Grand Policy Design Part V: From What Should Happen to What Is Likely to Happen Chapter 21: When Desirable and Feasible Differ Chapter 22: Turning Paralyzing Complexity into Actionable Simplicity Chapter 23: The Belly of the Distribution of Potential Outcomes Chapter 24: A World of Greater Divergence (I) Chapter 25: A World of Greater Divergence (II) Chapter 26: A World of Greater Divergence (III) Chapter 27: A World of Greater Divergence (IV) Chapter 28: Putting It All Together Part VI: The Keys to Navigating a Bimodal Distribution Chapter 29: What History Tells Us Chapter 30: Recognizing Blind Spots and Overcoming Biases Chapter 31: Advancing and Enhancing Cognitive Diversity Chapter 32: Translating Awareness into Optionality, Resilience, and Agility Chapter 33: The Power of Scenario Analyses Chapter 34: Valuing Liquidity and Optionality Part VII: Bringing It All Together Chapter 35: In Sum Dedication Acknowledgments Notes By Mohamed A. El-Erian About the Author PREAMBLE “What is needed is not more finance, but better finance.” —MARTIN WOLF “The world has largely exhausted the scope for central bank improvisation as a growth strategy.” —LARRY SUMMERS In the last few years, the global economy has evolved in ways once deemed highly unlikely, if not unthinkable. It is a phenomenon that continues today and, as will be made clear in this book, will intensify in the period ahead.


pages: 772 words: 203,182

What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . And What Other Countries Got Right by George R. Tyler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 8-hour work day, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Black Swan, blood diamond, blue-collar work, Bolshevik threat, bonus culture, British Empire, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, company town, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lake wobegon effect, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, Money creation, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, pension reform, performance metric, Pershing Square Capital Management, pirate software, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Fletcher, “Income Inequality on the Rise in Wealthy Nations, Report Finds,” Washington Post, Dec. 5, 2011. 8 “The Rich Are the Big Gainers in America’s New Prosperity,” Economist, June 17, 2006. 9 “Out of the Bottle,” Economist, Jan. 26, 2013, 42. 10 Saul Eslake, “Why Some Incomes Are Just Gross,” Sydney Morning Herald, Oct. 29, 2011. Martin Wolf, “America’s Inequality Need Not Determine the Future of Britain,” Financial Times, Dec. 22, 2011. 11 Saul Eslake, “Why Some Incomes Are Just Gross.” Martin Wolf, “America’s Inequality Need Not Determine the Future of Britain.” 12 James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 206. 13 James MacGregor Burns, Packing the Court (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), 93, 96. 14 Ibid. 15 Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality (New York: Norton, 2012). 16 Carol Morello, “Middle Class Caught in the Squeeze,” Washington Post, Sept. 13, 2012. 17 Harold Meyerson, “Unhappy Labor Day,” Washington Post, Sept. 7, 2013. 18 Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective,” Cambridge, MA, NBER working paper no. 11955 (January 2006), http://www.nber.org/papers/w11955.

Senior government officials whose job it was to regulate industry became increasingly drawn from the ranks of industry itself, with plans to return when their stint in government was complete. These circumstances were rife with conflicts of interest as regulatory oversight weakened, especially in finance. Longtime civil servants were on the defensive, now considered to be part of the problem. And self-regulation prevailed whose inevitable outcome was described by Martin Wolf, chief economic columnist for the Financial Times, in December 2007: “What is happening in credit markets today is a huge blow to the credibility of the Anglo-Saxon model of transactions-oriented financial capitalism. A mixture of crony capitalism and gross incompetence has been on display in the core financial markets of New York and London.

There are many instances where genuine value for shareholders has been produced by well-run or visionary executive suites, justifying higher compensation. But examples abound, especially of late on Wall Street, where weak executives have also received lush compensation. Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf discussed this failure, focusing on the financial sectors in the United States and the United Kingdom, where investment management presents “… a huge ‘lemons’ problem: in this business it is really hard to distinguish talented managers from untalented ones. For this reason, the business is bound to attract the unscrupulous and unskilled, just as such people are attracted to dealing in used cars (which was the original example of a market in lemons)….


pages: 82 words: 24,150

The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism by Grace Blakeley

Anthropocene, asset-backed security, basic income, Big Tech, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, debt deflation, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, don't be evil, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, global value chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, income inequality, informal economy, inverted yield curve, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, Philip Mirowski, post-war consensus, price mechanism, quantitative easing, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, reshoring, Rishi Sunak, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, social distancing, structural adjustment programs, too big to fail, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, yield curve

., Jonathan Taplin, Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy, New York: Little, Brown, 2017, in which the author makes the now well-known claim that ‘Data is … the new oil’. 14 Foroohar, Don’t Be Evil; Martin Wolf, ‘Why Rigged Capitalism Is Damaging Liberal Democracy’, Financial Times, 18 September 2019. 15 Foroohar, Don’t Be Evil. 16 Matt Phillips, ‘Investors Bet Giant Companies Will Dominate After Crisis’, New York Times, 28 April 2020. 17 Matthew Vincent, ‘Loss-Making Tech Companies Are Floating Like It’s 1999’, Financial Times, 16 June 2019. 18 Martin Wolf, ‘Corporate Savings Are Contributing to the Savings Glut’, Financial Times, 17 November 2015; Peter Chen, Loukas Karabarbounis and Brent Neiman, ‘The Global Corporate Saving Glut: Long-Term Evidence’, VoxEU, CEPR Policy Portal, 5 April 2017. 19 Rana Forooha, ‘Tech Companies Are the New Investment Banks’, Financial Times, 11 February 2018. 20 Andres Diaz, ‘I’m a Small Business Owner.

Boyce’s Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent, London: Zed, 2011. 13 Michael Thomson, Alexander Kentikelenis and Thomas Stubbs, ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes Adversely Affect Vulnerable Populations: A Systematic-Narrative Review of Their Effect on Child and Maternal Health’, Public Health Reviews 38, no. 13, 2017. 14 UNCTAD, The Least Developed Countries 2000 Report, New York and Geneva: UNCTAD, 2000. 15 Gianluca Benigno, Luca Fornaro and Martin Wolf, ‘The Global Financial Resource Curse’, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Report No. 915, February 2020. 16 Philip R. Lane, ‘Financial Globalisation and the Crisis’, BIS Working Paper 397, Basel: Bank for International Settlements, December 2012. 17 Trade and Development Report, 2008: Commodity Prices, Capital Flows and the Financing of Investment, New York and Geneva: UNCTAD, 2008. 18 Benigno, Fornaro and Wolf, ‘Global Financial Resource Curse’. 19 Grace Blakeley, ‘On Borrowed Time: Finance and the UK Current Account Deficit’, Institute for Public Policy Research, Commission on Economic Justice, 2018. 20 International Monetary Fund, ‘Zambia: 2019 Article IV Consultation – Press Release’, IMF Staff Report: Country Report No. 19/263, 2 August 2019; ‘The World Bank In Zambia: Overview’, World Bank, worldbank. org, last updated 13 October 2019. 21 ‘Zambia to Pay Vulture Fund $15.4m’, Lusaka Times, 25 April 2007. 22 Twivwe Siwale, ‘The Structural Constraints Limiting Zambia’s Economic Response to COVID-19’, London: International Growth Centre, 22 April 2020. 23 Tayyab Mahmud, ‘Is It Greek or Déjà Vu All Over Again?


pages: 376 words: 109,092

Paper Promises by Philip Coggan

accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, delayed gratification, diversified portfolio, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, fear of failure, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, German hyperinflation, global reserve currency, Goodhart's law, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, Isaac Newton, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, Les Trente Glorieuses, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Minsky moment, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, negative equity, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, paradox of thrift, peak oil, pension reform, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price stability, principal–agent problem, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, short selling, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, time value of money, too big to fail, trade route, tulip mania, value at risk, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

And debt is being refinanced all the time so the income on new debt falls. 3 Barry Eichengreen, Exorbitant Privilege: The Decline of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System, Oxford, 2010. 4 Ibid. 5 ‘The Global Monetary System: Beyond Bretton Woods 2’, The Economist, 6 November 2010. 6 Robert Zoellick, ‘The G20 Must Look Beyond Bretton Woods’, Financial Times, 8 November 2010. 7 Martin Wolf, ‘Current Account Targets are a Way Back to the Future’, Financial Times, 3 November 2010. 8 ‘King Says G-20 Needs Grand Bargain to Avert Protectionism’, Bloomberg , 20 October 2010. 9 ‘Seoul Food: The Search for Global Balance’, Global Economics Weekly, 3 November 2010. 10 Martin Wolf, Fixing Global Finance: How to Curb Financial Crises in the Late 21st Century, rev. edn, New Haven, Conn., 2010. 11 A long-standing deal has seen Americans head the World Bank and Europeans the IMF. 12 Carmen Reinhart and Belen Sbrancia, ‘The Liquidation of Government Debt’, NBER Working Paper 16893, March 2011. 13 Russell Napier, ‘Bretton Woods on Speed’, CLSA research note, November 2010.

The corollary of this policy was that they accumulated a massive current-account surplus which (being China) the government controlled. These foreign-exchange reserves were then held in Treasury bonds and bills, making it easier for the US to finance its trade deficit. In his book Fixing Global Finance, Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf argues convincingly that the ‘savings glut’ of China and others was more responsible for the imbalance than American profligacy. 3 His argument is that a low level of real interest rates indicated an excess of desired saving over investment. The Chinese (ironically for a communist state) did not provide much in the way of pensions, so their citizens saved to cover their old age; the Japanese had little desire to spend or invest because of their sluggish economy.

It remains the world’s largest economy, with the most liquid markets, a history of reliable debt service, and the ability to borrow in its own currency. Moreover, it is a relatively closed economy, with only a small proportion of activity made up by foreign trade. As a result, while a fall in the pound might push up UK prices quite quickly, a fall in the dollar is less likely to lead to a rise in American inflation. However, as Martin Wolf has remarked, ‘The very factor that makes borrowing large sums relatively safe for Americans – that they are borrowing in a currency they can create at will – also makes borrowing riskier for their creditors.’8 As we shall discuss later, the US faced huge long-term fiscal challenges. THE EURO-ZONE CRISIS Europe, not the US, has been at the centre of the sovereign debt crisis.


pages: 246 words: 74,341

Financial Fiasco: How America's Infatuation With Homeownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis by Johan Norberg

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Brooks, diversification, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Greenspan put, helicopter parent, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, millennium bug, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, Naomi Klein, National Debt Clock, new economy, Northern Rock, Own Your Own Home, precautionary principle, price stability, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail

Since the United States is such a large and liquid market, most people feel it is one of the safest places to invest. You can always get your money back-which is not always the case in savers' home countries. Even so, it does seem odd that the poor countries of the world should have been paying for consumption in its richest ones to such a large extent. In his book Fixing Global Finance, Martin Wolf, a leading economics writer at the Financial Times, argues that this is not the result of spontaneous saving and the free play of the market forces. Instead, these savings have largely been ordered by the governments of developing countries. The background to this can be found in these countries' recent experience of financial crises.

But now more than 70 percent of the surpluses found their way to U.S. stocks, bonds, bank accounts, direct investments-and above all Treasuries. However, this did not lead to more investments. Instead, it made U.S. households save less and consume more. This is not to say that American wastefulness is what created these imbalances. Martin Wolf points out that, if that had been the case, Americans would have demanded more capital, crowding out other willing borrowers by accepting higher interest rates. The wastefulness was an effect, not a cause. Governments of low- and medium-income countries were stepping up their saving and pushing down interest rates so far that Americans were able to spend.

When the U.S. administration decided during the present crisis to increase the level of deposit insurance and start guaranteeing interbank loans, it was presented as a way to create security and stability. Later, however, Treasury Secretary Henry "Hank" Paulson admitted that this unfortunately encourages banks to take excess risks, but said that he was forced to do it because the Europeans had started it, and American banks would otherwise have found it hard to compete.' As Martin Wolf of the Financial Times puts it, "Financial markets are indeed risky ... but the interventions of government often make them less safe, not more so." Wolf believes that if there were no government safety nets, banks would set aside more capital, take longer-term deposits, and lend more in the money markets where they can cash out quickly.


pages: 391 words: 102,301

Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety by Gideon Rachman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, open borders, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, pension reform, plutocrats, popular capitalism, price stability, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sinatra Doctrine, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, Thomas Malthus, Timothy McVeigh, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, zero-sum game

While Timothy McVeigh was angered by the notion that a world government might be imposed on the United States, al-Qaeda saw an all-powerful United States imposing its will on the rest of the world. The al-Qaeda movement was motivated by many strands of thought, emotion, and political analysis. Yet the symbolism of an attack on the economic capital of the United States and on the World Trade Center was hard to miss. As Martin Wolf of the Financial Times wrote, “We can view this event as an episode in the resistance of the Islamic World to westernization, as witness to the abiding force of human evil, as the end of liberal optimism and as an assault on liberal globalisation. All are valid, not excluding the last. The attack on the US was also an assault on globalisation.”10 In the heyday of liberal optimism during the Clinton years, it was easy to point to the most attractive forces driving globalization forward: new technologies, the spread of political freedom, the power of market economics, the creation of common interests between nations, even the wisdom of farsighted politicians.

The most gloomy environmentalists argue that over the long run, global warming will cause droughts, famines, and wars as mankind struggles over shrinking supplies of food and habitable land.4 An alternative to this Hobbesian vision of war of all against all is that mankind might actually succeed in reining in carbon emissions. But this could just be an alternative route to the same end: an international struggle for a fixed or diminishing “pie” of economic well-being. My colleague at the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, has written eloquently on this last point and the dangers of a “zero-sum world economy.” Wolf argues that “the biggest point about debates on climate change and energy supply is that they bring back the question of limits. … For if there are limits to emissions, there may also be limits to growth.

Cited in William Greider, Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country (New York: Rodale, 2009), 70. 7. Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (London: Penguin, 2002), 4. 8. Ibid., 21. 9. Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing (New York: ReganBooks, 2001), 59. 10. Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005), 9. 17. POWER: CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER AND THE NEOCONSERVATIVES 1. Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs 70:1 (Winter 1990/91). 2. Charles Krauthammer, “The Bush Doctrine,” Time, March 5, 2001.


pages: 614 words: 168,545

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It? by Brett Christophers

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business process, business process outsourcing, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, collective bargaining, congestion charging, corporate governance, data is not the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, electricity market, Etonian, European colonialism, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, G4S, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, greed is good, green new deal, haute couture, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, intangible asset, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, land bank, land reform, land value tax, light touch regulation, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, patent troll, pattern recognition, peak oil, Piper Alpha, post-Fordism, post-war consensus, precariat, price discrimination, price mechanism, profit maximization, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, remunicipalization, rent control, rent gap, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, risk free rate, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, sharing economy, short selling, Silicon Valley, software patent, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech bro, The Nature of the Firm, transaction costs, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, very high income, wage slave, We are all Keynesians now, wealth creators, winner-take-all economy, working-age population, yield curve, you are the product

Surely, now, with interest rates at rock-bottom, precisely where Keynes wanted them to be, his prognostications would be proved correct, and financial rentierism in its classic form would fade quietly into the night. Yet, once again, nothing of the kind has happened. As the Economist, in head-scratching mode, remarked in 2014 in response to a call from Martin Wolf at the Financial Times ‘for a policy that will “wipe out rentiers with cheap money” ’: ‘So how’s that working out? We have had a near-zero rates policy and quantitative easing for five years now [but nevertheless] the rentiers are not being wiped out; they are making out like bandits.’58 And they have continued to make out like bandits.

By 2015, retail water bills had increased in real terms by an average of some 40 per cent since the sector was privatized in 1989, the steepest price increases occurring during the 1990s.15 The water sector’s experience is closer to being the norm than the exception. When the Financial Times’s Martin Wolf – hardly noted for his socialism – declared in 2008 that ‘Britain’s utility model is broken’, one of his main criticisms of the ‘flawed’ model whereby infrastructure-based public monopolies had been transferred into the hands of private companies ‘that own, run and develop the assets’ was that it had proved ‘excessively costly to consumers’ not just in the water sector but also, among others, in the cases of ‘airports, nuclear power, electricity and gas networks’.16 Writing seven years later, also from a free-market standpoint, Nigel Hawkins agreed.

At heart, though, as James Meek recognized, what the likes of Hutchison and the Canadian pensions fund manager are actually buying in all these instances is always the same: bill-paying customers and the captive rents that, directly or indirectly, they pay to monopoly infrastructure owners. But let us return to the one infrastructure sector identified by Martin Wolf and Nigel Hawkins as a substantive exception to the post-privatization rule of rising consumer prices and weak investment: telecommunications. As Hawkins notes, UK consumers of telecoms services have benefited from both falling prices and significant investment-fuelled innovation since BT’s privatization (as British Telecom), in 1984.


pages: 264 words: 76,643

The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations by David Pilling

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Branko Milanovic, call centre, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, dark matter, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial intermediation, financial repression, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, Higgs boson, high-speed rail, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, Mahatma Gandhi, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mortgage debt, off grid, old-boy network, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, peak oil, performance metric, pez dispenser, profit motive, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, science of happiness, shareholder value, sharing economy, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, urban sprawl, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

Angus Deaton alerted me to this idea: www.sciencedirect.com. 14. Angus Deaton in conversation with the author, July 2016. 15. Martin Wolf, review of Branko Milanovic, Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization, Harvard University Press, 2016, in Financial Times, April 14, 2016. 16. Inequality of wealth (see chapter 9) is almost always higher than inequality of income because advantages and disadvantages accumulate over time. 17. Milanovic, Global Inequality. 18. Milanovic calls this “citizenship rent.” 19. Martin Wolf, review of Milanovic, Global Inequality, in Financial Times, April 14, 2016. 20.

Gabriel Wildau, “Small Chinese Cities Steer Away from GDP as Measure of Success,” Financial Times, August 13, 2014. 19. Arthur Beesley et al., “China and EU Offer Sharp Contrast with US on Climate Change,” Financial Times, June 1, 2017. CHAPTER 10: WEALTH 1. This is something Martin Wolf of the Financial Times told me. Personal conversation, September 2016, London. 2. For companies there’s even a third set of accounts, called the cash-flow statement, which measures the actual cash position of the company—the liquidity at its disposal—and is thus different again from the profit and loss accounts. 3.

George Monbiot, “Can You Put a Price on the Beauty of the Natural World?,” Guardian, April 22, 2014: www.theguardian.com. 17. See the Global Footprint Network website: www.footprintnetwork.org. 18. Ibid. 19. Interview with author, March 2017. 20. These ideas are based on a discussion with Martin Wolf, my esteemed colleague at the Financial Times, September 2016. 21. Glenn-Marie Lange et al., “The Changing Wealth of Nations,” World Bank, December 2011, p. xii: www.worldbank.org. 22. Angus Maddison, a pioneer in calculating GDP over time, was professor at the University of Groningen from 1978 to 1997, and a founder of the Groningen Growth and Development Centre. 23.


pages: 422 words: 113,830

Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism by Kevin Phillips

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency peg, diversification, Doha Development Round, energy security, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, index arbitrage, index fund, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, large denomination, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mobile money, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old-boy network, peak oil, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Renaissance Technologies, reserve currency, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route

It is too early to tell how economically important this upheaval will prove. But nobody can doubt its significance for the financial system. Its origins lie with credit expansion and financial innovation in the U.S. itself. It cannot be blamed on “crony capitalism” in peripheral economies, but rather on irresponsibility in the core of the world economy. —Martin Wolf, Financial Times, September 2007 The “crack cocaine” of our generation appears to be debt. We just can’t seem to get enough of it. And, every time it looks like the U.S. consumer may be approaching his maximum tolerance level, somebody figures out how to lever on even more debt using some new and more complex financing.

Even within the United States, market preferences are unlikely to block the emergence of some government-sanctioned energy strategy or hybrid of an energy and global-warming strategy, nor are they likely to block a considerable amount of financial reregulation, not least in the area of securities transparency and valuation. Other reregulation, as suggested by commentators like Martin Wolf and Henry Kaufman, could also include a rethinking of the legal status of megabanks. To Wolf, “What we have [in banking] is a risk-loving industry guaranteed as a public utility.” If banks are to be rescued because they are too big to fail, they must also become, in the manner of a regulated public utility, too suitably behaved and too responsible to fail.43 This chapter cannot turn away from the role of unstable and speculative finance in jeopardizing America’s position in the world of the early twenty-first century without considering two particular failures.

And if these multiple abuses overlap with the great unwinding of the 1982-2007 debt bubble, then they—and the financial sector that created, promoted, and so greatly profited from them—will have much to answer for. The nature of English-speaking capitalism as practiced especially by Wall Street but also by the City of London is drawing fire. Martin Wolf, the chief economic commentator at the Financial Times, noted at year’s end that “what is happening in credit markets today is a huge blow to the credibility of the Anglo-Saxon model of transactions-orientated financial capitalism. A mixture of crony capitalism and gross incompetence has been on display in the core financial markets of New York and London.”44 On the other side of the Atlantic, the iconic American investor Warren Buffett summarized his criticism: “You can’t turn a financial toad into a prince by securitizing it. . . .


pages: 182 words: 53,802

The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Banks by Ann Pettifor

Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , borderless world, Bretton Woods, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, clean water, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land bank, Leo Hollis, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mobile money, Money creation, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, Satyajit Das, savings glut, secular stagnation, The Chicago School, the market place, Thomas Malthus, Tobin tax, too big to fail

The movement shows little concern for high interest rates; indeed they are seen as beneficial because they act as constraints on lending. They have also little interest in cross-border financial flows or the impact of these flows on domestic economic policies. Sovereign Money reformers are backed by establishment figures such as Lord Adair Turner of the Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET) and Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. The latter argued that, ‘proposals for replacing private debt-created money with government-created money are perfectly feasible and would bring substantial benefits.’2 Although I am about to take issue with their specific proposals, I am also clear that today’s monetary reformers must be congratulated.

Creationism in Schools, 2005, gallup.com, accessed 8 June 2016. 9John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, 1930, econ.yale.edu. 1. Credit Power 1Michael Hudsen, Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy, New York: Nation Books, 2016. 2Geoffrey Ingham, The Nature of Money, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004. 3Sir Mervyn King in an interview with Martin Wolf, ‘Lunch with the FT’, Financial Times, 14 June 2013, ft.com, accessed 6 June 2016. And the thing that’s so extraordinary is that, for the past few years, the banking system, which is normally responsible for creating 95 percent of broad money has been contracting its part of the money supply. And since we at the bank only supply about 5 percent of it, the proportional increase in our bit has to be massive to offset the contraction of the rest. 4See Cullen Roche, ‘Understanding Why Austrian Economics Is Flawed’, Pragmatic Capitalism, 10 September 2013, pragcap. com, accessed 3 October 2013. 5For more on this, see William Keegan, Mrs Thatcher’s Economic Experiment, London: Penguin Books, 1984. 6Ibid., p. 208. 7Jon Ward, ‘He Found the Flaw?’

., p. 27. 37Adair Turner, ‘Helicopters on a Leash’, Project Syndicate, 9 May 2016, project-syndicate.org, accessed 2 June 2016. 38Ibid., pp. 2–4. 39From Keynes, ‘An Open Letter to President Roosevelt’. My emphasis. 40Adair Turner, ‘Helicopters on a Leash’, Project Syndicate, 9 May 2016, project-syndicate.org, accessed 26 July 2016. 41Quoted in Martin Wolf, ‘George Osborne’s Desire to Cut Spending Makes Little Sense’, Financial Times, 4 March 2016. 42International Labour Office, World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2016, January 2016, ilo.org, accessed 2 June 2016. 7. Subordinating Finance, Restoring Democracy 1Massimo Amato and Luca Fantacci, The End of Finance, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011. 2Polanyi, The Great Transformation, p. 217. 3Paul Trott, ‘2009 EMF Study on the Valuation of Property for Lending Purposes’, European Mortgage Federation, November 2009, law.berkeley.edu, accessed 2 June 2016. 4Bank of England, ‘Trends in Lending: April 2015’, bankofengland.co.uk, accessed 2 June 2016. 5Chart G1.1, ‘Bankstats (Monetary and Financial Statistics)’, Bank of England, March 2016, bankofengland.co.uk, accessed 2 June 2016. 6For a detailed exposition of Keynes’s liquidity preference theory, see Tily, Keynes Betrayed, Chapter 7. 7Ibid. 8Ibid., p. 202. 9David Stockman ‘How The Fed Turned a Flood of Treasury Debt into a Scarcity of Repo Collateral’, David Stockman’s Contra Corner, 14 August 2014, davidstockmanscontracorner.com, accessed on 2 June 2016. 10Hélène Rey, ‘Dilemma Not Trilemma: The Global Financial Cycle and Monetary Policy Independence’, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2015, nber.org, accessed 2 June 2016, p. 311. 11Ibid. 12Jagdish Bhagwati, ‘The Capital Myth: The Difference Between Trade in Widgets and Dollars’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 77, May/June 1998. 13Jonathan D.


pages: 194 words: 56,074

Angrynomics by Eric Lonergan, Mark Blyth

AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Branko Milanovic, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, collective bargaining, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Erik Brynjolfsson, Extinction Rebellion, fake news, full employment, gig economy, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, income per capita, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, labour market flexibility, liberal capitalism, lockdown, low interest rates, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Modern Monetary Theory, precariat, price stability, quantitative easing, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Skype, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, spectrum auction, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, The Spirit Level, universal basic income

First published in 2020 by Agenda Publishing Agenda Publishing Limited The Core Bath Lane Newcastle Helix Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 5TF www.agendapub.com ISBN 978-1-78821-278-6 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-78821-279-3 (paperback) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Patty Rennie Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: from economics to angrynomics DIALOGUE 1 Public anger and the energy of tribes DIALOGUE 2 The moral mobs and their handlers DIALOGUE 3 Macroangrynomics: capitalism as hardware DIALOGUE 4 Microangrynomics: private stressors, uncertainty and risk DIALOGUE 5 Calming the anger: from angrynomics to an economics that works for everyone Conclusions Postscript: angrynomics in a pandemic Further reading Notes Index “A man is about as big as the things that make him angry” WINSTON CHURCHILL Acknowledgements A great many colleagues and friends have contributed to the thinking behind this book. Many of them will disagree with much of what follows. We have benefitted hugely from reading and discussing many of these ideas with Martin Wolf, Martin Sandbu, James Mackintosh, Adair Turner, Angus Armstrong, Roger Farmer, Carolina Alves, Anand Menon, Michael Burleigh, Frances Coppola, Daniel Mytnik, James Hanham, Simon Tilford, John Springford, Dave Fishwick, Jenny Rogers, Tony Finding, Tristan Hanson, Juan Nevado, Megan Greene, Simon Wren-Lewis, Kate Raworth, Roman Krznaric, Sony Kapoor, Alev Scott, Rupert Taylor, Clare Patey, Stewart Gilchrist, Nigel Kershaw, Kevin Riches, Matthias Matthijs, Jonathan Hopkin, Stephen Kinsella, Holly Goulet, Joe Hanrahan, Kimberly Witherspoon, Sarah Russo, Vicky Capstick, Rose McDermott, Carys Roberts, Wade Jacobi, John and Shelley Sawers and Matthew Lawrence.

One of the signature claims for the boosters of v.3.0, as it was for v.1.0, was that while the new system was geared towards capital rather than labour, the resulting growth would “raise all boats”, or at least “trickle down” to everyone else. However, the problem we discovered by about 1995, through the work of economists such as Tony Atkinson, Martin Wolf, Thomas Piketty and Branko Milanovic, was that it was all trickling up, not down. The numbers are well known, and we have mentioned some already, but just to recap, remember the following. While globalization certainly benefitted workers in the developing world, workers in the bottom 50 per cent of the global income distribution captured only 12 per cent of total growth.

The economics profession has been engaged in a great deal of soul-searching since the financial crisis. The crisis revealed not just a failure of forecasting, but also a sense that the focus and methods of economic policy were out of touch – giving insufficient weight to climate change and inequality – and the conventional tools of analysis and policy needed a complete overhaul. Martin Wolf at the Financial Times, has provided deep insights through his columns on all of these issues. In two brilliant articles – “Why rigged capitalism is damaging social democracy” (FT, 18 September 2019) and “How to reform today’s rigged capitalism” (FT, 3 December 2019) – he summarises both what is wrong and what should be done.


Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by Quinn Slobodian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Greenspan put, Gunnar Myrdal, Hernando de Soto, invisible hand, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mercator projection, Mont Pelerin Society, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Pearl River Delta, Philip Mirowski, power law, price mechanism, public intellectual, quantitative easing, random walk, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, special economic zone, statistical model, Suez crisis 1956, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Chicago School, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, urban renewal, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

After the resolution of the oil crisis led to a vast new sea of petrodollars to be recycled through Wall Street and the City of London to lenders in the Global South, the uniformity of conditions globally became all the more pressing. The TPRC and its in-­house journal, The World Economy, became a clearing­house for critiques of the NIEO and calls to reform the GATT in the 1970s and early 1980s.134 One of the sharpest critics at the time was one of ­today’s most influential economic commentators, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. ­After beginning his ­career at the World Bank in 1971 (where he coauthored its first World Development Report with ­future MPS president Deepak Lal), Wolf was the director of studies at the TPRC in 1981 for six years before beginning at the Financial Times.135 At the TPRC, Wolf criticized what he called “the desire of developing countries to create a world in which one group of countries has most of the obligations and another most of the rights.”136 By opting out of GATT disciplines, Wolf and ­others argued, developing countries ­were undermining the rule of law. 244 GLOBALISTS As a 1984 TPRC report that Wolf helped write put it, “Developing countries have been engaged in a sustained assault on the liberal princi­ples of the international trading system.”137 Against special and differential treatment, the goal of NIEO opponents was to promote the idea of one rule for all in the world economy.

Indeed, just four years ­after it began its work, it was the spread of knowledge about the organ­ization led to a shutdown engineered from below.47 In 1999, massive protests led to the cancellation of the meeting of the WTO in Seattle. In a lecture series devoted to Jan Tumlir, Sutherland called Seattle a “watershed for the institution” that created “a fundamental deficit in effective po­liti­cal support for the WTO system.” “Seattle created a generation and a legion of WTO-­haters,” he said, “and they have votes.” 48 Martin Wolf noted in the same lecture series, “As decision-­makers transformed the size, economic scope, impact and ­legal potency of the trading system, they also increased its po­liti­cal visibility. What had previously been the play t­ hing of a limited group of highly knowledgeable policy-­makers and technocrats has become the focus of fierce pressure from a wide range of non-­governmental organisations.”

Gerard Curzon and ­Virginia Curzon Price, Hidden Barriers to International Trade (London: Trade Policy Research Centre, 1970), n.p. 215. Ibid. 216. Harry G. Johnson, “World Inflation, the Developing Countries and an ‘Integrated Programme for Commodities,’ ” Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Review, December 1976, 335. 217. Martin Wolf, “An Unholy Alliance: The Eu­ro­pean Community and Developing Countries in the International Trading System,” in Eu­ro­pean Trade Policies and the Developing World, ed. L. B. M. Mennes and Jacob Kol (London: Croom Helm, 1988), 45. 218. Gerard Curzon and Victoria Curzon Price, Global Assault on Non-­tariff Trade Barriers (London: Trade Policy Research Centre, 1972), 3. 7.


pages: 327 words: 90,542

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril by Satyajit Das

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, accounting loophole / creative accounting, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, Anton Chekhov, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, bond market vigilante , Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collaborative economy, colonial exploitation, computer age, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, digital divide, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Downton Abbey, Emanuel Derman, energy security, energy transition, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial repression, forward guidance, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, geopolitical risk, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, informal economy, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, It's morning again in America, Jane Jacobs, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Les Trente Glorieuses, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, margin call, market design, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, open economy, PalmPilot, passive income, peak oil, peer-to-peer lending, pension reform, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Rana Plaza, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satyajit Das, savings glut, secular stagnation, seigniorage, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Fry, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the market place, the payments system, The Spirit Level, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade route, transaction costs, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks, Y2K, Yom Kippur War, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Little appears to have changed since Ferdinand Pecora conducted the 1932 commission examining Wall Street practices prior to the 1929 crash. His observation remains true today: “Legal chicanery and pitch darkness were the banker's stoutest allies.” 12 Governments seem unable or unwilling to rein in banks, which are described by the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf as a “risk-loving industry guaranteed as a public utility.”13 Increasingly reviled and mistrusted, financial institutions throughout the world are losing legitimacy. To deal with domestic problems, developed nations are using a combination of low interest rates and increased money supply to devalue their currencies.

25 September 2009. www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/historicpubs/speeches/2009/speech409.pdf. 6 Peter Drucker, “The Mirage of Pensions,” Harper's Monthly, February 1950. 7 Jagadeesh Gokhale, Measuring the Unfunded Obligations of European Countries, National Centre for Policy Studies, Policy Report Number 319, January 2009. 8 See Quentin Peel, “Merkel Warns on Cost of Welfare,” Financial Times, 16 December 2012. 9 See AFP, “Impact of US Financial Crisis Will Be Felt around World: Chinese PM,” 28 September 2008. 10 See Martin Wolf, “Reform of British Banking Needs to Go Further,” Financial Times, 20 June 2013. 11 A phrase coined by Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England. 12 See Simon Schama, The American Future: A History from the Founding Fathers to Barack Obama, 2010, p. 311. 13 See “Jean-Claude Juncker Interview: The Demons Haven't Been Banished,” Der Spiegel, 11 March 2013. www.spiegel.de/international/europe/spiegel-interview-with-luxembourg-prime-minister-juncker-a-888021.html. 3.

Ralph Mannheim, Der Fuehrer: Hitler's Rise to Power, Houghton Mifflin, 1944, excerpted in Fritz Ringer, The German Inflation of 1923, Oxford University Press, 1969, p. 170. 2 See Michael Mackenzie, Dan McCrum, and Stephen Foley, “Bond Markets: A False Sense of Security,” Financial Times, 18 November 2012. 3 See Ralph Atkins and Martin Sandbu, “FT Interview Transcript: Jens Weidmann,” Financial Times, 13 November 2011. 4 See Ben McLannahan, “Japan Bonds Swing Wildly after BoJ Move,” Financial Times, 5 April 2013. 5 John Maynard Keynes, quoted in Robert Sidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Saviour 1920-1937, Macmillan, 1992, p. 62. 6 Greg Smith, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” New York Times, 14 March 2012. 7 Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, University of California Press (1935) 1994, p. 109. 8 “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: The Role of Investment Banks,” Senate Hearing 111-674, vol. 4, 27 April 2010. www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111shrg57322/html/CHRG-111shrg57322.htm. 9 Matt Taibbi, “The Great American Bubble Machine,” Rolling Stone, 5 April 2010. 10 Liam Vaughan and Jesse Westbrook, “Barclays Big-Boy Breaches Mean Libor Fixes Not Enough,” Bloomberg, 29 June 2012. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-06-29/barclays-big-boy-breaches-mean-libor-fixes-not-enough. 11 Martin Arnold, “HSBC Shares Drop after Full-Year Profits Fall,” Financial Times, 23 February 2015. 12 Ferdinand Pecora, Wall Street under Oath, Simon & Schuster, 1939, p. 130. http://books.google.com.au/books?id=i2AUAQAAMAAJ&dq=Wall%20Street%20Under%20Oath. 13 Martin Wolf, “Why Banking Is an Accident Waiting to Happen,” Financial Times, 27 November 2007. www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3da550e8-9d0e-11dc-af03-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz3ZxuzhRuO. 14 John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Macmillan, 1936, Chapter 12, Part VI. 15 “Statement by Mr.


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Are Chief Executives Overpaid? by Deborah Hargreaves

banking crisis, benefit corporation, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bonus culture, business climate, corporate governance, Donald Trump, G4S, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, late capitalism, loadsamoney, long term incentive plan, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, performance metric, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Snapchat, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, wealth creators

Stagnating average wages and increasingly insecure employment terms, accompanied by runaway pay at the top, had a role to play in the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in the US. Many people express concerns about the growth of a two-tier economy and society, with the elite enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else. Commentators such as Martin Wolf in the Financial Times argue that the liberal international order that has presided since the Cold War, is crumbling.1 This is in part because it does not satisfy large parts of western society – the people who voted for Mr Trump and Brexit. As people watch a tiny elite consuming far too much of everything, it undermines their trust in government, business and the country itself.

It is time for the business sector to listen to the moderate voices for reform or reap the consequences of growing inequality, anti-business sentiment and possibly more dramatic clashes. If we don’t rise to the challenge, the fundamental trust that makes a liberal market democracy function could be damaged beyond repair. We run the risk of sleepwalking into a dystopian future of extreme income disparities and the unrest that could bring. Notes 1. Martin Wolf, ‘The Liberal International Order is Sick’. Financial Times, 23 January 2018. Available at https://www.ft.com/content/c45acec8-fd35-11e7-9b32-d7d59aace167 2. Aditya Chakrabortty, ‘One blunt heckler has revealed just how much the UK economy is failing us’. The Guardian, 10 January 2017. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/10/blunt-heckler-economists-failing-us-booming-britain-gdp-london POLITY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT Go to www.politybooks.com/eula to access Polity’s ebook EULA.


pages: 190 words: 61,970

Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty by Peter Singer

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Bear Stearns, Branko Milanovic, Cass Sunstein, clean water, do well by doing good, end world poverty, experimental economics, Garrett Hardin, illegal immigration, Larry Ellison, Martin Wolf, microcredit, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, Peter Singer: altruism, pre–internet, purchasing power parity, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, Silicon Valley, subprime mortgage crisis, Thomas Malthus, Tyler Cowen, ultimatum game, union organizing

But it scarcely seems possible that, if we truly set out to reduce poverty, and put resources into doing so that match the size of the problem—including resources to evaluate past failures and learn from our mistakes— we will be unable to find ways of making a positive impact. “Trade, Not Aid”? One of our great anxieties about giving aid is that it isn’t really going to help the poor or, worse still, that it may even hurt them. That view is supported by some aid critics, who claim that aid does not spur economic growth.7 Martin Wolf, for example, in Why Globalization Works, argues that reducing the barriers that poor nations face when they seek to sell their products on the global market would do more to reduce poverty than any amount of aid.8 Wolf and other aid critics point out that the nations that have pulled themselves out of poverty during the past fifty years have generally received little aid, whereas the nations that have received the most aid are generally still poor.

Michael Liffman, of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Philanthropy and Social Investment at Swinburne University, encouraged me to think about ethical issues specific to philanthropy, and cosponsored a conference at Princeton University on that topic. At Columbia University, Akeel Bilgrami brought me together with Joe Stiglitz and Bill Easterly in a stimulating discussion of the efficacy of aid. Moises Naim, of Foreign Policy arranged another lively debate for me, this time with Martin Wolf, in Monterrey, Mexico. At Oxfam America, Philip Weiser and Paul O’Brien kindly responded to my queries; and Aida Pesquera, from the Oxfam office in Bogotá, accompanied me on a visit to an Oxfam project in Colombia. Oxfam Australia arranged my visit to the ragpickers they were aiding in Pune, India, and Margie Bryant of Serendipity Productions, funded the trip as part of her documentary on my work.

Celia Dugger, “CARE Turns Down Federal Funds for Food Aid,” The New York Times, August 16, 2007; Daniel Maxwell and Christopher Barrett, Food Aid After Fifty Years: Recasting Its Role (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 35. 7. William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden (London: Penguin, 2007), is among them. See also Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian, “Aid and Growth: What Does the Cross-Country Evidence Really Show?” IMF Working Paper 05/127 (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 2005). 8. Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works (New Haven, CT.: Yale University Press, 2004). 9. See Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Recipient Aid Charts,” www.oecd.org/countrylist/0,3349,en_2649_34469_25602317_l_l_l_l,00.html; for discussion see Tim Harford and Michael Klein, “Aid and the Resource Curse,” Public Policy for the Private Sector, Note 291, April 2005, http://rru.worldbank.org/Documents/PublicPolicyJournal/ 291Harford_Klein.pdf 10.


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The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy by Mervyn King

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, centre right, classic study, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, distributed generation, Doha Development Round, Edmond Halley, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Japanese asset price bubble, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, labour market flexibility, large denomination, lateral thinking, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Nick Leeson, no-fly zone, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Satoshi Nakamoto, savings glut, secular stagnation, seigniorage, stem cell, Steve Jobs, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, yield curve, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

In good times, banks took the benefits for their employees and shareholders, while in bad times the taxpayer bore the costs. For the banks, it was a case of heads I win, tails you – the taxpayer – lose. Greater risk begets greater size, greater importance to the functioning of the economy, higher implicit public subsidies, and yet larger incentives to take risk – described by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times as the ‘financial doomsday machine’.14 All banks, and large ones in particular, benefited from an implicit taxpayer guarantee, enabling them to borrow cheaply to finance their lending. Although the implicit subsidy was not new, banks were able to exploit its existence to borrow more, and resorted to the use of ever more short-term finance from institutions (known as wholesale funding) in addition to deposits from individual or business customers.

They recommended ending the system of ‘fractional reserve banking’, under which banks create deposits to finance risky lending and so have insufficient safe cash reserves to back their deposits.12 The elimination of fractional reserve banking was a proposal put forward in 1933 as the ‘Chicago Plan’.13 The proponents of the plan included the brilliant American monetary theorist Irving Fisher and a distinguished group of economists at Chicago such as Frank Knight, Henry Simons and Paul Douglas; later support came from right across the spectrum of post-war economists, ranging from Milton Friedman to James Tobin and Hyman Minsky.14 Interestingly, John Maynard Keynes was not part of this group, largely because Britain did not experience a banking crisis in the 1930s and his focus was on restoring output and employment.15 More recently, a number of economists have proposed variations on the same theme: John Cochrane from Chicago, Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof from the IMF, the British economists Andrew Jackson, Ben Dyson and John Kay, Laurence Kotlikoff from Boston and the distinguished FT commentator Martin Wolf.16 There are two ways of looking at these radical approaches to banking reform, one by focusing on the banks’ assets and the other on their liabilities. The essence of the Chicago Plan was to force banks to hold 100 per cent liquid reserves against deposits. Reserves would include only safe assets, such as government securities or reserves held with the central bank.

As Irving Fisher put it, ‘We could leave the banks free … to lend money as they please, provided we no longer allowed them to manufacture the money which they lend … In short: nationalize money but do not nationalize banking.’20 And the clarity and passion of Fisher in the 1930s are echoed in the arguments of John Cochrane and Martin Wolf today. Such reforms would indeed eliminate the alchemy in our banking system, which the official reform agenda fails to tackle. So why hasn’t the idea been implemented? One explanation is that it would eliminate the implicit subsidy to banking that results from the ‘too important to fail’ nature of most banks.


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Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Blyth

"there is no alternative" (TINA), accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black Swan, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency peg, debt deflation, deindustrialization, disintermediation, diversification, en.wikipedia.org, ending welfare as we know it, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Irish property bubble, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal capitalism, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Minsky moment, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, savings glut, short selling, structural adjustment programs, tail risk, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, too big to fail, Two Sigma, unorthodox policies, value at risk, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

But then, like the United States and the United Kingdom, Germany forgot her uniqueness, in terms of both timing and context and in terms of how building the export-led ordo that made Germany rich was only possible precisely because other countries were not doing the same at the same time.38 Now Germany and the EC want everyone else in Europe to be more German: another fallacy of composition that cannot work. As Martin Wolf put it beautifully, “Is everybody supposed to run current account surpluses? If so, with whom—Martians? And if everybody does indeed try to run a savings surplus, what else can be the outcome but a permanent global depression?”39 Germany was able to take the lead in Europe because German ideas have been at the heart of the EU and the euro since its inception.

Greta R. Krippner, Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 7. T-bills were in short supply because Asian governments were vacuuming up as many as they could to add to reserves and manage their exchange rates. See Martin Wolf, Fixing Global Finance (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); and Eric Helleiner and Jonathan Kirshner, The Future of the Dollar (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), chap. 3. 8. As we shall see later, this fear of contagion is what in part drives austerity in the Eurozone. 9.

There was also a third, more “public” argument that a common currency would lead to a greater popular identification with Europe on the level of citizen’s identities. Quite the opposite seems to be happening in Spain at the moment. 46. I owe this insight to a presentation entitled “Will the Euro Survive the Crisis?” given by Martin Wolf at Brown University, April 17, 2012. 47. I thank Simon Tilford for this insight. 48. Barry Eichengreen, Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression 1919–1939 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 49. This was sometimes referred to as “the d’Artagnan Principle” after Alexandre Dumas’s Musketeers’ cry “all for one and one for all.” 50.


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The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer by Nicholas Shaxson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Blythe Masters, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Donald Trump, Etonian, export processing zone, failed state, fake news, falling living standards, family office, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, forensic accounting, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Global Witness, high net worth, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kickstarter, land value tax, late capitalism, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megaproject, Michael Milken, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, transfer pricing, two and twenty, vertical integration, Wayback Machine, wealth creators, white picket fence, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

‘The notion of competitiveness of an economy doesn’t make sense. It is a semantically nonsensical use of the term,’ he said. See ‘An interview with Martin Hellwig: competitiveness as doublespeak,’ foolsgold.international, 2015, based on my telephone interview with Hellwig, 29 June 2015. 26. The Martin Wolf quote comes from ‘Optimistic about the State: Martin Wolf’s searing attack on the competitiveness agenda’, foolsgold.international, 7 May 2015. The Simon Wren-Lewis quote comes from his article ‘Bemoaning the cost of national debt is missing the point – we must invest in the economy’, New Statesman, 28 November 2017. 27. For a deeper discussion of this, see Thomas Fazi and Bill Mitchell, Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-neoliberal World, Pluto, 2017, or Dani Rodrik, Straight Talk on Trade, Princeton, 2018. 28.

This self-abasing belief, that we must bow down to global markets and run as fast as we can in some sort of a race to the bottom, is widely held, both on the right – whose members see beneficent global markets reining in and disciplining grasping, incompetent governments – and also on the left, which fears that governments are powerless to shield their people from nasty global forces. ‘Both agree that impotent politicians must now bow before omnipotent markets,’ explained Martin Wolf, chief economic commentator for the Financial Times. ‘This has become one of the clichés of the age. But it is (almost) total nonsense.’26 People believe this nonsense because of other confusions. One is that they fail to see how the pro-finance changes that have happened with globalisation have generally required active intervention, or deliberate non-intervention, by governments.

People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off.’30 You can slice this a different way. Among rich nations, high-tax countries have performed just as well as low-tax countries in overall GDP and growth terms, but with better health and social outcomes and less inequality. Or, as Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ chief economic commentator, put it, ‘High-tax countries have been more successful in achieving their social objectives than low-tax countries. They have done so with no economic penalty.’31 The case against corporate tax cuts is so strong and the reasons why the research is wrong are so numerous that it is tedious to lay them all out.


pages: 477 words: 75,408

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism by Calum Chace

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Robotics, Andy Rubin, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, bread and circuses, call centre, Chris Urmson, congestion charging, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital divide, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, Flynn Effect, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, gender pay gap, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, income inequality, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, lifelogging, lump of labour, Lyft, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Milgram experiment, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, PageRank, pattern recognition, post scarcity, post-industrial society, post-work, precariat, prediction markets, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Rodney Brooks, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, TED Talk, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, working-age population, Y Combinator, young professional

It found that roughly a third of jobs have a low probability of being automated out of existence, another third have a medium probability, and the final third have a high probability. Haldane avoided putting a specific timescale on this, and also avoided saying what would happen after that undisclosed period. Martin Wolf As the main financial columnist and associate editor at the Financial Times, Martin Wolf is the very epitome of a City establishment figure. He was described by US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers as “probably the most deeply thoughtful and professionally informed economic journalist in the world.”[xlvii] Although the credit crunch and subsequent recession have re-kindled his youthful enthusiasm for Keynesian economics, it is still a surprise to read him advocating income redistribution and universal basic income, as he did in this article from February 2014: “If Mr Frey and Prof Osborne [see below] are right [about automation]… we will need to redistribute income and wealth.

[cclxxxviii] Abundance The Star Trek economy is the post-scarcity economy, the economy of radical abundance. In their 2012 book “Abundance: the future is better than you think”, Peter Diamandis and Stephen Kotler argue that this world is within reach in the not-too-distant future, thanks largely to the exponential improvement in technology. Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf urged that we should “enslave the robots and free the poor”,[cclxxxix] and who would not welcome such an outcome? Perhaps if we play our cards right, automation by machine intelligence will simply mean that we humans get to spend our long and healthy lives playing, learning, enjoying each other's company, having adventures and fun.


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Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream by Arianna Huffington

Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 13, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, call centre, carried interest, citizen journalism, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, Cornelius Vanderbilt, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, David Brooks, do what you love, extreme commuting, Exxon Valdez, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, high-speed rail, housing crisis, immigration reform, invisible hand, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, late fees, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, new economy, New Journalism, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, post-work, proprietary trading, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Savings and loan crisis, single-payer health, smart grid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, winner-take-all economy, working poor, Works Progress Administration

Harvard Business School, 1 Dec. 2008, www.hbswk.hbs.edu. 63 A June 2008 Harvard Business School study: Ibid. 64 Even more troubling: Booz Allen Hamilton, “The Globalization of White-Collar Work: The Facts and Fallout of Next-Generation Offshoring,” 2006, www.booz.com. 65 “The financial sector,” wrote Martin Wolf: Martin Wolf, “The Challenge of Halting the Financial Doomsday Machine,” 20 Apr. 2010, www.ft.com. 66 By 2020, interest alone: David Brooks, “The Ecstasy of Fiscal Policy,” 1 Apr. 2010, www.nytimes.com. 67 That same year, five segments: Douglas W. Elmendorf, “The Economic and Budget Outlook,” Congressional Budget Office, 13 May 2010, www.cbo.gov. 68 A recent report: John Mauldin, “The Future of the Global Public Debt Explosion,” 2 May 2010, www.businessinsider.com. 69 For instance, in Greece: Bank for International Settlements, “The Future of Public Debt Prospects and Implications,” Mar. 2010, www.bis.org. 70 “While fiscal problems need …”: Ibid. 71 As Mauldin says: John Mauldin, “The Future of the Global Public Debt Explosion,” 2 May 2010, www.businessinsider.com. 72 Mauldin goes on to: Ibid. 73 Princeton economist Alan Blinder: Alan Blinder, “Opening Remarks and Consequences of Current Fiscal Trajectory,” 8 Oct. 2009, www.americanprogress.org. 74 Historian Arnold Toynbee believed that: Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 273. 75 Partisanship pop quiz time: Dwight D.

The financialization of our economy didn’t just happen. Decisions were made that made it possible—and decisions can be unmade. But first we need to decide, as a country, what kind of economy we want to have: one that’s good for middle-class families or one that’s built to enrich Wall Street. “The financial sector,” wrote Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, “seems to be a machine to transfer income and wealth from outsiders to insiders, while increasing the fragility of the economy as a whole.”65 When the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times is sounding like the second coming of Karl Marx, you know things have gotten way out of hand.


Hopes and Prospects by Noam Chomsky

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, colonial rule, corporate personhood, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deskilling, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Firefox, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, invisible hand, liberation theology, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, nuremberg principles, one-state solution, open borders, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Seymour Hersh, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus

And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with strengthened market positions, giving them even greater control over consumer lending and more potential to profit,” and with even better opportunities to take risks and gain profits without concern for the consequences of failure, thanks to the government insurance policy. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, the media’s most respected financial commentator, writes that the financial system was saved from “an abyss” only by massive robbery of taxpayers to pay off the financial sector’s creditors—a decision that was “quite unbearable,” but “also correct,” given the alternative.

It already makes one-third of the world’s solar cells, is in the lead in mass production of electric cars and the latest generation of “clean coal” power stations, and is predicted to surpass the United States as the largest market for wind turbines. China is also providing the most successful model for financial institutions, Martin Wolf concludes: “China has emerged as the most significant winner from the financial and economic crisis” because of its successful management—and not coincidentally, it rejected the financial liberalization of the neoliberal era.15 The primary victims of military terror and economic strangulation are the poor and weak, within the rich countries themselves and far more brutally in the South.

Eric Dash, New York Times, June 10, 2009. 9. Theo Francis and Peter Coy, “No Big Fix for Global Finance,” Business Week, September 9, 2009. David Cho, “Banks ‘Too Big to Fail’ Have Grown Even Bigger; Behemoths Born of the Bailout Reduce Consumer Choice, Tempt Corporate Moral Hazard,” Washington Post, August 28, 2009. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, September 15, 2009. 10. “Fewer American See Solid Evidence of Global Warming,” Pew survey reports, October 22, 2009, http://people-press.org/report/556/. 11. Clifford Krauss and Jad Mouawad, New York Times, August 19, 2009; John Carey, Business Week, September 8, 2009. 12.


pages: 429 words: 120,332

Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens by Nicholas Shaxson

Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, call centre, capital controls, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, export processing zone, failed state, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Global Witness, Golden arches theory, high net worth, income inequality, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, land value tax, light touch regulation, Londongrad, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Money creation, money market fund, New Journalism, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old-boy network, out of africa, passive income, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Suez crisis 1956, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, transfer pricing, vertical integration, Washington Consensus

Another famous study found that between 1940 and 1971, a period mostly covering the time of the golden age, developing countries suffered no banking crises and only sixteen currency crises, whereas in the quarter century after 1973 there were 17 banking crises and 57 currency crises. A major new study in 2009 by the economists Carmen Reinhardt and Kenneth Rogoff, looking back over eight hundred years of economic history, concluded that, as reviewer Martin Wolf put it, “Financial liberalisation and financial crises go together like a horse and carriage.”23 We cannot infer too much from these very different episodes. Other reasons exist for the high growth rates during the golden age, not least postwar rebuilding and productivity improvements during the war.

Social capital—an educated and experienced workforce, a trustworthy business climate, and so on—matters more. Having seed corn is just one factor in achieving a good harvest, along with rain, good soils, fertilizer, and the human capital, knowledge, and confidence to put it all together. “Access to capital is not, in fact, the decisive constraint on economic growth,” wrote the economist Martin Wolf. “It is social and human capital, as well as the overall policy regime that matter.”32 These, of course, need tax dollars. Second, tax isn’t only about revenue, the first of four “Rs” of taxation. The second “R” is redistribution, notably tackling inequality. This is what democratic societies always demand, and as the painstakingly researched book The Spirit Level attests, it is inequality, rather than absolute levels of poverty and wealth, that determines how societies fare on almost every single indicator of well-being, from life expectancy to obesity to delinquency to depression or teenage pregnancy.

“A striking feature of the distribution of current account surpluses and deficits among developing countries is that most of the countries that are experiencing high GDP growth have surpluses, and often large surpluses…. The fact that most of these nations continue to experience rapid GDP growth, in spite of this large outflow of capital, suggests that the availability of capital has not been a major impediment to economic growth.” 23.Martin Wolf, “This Time Will Never Be Different,” Financial Times, September 28, 2009. 24.“Capital Inflows: The Role of Controls,” IMF Staff Position Note, February 19, 2010. CHAPTER 4 THE GREAT ESCAPE 1.Catherine R. Schenk, “The Origins of the Eurodollar Market in London: 1955–1963,” Explorations in Economic History 35, no. 2 (1998): 221–238. 2.Ibid., p. 225. 3.Ibid., p. 227. 4.Anthony Sampson, Who Runs This Place?


pages: 859 words: 204,092

When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of the Middle Kingdom by Martin Jacques

Admiral Zheng, An Inconvenient Truth, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, classic study, credit crunch, Dava Sobel, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, discovery of the americas, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, flying shuttle, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, income per capita, invention of gunpowder, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, land tenure, lateral thinking, Malacca Straits, Martin Wolf, Meghnad Desai, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, one-China policy, open economy, Pearl River Delta, pension reform, price stability, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, spinning jenny, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, the scientific method, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, Xiaogang Anhui farmers, zero-sum game

Alastair Bonnett, The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics and History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), Chapters 1-2, 6. 3 . We are already living in what is, in economic terms, a multipolar world; Pam Woodall, ‘The New Titans’, survey, The Economist, 16 September 2006. Also, Brian Beedham, ‘Who Are We, Who Are They?’, survey, pp. 14-16, The Economist, 29 July 1999. 4 . Martin Wolf, ‘Life in a Tough World of High Commodity Prices’, Financial Times, 4 March 2008; Jing Ulrich, ‘China Holds the Key to Food Prices’, Financial Times, 7 November 2007. 5 . ‘Sharpened Focus on Sovereign Wealth Funds,’ International Herald Tribune, 21 January 2008; ‘China’s Stake in BP’, Financial Times, 15 April, 2008. 6 .

‘China Acts to Become Huge Global Investor’, International Herald Tribune, 10-11 March 2007. 154 . ‘Beijing to Take $3bn Gamble on Blackstone’, Financial Times, 18 May 2007. 155 . ‘China’s Two Trillion Dollar Question’, editorial, Financial Times, 11 September 2008. 156 . For a broader view of the rise of such funds, see Martin Wolf, ‘The Brave New World of State Capitalism’, Financial Times, 16 October 2007. 157 . ‘China Aids Barclays on ABN Amro’, Financial Times, 23 July 2007; ‘The Chinese Bank Plan is One to Watch’, Financial Times, 23 July 2007. 158 . ‘Bear Stearns in Landmark China Deal’, Financial Times, 22 October 2007. 159 .

., ‘China and Asia’s Future Monetary System’, Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper, 129 (12 September 2005), p. 11; for details of the Chiang Mai Initiative, see www.unescap.org/pdd/publications/bulletin2002/ch8.pdf. 38 . Zhang Yunling, East Asian Regionalism and China, p. 54. 39 . Ibid., p. 29; also Martin Wolf, ‘Asia Needs the Freedom of Its Own Monetary Fund’, Financial Times, 19 May 2004. 40 . Interview with Zhu Feng, Beijing, 16 November 2005. 41 . Zhu Feng, ‘Regionalism, Nationalism and China’s Regional Activism in East Asia’, unpublished paper, 2006, p. 4; and Takashi Inoguchi, ‘Nationalism, Globalisation and Regional Order in North-East Asia: The Case of Japan at the Dawn of the Century’, paper presented at conference on ‘Nationalism and Globalisation in North-East Asia’, Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics, 12 May 2007, 42 .


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The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong With Banking and What to Do About It by Anat Admati, Martin Hellwig

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, bonus culture, book value, break the buck, business cycle, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centralized clearinghouse, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, diversified portfolio, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Growth in a Time of Debt, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Larry Wall, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, Martin Wolf, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, negative equity, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, open economy, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, peer-to-peer lending, proprietary trading, regulatory arbitrage, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, The Market for Lemons, the payments system, too big to fail, Upton Sinclair, Yogi Berra

We thank Viral Acharya, Philippe Aghion, Sheila Bair, Mary Barth, Nadine Baudot-Trajtenberg, Jane Baxter, Lawrence Baxter, Urs Birchler, Niklaus Blattner, Jürg Blum, Arnoud Boot, Claudio Borio, Michael Boskin, John Boyd, Dick Brealey, Claudia Buch, Charles Calomiris, John Cochrane, Peter DeMarzo, Thomas Gehrig, Hans Gersbach, Hendrik Hakenes, Andy Haldane, Ian Harrison, Richard Herring, Tom Hoenig, Rob Johnson, Ed Kane, Dennis Kelleher, Mervyn King, David Kreps, Sebastian Mallaby, Maureen McNichols, Hamid Mehran, Allan Meltzer, David Miles, Chuck Morris, Manfred J. M. Neumann, George Parker, Francisco Perez-Gonzalez, Thierry Philipponnat, John Plender, Barbara Rehm, Isabel Schnabel, David Skeel, Chester Spatt, Ilya Strebulaev, Martin Summer, Elu von Thadden, Adair Turner, Jim Van Horne, Larry Wall, Beatrice Weder di Mauro, Juli Weiss, Mark Whitehouse, Martin Wolf, Daniel Zimmer, and Jeff Zwiebel. Some of them may disagree with our views, but all of them have contributed to the book with their insights. In the book we are critical of politicians and regulators, but many do not fit our characterizations. Our thinking has been influenced, in particular, by serving on policy committees.

This lack of implementation helped FDIC-insured banks to be stronger than European banks or U.S. investment banks regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which allowed the use of risk weights.41 In a major innovation, Basel III proposes to introduce regulation based on a so-called leverage ratio. This regulation will set a minimum level for equity relative to total assets. Basel III fixed this minimum level at 3 percent.42 If this number looks outrageously low, it is because the number is outrageously low. When the agreement was announced in September 2010, Martin Wolf’s column in the Financial Times was appropriately titled “Basel: The Mouse That Did Not Roar.”43 He sarcastically noted that the claim that the requirement triples the previous requirements “sounds tough, but only if one fails to realize that tripling almost nothing does not give one very much.” Banks’ having 3 percent equity is akin to Kate’s having $9,000 in equity and a mortgage of $291,000 funding a $300,000 house.

Noyer had warned against “excessive capital cushions” and insisted that the French banks’ holdings of Greek debt were not a reason for particular concern.5 In international negotiations about the reform of banking regulation over the past few years, France has consistently opposed any tightening of regulation. In Chapter 11 we referred to the characterization of Basel III as “The Mouse That Did Not Roar” in the title of Martin Wolf’s column in the Financial Times. The watering down of regulatory reform was largely due to the efforts of France, Germany, and Japan.6 Many politicians exhibit a remarkable discrepancy between speech and action. In public speech they are often critical of banks, but they do little to curb the risks that banks impose on taxpayers.


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The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Alex Hyde-White

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, centre right, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency peg, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial innovation, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, income inequality, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, light touch regulation, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market friction, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, neoliberal agenda, new economy, open economy, paradox of thrift, pension reform, pensions crisis, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Washington Consensus, working-age population

Stiglitz and Daniel Heymann (Houndmills, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 1–39; and the other papers in that volume. 47 As we noted in chapter 2, the Erasmus program, where European students study in each other’s countries, is an example. 48 As we noted in the case of the provision of deposit insurance within a banking union. Chapter 10. Can There Be an Amicable Divorce? 1 Martin Wolf, in his very thoughtful writing about the euro and the euro crisis, has come to much the same conclusions, and has often used the marriage metaphor, suggesting that the breakup of the eurozone, including the exit of Greece, would be a messy divorce. This chapter shows how it might be somewhat less messy—though it may be stretching it to suggest it could ever be truly amicable. See Martin Wolf, The Shifts and Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis (New York: Penguin Press, 2014). 2 I won’t discuss here the optimal groupings but instead will focus on how such a divorce can be managed. 3 Those in finance describe the divorce as providing an in-the-money option. 4 Of course, this logic implies that for countries that have managed to grow reasonably well within the confines of the eurozone, the benefit to leaving would be less than the cost. 5 See, for instance, Matthew Yglesias, “How Greece Leaving the Euro Would Actually Work,” Vox, July 16, 2015, available at http://www.vox.com/2015/7/6/8901303/greek-crisis-grexit-how-it-works; and Jack Ewing, “Weighing the Fallout of a Greek Exit from the Euro,” New York Times, July 9, 2015. 6 Regulators, legislatures, and courts in antitrust actions have finally begun intervening to curtail the high fees and abusive practices, but the fees remain far higher than what they should be. 7 As we noted in chapter 7, among the foolish mistakes of the Troika were its policies that effectively discouraged the use of the banking system and thus almost encouraged tax avoidance.

The idea behind such a system has been promoted by the international Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, which released its report in September 2009, which in turn was published as The Stiglitz Report (New York: The New Press, 2010). See also John Maynard Keynes, “The Keynes Plan,” 1942–43, reproduced in J. Keith Horsefield, ed., The International Monetary Fund 1945–1965: Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation, vol. 3, Documents (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 1969), pp. 3–36; and Martin Wolf, Fixing Global Finance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). Chapter 5. The Euro: A Divergent System 1 A quite different antigravity force has been at play elsewhere in the world, as money has moved from developing and emerging markets to the developed countries. In Making Globalization Work (New York: W.

Though we focused much of our attention on the impacts of the crisis on emerging markets and developing countries, much of what we said has proven equally applicable to Europe. The subject of the euro has, of course, been a fascinating one for economists. Among the numerous individuals from whom I have learned enormously, three require special note: Martin Wolf, both from conversations and from his book The Shifts and Shocks (New York: Penguin Press, 2014); George Soros, whose deep concern for the consequences of the euro crisis and his substantial understanding of financial markets inevitably led to his immersion into the euro crisis—and again I have learned from both his writings on the subject and our innumerable discussions; and Rob Johnson, president of INET and my former student at Princeton, to whom I am grateful not only for frequent discussions on the subject but for his convening of economists from Europe and America who have attempted to come to a common understanding of the causes and responses to the crisis.


The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain by Brett Christophers

Alan Greenspan, book value, Boris Johnson, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Corn Laws, credit crunch, cross-subsidies, Diane Coyle, estate planning, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, ghettoisation, Hernando de Soto, housing crisis, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, land bank, land reform, land tenure, land value tax, late capitalism, market clearing, Martin Wolf, New Journalism, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, price mechanism, price stability, profit motive, radical decentralization, Right to Buy, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, Tyler Cowen, urban sprawl, wealth creators

If anything, belief in the fundamentally unearned nature of many (if not all) privatized gains in land value is even more widely shared among economic and political thinkers than the parallel belief in the iniquities of land rent. It ranges across the entire intellectual and ideological spectrum. Writing in 2010, for example, Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times and famed cheerleader for globalization, had this to say: In 1984, I bought my London house. I estimate that the land on which it sits was worth £100,000 in today’s prices. Today, the value is perhaps ten times as great. All of that vast increment is the fruit of no effort of mine.

This is capitalist contradiction writ large: ‘the land market necessarily internalizes all the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist mode of production’ insofar as the positive ‘co-ordinating functions’ of rental appropriation ‘are bought at the cost of permitting insane forms of land speculation … Speculation in land may be necessary to capitalism’, Harvey writes, ‘but speculative orgies periodically become a quagmire of destruction for capital itself.’3 And if ever this phenomenon was in evidence, it was in 2007–09, in the global financial crisis – which, as we know by now, was triggered precisely by insane forms of speculation in markets for housing – read: land – and out of which a quagmire of destruction for capital itself was averted only by massive state intervention and the socialization of losses. That this is the case is recognized, furthermore, by economic commentators with vastly different understandings of capitalism than Harvey’s. As we saw earlier, the Financial Times’s Martin Wolf decries the fact that ‘the opportunity for speculation in land both fuels – and is fuelled by – the credit cycle’. In fact, his post-crisis critique of land markets, finance capital, speculation and economic destruction is strikingly comparable to Harvey-the-Marxist’s. Where Harvey writes of pyramids of debt claims on land, Wolf says that the existing nexus of housing, land and finance capital is ‘no more than a giant pyramid selling scheme and one whose dire consequences we have seen again and again’; where Harvey writes of insane forms of speculation on rents destroying value, Wolf castigates the ‘fever of land speculation’ and laments that such ‘insane speculative fevers have ended up destabilising the entire global economy’.1 If any market indubitably refutes the neoclassical conceit that private markets produce efficient and stable outcomes, then it is surely the land market (see also Chapter 5).

There are ongoing issues related specifically to public landownership that, as we will see, can only be understood with reference to this history. And contemporary British capitalism more broadly remains haunted both by the speculative-landownership dynamics that deepened in the post-war decades and by the state’s failure to meaningfully mitigate them. For, as commentators even as conservative as the Financial Times’s Martin Wolf admit, twenty-first-century British capitalism is dominated to an extraordinary degree by ‘ruinous trust in land speculation as the route to wealth’.1 This dependency became entrenched in the 1960s and 1970s with the rise of financial landownership. The enduring irony, of course, is that whereas, in Weiler’s words, ‘the property speculator came to represent all that was wrong with post-war British capitalism’ (at least in Labour’s telling), the same speculator – the hero of a myriad television property shows – has somehow come to represent much of what is today deemed right.2 Landownership on the eve of neoliberalism Given all of the significant post-war developments in public and private landownership traced in the preceding pages, what was the overall pattern of landownership in Britain when, in 1979, the Conservatives returned to power under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher?


Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, American ideology, Chelsea Manning, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate personhood, David Brooks, discovery of DNA, double helix, drone strike, failed state, Great Leap Forward, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, inflation targeting, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, land reform, language acquisition, Martin Wolf, Mohammed Bouazizi, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, no-fly zone, obamacare, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, pattern recognition, Powell Memorandum, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, single-payer health, sovereign wealth fund, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Tobin tax, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

The question is whether these systems, whatever they are, can be adapted to current problems and circumstances. For example, there’s no justification, economic or other, for the enormous and growing role of financial institutions since the 1970s. Even some of the most respected economists point out that they’re just a drag on the economy. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times says straight out that the financial institutions shouldn’t be allowed to have anything like the power they do.19 There’s plenty of leeway for modification and change. Worker-owned industries can take over. There’s interesting work on this topic by Gar Alperovitz, who has been right at the center of a lot of the organizing around worker control.20 It’s not a revolution, but it’s the germ of another type of capitalism, capitalism in the sense that markets and profit are involved.

GOP Debate, Myrtle Beach Convention Center, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 16 January 2012. 16. Ibid. 17. Jeffrey M. Jones, “Unemployment Re-Emerges as Most Important Problem in the U.S.,” Gallup, 15 September 2011. 18. Immanuel Wallerstein, interview with Sophie Shevardnadze, Russia Today, 4 October 2011. 19. Martin Wolf, “The Big Question Raised by Anti-Capitalist Protests,” Financial Times (London), 28 October 2011. 20. See also Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012). 21. Howard Zinn, “A Chorus Against War,” The Progressive 67, no. 3 (March 2003), pp. 19–21. 22. Howard Zinn, “Operation Enduring War,” The Progressive 66, no. 3 (March 2002), pp. 12–13. 23.


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The Price of Everything: And the Hidden Logic of Value by Eduardo Porter

Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, British Empire, capital controls, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, clean water, Credit Default Swap, Deng Xiaoping, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, flying shuttle, Ford paid five dollars a day, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, guest worker program, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, longitudinal study, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, means of production, Menlo Park, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, new economy, New Urbanism, peer-to-peer, pension reform, Peter Singer: altruism, pets.com, placebo effect, precautionary principle, price discrimination, price stability, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, search costs, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superstar cities, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, ultimatum game, unpaid internship, urban planning, Veblen good, women in the workforce, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

The tale about the wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich is in John Tierney, “Betting on the Planet,” New York Times Magazine, December 2, 1990. The price of Brent crude is drawn from the Energy Information Agency database (at tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=Plastic&s=RBRTE&f=D, accessed 07/19/2010). Martin Wolf’s despair is in evidence in Martin Wolf, “The Dangers of Living in a Zero-Sum World Economy,” Financial Times, December 18, 2007. The price of the contents of Ehrlich’s basket can be found in U.S. Geological Survey, “Historical Statistics for Mineral and Material Commodities in the United States” (minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/index.html, accessed 07/19/2010). 226-229 When Prices Fail: The estimate of the impact of the financial crisis on the world’s economic output in 2009 is drawn from the International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook, April 2010 (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?

But as soon as the world started growing again, we started hitting some of the same constraints. Oil prices, which dropped to a trough of $33.73 a barrel after Christmas in 2008, were back above $80 in April of 2010. In August, on fears of a global shortage, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index surged to its highest level since September 2008. Martin Wolf, the usually serene economic columnist for the Financial Times, wrote that limits to economic growth could topple civilization. A world that over the past two hundred years had grown itself out of many of its problems could easily slip back to a zero-sum reality in which one group’s gain would result in another’s loss, in which the only chance to get ahead would be to steal, repress, and plunder.


Masters of Mankind by Noam Chomsky

affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, Berlin Wall, failed state, God and Mammon, high-speed rail, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), land bank, land reform, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, nuremberg principles, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, profit maximization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, scientific management, Silicon Valley, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, union organizing, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system

However, a recent study by the International Monetary Fund indicates—to quote the business press—that perhaps “the largest US banks aren’t really profitable at all,” adding that “the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from US taxpayers.”2 This is more evidence to support the judgment of the most respected financial correspondent in the English-speaking world, Martin Wolf of the London Financial Times, that “an out-of-control financial sector is eating out the modern market economy from inside, just as the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid.”3 The term “capitalism” is also commonly used for systems in which there are no capitalists: for example, the extensive worker-owned Mondragón conglomerate in the Basque Country of Spain or the worker-owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio—often with conservative support—a matter discussed in important work by Gar Alperovitz.4 Some might even use the term “capitalism” to include the industrial democracy advocated by John Dewey, America’s leading social philosopher.

McChesney, The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the U.S.A. to China (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012). 2. Editors, “Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year?” Bloomberg View, February 20, 2013. Citing Kenichi Ueda and Beatrice Weder di Mauro, “Quantifying Structural Subsidy Values for Systemically Important Financial Institutions,” IMF Working Paper, WP/12/128 (2012). 3. Martin Wolf, “Comment on Andrew G. Haldane, ‘Control Rights (And Wrongs),’” Wincott Annual Memorial Lecture, October 24, 2011. 4. See, among other works, Gar Alperovitz, America beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2004). 5. John Dewey, “Education vs.


pages: 535 words: 158,863

Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making by David Rothkopf

"World Economic Forum" Davos, airport security, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, asset allocation, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Bob Geldof, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, carried interest, clean water, compensation consultant, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Brooks, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, fake news, financial innovation, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Gini coefficient, global village, high net worth, income inequality, industrial cluster, informal economy, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Elkington, joint-stock company, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, liberal capitalism, Live Aid, Long Term Capital Management, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Nelson Mandela, old-boy network, open borders, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, proprietary trading, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Skype, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, upwardly mobile, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, William Langewiesche

On the other hand, a number of columnists and business magazine editors defend elites for their role in globalization, believing that by globalizing they will ultimately help create a more equitable system. To some, therefore, the members of the superclass are the heroes of the process of globalization that will, someday, help the poorest out of poverty. To others they are the “new robber barons,” standing astride what observers from the Financial Times’s Martin Wolf to The New York Times’s Paul Krugman have called a new “gilded age”—or circling it in their G5. They are either pioneers who earn the benefits they reap, or they are exploiters who should beware the impending backlash or global revolution. But they are, in either case, important to the story of inequality.

He deftly runs it like a salon: At some point early in the dinner he interrupts and says, ‘Let’s start this,’ and welcomes everyone, describes with great humor who they are and what they have recently achieved, and then provokes an always fascinating discussion. So for example he says, ‘Jean-Claude Trichet [president of the European Central Bank], tell us, how do you see Europe’s main economic vulnerabilities?’ or to [Financial Times columnist] Martin Wolf, ‘What do you think will happen to the Chinese currency?’ or ‘You, Mr. Minister of Finance of Turkey, what are the repercussions of the Iraq war in your country?’ and so on. The dinner has a strong European flavor, as it normally includes the CEOs of Heineken, Royal Dutch Shell, Phillips, and other major European firms.

Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: Norton, 2002), 79. 64 Mack McLarty, suggested that the issue Mack McLarty, interview with the author, 2006. 64 Moisés Naím, a former Venezuelan trade and industry minister Moisés Naím, interview with the author, 2007. 65 a new “gilded age” Martin Wolf, “A New Gilded Age,” Financial Times, April 25, 2006; Paul Krugman, “Gilded Once More,” New York Times, April 27, 2007. 66 “The World Is Not Flat” Nancy Birdsall, “The World Is Not Flat: Inequality and Injustice in Our Global Economy,” 2005 WIDER Annual Lecture, October 31, 2005. 66 According to the United Nations “The Inequality Predicament: Report on the World Social Situation 2005,” United Nations Publications, August 2005. 66 the richest countries in the world L.


pages: 504 words: 143,303

Why We Can't Afford the Rich by Andrew Sayer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, anti-globalists, asset-backed security, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, biodiversity loss, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collective bargaining, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, declining real wages, deglobalization, degrowth, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, demand response, don't be evil, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, en.wikipedia.org, Etonian, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, G4S, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, green new deal, high net worth, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", James Dyson, job automation, Julian Assange, junk bonds, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land value tax, long term incentive plan, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, patent troll, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, popular capitalism, predatory finance, price stability, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

It’s a misunderstanding that has long allowed the financial sector to escape serious scrutiny, and there’s a risk the delusion may persist. How banks create money for nothing and charge us interest for it The essence of the contemporary monetary system is creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks’ often foolish lending. (Martin Wolf)61 I believe it is absolutely fundamental to understand that banks do not intermediate already existing money. They create money and credit ex nihilo, de novo. (Adair Turner, former Chair of the UK Financial Services Authority)62 Capitalism is issuing money to itself and claiming it as profit.

It’s extraordinarily naïve to imagine that a hyperactive market for the control of companies will ensure that those companies will produce better products with greater efficiency. Even from the standpoint of the mainstream, the financial sector can no longer take refuge in a markets-are-always-right line. Financial Times economics editor Martin Wolf puts it clearly enough: A market works well if, and only if, decision-makers confront the consequences of their decisions. This is not – and probably cannot be – the case in finance: certainly, people now sit on fortunes earned in activities that have led to unprecedented rescues and the worst recession since the 1930s.86 Arm’s-length lending, with the risks on one side borne by the borrower and on the other passed on through securitisation, allows the lender to escape the consequences of their decisions on lending.

Systemic risk is a noxious by-product. Banking benefits those producing and consuming financial services – the private benefits for bank employees, depositors, borrowers and investors. But it also risks endangering innocent bystanders within the wider economy – the social costs to the general public from banking crises.113 Martin Wolf, again at the Financial Times, summarised the situation thus: Financial systems are important servants of the economy, but poor masters. A large part of the activity of the financial sector seems to be a machine to transfer income and wealth from outsiders to insiders, while increasing the fragility of the economy as a whole.… Banks are rent-extractors – and uncompetitive ones at that.114 Wolf also asked: ‘Can we afford our financial system?’


pages: 497 words: 150,205

European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics Are in a Mess - and How to Put Them Right by Philippe Legrain

3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, clean tech, collaborative consumption, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Crossrail, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, debt deflation, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, Downton Abbey, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, eurozone crisis, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, Ford Model T, forward guidance, full employment, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, Hyperloop, immigration reform, income inequality, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Irish property bubble, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, land bank, liquidity trap, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, mittelstand, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, peer-to-peer rental, price stability, private sector deleveraging, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, Richard Florida, rising living standards, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Gordon, savings glut, school vouchers, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, software patent, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, working-age population, Zipcar

I look forward to reading Unhappy Union, John Peet and Anton La Guardia’s book about the crisis; Zanny Minton Beddoes and I have often had converging opinions about it. Saugato Datta, who has since moved on, is a great guy. At the Financial Times, I have enjoyed many stimulating conversations with Martin Wolf, my former colleague Gideon Rachman, Gillian Tett, Peter Spiegel, Alex Barker and many others. I recently had the pleasure of meeting Martin Sandbu who is writing a book about the euro which will doubtless be excellent. Wolfgang Münchau’s Eurointelligence is required reading for anyone interested in the crisis.

A FIASCO MADE IN FRANKFURT, BRUSSELS AND BERLIN A tragedy in five acts By deciding that the crisis was largely fiscal, policy makers could ignore the truth that the underlying cause of the disarray was irresponsible cross-border lending, for which suppliers of credit are surely as responsible as users. If the culpability of both sides – lenders and borrowers – had been understood, the moral case for debt write-offs would have been clearer. Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator, Financial Times103 Lazy. Feckless. Profligate. Thieving. Those are just some of the terms of abuse hurled at Gipsies, who have long been scapegoats in Europe for all manner of ills. Similar venom has recently been directed at a different set of GIPSIs – Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy – the countries that have suffered the brunt of the crisis in the eurozone, and on which it has been blamed.

One calculation by Brad DeLong and Larry Summers finds that on plausible assumptions, government borrowing pays for itself in a slump when resources lie idle – especially when interest rates are very low but even when they are pretty high – notably by averting the scars on future growth of having workers unemployed for years, with their skills going rusty and their future employability ebbing away.209 Yet astonishingly, Trichet argued on the contrary that in the worst crisis since the 1930s governments needed to embrace austerity to have the space to respond to potential future emergencies.210 As Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, has insightfully remarked: “Too often, fiscal conservatives sound just like the revolutionaries who were prepared to sacrifice present generations for what turned out to be imaginary future benefits.”211 Everyone can’t save at once When the economy is at full tilt, government borrowing has an additional cost: since the domestic supply of loanable funds is limited, it crowds out borrowing by the private sector and risks inflation.


pages: 566 words: 160,453

Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? by David G. Blanchflower

90 percent rule, active measures, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Clapham omnibus, collective bargaining, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, driverless car, estate planning, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, George Akerlof, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, inflation targeting, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, John Bercow, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Nate Silver, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, obamacare, oil shock, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, p-value, Panamax, pension reform, Phillips curve, plutocrats, post-materialism, price stability, prisoner's dilemma, quantitative easing, rent control, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, selection bias, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, urban planning, working poor, working-age population, yield curve

Plus, the fiscal authorities threw the kitchen sink at the crisis by cutting taxes and offering cash for clunkers and fridges and lots of stimulus money. And it worked, and economies started to grow. Then the fiscal authorities around the world imposed austerity, which Mark Blyth called a “dangerous idea” (2015, 245), while Martin Wolf called it a large unforced error: “The fact that the economy grows in the end does not prove that needlessly weakening the recovery was a sound idea. This has been an unnecessarily protracted slump. It is good that recovery is here, though it is far too soon to tell its quality and durability. But this does not justify what remains a large unforced error.”17 Central banks were desperate to raise rates and continued to tell anyone who would listen that they were about to, although they didn’t because recovery was so tepid.

True, policy-makers were able to find some economists telling them what they wanted to hear, but the basic Hicksian approach that did pretty well over the whole period clearly said that depressed economies near the zero lower bound should not be engaging in fiscal contraction. Never mind, they did it anyway” (2018, 165). As the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf noted, “Austerity has failed. It turned a nascent recovery into stagnation. That imposes huge and unnecessary costs, not just in the short run, but also in the long term: the costs of investments unmade, of businesses not started, of skills atrophied, and of hopes destroyed.”48 Harvard economist Alberto Alesina told the Austerians what they wanted to hear, that in the aftermath of the Great Recession, many OECD countries needed to reduce large public-sector deficits and debts.

Treasury Select Committee, “The Run on the Rock, Volume 1,” January 24, 2008, The Stationery Office, London, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmtreasy/56/56i.pdf. 13. “Rush on Northern Rock Continues,” BBC News, September 15, 2007. 14. Graham Wearden, “Santander to Buy A&L for £1.3bn,” Guardian, July 2008. 15. Harry Wallop, “Bradford & Bingley: A History of How and When It All Went Wrong,” Telegraph, September 28, 2008. 16. “Lessons of the Fall.” 17. Martin Wolf, “Osborne Has Now Been Proved Wrong on Austerity,” Financial Times, September 26, 2013. 18. Sumeet Desai and Matt Falloon, “Bank’s Blanchflower Says Big Rate Cuts Needed,” Reuters, August 28, 2008. 19. MPC Minutes, September 3 and 4, 2008, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/minutes/2008/monetary-policy-committee-september-2008. 20.


pages: 430 words: 109,064

13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown by Simon Johnson, James Kwak

Alan Greenspan, American ideology, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, break the buck, business cycle, business logic, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, Charles Lindbergh, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency risk, Edward Glaeser, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyman Minsky, income per capita, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, late fees, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, sovereign wealth fund, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Myth of the Rational Market, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, value at risk, yield curve

Subprime lending, mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and credit default swaps all flowed naturally from this business model, and absent fundamental reform, there is no reason to believe bankers will refrain from inventing new toxic products and precipitating another crisis in the future. What’s more, given the growth in the size of the leading banks, the next crisis is likely to be even bigger. As The Financial Times’ Martin Wolf wrote in September 2009, “What is emerging is a slightly better capitalised financial sector, but one even more concentrated and benefiting from explicit state guarantees. This is not progress: it has to mean still more and bigger crises in the years ahead.”17 When the next crisis comes, either the government will ride to the rescue once again, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, or popular revulsion at bailing out megabanks yet again will prevent Congress and the administration from saving the financial system—with potentially disastrous economic consequences.

Stephen Labaton, “Bill Shields Most Banks from Review,” The New York Times, October 15, 2009, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/business/16regulate.html; Hirsh, “Barney Frank,” supra note 13. 16. William Greider, “The Money Man’s Best Friend,” The Nation, November 11, 2009, available at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/greider. 17. Martin Wolf, “Why Narrow Banking Alone Is Not the Finance Solution,” Financial Times, September 29, 2009, available at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/34cbca0c-ad28–11de-9caf-00144feabdc0.html. 18. Time Magazine/ABT SRBI Survey, conducted October 26–27, 2009; results available at http://www.srbi.com/Wall%20Street%20Questionnaire%20and%20Poll%20Results.pdf. 19.

The Balance Sheet (James Surowiecki): http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/jamessurowiecki/ Beat the Press (Dean Baker): http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press Calculated Risk: http://calculatedriskblog.com The Conscience of a Liberal (Paul Krugman): http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/ J. Bradford DeLong’s Grasping Reality with Opposable Thumbs: http://delong.typepad.com/ Econbrowser (Menzie Chinn and James Hamilton): http://www.econbrowser.com/ Econlog (Arnold Kling, Bryan Caplan, and David Henderson): http://econlog.econlib.org/ Economists’ Forum (Martin Wolf and guests): http://blogs.ft.com/economistsforum/ Economist’s View (Mark Thoma): http://economistsview.typepad.com/ Economix (New York Times reporters and guest economists): http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/ Executive Suite (Joe Nocera): http://executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com/ Free Exchange (The Economist): http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/ Interfluidity (Steve Randy Waldman): http://www.interfluidity.com/ Ezra Klein: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/ Making Sense (Paul Solman): http://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/makingsense/ Greg Mankiw: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/ Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok): http://www.marginalrevolution.com/ Naked Capitalism (Yves Smith and others): http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/ Planet Money: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/ Real Time Economics (Wall Street Journal): http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/ Rortybomb (Mike Konczal): http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/ Felix Salmon: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/ Acknowledgments This book is the product of a friendship that began twenty years ago and a collaboration that began at the peak of the financial crisis in 2008.


pages: 385 words: 101,761

Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire by Bruce Nussbaum

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, declining real wages, demographic dividend, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, follow your passion, game design, gamification, gentrification, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, industrial robot, invisible hand, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Gruber, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, lone genius, longitudinal study, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Max Levchin, Minsky moment, new economy, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, QR code, race to the bottom, reality distortion field, reshoring, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, six sigma, Skype, SoftBank, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, supply-chain management, Tesla Model S, The Chicago School, The Design of Experiments, the High Line, The Myth of the Rational Market, thinkpad, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, We are the 99%, Y Combinator, young professional, Zipcar

postversion=2008092811; Colin Barr, “How It Got This Bad,” CNN Money, September 26, 2008, accessed September 14, 2012, http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/26/news/ leverage.fortune; Martin Wolf and Chris Giles, “Transcript: Larry Summers Interview,” Financial Times, April 2, 2010, accessed September 14, 2012, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ 3c023d9c-3dba-11df-bdbb-00144feabdc0.html#axzz24r1TJX1h. 232 It took years for economists: Marcus Baram, “Who’s Whining Now? Gramm Slammed by Economists,” September 19, 2008, accessed September 14, 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=5835269. 232 In a 2010 interview with Martin Wolf: Wolf and Giles, “Transcript: Larry Summers Interview.” 232 Summers was, after all: Stephen Labaton, “Congress Passes Wide-Ranging Bill Easing Bank Laws,” New York Times, November 5, 1999, accessed September 14, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/05/business/ congress-passes-wide-ranging-bill-easing-bank-laws.html; Charles Ferguson, “Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics,” Chronicle of Higher Economics, October 3, 2010, accessed September 14, 2012, http://chronicle.com/article/Larry-Summersthe/124790/; Rana Foroohar, “Larry Summers: No Regrets on Deregulation,” Time Business, April 12, 2011, accessed September 14, 2012, http://business.time.com/2011/04/12/ larry-summers-no-regrets-on-deregulation/. 232 In 1999, Summers, along with: Cyrus Sanati, “10 Years Later, Looking at Repeal of Glass-Steagall,” DealBook, November 12, 2009, accessed September 14, 2012, http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/10 -years-later-looking-at-repeal-of-glass-steagall/. 232 the Depression-era regulation: Labaton, “Congress Passes Wide-Ranging Bill Easing Bank Laws.” 232 calling the repeal “historic”: Sanati, “10 Years Later.” 232 Perhaps no one believed: Justin Fox, “The Myth of the Rational Market,” Time, June 22, 2009, accessed September 14, 2012, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,1904153,00.html. 232 But in October 2008, Greenspan: Edmund L.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the volatility of the markets during the crash did not reflect the underlying economic fundamentals but rather reflected the heightened emotions of political and social actors. It took years for economists, policy makers, and bankers to admit that the fundamental assumptions underlying the efficient market theory were wrong. In a 2010 interview with Martin Wolf, the economics correspondent for the Financial Times, Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton and ex-assistant for economic policy for Barack Obama, grudgingly admitted he was surprised at the failure of efficient markets in the crisis. Summers was, after all, a chief architect of the deregulation that helped provoke the financial crash in 2007.


pages: 380 words: 109,724

Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US by Rana Foroohar

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AltaVista, Andy Rubin, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, cashless society, clean tech, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, computer age, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, data science, deal flow, death of newspapers, decentralized internet, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Etonian, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, future of work, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, life extension, light touch regulation, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, PageRank, patent troll, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, price discrimination, profit maximization, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, search engine result page, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Snapchat, SoftBank, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, subscription business, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, TED Talk, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the long tail, the new new thing, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, warehouse robotics, WeWork, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

., beyond the creator of the licensed technology if they are in the U.S.,” says Daniel Alpert, a financier and a professor at Cornell University studying the effects of this shift in investment. “Apps, Netflix, and Amazon movies don’t create jobs the way a new plant would.” Or, as my Financial Times colleague Martin Wolf has put it, “[Apple] is now an investment fund attached to an innovation machine and so a black hole for aggregate demand. The idea that a lower corporate tax rate would raise investment in such businesses is ludicrous.”19 In short, cash-rich corporations—especially tech firms—have become the financial engineers of our day.20 The House Always Wins There are the ways in which Big Tech is driving the mega-trends in global markets, as we’ve just explored.

Americans for Tax Fairness press release, May 10, 2018, https://americansfortaxfairness.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​20180510-TTCT-Updates-Release.pdf. 3. Ibid. 4. “Risks Rising in Corporate Debt Market,” OECD Report, February 25, 2019. 5. Rana Foroohar, “Apple Sows Seeds of Next Market Swing,” Financial Times, May 13, 2018. 6. Martin Wolf, “Taming the Masters of the Tech Universe,” Financial Times, November 14, 2017. 7. Rana Foroohar, “Tech Companies Are the New Investment Banks,” Financial Times, February 11, 2018. 8. Edelman Trust Barometer 2018, 2019. 9. Rana Foroohar, “Political Ads on Facebook Recall Memories of the Banking Crisis,” Financial Times, October 2, 2017. 10.

Rana Foroohar, “Political Ads on Facebook Recall Memories of the Banking Crisis,” Financial Times, October 2, 2017. 10. Gabriel J. X. Dance et al., “As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants,” The New York Times, December 18, 2018. 11. Rana Foroohar, Makers and Takers: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street (New York: Crown Business, 2016). 12. Martin Wolf, “We Must Rethink the Purpose of the Corporation,” Financial Times, December 11, 2018. 13. Foroohar, Makers and Takers. 14. Douglas Edwards, I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 291. 15. Foroohar, “How Much Is Your Data Worth?”


pages: 460 words: 107,454

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab, Peter Vanham

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

Moreover, the economic growth that China, India, and others achieved in recent years was often shared just as unequally as in the West. For China, the inequality challenge is equally present, but the greater problem may be the looming burden of its debt. Until the financial crisis in 2008, China's total debt-to-GDP ratio of 170 percent was in line with that of other emerging markets, as Martin Wolf of the Financial Times noted in a 2018 essay.10 But in the decade since then, it has risen explosively. In July 2019, it stood at 303 percent, according to an IIF estimate, and after the first few months of the COVID-19 crisis it ballooned to 317 percent.11 This is a dangerous trend because much of Chinese debt is owned by nonfinancial state-owned enterprises and local governments who may use debt to boost economic output in the short run.

Notes 1 “Top 5 Tech Giants Who Shape Shenzhen, ‘China's Silicon Valley,’” South China Morning Post, April 2015, https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/technology/enterprises/article/1765430/top-5-tech-giants-who-shape-shenzhen-chinas-silicon. 2 Interview with Liu Guohong by Peter Vanham, Shenzhen, China, June 2019. 3 Nanyang Commercial Bank, https://www.ncb.com.hk/nanyang_bank/eng/html/111.html. 4 “First Land Auction Since 1949 Planned in Key China Area,” Los Angeles Times/Reuters, June 1987, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-06-28-mn-374-story.html. 5 “The Silicon Valley of Hardware,” Wired, https://www.wired.co.uk/video/shenzhen-episode-1. 6 “Exclusive: Apple Supplier Foxconn to Invest $1 Billion in India, Sources Say,” Reuters, July 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-foxconn-india-apple-exclusive/exclusive-apple-supplier-foxconn-to-invest-1-billion-in-india-sources-say-idUSKBN24B2GH. 7 “Global 500: Ping An Insurance,” Fortune, https://fortune.com/global500/2019/ping-an-insurance. 8 “The World's Biggest Electric Vehicle Company Looks Nothing Like Tesla,” Bloomberg, April 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-16/the-world-s-biggest-electric-vehicle-company-looks-nothing-like-tesla. 9 “How Shenzhen Battles Congestion and Climate Change,” Chia Jie Lin, GovInsider, July 2018, https://govinsider.asia/security/exclusive-shenzhen-battles-congestion-climate-change/. 10 “China's Debt Threat: Time to Rein in the Lending Boom,” Martin Wolf, Financial Times, July 2018 https://www.ft.com/content/0c7ecae2-8cfb-11e8-bb8f-a6a2f7bca546. 11 “China's Debt-to-GDP Ratio Surges to 317 Percent,” The Street, May 2020, https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/economics/chinas-debt-to-gdp-ratio-hits-317-percent. 12 “Climate Change: Xi Jinping Makes Bold Pledge for China to Be Carbon Neutral by 2060,” South China Morning Post, September 2020, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3102761/climate-change-xi-jinping-makes-bold-pledge-china-be-carbon. 13 “Current Direction for Renewable Energy in China,” Anders Hove, The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, June 2019, https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Current-direction-for-renewable-energy-in-China.pdf. 14 “Everyone around the World is Ditching Coal—Except Asia,” Bloomberg, June 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/the-pandemic-has-everyone-ditching-coal-quicker-except-asia. 15 “Statistical Review of World Energy 2020,” BP, https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html. 16 “World Integrated Trade Solution,” World Bank, 2018, https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/CHN/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/Import/Partner/by-country/Product/Total#. 17 “China Imports,” Comtrade, UN, 2018, https://comtrade.un.org/labs/data-explorer/. 18 “Does Investing in Emerging Markets Still Make Sense?”

Notes 9 “Fact Sheets on the European Union: The Principle of Subsidiarity,” European Parliament, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/7/subsidiaritatsprinzip. 10 “Subsidiarity,” Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/subsidiarity. 11 “Chart of the Day: These Countries Create Most of the World's CO2 Emissions,” World Economic Forum, June 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/chart-of-the-day-these-countries-create-most-of-the-world-s-co2-emissions/. 12 “Connotations of Chinese Dream,” China Daily, March 2014, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014npcandcppcc/2014-03/05/content_17324203.htm. 13 “The Speech that Launched the Great Society,” The Conversation, January 2015, https://theconversation.com/the-speech-that-launched-the-great-society-35836. 14 For commentary, see “Who Creates a Nation's Economic Value?” Martin Wolf, Financial Times, April 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/e00099f0-3c19-11e8-b9f9-de94fa33a81e. 15 “The Worldwide Uber Strike Is a Key Test for the Gig Economy,” Alexia Fernandez Campbell, Vox, May 219, https://www.vox.com/2019/5/8/18535367/uber-drivers-strike-2019-cities. 16 “Uber Pre IPO, 8th May, 2019 Global Strike Results,” RideShare Drivers United, May 2019, https://ridesharedriversunited.com/uber-pre-ipo-8th-may-2019-global-strike-results/. 17 “Worker or Independent Contractor?


pages: 460 words: 107,454

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

Moreover, the economic growth that China, India, and others achieved in recent years was often shared just as unequally as in the West. For China, the inequality challenge is equally present, but the greater problem may be the looming burden of its debt. Until the financial crisis in 2008, China's total debt-to-GDP ratio of 170 percent was in line with that of other emerging markets, as Martin Wolf of the Financial Times noted in a 2018 essay.10 But in the decade since then, it has risen explosively. In July 2019, it stood at 303 percent, according to an IIF estimate, and after the first few months of the COVID-19 crisis it ballooned to 317 percent.11 This is a dangerous trend because much of Chinese debt is owned by nonfinancial state-owned enterprises and local governments who may use debt to boost economic output in the short run.

Notes 1 “Top 5 Tech Giants Who Shape Shenzhen, ‘China's Silicon Valley,’” South China Morning Post, April 2015, https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/technology/enterprises/article/1765430/top-5-tech-giants-who-shape-shenzhen-chinas-silicon. 2 Interview with Liu Guohong by Peter Vanham, Shenzhen, China, June 2019. 3 Nanyang Commercial Bank, https://www.ncb.com.hk/nanyang_bank/eng/html/111.html. 4 “First Land Auction Since 1949 Planned in Key China Area,” Los Angeles Times/Reuters, June 1987, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-06-28-mn-374-story.html. 5 “The Silicon Valley of Hardware,” Wired, https://www.wired.co.uk/video/shenzhen-episode-1. 6 “Exclusive: Apple Supplier Foxconn to Invest $1 Billion in India, Sources Say,” Reuters, July 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-foxconn-india-apple-exclusive/exclusive-apple-supplier-foxconn-to-invest-1-billion-in-india-sources-say-idUSKBN24B2GH. 7 “Global 500: Ping An Insurance,” Fortune, https://fortune.com/global500/2019/ping-an-insurance. 8 “The World's Biggest Electric Vehicle Company Looks Nothing Like Tesla,” Bloomberg, April 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-16/the-world-s-biggest-electric-vehicle-company-looks-nothing-like-tesla. 9 “How Shenzhen Battles Congestion and Climate Change,” Chia Jie Lin, GovInsider, July 2018, https://govinsider.asia/security/exclusive-shenzhen-battles-congestion-climate-change/. 10 “China's Debt Threat: Time to Rein in the Lending Boom,” Martin Wolf, Financial Times, July 2018 https://www.ft.com/content/0c7ecae2-8cfb-11e8-bb8f-a6a2f7bca546. 11 “China's Debt-to-GDP Ratio Surges to 317 Percent,” The Street, May 2020, https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/economics/chinas-debt-to-gdp-ratio-hits-317-percent. 12 “Climate Change: Xi Jinping Makes Bold Pledge for China to Be Carbon Neutral by 2060,” South China Morning Post, September 2020, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3102761/climate-change-xi-jinping-makes-bold-pledge-china-be-carbon. 13 “Current Direction for Renewable Energy in China,” Anders Hove, The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, June 2019, https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Current-direction-for-renewable-energy-in-China.pdf. 14 “Everyone around the World is Ditching Coal—Except Asia,” Bloomberg, June 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/the-pandemic-has-everyone-ditching-coal-quicker-except-asia. 15 “Statistical Review of World Energy 2020,” BP, https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html. 16 “World Integrated Trade Solution,” World Bank, 2018, https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/CHN/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/Import/Partner/by-country/Product/Total#. 17 “China Imports,” Comtrade, UN, 2018, https://comtrade.un.org/labs/data-explorer/. 18 “Does Investing in Emerging Markets Still Make Sense?”

Notes 9 “Fact Sheets on the European Union: The Principle of Subsidiarity,” European Parliament, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/7/subsidiaritatsprinzip. 10 “Subsidiarity,” Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/subsidiarity. 11 “Chart of the Day: These Countries Create Most of the World's CO2 Emissions,” World Economic Forum, June 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/chart-of-the-day-these-countries-create-most-of-the-world-s-co2-emissions/. 12 “Connotations of Chinese Dream,” China Daily, March 2014, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014npcandcppcc/2014-03/05/content_17324203.htm. 13 “The Speech that Launched the Great Society,” The Conversation, January 2015, https://theconversation.com/the-speech-that-launched-the-great-society-35836. 14 For commentary, see “Who Creates a Nation's Economic Value?” Martin Wolf, Financial Times, April 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/e00099f0-3c19-11e8-b9f9-de94fa33a81e. 15 “The Worldwide Uber Strike Is a Key Test for the Gig Economy,” Alexia Fernandez Campbell, Vox, May 219, https://www.vox.com/2019/5/8/18535367/uber-drivers-strike-2019-cities. 16 “Uber Pre IPO, 8th May, 2019 Global Strike Results,” RideShare Drivers United, May 2019, https://ridesharedriversunited.com/uber-pre-ipo-8th-may-2019-global-strike-results/. 17 “Worker or Independent Contractor?


pages: 586 words: 160,321

The Euro and the Battle of Ideas by Markus K. Brunnermeier, Harold James, Jean-Pierre Landau

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, diversification, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, full employment, Future Shock, German hyperinflation, global reserve currency, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Irish property bubble, Jean Tirole, Kenneth Rogoff, Les Trente Glorieuses, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mittelstand, Money creation, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, open economy, paradox of thrift, pension reform, Phillips curve, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, principal–agent problem, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, risk free rate, road to serfdom, secular stagnation, short selling, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, special drawing rights, tail risk, the payments system, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, union organizing, unorthodox policies, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, yield curve

According to this critique, Europe needed growth to be able to pay off large volumes of public and private sector debt. The emphasis on fiscal consolidation as a way of reducing the burden of debt was in consequence counterproductive. The critique, powerfully deployed in the Financial Times by Martin Wolf and by former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, marked a dramatic revival of the traditional Keynesian approach to the management of crises.33 This position seemed to be supported by research from the IMF, which calculated much larger fiscal multipliers than had previously been assumed. Hollande drew on this substantial Anglo-American critique when denouncing “ruthless austerity,” stating in the course of his presidential campaign that “It’s not Germany that decides for the whole of Europe.”34 It also looked as if the new Spanish and Italian prime ministers, Mariano Rajoy and Mario Monti, both of whom had undertaken a considerable amount of reform, were backing the Hollande claim; even in the Netherlands, a clearly Northern country, the government collapsed because it was unable to push through spending cuts.

The effects of the British stance were amplified because it was not just a matter of the government’s position. The governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, believed that it was astonishing “that the people there [in the euro area] are not willing to face up to the fact.”25 Major newspapers and their commentators—above all Martin Wolf and Wolfgang Münchau in the Financial Times, Anatole Kaletsky in the Times, and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph—pursued the case that the euro was hopelessly doomed with relentless vigor. Anyone recalling their statements at the height of the crisis in 2012–2013 would be surprised that the euro had survived at all: if it continued, it must be some kind of malign and destructive zombie.

Last accessed January 4, 2016, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9267144/Rain-on-Francois-Hollandes-parade-as-new-president-celebrates-inauguration.html. 33. Wolf demanded “more financing, ideally via some sort of euro area bond; collective backing of banks; less fiscal contraction; more expansionary monetary policies; and stronger German demand.” Martin Wolf, “The Riddle of German Self-Interest,” Financial Times, May 30, 2012, https://next.ft.com/content/4fe89d8c-a8df-11e1-b085-00144feabdc0; Summers stated, “Fiscal contraction reduces incomes, limiting the capacity to repay debts. It achieves only limited reductions in deficits once the adverse effects of economic contraction on tax revenue and benefit payments are accounted for.”


Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil by Nicholas Shaxson

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business climate, clean water, colonial rule, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, income per capita, inflation targeting, Kickstarter, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil-for-food scandal, old-boy network, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Tragedy of the Commons, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

(Oil, by magnifying inequality and attacking the industrialized parts of the economy, often destroys the middle class.) Academic research has found that divided societies tend to be more violent, and grow more slowly, than others.45 “In a society when everyone cheats and takes or pays bribes, there is little incentive not to join in,” wrote the Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf. “Government is a monopoly for good reason. Competing bandits are bad news.” Today Nigeria has a civilian government under President Obasanjo, who was elected in 1999 as a paragon of transparency and good governance. He cleverly appointed Nigerians recruited from the overseas diaspora—less suffused with the Nigerian scramble mentality—and placed them in a self-reinforcing ring, where they would hopefully be able to trust each other even if they couldn’t trust anyone else.

Tax evasion, remember, uses exactly the same system that helps African rulers steal their citizens’ money and helps drug cartels launder their profits. The fourth argument—that tax competition between countries is good—is entirely bogus, and rests on an economic fallacy. “The notion of the competitiveness of countries, on the model of the competitiveness of companies, is nonsense,” wrote the Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf.19 Think about it this way. If a company cannot compete, it goes bankrupt and a better one takes its place; this weeds out bad firms and is a 228 Conclusion source of capitalism’s dynamism. But if a country cannot “compete,” you get a failed state. “I have never heard a coherent argument for tax competition,” said Christensen of the Tax Justice Network.

Senator Carl Levin, among others, suggested this one in the Omar Bongo Citibank Senate investigation, “U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Hearings on Private Banking and Money Laundering,” November 9, 1999, page 104. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa431.pdf. I am paraphrasing Raymond Baker. Baker, Capitalism’s Achilles Heel, page 180. See Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), page 268; see his broad discussion of competitiveness on pages 249–277. For example, News Corp (which owns Fox News) paid an effective 6 percent tax rate—including a zero tax rate in Britain—in some years, while corporate tax rates in its main markets have been above 30 percent.


pages: 403 words: 111,119

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, bank run, basic income, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, dematerialisation, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, full employment, Future Shock, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global village, Henri Poincaré, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, loss aversion, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Minsky moment, mobile money, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, Myron Scholes, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, price mechanism, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, smart cities, smart meter, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, the market place, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, wikimedia commons

That idea may sound outlandish, but it is neither a new nor a fringe suggestion. First proposed during the 1930s Great Depression by influential economists of the day such as Irving Fisher and Milton Friedman, it obtained renewed support after the 2008 crash, gaining the backing of mainstream financial experts at the International Monetary Fund and Martin Wolf of the UK’s Financial Times.49 State-owned banks could, furthermore, use money from the central bank to channel substantial low- or zero-interest loans into investments for long-term transformation, such as affordable and carbon-neutral housing and public transport. It would give a crucial boost to building the transformative assets that every economy now needs, and would shift power away from what Keynes called ‘the rentier … the functionless investor’.

What’s more, when wages for the worse-off stagnate, immigrants are all too quickly blamed, as has happened in many high-income countries in recent years, fuelling xenophobia and social strife. Our societies, like our economies, have evolved to expect growth and have come to depend upon it: it seems we do not yet know how to live without it. No wonder Martin Wolf, one of the UK’s most respected financial journalists, wrote with palpable unease in 2007 when he took the rare step of leaning across the debating aisle to agree with the prepare-for-landing crowd about the economic implications of cutting global carbon emissions. ‘If there are limits to emissions, there may also be limits to growth,’ he acknowledged in his Financial Times column.

Schabas, M. (1995) ‘John Stuart Mill and concepts of nature’, Dialogue, 34: 3, p. 452. 19. Gaffney, M. and Harrison, F. (1994) The Corruption of Economics. London: Shepheard-Walwyn. 20. Wolf, M. (2010) ‘Why were resources expunged from neo-classical economics?’ Financial Times, 12 July 2010. http://blogs.ft.com/martin-wolf-exchange/tag/resources/ 21. Green, T. (2012) ‘Introductory economics textbooks: what do they teach about sustainability?’, International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 3: 2, pp. 189–223. 22. Daly, H. and Farley, J. (2011) Ecological Economics. Washington: Island Press, p. 16. 23.


pages: 521 words: 110,286

Them and Us: How Immigrants and Locals Can Thrive Together by Philippe Legrain

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, centre right, Chelsea Manning, clean tech, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, demographic dividend, digital divide, discovery of DNA, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, future of work, illegal immigration, immigration reform, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, job automation, Jony Ive, labour market flexibility, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, mass immigration, moral hazard, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, open borders, open immigration, postnationalism / post nation state, purchasing power parity, remote working, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Tim Cook: Apple, Tyler Cowen, urban sprawl, WeWork, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working-age population

PREVIOUS BOOKS BY PHILIPPE LEGRAIN Open World: The Truth about Globalisation (2002) ‘Excellent’ – The Economist ‘We have waited a long time. But at last a good book on globalisation has appeared … wonderfully lucid and intelligent’ – Martin Wolf, Financial Times Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them (2007) Shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award ‘Invaluable … A superb combination of direct reportage with detailed analysis of the evidence’ – Martin Wolf, Financial Times ‘Energetic and right-minded … Sense as good as this needs cherishing’ – Guardian ‘The single best non-technical defence of a liberal immigration policy’ – Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution Aftershock: Reshaping the World Economy after the Crisis (2010) ‘Legrain has a gift for combining big numbers that offer a sense of the scale while zeroing in on what all this means for people …a particularly good survey of what made up the unpleasant cocktail which the world has yet to digest’ – The Economist European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics are in a Mess – and How to Put Them Right (2014) Among the Financial Times’ Best Books of 2014 ‘Philippe Legrain provides an original and insightful analysis of what has gone wrong with Europe’s economies and politics and a timely warning that the crisis ultimately threatens our open societies.

I now write for a variety of international publications, notably through Project Syndicate – thank you Ken Murphy – and Foreign Policy, with thanks to Sasha Polakow-Suransky and Cameron Abadi. Thank you too to Jonadav Apelblat at The Brussels Times. Many other journalists have supported my work, including Martin Wolf and Martin Sandbu at the Financial Times, Jonathan Freedland at the Guardian, Danny Finkelstein and David Aaronovitch at The Times, Tom Clark at Prospect, Jeremy Cliffe at the New Statesman, Kenan Malik and Bill Keegan at the Observer, Christian May at City AM, Angela Wilkes at The International Economy, Iain Martin and Andrew Neil.


pages: 228 words: 68,880

Revolting!: How the Establishment Are Undermining Democracy and What They're Afraid Of by Mick Hume

anti-communist, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, central bank independence, colonial rule, David Brooks, disinformation, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Jeremy Corbyn, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, non-tariff barriers, Occupy movement, open borders, plutocrats, post-truth, public intellectual, Slavoj Žižek, the scientific method, We are the 99%, World Values Survey

Some point out, for example, that world financial integration via global flows of capital is nothing new; the sums involved might be much larger today in quantitative terms, but integration now is not qualitatively different to the world economy on the eve of the First World War. Indeed, ‘[i]n important ways,’ observes American history Professor Carl Strikwerda, ‘the pre-1914 world was more globalized than our world is today’. Top economic analyst Martin Wolf of the Financial Times agrees that ‘almost all the widely cited aspects of contemporary globalisation are old. The difference is only one of degree, not of kind … none of the following is new: the declining relevance of distance; the “ideas” economy; the “weightless” economy; liberation by “microchip”; “Jihad vs.

Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, p. 162 13. Cited in Cartledge, Democracy, p. 308 14. Professor Carl Strikwerda, ‘The First World War in the History of Globalization’, paper presented at conference ‘The Legacy of World War I’, 14 November 2014, at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, p. 1; Martin Wolf, Why Globalisation Works (Yale University Press, 2004), p. 99 15. J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) 16. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto 1848 (Junius Publications and Pluto Press, 1996), p. 16 17. Washington Post, 29 March 2013 18. Professor Jeremy Rabkin, ‘National Sovereignty – Why It Is Worth Defending’, World Family Policy Forum 2000, www.law2.byu.edu/wfpc/forum/2000/Rabkin.pdf 19.


pages: 249 words: 66,383

House of Debt: How They (And You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It From Happening Again by Atif Mian, Amir Sufi

Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, break the buck, business cycle, Carmen Reinhart, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, debt deflation, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, financial innovation, full employment, high net worth, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, paradox of thrift, quantitative easing, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, school choice, seminal paper, shareholder value, subprime mortgage crisis, the payments system, the scientific method, tulip mania, young professional, zero-sum game

The idea of directly injecting cash into the economy may at first seem crazy, but reputable economists and commentators have suggested exactly such a policy during severe economic downturns.8 Ben Bernanke, only a few years before he was chairman of the Fed, suggested helicopter drops for Japanese central bankers in the 1990s, earning the nickname “Helicopter Ben.”9 Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf wrote in February 2013 that “the view that it is never right to respond to a financial crisis with monetary financing of a consciously expanded fiscal deficit—helicopter money, in brief—is wrong. It simply has to be in the toolkit.”10 Willem Buiter used rigorous modeling to show that such helicopter drops would in fact help an economy trapped at the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates.11 It would be best if the helicopters targeted indebted areas of the country to drop cash.

The most cited reference to such helicopter drops of money is Milton Friedman, “The Optimum Quantity of Money,” in The Optimum Quantity of Money and Other Essays (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), 1–50. 9. Ben Bernanke, “Japanese Monetary Policy: A Case of Self-Induced Paralysis” (paper, Princeton University, 1999). 10. Martin Wolf, “The Case for Helicopter Money,” Financial Times, February 12, 2013. 11. Willem H. Buiter, “Helicopter Money: Irredeemable Fiat Money and the Liquidity Trap; Or, Is Money Net Wealth after All?” (working paper, January 31, 2004), http://www.willembuiter.com/helinber.pdf. 12. Alan Boyce, Glenn Hubbard, Christopher Mayer, and James Witkin, “Streamlined Refinancings for Up to 13 Million Borrowers” (draft policy proposal, Columbia Business School, Columbia University, June 13, 2012), http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/sites/realestate/files/BHMW-V15-post.pdf. 13.


pages: 199 words: 64,272

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein

Alan Greenspan, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, back-to-the-land, bank run, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, break the buck, card file, central bank independence, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, Edmond Halley, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, index card, invention of movable type, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, life extension, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, side hustle, Silicon Valley, software is eating the world, Steven Levy, the new new thing, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs

As with the gold standard a hundred years earlier, there was a desire to tell a simple morality tale, in this case about prudent savers in Northern Europe and wasteful borrowers in Southern Europe. But as with the gold standard, the story fell apart when you looked closely at what was going on. The prudent savers and the wasteful borrowers were two sides of the same coin. “After all,” the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf wrote, “the borrowing would have been impossible without the lending. It is stupid to finance profligacy and then complain about the consequences of one’s own choices.” It’s My Money, I’ll Print More If I Want To What happened in Europe during these years was a lot like what happened in the United States in the wake of the financial crisis.

George Papandreou is the Greek prime minister who disclosed that the deficit was 12 percent. Jean-Claude Juncker is the one who said “the game is over” after Greek statistics were found out. The details about government spending and tax evasion in Greece come from Greece’s ‘Odious’ Debt, by Jason Manolopoulos. The “stupid to finance profligacy” quote from Martin Wolf appears in his book The Shifts and the Shocks. “A look back: what Eurozone ‘risk sharing’ actually meant,” by Marcello Minenna, published online by the Financial Times, shows German bank lending to Greece, Spain, and other eurozone countries. The German trade surplus with the rest of the eurozone is described in “The German trade surplus may widen with the euro area recovery,” published by the think tank Bruegel.


pages: 460 words: 122,556

The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, break the buck, Brownian motion, Carmen Reinhart, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversified portfolio, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, geopolitical risk, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, junk bonds, Ken Thompson, Kenneth Rogoff, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Michael Milken, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Northern Rock, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, race to the bottom, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, the payments system, too big to fail, tulip mania, Y2K

CHAPTER 2 1 Matt Apuzzo, “Report: Banks Torpedoed Rules That Could Have Saved Them,” Associated Press, December 1, 2008. 2 PRNewswire-FirstCall, February 4, 2003 (Source: Countrywide), http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-04-2003/0001885208&EDATE=. 3 David Andrukonis, e-mail, September 7, 2004. 4 Mortgage Bankers Association. 5 Meredith Whitney, Oppenheimer equity research report, December 11, 2008. Household growth was 2.5 percent. 6 Martin Wolf, “Asia’s Revenge,” Financial Times, October 9, 2008, and also Martin Wolf, “Seeds of Its Own Destruction,” Financial Times, March 9, 2009. 7 Ben S. Bernanke, Sandridge Lecture, Virginia Association of Economics, Richmond, March 10, 2005. 8 Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, draft of “Is the 2007 U.S. Sub-Prime Financial Crisis So Different?

My wife, Judy, with bottomless reserves of dedication and commitment, with her superior feeling for reading and for writing, teased out the hidden connections, assaulted the unclear linkages, insisted on clarity in the midst of authorial clouds, refused to be satisfied with the nearly good, the half-explained, or the almost right, and, generally, with the patience born, I trust and reciprocate, of love, helped to steer—verily to nurture—volumes of prose into something more nearly resembling a book. Words do not express. NOTES PROLOGUE 1 “Only a fifth”: Mark Zandi, Economy.com, and Robert J. Samuelson, The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence (2008), p. 218; “debt of financial firms”: Martin Wolf, “Asia’s Revenge,” Financial Times, October 9, 2008. 2 Ben Bernanke and Mark Gertler, “Monetary Policy and Asset Price Volatility,” Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Q IV (1999), pp. 17-51; and Roger Lowenstein, “The Education of Ben Bernanke,” New York Times Magazine, January 20, 2008. 3 Peter S.


pages: 232 words: 77,956

Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else by James Meek

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Berlin Wall, business continuity plan, call centre, clean water, Deng Xiaoping, electricity market, Etonian, Ford Model T, gentrification, HESCO bastion, housing crisis, illegal immigration, land bank, Leo Hollis, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, Mikhail Gorbachev, post-industrial society, pre–internet, price mechanism, Right to Buy, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, working poor

Then the customers will still pay for water according to Ofwat’s assumptions, but shareholders will pocket the difference between the two. And that, Helm says, is exactly what happened. ‘Investors,’ he wrote, ‘now contemplate an extraordinary open goal … The scale of this transfer [from customers to shareholders] is enormous.’ In an article in the Financial Times inspired by Helm’s analysis, Martin Wolf wrote: ‘Investors have been able to buy the companies (BAA and the water companies, for example), replace the equity with debt and enjoy a licence to print money. Professor Helm estimates that this financial arbitrage has been worth up to £1 billion a year, at the expense of the customers, predominantly in water.

That is money that could be spent on lending to other, more productive businesses. Yet it is so large a share of banks’ assets that the kind of radical reform of the planning and land ownership system Griffith wants to see might, by lowering house and land prices, bring the banks to their knees again. As Martin Wolf wrote in a despairing attack on Help to Buy in the Financial Times, ‘a deregulated and dynamic housing supply could spell financial and political Armageddon.’ Against this is David Orr’s prescription: to increase housing supply at the other end of the market with a relatively small increase in government funding to housing associations, and to hand council housing over to a new set of European-style municipal housing agencies that could borrow money without adding to the national debt.


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I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay by John Lanchester

Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black-Scholes formula, Blythe Masters, Celtic Tiger, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, diversified portfolio, double entry bookkeeping, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, Greenspan put, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, intangible asset, interest rate swap, invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jane Jacobs, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, money market fund, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, negative equity, new economy, Nick Leeson, Norman Mailer, Northern Rock, off-the-grid, Own Your Own Home, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Right to Buy, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Great Moderation, the payments system, too big to fail, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, value at risk

When we look at who could have done something about this, there are two sets of people who might have raised the alarm: economists and journalists. It’s more or less against the law ever to praise the media for anything, but the fact is that print journalists did speak up in public about the risks building up and the vulnerability of the global financial system. Larry Elliott in The Guardian, Martin Wolf and Gillian Tett in the Financial Times, and even the often overly gung ho Economist all warned about the dangers—and had the satisfaction denied to Cassandra of everyone realizing that they’d been right all along. (Remember, Cassandra’s curse was that no one would believe her.) It may be, as Judge Richard Posner has observed, that journalists have a built-in affinity for narratives of disaster and collapse: the press, as he puts it, “thrives on drama and therefore conflict and alarms, discord and discontinuities.”14 (It’s also true, of course, that there were industrial quantities of property market puffery and hype, a considerable amount of which took place on television.)

I’d say, as an outsider to economics, that the standard of reporting and writing and commentary in this milieu is bracingly high. I have learnt an enormous amount from the work of Evan Davis, Stephanie Flanders, and Robert Peston at the BBC—Flanders and Peston have high-quality blogs, in addition to their old-media work; Philip Coggan, John Kay, Gillian Tett, and Martin Wolf at the Financial Times; Larry Elliott at The Guardian; and although as a Nobel Prize winner he is too grand to count, Paul Krugman at The New York Times is also a superb journalist and commentator. There is a great deal of lively economic commentary on the Internet, and the best clearinghouse for the debates is the superb blog run by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution, at www.marginalrevolution.com.


pages: 484 words: 136,735

Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis by Anatole Kaletsky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, buy and hold, Carmen Reinhart, classic study, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, eat what you kill, Edward Glaeser, electricity market, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, geopolitical risk, George Akerlof, global rebalancing, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, long and variable lags, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, market design, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, peak oil, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, seminal paper, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, statistical model, systems thinking, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

This financial revolution was responsible for the boom-bust cycle that exploded in the 2007-09 crisis, but the changes in traditional attitudes to debt, in property values, and in views about reasonable levels of borrowing are unlikely to be fully reversed even after the crisis. The first two of these four megatrends—the emergence of three billion new capitalists, both producers and consumers, in Asia and the unification of the world economy into a single market—have been discussed at length in many excellent studies, most notably Martin Wolf’s magisterial book, Why Globalization Works.4 The transformative power of the other two megatrends, by contrast, has not been as widely recognized. The next two chapters will therefore look in detail at these less familiar transformations. The theme in the background of this discussion will be the way in which all the global megatrends reinforced one another, first in creating the period of remarkable economic stability that came to be known as the Great Moderation and then snapping back with a vengeance in the crisis of 2007-09.

Although this term was invented by the sociologist Daniel Bell in The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society, its relationship to information technology was developed most convincingly by Toffler in his book The Third Wave. Ignored by “serious” academics, Toffler was the only modern Western economist or social scientist to appear in a list of “Fifty foreigners shaping China’s modern development” published by People’s Daily in 2006. http://english.people.com.cn/200608/03/eng20060803_289510.html. 4 Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works. Chapter Six 1 Known to philosophers as Petronius’s Paradox, this statement is usually attributed to Gaius Petronius Arbiter, a Roman patrician believed to be the author of the Satyricon. Petronius’s Paradox is considered a classic example of a self-referential statement that contradicts its own premise and is therefore logically meaningless. 2 Ben Bernanke, “The Great Moderation,” remarks at the meetings of the Eastern Economic Association, Federal Reserve Board, Washington, DC, February 20, 2004. 3 Olivier Blanchard and John Simon, “The Long and Large Decline in U.S.

Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary Confirmation Hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, January 21, 2010. Available from http://www.finance.senate.gov/sitepages/leg/LEG%202009/012209%20TFG%20Questions.pdf. See also Robert Aliber, “Tariffs Can Persuade Beijing to Free the Renminbi,” Financial Times, December 8, 2009, and Martin Wolf, “Why China’s Exchange Rate Policy Is a Common Concern,” Financial Times, December 9, 2009. 23 The most important and successful of these interventions was the Plaza Agreement of September 22, 1985, which resulted in a 40 percent devaluation of the dollar over the following eighteen months. This was followed by the Louvre Accord of February 22, 1987, which helped to stabilize the dollar-yen exchange rate for the next five years in the range of 125-150, but was subsequently blamed for contributing to the 1987 crash on Wall Street and the Japanese bubble economy of 1988-89. 24 A good summary of recent thinking is John Williamson, “The Choice of Exchange Rate Regime: The Relevance of International Experience to China’s Decision,” Lecture at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing on September 7, 2004.


pages: 823 words: 206,070

The Making of Global Capitalism by Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin

accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, book value, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, continuous integration, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, dark matter, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, guest worker program, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, inflation targeting, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, oil shock, precariat, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, seigniorage, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, stock buybacks, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, union organizing, vertical integration, very high income, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Now if somebody has had many years of experience like me, the people you’re talking to at least think, well, this guy knows what he is talking about; he’s been through some of these firefights himself, and so we’re not dealing with somebody who doesn’t understand how we think or what we can do.79 With the political implications of bailing out a private hedge fund ruling out public funds being brought into play in this instance (as they very much had been in the Korean bailout less than nine months earlier), and with the pressure on them from the Fed by most accounts rather heavier than McDonough suggests, fourteen of Wall Street’s leading financial institutions agreed to organize a creditors’ consortium to take over LCTM and the responsibility to meet its obligations. “Suddenly,” as Martin Wolf put in the Financial Times, “investors discovered Russia was not too nuclear to fail, yet a mere hedge fund could be too big to do so.”80 But however significant, this would not have happened, nor would it have been enough, had the Fed not already started pouring funds into the banking system. Once it was decided to deny the Russians further bailout funds, US interest rates had to come down, and investors’ flight to the safety of US Treasury bonds would accommodate this—the only questions were when and by how much.

The Treasury would purchase more bank stock, while emphasizing that the long-term objective was to keep the banks in private hands. The new asset-management funds the Treasury would set up to unblock financial markets (along the lines of the Resolution Trust Corporation during the Savings and Loan crisis) were accurately described by the Financial Times’s Martin Wolf: “Under the scheme, the government provides virtually all the finance and bears almost all the risk, but it uses the private sector to price the assets. In return, private investors obtain rewards—perhaps generous rewards—based on their performance via equity participation, alongside the Treasury.

Available at imf.org. 77 See Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management, New York: Random House, 2000. 78 The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, New York: Public Affairs, 2011, p. 57. 79 McDonough interview, PBS, The Commanding Heights. See also his statement before the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services, 105th Congress, 2nd Session, October 1, 1998. 80 Martin Wolf, “Back to the Future,” Financial Times, October 14, 1998. 81 Paul Krugman, “Let’s Not Panic—Yet,” New York Times, August 30, 1998. Another article two days later by the chief economist of Morgan Stanley, Stephen Roach, supported this, saying that “central banks and the IMF need to focus squarely on crisis containment and put tangential considerations aside . . .


pages: 270 words: 79,180

The Middleman Economy: How Brokers, Agents, Dealers, and Everyday Matchmakers Create Value and Profit by Marina Krakovsky

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Al Roth, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Black Swan, buy low sell high, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Credit Default Swap, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, deal flow, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, experimental economics, George Akerlof, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, Jean Tirole, Joan Didion, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kenneth Arrow, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market microstructure, Martin Wolf, McMansion, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, moral hazard, multi-sided market, Network effects, patent troll, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, pez dispenser, power law, real-name policy, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Sand Hill Road, search costs, seminal paper, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social graph, supply-chain management, TaskRabbit, the long tail, The Market for Lemons, the strength of weak ties, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, two-sided market, Uber for X, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Y Combinator

Carol Shamon, the San Diego-based modeling agent introduced in the Certifier chapter, says that though she’s a nice person, she sometimes becomes a fierce “mama bear” to protect the talent she represents. Even a lawyer who’s a good Insulator doesn’t see himself as merely an expert in the law. That’s a point made by Hubert Willman, a seasoned attorney who negotiates deals at the mergers and acquisitions firm Martin Wolf based in Danville, California.21 When one company buys another or goes up for sale, many millions of dollars and entire careers are at stake; therefore, it makes sense that companies typically turn to professionals to negotiate the deal. Even serial entrepreneurs have limited experience selling a company, but professional mergers and acquisitions firms do it every day.

Power, 165 Jerry Maguire, 174, 189 Jin, Ginger, 85, 102 Johnson & Johnson, 54 Lay, Ken, 41 Leone, Doug, 21 Lerner, Josh, 133 leveraging relationships, 93–4 Lewis, Michael, 112 Li & Fung, 140 likability, 177–8 limited partners (LPs), 9, 19 LinkedIn, 4, 22–3, 27, 36, 54–5, 61 Long Tail, The (Anderson), 134–5 Lyft, 6, 38, 124, 126, 136–7 Maples, Mike, 5–6, 124–7, 129–33, 136 “Market for Lemons, The” (Akerlof), 65 Marks, Howard, 127 Martin Wolf, 190 Match.com, 38, 42 McAdams, David, 88, 90, 93 McKenney, Julie, 94–7, 100, 107 McMaster-Carr, 141 Medallion Rug Gallery, 19, 28 Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), 187–8 middlemen Parasites, 8–11, 89, 118 Partners, 8–9, 13 Pets, 9, 12–13 Predators, 9, 11–13, 112 stereotypes about, 10 see also Bridges; Certifiers; Concierges; Enforcers; Insulators; Risk Bearers Miura-Ko, Ann, 124, 131–2 MRO (Maintenance, Repair, Operations) industry, 141 MySpace, 80 National Automobile Dealers Association, 11 Neale, Margaret, 192 negative externalities, 12 negotiation, 176–7, 179, 183–9, 191–2 Nesbit, Lynn, 185 Netflix, 135 NFL, 173–4, 179–80, 183 Nozad, Pejman, 18–20, 22–3, 26–8, 40–2 OpenTable, 78–84, 108–9 opportunism, 74, 92, 104–5, 108 Parasites, 8–11, 89, 118 Parker, Eugene, 180 Partners, 8–9, 13 Pejman Mar, 19 Pets, 9, 12–13 Petzinger, Thomas, 8 Pfeffer, Jeffrey, 177 Poe, Ellison, 8, 146–8, 153, 158–9, 169 pooling, 137–42 PowerSellers, 60, 67, 85–6, 134, 164 Predators, 9, 11–13, 112 Priceline, 78 Prisco, Pete, 180 Proposers, 183–4 Rachleff, Andy, 127 Radford, R.


pages: 307 words: 82,680

A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income by Guy Standing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-fragile, bank run, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, British Empire, carbon tax, centre right, collective bargaining, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, declining real wages, degrowth, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial intermediation, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gunnar Myrdal, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, independent contractor, intangible asset, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joi Ito, labour market flexibility, land value tax, libertarian paternalism, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, nudge theory, offshore financial centre, open economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, precariat, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, rent control, rent-seeking, Salesforce, Sam Altman, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, The Future of Employment, universal basic income, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce, working poor, Y Combinator, Zipcar

Supporters in this fourth wave include: Nobel Prize winners James Buchanan, Herbert Simon, Angus Deaton, Christopher Pissarides and Joseph Stiglitz; academics Tony Atkinson, Robert Skidelsky and Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labour under Bill Clinton; prominent economic journalists Sam Brittan and Martin Wolf; and leading figures in the BIEN movement, such as German sociologist Claus Offe and the Belgian philosopher Philippe van Parijs. Latterly, the idea has been taken up by Silicon Valley luminaries and venture capitalists, some putting up money for the cause, as we shall see. They include Robin Chase, co-founder of Zipcar, Sam Altman, head of the start-up incubator Y Combinator, Albert Wenger, a prominent venture capitalist, Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, Elon Musk, founder of SolarCity, Tesla and SpaceX, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, and Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent.

Instead, QE has enriched the financiers, worsened income inequality and hastened the alarming oncoming crisis of underfunded pension schemes.9 The idea of giving money directly to people to boost growth was put forward in a famous 1969 article by Milton Friedman, who used the parable of scattering dollar bills from a helicopter for the public to pick up.10 ‘Helicopter money’ – printing money to distribute to the public – has been proposed by American bond investor Bill Gross and by the economics journalist Martin Wolf, among others. The term ‘helicopter money’ has the drawback of conveying an image of people scrambling to pick up the money fluttering down, with the lion’s share going to the swift and the strong. A libertarian might regard that quasi-Darwinian prospect with equanimity; the rest of us might not.


Propaganda and the Public Mind by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, deindustrialization, digital divide, European colonialism, experimental subject, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, interchangeable parts, language acquisition, liberation theology, Martin Wolf, one-state solution, precautionary principle, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, school vouchers, Silicon Valley, structural adjustment programs, Thomas L Friedman, Tobin tax, Washington Consensus

Andrew Simms, “Unctad Offers Way Forward for Talks on World Trade,” Guardian Weekly (Manchester), February 23, 2000, p. 12. 2. Susan Strange, Mad Money: When Markets Outgrow Governments (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), p. 127. 3. See the articles on-line at http:/ /www.twnside.org.sg/unctad.htm and http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/ focusIS.htm. 4. Martin Wolf, “The Curse of Global Inequality,” Financial Times, January 26, 2000, p. 23. 5. Thomas L. Friedman, “Senseless in Seattle,” New York Times, December 1, 1999, p. A23. 6. Doug Henwood, “Miscellany,” Left Business Observer 91 (August 31, 1999), p. 8. See also http:/ /www.panix.com /-dhenwood /Gini_supplement.html and http://www.panix.com/-dhenwood/Wealth_distrib.html. 7.

Tariq Ali, “The Panic Button,” Guardian, October 14, 1999, p. 21. 31. Marc L. Miringoff and Marque-Luisa Miringoff, The Social Health of the Nation: How America Is Really Doing (New York: Oxford UP, 1999). 32. Bretton Woods Commission, Bretton Woods: Looking into the Future (Washington, DC: Bretton Woods Commission, 1994). See Martin Wolf, “Bretton Woods at an Awkward Age,” Financial Times, October 7, 1994, p. 19, and Michael Prowse, “IMF and World Bank ‘Must Adapt to New Global Financial Landscape,’” Financial Times, July 7, 1994, p. 5. 33. UNCTAD, Trade and Development Report, 1999 (Geneva: UNCTAD, 1999). For a review, see Chakravarthi Raghavan, Third World Economics, November 1-15,1999.


pages: 261 words: 81,802

The Trouble With Billionaires by Linda McQuaig

"World Economic Forum" Davos, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, British Empire, Build a better mousetrap, carried interest, Charles Babbage, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, employer provided health coverage, financial deregulation, fixed income, full employment, Gary Kildall, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the telephone, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, John Bogle, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, laissez-faire capitalism, land tenure, lateral thinking, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, minimum wage unemployment, Mont Pelerin Society, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, price mechanism, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tobin tax, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, very high income, wealth creators, women in the workforce

The activities of Paulson, and others like him on Wall Street, could surely in no way be construed as socially beneficial. Their actions do nothing to improve the efficient allocation of capital – the function that financial markets are supposed to perform. Instead, they amount to little more than gambling, which has no social utility. Martin Wolf, a columnist for the Financial Times, noted that Paulson’s moves ‌served ‘absolutely no useful purpose’.4 By buying insurance on CDO investments in which he had no ownership stake, Paulson wasn’t protecting himself from losses, but rather was placing a bet that the CDO investments would fail – like buying insurance on someone else’s car, hoping it would crash.

Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1979), p. 466. ‌18 Bardini, Bootstrapping, pp. 6–14. ‌19 Alperovitz & Daly, Unjust Deserts, p. 144. 6 Why Other Billionaires Are Even Less Deserving ‌1 Quoted in Gregory Zuckerman, The Greatest Trade Ever (New York: Random House, 2009), p. 192. ‌2 Ibid., p. 95. ‌3 Ibid., pp. 3, 8. ‌4 Martin Wolf and Simon Johnson, online interview, Yahoo Originals, 21 April 2010. ‌5 This analogy is an adaptation of one made by Phil Angelides, head of the federally appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, and cited in Dean Baker, ‘Goldman’s Scam #5476, Yes, It Can Get Even Worse’, The Guardian, 19 April 2010. ‌6 Wolf and Johnson interview. ‌7 Henry Paulson is not related to John Paulson. ‌8 In fact, Goldman bought more of this insurance from AIG than any other bank.


pages: 309 words: 85,584

Nine Crises: Fifty Years of Covering the British Economy From Devaluation to Brexit by William Keegan

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, capital controls, congestion charging, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Etonian, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial thriller, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, gig economy, inflation targeting, Jeremy Corbyn, Just-in-time delivery, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, oil shock, Parkinson's law, Paul Samuelson, pre–internet, price mechanism, quantitative easing, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, short selling, South Sea Bubble, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, transaction costs, tulip mania, Winter of Discontent, Yom Kippur War

Although the Queen herself posed that famous question as to why nobody warned about the banking crisis, there was no shortage of officials and economists who were uneasy before the crash – a famous example being when Raghuram Rajan, then chief economist at the IMF, was in effect shouted down when he voiced his concerns at the annual Jackson Hole central bankers’ conference in August 2005. Bill White, then chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, issued many a warning, reported by, among others, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times and, indeed, by me in The Observer. Unfortunately, the supposed wonders of deregulation were all the rage, and the consensus and herd instinct ruled. There was a notorious remark by Chuck Prince of Citibank that, even if problems were on the horizon, participants just had to ‘keep dancing’.

There were some sturdy Keynesians who also challenged the Osborne orthodoxy. Among them were the redoubtable US economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, and Professor Simon Wren-Lewis of Oxford University. I have already mentioned my old friend Robert Neild. Then there were continual efforts by the Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf, as well as Jonathan Portes at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. When one felt a little isolated in the face of all too successful government propaganda, and wondered whether one was indeed missing something, it was always a relief to turn to the latest writings of the above, and others, for reassurance.


pages: 361 words: 81,068

The Internet Is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, AltaVista, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, Bob Geldof, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, computer age, connected car, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, data science, David Brooks, decentralized internet, DeepMind, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Davies, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, frictionless, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Google bus, Google Glasses, Hacker Ethic, happiness index / gross national happiness, holacracy, income inequality, index card, informal economy, information trail, Innovator's Dilemma, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, libertarian paternalism, lifelogging, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, nonsequential writing, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Occupy movement, packet switching, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer rental, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Potemkin village, power law, precariat, pre–internet, printed gun, Project Xanadu, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, San Francisco homelessness, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, the medium is the message, the new new thing, Thomas L Friedman, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, work culture , working poor, Y Combinator

And, everyone’s favorite, ROBOTS,” wrote the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson in 2014 about our increasing concern with the elimination of jobs from the economy.17 As if to mark (or perhaps mourn) the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Web, it seems as if 2014 is the year that we’ve finally fully woken up to what the Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Akst dubs “automation anxiety.”18 The cover of the one business magazine that I’d read on the flight from Chicago to Rochester, for example, featured the image of a deadly tornado roaring through a workspace. “Coming to an office near you . . .,” it warned about what technology will do to “tomorrow’s jobs.”19 Many others share this automation anxiety. The distinguished Financial Times economics columnist Martin Wolf warns that intelligent machines could hollow out middle-class jobs, compound income inequality, make the wealthy “indifferent” to the fate of everyone else, and make a “mockery” of democratic citizenship.20 “The robots are coming and will terminate your jobs,”21 worries the generally cheerful economist Tim Harford in response to Google’s acquisition in December 2013 of Boston Dynamics, a producer of military robots such as Big Dog, a three-foot-long, 240-pound, four-footed beast that can carry a 340-pound load and climb snowy hiking trails.

,” Guardian, January 21, 2012. 14 Jason Farago, “Our Kodak Moments—and Creativity—Are Gone,” Guardian, August 23, 2013, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/photography-photography. 15 Nick Brown, “US Judge Approves Kodak Plan to Exit Bankruptcy,” Reuters, August 20, 2013, reuters.com/article/2013/08/20/us-kodak-idUSBRE97J0W820130820. 16 Julie Creswell, “Kodak’s Fuzzy Future,” New York Times, May 3, 2013, dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/after-bankruptcy-a-leaner-kodak-faces-an-uphill-battle. 17 Derek Thompson, “What Jobs Will the Robots Take?,” Atlantic, January 23, 2014. 18 Daniel Akst, “Automation Anxiety,” Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2013. 19 “Coming to an Office Near You . . .” Economist, January 18 , 2014. 20 Martin Wolf, “If Robots Divide Us, They Will Conquer,” Financial Times, February 4, 2014. 21 Tim Harford, “The Robots Are Coming and Will Terminate Your Jobs,” Financial Times, December 28–29, 2013. 22 Ibid. 23 Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (New York: Norton, 2008), p. 113. 24 Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (New York: Norton, 2014), p. 198. 25 Carole Cadwallader, “Are the Robots About to Rise?


pages: 223 words: 10,010

The Cost of Inequality: Why Economic Equality Is Essential for Recovery by Stewart Lansley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Curtis, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, banking crisis, Basel III, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, capital controls, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Edward Glaeser, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, floating exchange rates, full employment, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, high net worth, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job polarisation, John Meriwether, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Larry Ellison, light touch regulation, Londongrad, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, mittelstand, mobile money, Mont Pelerin Society, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, proprietary trading, Right to Buy, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, shareholder value, The Great Moderation, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, working-age population

Banks would turn deposits of a few billion pounds into lending parcels worth twenty or thirty times this amount, or in some cases even more. ‘The essence of the contemporary monetary system is the creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks’ often foolish lending’, wrote Financial Times columnist, Martin Wolf in 2010.194 In 1974, new rules had been drawn up by global finance regulators meeting in the historic Swiss city of Basel about the level of capital banks were required to hold. Under Basel 1, as it was called, banks were required to keep liquid capital reserves of at least eight per cent of their lending and investment.

This has also been the main cause of the upsurge in financial crises, most of them associated with a torrent of currency, stock or property speculation. In the two decades from 1950 there were no banking crises and relatively few financial crises. Since the end of the 1970s, the number of such crises has mushroomed. As the Financial Times columnist, Martin Wolf, has put it, ‘financial liberalisation and financial crises go together like a horse and carriage’.230 In October 1987, the world’s leading stock markets crashed, their largest fall in a day since the crash of 1929. A serious fall-out for the world economy was only averted by a huge injection of liquidity by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.


pages: 296 words: 82,501

Stuffocation by James Wallman

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, Alvin Toffler, back-to-the-land, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Black Swan, BRICs, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, clean water, collaborative consumption, commoditize, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Future Shock, Great Leap Forward, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, high net worth, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Hargreaves, Joseph Schumpeter, Kitchen Debate, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, McMansion, means of production, Nate Silver, Occupy movement, Paul Samuelson, planned obsolescence, post-industrial society, post-materialism, public intellectual, retail therapy, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, spinning jenny, Streisand effect, The future is already here, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, World Values Survey, Zipcar

Read the transcript – to which I’ve made minor alterations for the sake of grammar and ease of reading – at the Freedom of Information Act Reading Room (www.foia.cia.gov). The best idea of the 20th century? For an excellent reading of the benefits of capitalism, read Michael Schuman, “How To Save Capitalism”, Time Magazine, 30 January 2012; Martin Wolf, “Is the Age of Unlimited Growth Over?”, Financial Times, 3 October 2012; and Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon, “The Greatest Century That Ever Was: 25 Miraculous Trends of the Past 100 Years”, Policy Analysis, No. 364, December 15, 1999. “By 2030, so many believe, we may even have eradicated poverty.”

The Pilot and the Pig’s Ear For more on Bompas and Parr, visit www.jellymongers.co.uk “Everyone is an autobiographer nowadays” “We live in a cluttered time of too much information” We consume the equivalent of 174 newspapers’ worth of information every day, according to a researcher at the University of Southern California called Dr Martin Hilbert, as reported in Richard Alleyn, “Welcome to the information age – 174 newspapers a day”, Daily Telegraph, 11 February 2011. CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Experientialists Who Love Stuff “Consumer spending makes up around 65% of the British, and just above 70% of the US economy” Various sources, including: Martin Wolf, “Britain must fix its banks – not its monetary policy”, Financial Times, 6 June 2013; Hale Stewart, “Consumer Spending and the Economy”, FiveThirtyEight, New York Times, 19 September 2010. The Secret Loot in the Experience Economy For more on Secret Cinema, visit www.secretcinema.org.


pages: 561 words: 87,892

Losing Control: The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity by Stephen D. King

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, credit crunch, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, G4S, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, junk bonds, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Meghnad Desai, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Naomi Klein, new economy, old age dependency ratio, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, spice trade, statistical model, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Market for Lemons, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, transaction costs, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

Of particular value have been regular meetings at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, the Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG (OeKB) in Vienna and the Accumulation Society in London. I have also benefited from my occasional involvement with the Business Council for Britain. Those who offered encouragement when the book was merely a vague concept include Diane Coyle, Hamish McRae and Martin Wolf. All three know a lot more than I do about writing books and all were kind enough to steer me in the right direction. I am enormously grateful to the people at Yale University Press. Special thanks go to Phoebe Clapham, my editor, who was dogged in her determination to turn my scribblings into a coherent final manuscript.

In relation to the size of the indigenous population, the proportion of foreign-born citizens is now a lot lower: in the second half of the nineteenth century the proportion stood at between 13 and 14 per cent whereas, over the last fifty years, it has oscillated between 4 and 8 per cent. The proportionate economic impact of immigration has, thus, faded over the last half-century. 2. Source: US Census Bureau. 3. The range of arguments is vast. Supporters of globalization include Martin Wolf with his Why Globalization Works (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2004) and Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, New York, 2005). Its detractors – using varying arguments – include Joseph Stiglitz (Globalization and its Discontents [Penguin, London, 2003]), Naomi Klein (No Logo [Fourth Estate, New York, 1999]) and Noreena Hertz (The Silent Takeover [The Free Press, New York, 2002]).


pages: 289 words: 86,165

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

"there is no alternative" (TINA), 15-minute city, AlphaGo, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, cloud computing, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, David Graeber, Day of the Dead, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, failed state, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, green new deal, hiring and firing, housing crisis, imperial preference, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, invention of the wheel, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, Monroe Doctrine, Nate Silver, Nick Bostrom, oil shock, open borders, out of africa, Parag Khanna, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, popular capitalism, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, social distancing, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, TED Talk, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, UNCLOS, universal basic income, urban planning, Washington Consensus, white flight, Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

During the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the economist Paul Krugman warned in a Fortune essay that unless Asian countries took drastic measures (like putting controls on their currency), “we could be looking at a true Depression scenario—the kind of slump that 60 years ago, devastated economies, destabilized governments, and eventually led to war.” When the dot-com bubble deflated in 2000, wiping out $5 trillion in wealth, many predicted the end of the obsession with technology and the Internet. In the wake of the global financial crisis, Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, declared, “Another ideological god has failed,” and Tim Geithner, the secretary of the treasury, promised, “Capitalism will be different.” But after each crisis, the economy was patched up and we muddled along. Could we do so again? It is certainly possible.

But for Everyone Else, It’s Infuriating,” Fox News Opinion, January 19, 2019. 62 “the kind of slump”: Paul Krugman, “Saving Asia: It’s Time to Get Radical,” Fortune / CNN Money, September 7, 1998. 62 wiping out $5 trillion in wealth: Chris Gaither and Dawn C. Chmielewski, “Fears of Dot-Com Crash, Version 2.0,” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 2006. 62 the end of the obsession: Alex Williams, “2001: When the Internet Was, Um, Over?,” New York Times, October 8, 2018. 62 “Another ideological god has failed”: Martin Wolf, “Seeds of Its Own Destruction: The Scope of Government Is Again Widening and the Era of Free-Wheeling Finance Is Over,” Financial Times, March 8, 2009. 62 “Capitalism will be different”: Joe Weisenthal, “Geithner Tells Charlie Rose: Capitalism Will Be Different,” Business Insider, March 11, 2009. 62 Could we do so again?


pages: 75 words: 22,220

Occupy by Noam Chomsky

Alan Greenspan, corporate governance, corporate personhood, deindustrialization, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, income inequality, invisible hand, Martin Wolf, Nate Silver, Occupy movement, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, precariat, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, too big to fail, union organizing

At that time, there was also egalitarianism: the lowest quintile did as well as the highest quintile and it absorbed into the mainstream society. Groups that had been excluded from society, African Americans for example, could finally be integrated into society. That came to an end in the 1970s when, for one thing, there was a shift towards increasing the role of finance in the society. One of the great financial correspondents, Martin Wolf, wrote recently that the financial systems are wiping out functioning markets the way larva destroys a host. He’s one of the most respected financial economists in the world and not a radical. That’s what the effect of the financial system has been. Combined with this were corporate decisions to ship production abroad.


pages: 543 words: 147,357

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society by Will Hutton

Abraham Maslow, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Blythe Masters, Boris Johnson, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, centre right, choice architecture, cloud computing, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, debt deflation, decarbonisation, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, discovery of the americas, discrete time, disinformation, diversification, double helix, Edward Glaeser, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, full employment, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, income inequality, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Dyson, James Watt: steam engine, Japanese asset price bubble, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, language acquisition, Large Hadron Collider, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, long term incentive plan, Louis Pasteur, low cost airline, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meritocracy, Mikhail Gorbachev, millennium bug, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, moral panic, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Neil Kinnock, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, plutocrats, power law, price discrimination, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, railway mania, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, Skype, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, tail risk, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-masted sailing ship, too big to fail, unpaid internship, value at risk, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, work culture , working poor, world market for maybe five computers, zero-sum game, éminence grise

Cooley, Matthew Richardson and Ingo Walter, ‘Rethinking Compensation in Financial Firms’, both in Viral Acharya and Matthew Richardson (eds) (2009) Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System, John Wiley and Sons. 3 Kate Kelly, ‘Bear CEO’s Handling of Crisis Raises Issues’, Wall Street Journal, 1 November 2007, at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119387369474078336.html. 4 Evan Thomas, ‘Rubin’s Detail Deficit’ Newsweek, 29 November 2008. 5 Andrew Haldane (2009) ‘Rethinking the Financial Network’, presentation to the Financial Students Association, Amsterdam. 6 John Kay, ‘Banks Got Burned by Their Own “Innocent Fraud”’, Financial Times, 15 October 2008, at http://www.johnkay.com/finance/573. 7 See testimony of Richard Michalek in front of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: The Role of Credit Rating Agencies Friday, 23 April 2010. 8 James Crotty (2009) ‘Structural Causes of the Global Financial Crisis: A Critical Assessment of the “New Financial Architecture”’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 33: 563–80. 9 Simon Johnson and James Kwak, ‘The Quiet Coup’, Atlantic Monthly,May 2009, at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice. 10 Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra and Thierry Tressel (2009) ‘A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis’, IMF Working Paper No. 09/287. 11 CRESC (2009) ‘An Alternative Report on UK Banking Reform’, ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, University of Manchester. 12 Patrick Wintour, ‘Conservative Party in Hock to City, Says Nick Clegg’, Guardian, 3 May 2010, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/03/bankers-nick-clegg-david-cameron. 13 David Miller and William Dinan (2009) ‘Revolving Doors, Accountability and Transparency – Emerging Regulatory Concerns and Policy Solutions in the Financial Crisis’, report, OECD. 14 Tamsin Cave (2010) ‘An Inside Job – A Snapshot of Political Schmoozing by the City’, Spinwatch, at http://www.spinwatch.org/blogs-mainmenu29/tamasin-cave-mainmenu-107/5347-an-inside-job. 15 Joseph Zeira (1999) ‘Informational Overshooting, Booms and Crashes – The Stock Market Boom and Crash of 1929’, Journal of Monetary Economics 43 (1): 237–57. 16 World Bank (2001) Finance for Growth: Policy Choices in a Volatile World and the supporting database: Gerard Caprio and Daniel Klingbiel (2003) ‘Episodes of Systemic and Borderline Financial Crisis’, World Bank. The evidence and literature are reviewed in Martin Wolf (2008) Fixing Global Finance, Johns Hopkins University Press. 17 Claudio Borio and William White (2003) ‘Whither Monetary and Financial Stability? The Implications of Evolving Policy Regimes’, paper presented at a symposium sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. 18 Manuel Roig-Franzia, ‘Credit Crisis Cassandra’, Washington Post, 26 May 2009, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/25/AR2009052502108.html. 19 Hyman Minsky (2008) Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, McGraw-Hill Professional.

See also Julia Jones, Piyamas Nanork and Benjamin Oldroyd (2007) ‘The Role of Genetic Diversity in Nest Cooling in a Wild Honey Bee, Apis florea’, Journal of Comparative Physiology a-Neuroethology Sensory Neural and Behavioral Physiology 193 (2): 159–65. 55 Dean Amel, Colleen Barnes, Fabio Panetta and Carmelo Salleo (2004) ‘Consolidation and Efficiency in the Financial Sector: A Review of the International Evidence’, Journal of Banking and Finance 28: 2493–519. 56 ACT Response to the Turner Review of Banking Regulation, at http://www.treasurers.org/reviewbankingregulation/actresponse/0609. 57 Peter Boone and Simon Johnson, ‘Bernanke on Banking’, Economix, 19 October 2009, at http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/bernankeon-banking/. 58 Manmohan Singh (2010) ‘Collateral, Netting and Systemic Risk in the OTC Derivatives Market’, IMF Working Paper No. 10/99. 59 Michael Lewis (2010) The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Allen Lane. Chapter Eight: The £5 Trillion Mistake 1 Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff (2010) This Time is Different, Princeton University Press. 2 HM Treasury (2009) Pre-Budget Report 2009: Securing the Recovery: Growth and Opportunity, HMSO. See also Martin Wolf, ‘Britain’s Dismal Choice: Sharing the Losses’, Financial Times, 15 December 2009, at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f693b6a4-e9af-11de-9f1f-00144feab49a,s01=1.html. 3 OECD (2009) OECD Factbook, OECD, with Treasury figures and estimates for 2008 and 2009. 4 Robert Chote, Carl Emmerson and Jonathan Shaw (eds) (2010) The Institute for Fiscal Studies Green Budget, IFS. 5 Francesco Guerrera, ‘Welch Denounces Corporate Obsessions’, Financial Times, 13 March 2009, at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3ca8ec2e-0f70-11de-ba10-0000779fd2ac.html. 6 Max Hastings, ‘The End of Britain’s Long Weekend’, Financial Times, 20 December 2009, at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1e9f7cdc-ed8e-11de-ba12-00144feab49a.html. 7 Internal Cabinet Office analysis. 8 Chris Giles, ‘Manufacturing Fades under Labour’, Financial Times, 2 December 2009, at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f32a3392-df7a-11de-98ca-00144feab49a.html. 9 Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1911) Liberalism, at socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/hobhouse/liberalism.pdf. 10 Buffett, Gates and Simon are all cited in Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly (2008) Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back, The New Press. 11 Antonio Afonso, Ludger Schuknecht and Vito Tanzi (2005) ‘Public Sector Efficiency: An International Comparison’, Public Choice 123 (3–4): 321–47.

, IMF Working Paper No. 09/160. 15 Joseph Stiglitz, ‘The Dangers of Deficit Reduction’, Project Syndicate, at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz123/English. 16 International Monetary Fund (2009) ‘The State of Public Finances Cross-Country Fiscal Monitor: November 2009’, report, Tables 1 and 2 on pp. 35 and 36. 17 Robert Chote, Carl Emmerson and Jonathan Shaw (eds) (2010) The Green Budget 2010, Institute for Fiscal Studies. 18 Ibid. 19 David Willetts (2010) The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Stole Their Children’s Future, Atlantic Books. 20 Martin Wolf, ‘China and Germany Unite to Impose Global Deflation’, Financial Times, 16 March 2010, at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cd01f69e-3134-11df-8e6f-00144feabdc0.html. 21 Michael Pettis (2009) ‘Sharing the Pain: The Global Struggle over Savings’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Policy Brief No. 84. 22 Eswar Prasad (2009) ‘Rebalancing Growth in Asia’, NBER Working Paper No. 15169. 23 See John Garnaut, ‘China’s Runaway Growth Train on a Dangerous Course’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 2010, at http://www.smh.com.au/business/chinas-runaway-growth-train-on-a-dangerous-course-20100124-msll.html.


pages: 357 words: 95,986

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams

3D printing, additive manufacturing, air freight, algorithmic trading, anti-work, antiwork, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, basic income, battle of ideas, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, centre right, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decarbonisation, deep learning, deindustrialization, deskilling, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, housing crisis, housing justice, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, intermodal, Internet Archive, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, liberation theology, Live Aid, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market design, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, megaproject, minimum wage unemployment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Bookchin, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Overton Window, patent troll, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, post scarcity, post-Fordism, post-work, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Slavoj Žižek, social web, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, surplus humans, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the long tail, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, wages for housework, warehouse automation, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

Economists, NGOs and policymakers explored the idea in detail,94 and a number of small-scale experiments were set up in Canada and the United States.95 Such was the influence of UBI that over 1,300 economists signed a petition pushing the US Congress to enact a ‘national system of income guarantees’.96 Three separate administrations gave serious consideration to the proposal, and two presidents – Nixon and Carter – attempted to pass legislation to achieve it.97 In other words, UBI very nearly became a reality in the 1970s.98 While Alaska eventually implemented a basic income funded by its oil wealth, the idea largely disappeared from debate in the wake of neoliberal hegemony.99 But recent years have seen the idea undergo a resurgence in popularity. In both mainstream and critical media, it has gained traction, being taken up by Paul Krugman, Martin Wolf, the New York Times, the Financial Times and the Economist.100 The Swiss are holding a referendum on UBI in 2016, the proposal has been recommended by parliamentary committees in other countries, various political parties have adopted it in their manifestos, and there have been new experiments with it in Namibia and India.101 The idea has global scope, having been promoted forcefully by groups in Brazil, South Africa, Italy and Germany, and by an international network involving over twenty countries.102 The movement for a UBI is thus once again resurgent in the wake of the 2008 crisis and the austerity regimes put in place after it.

Technology and The Future of Work (London: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 204–5. 98.An indispensable resource for the story behind this rise and fall in a basic income policy, along with an essential guide to how cultural framing affects the viability of the policy, is Brian Steensland, The Failed Welfare Revolution: America’s Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). 99.Daniel Raventós, Basic Income: The Material Conditions of Freedom, transl. Julie Wark (London: Pluto Press, 2007), p. 12. 100.Paul Krugman, ‘Sympathy for the Luddites’, New York Times, 13 June 2013; Martin Wolf, ‘Enslave the Robots and Free the Poor’, Financial Times, 11 February 2014. 101.More specifically, the Green Party of England and Wales has included it in its manifesto; the Liberal Party of Canada has put the idea on their agenda, and its leader pushed for it in 2001; in Canada, the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs recommended it as a way to deal with poverty; and the Swiss will be voting in a referendum on the idea.


pages: 344 words: 93,858

The Post-American World: Release 2.0 by Fareed Zakaria

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, conceptual framework, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, double entry bookkeeping, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), knowledge economy, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, mutually assured destruction, National Debt Clock, new economy, no-fly zone, oil shock, open economy, out of africa, Parag Khanna, postindustrial economy, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South China Sea, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, The future is already here, The Great Moderation, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, Washington Consensus, working-age population, young professional, zero-sum game

China’s lending was also essentially a massive stimulus program for the United States. During the go-go years of the mid-aughts, it kept interest rates low and encouraged homeowners to refinance, hedge fund managers to ramp up leverage, and investment banks to goose their balance sheets. China’s lending created cheap money, says the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, and “cheap money encouraged an orgy of financial innovation, borrowing and spending.” It was one of the major contributors to the global financial crisis, and the cycle continues even in its aftermath. Everyone agrees the status quo is unsustainable. “There can be no return to business as usual,” Wolf wrote after the financial collapse.

Autor is cautious and tentative, but it would seem that technology, followed by global competition, has played the largest role in making less valuable the routine tasks that once epitomized middle-class work. As this hollowing out of the middle suggests, there really isn’t a Third World anymore. China, India, and the United States all compete on a level playing field. What, then, is America’s competitive advantage? The answer lies in something the economist Martin Wolf noted. Describing the changing world, he wrote that economists used to discuss two basic concepts, capital and labor. But these are now commodities, widely available to everyone. What distinguishes economies today are ideas and energy. A country must be a source of either ideas or energy (meaning oil, natural gas, coal, etc.).


pages: 384 words: 93,754

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism by John Elkington

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, anti-fragile, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, deglobalization, degrowth, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Future Shock, Gail Bradbrook, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Google X / Alphabet X, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, Hans Rosling, hype cycle, impact investing, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, John Elkington, Jony Ive, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, M-Pesa, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, microplastics / micro fibres, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, placebo effect, Planet Labs, planetary scale, plant based meat, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, space junk, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, systems thinking, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tim Cook: Apple, urban planning, Whole Earth Catalog

Hyperbole, of course, but this was very much the gist of his thinking.16 On taxes, he had this to say: “I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.” NEW STORIES Reviewing a new book called Prosperity, by Colin Mayer of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, the Financial Times economics editor Martin Wolf concluded that “profit is not itself a business purpose. Profit is a condition of—and result of—achieving a purpose. The purpose might be making cars, delivering products, disseminating information, or many other things. If a business substitutes making money for purpose, it will fail at both.”17 Purpose has been much debated recently, but these efforts must increasingly be set in the context of the fact that, as Wolf himself has concluded, “capitalism is broken.”

See also: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/the-business-of-business-is-what/. 14.This and other quotes and definitions of Lexicon from http://lexicon.ft.com/. 15.Ian Shuttleworth, “Where Did Capitalism Go Wrong?,” Financial Times, July 16, 2018. 16.https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/12/09/sand/ 17.Martin Wolf, “Rethink the Purpose of the Corporation,” Financial Times, December 12, 2018. 18.https://bcorporation.net/about-b-corps 19.Volans, Breakthrough Business Models: Exponentially More Social, Lean, Integrated and Circular, commissioned by the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, September 2016. 20.The term “extra-financial” means those forms of value and impact that are not captured in current financial accounting, which mainly still operates on the basis of a single, financial bottom line. 21.


pages: 339 words: 95,270

Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace by Matthew C. Klein

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, centre right, collective bargaining, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, full employment, George Akerlof, global supply chain, global value chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, intangible asset, invention of the telegraph, joint-stock company, land reform, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, New Urbanism, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, passive income, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Scramble for Africa, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, Wolfgang Streeck

Sebastian encouraged Matt’s ambitions at a time when becoming a writer seemed like the worst possible way to earn a living. He has always been a valuable source of advice on career decisions—especially the decision to write this book. Preparing the proposal and finding the right publisher were not easy. In addition to Sebastian, we thank Tim Harford, Anna Pitoniak, Reihan Salam, Amir Sufi, and Martin Wolf, who were all incredibly generous with their suggestions and personal introductions. Yale University Press has been a joy to work with. We would like to thank Seth Ditchik, Laura Jones Dooley, Dorothea Halliday, Kristy Leonard, Karen Olson, and Margaret Otzel for their support and guidance throughout the process.

Although many people contributed to our thinking, we especially thank Robert Aliber, Kenneth Austin, Ed Conway on Bretton Woods, Brad Delong, Niall Ferguson, Jacob Feygin, Marcel Fratzscher on Germany, Cardiff Garcia, Ambassador Jorge Guajardo, Stephanie Kelton, the formidable Wall Street veteran Robert Kowit, George Magnus, Sebastian Mallaby, Atif Mian, Julio Mota, Christian Odendahl, Zoltan Pozsar, Dani Rodrik, Reihan Salam, Martin Sandbu, Karthik Sankaran, Brad Setser, Hyun Song Shin, Amir Sufi, Srinivas Thiruvadanthai, Adam Tooze, Kellee Tsai on China’s informal banks, Angel Ubide, Duncan Weldon, Martin Wolf, and Gabriel Zucman. Brad Setser and Harry X. Wu also generously provided us with their data on China’s manufacturing trade, global foreign reserve accumulation, and Chinese productivity. During our many meetings at the International Monetary Fund office in Beijing, our host, Alfred Shipke, along with Logan Wright, Rodney Jones, and Chen Long, spent hours agreeing or disagreeing about the evolution of the Chinese economy, from which Michael stole many of our best ideas.


pages: 356 words: 103,944

The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy by Dani Rodrik

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, financial deregulation, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, frictionless, frictionless market, full employment, George Akerlof, guest worker program, Hernando de Soto, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, information asymmetry, joint-stock company, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, microcredit, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Multi Fibre Arrangement, night-watchman state, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, open economy, Paul Samuelson, precautionary principle, price stability, profit maximization, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tobin tax, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, tulip mania, Washington Consensus, World Values Survey

So we have the late Paul Samuelson, the author of the postwar era’s landmark economics textbook, reminding his fellow economists that China’s gains in globalization may well come at the expense of the United States; Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobelist in Economics, arguing that trade with low-income countries is no longer too small to have an effect on inequality in rich nations; Alan Blinder, a former U.S. Federal Reserve vice chairman, worrying that international outsourcing will cause unprecedented dislocations for the U.S. labor force; Martin Wolf, the Financial Times columnist and one of the most articulate advocates of globalization, expressing his disappointment with the way financial globalization has turned out; and Larry Summers, the Clinton administration’s “Mr. Globalization” and economic adviser to President Barack Obama, musing about the dangers of a race to the bottom in national regulations and the need for international labor standards.

Mishkin, The Next Great Globalization: How Disadvantaged Nations Can Harness Their Financial Systems to Get Rich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 5 Two prominent economists who are strong supporters of globalization but have expressed doubts on the wisdom of freeing up capital flows are Jagdish Bhagwati and Martin Wolf. 6 Frederic S. Mishkin, “Why We Shouldn’t Turn Our Backs on Financial Globalization,” IMF Staff Papers, vol. 56, no. 1 (2009), pp. 150ff. 7 Quoted at http://www.imf.org/external/np /sec/mds/1996/MDS9611.htm. 8 Mishkin, “Why We Shouldn’t Turn Our Backs,” p. 106. 9 Michael Lewis, “The End,” Portfolio.com, Nov. 11, 2008 (http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/ national-news/portfolio/2008/ 11/11/The-End-of-Wall-Streets- Boom?


pages: 443 words: 98,113

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay by Guy Standing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bilateral investment treaty, Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commons-based peer production, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Firefox, first-past-the-post, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, information retrieval, intangible asset, invention of the steam engine, investor state dispute settlement, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, megaproject, mini-job, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Kinnock, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, nudge unit, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, openstreetmap, patent troll, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Phillips curve, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, quantitative easing, remote working, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, structural adjustment programs, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Y Combinator, zero-sum game, Zipcar

As we will see, the new digital platforms have also expanded the effective labour supply by mobilising extra people to carry out tasks on a piecework basis that previously were done by (fewer) full-time employees. The basis of the Phillips curve has been demolished by the globalised flexible labour process. LIES, DAMNED LIES AND ‘AUSTERITY’ ‘The austerity obsession … is lunatic.’ Martin Wolf, Financial Times50 In the early years of the Global Transformation, governments made a Faustian bargain with their citizens.51 Liberalisation of markets in a globalising economy tripled the labour supply to the world labour market, adding two billion people. This was bound to put downward pressure on the living standards of those relying on labour in industrialised countries.

The misguided proposal is that stagnation justifies ‘helicopter money’, an image first suggested by Milton Friedman in which central banks would print money and throw it out of a helicopter for people to spend. In early 2016, this idea was garnering increasing interest, including from Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times concluded that central banks should ‘be given the power to send money, ideally to every citizen’.18 But the main objection to ‘helicopter money’ is that it would leave economic policy in the hands of bankers rather than democratically accountable bodies. The missed opportunity was a big one.


pages: 370 words: 102,823

Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth by Michael Jacobs, Mariana Mazzucato

Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, circular economy, collaborative economy, complexity theory, conceptual framework, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Detroit bankruptcy, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, endogenous growth, energy security, eurozone crisis, factory automation, facts on the ground, fiat currency, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, Ford Model T, forward guidance, full employment, G4S, general purpose technology, Gini coefficient, Growth in a Time of Debt, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, military-industrial complex, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, planned obsolescence, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, private sector deleveraging, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, systems thinking, the built environment, The Great Moderation, The Spirit Level, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, vertical integration, very high income

In practice, this meant that as hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs, tax receipts (T) fell sharply and government spending (G) to support the jobless (e.g. unemployment compensation, food stamps, etc.) rose rapidly. The result was a non-discretionary (i.e. endogenous) spike in the deficit (G-T) that reflected the severity of the crisis, something Martin Wolf noted18 in his regular column at the Financial Times. ‘I look at this through the lens of sectoral financial balances’, Wolf said, continuing: The idea that the huge fiscal deficits of recent years have been the result of decisions taken by the current administration is nonsense. No fiscal policy changes explain the collapse into massive deficit between 2007 and 2009, because there was none of any importance.

Historical data on the federal budget is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals (accessed 4 May 2016). 17 Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs and Paul McCulley of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund, both relied on Wynne Godley’s sector financial balances framework to help them see the positive role of government deficits in facilitating the deleveraging process. See for example Hatzius’ 2012 interview with the Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/goldmans-jan-hatzius-on-sectoral-balances-2012-12?IR=T (accessed 4 May 2016). 18 M. Wolf, ‘The balance sheet recession in the US’, Financial Times, 19 July 2012, http://blogs.ft.com/martin-wolf-exchange/2012/07/19/the-balance-sheet-recession-in-the-us/ (accessed 4 May 2016). 19 P. McCulley, Global Central Bank Focus: Facts on the Ground, Policy Note 2010/2, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, 2010, p. 3, http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/pn_10_02.pdf (accessed 4 May 2016). 20 L.


Who Rules the World? by Noam Chomsky

Able Archer 83, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, classic study, corporate governance, corporate personhood, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Garrett Hardin, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, liberation theology, Malacca Straits, Martin Wolf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, nuclear winter, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, one-state solution, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, precariat, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, structural adjustment programs, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, uranium enrichment, wage slave, WikiLeaks, working-age population

There is much loose talk about projected cuts, but such reporting fails to mention that if they take place at all, they will be from projected future Pentagon growth rates. The deficit crisis has largely been manufactured as a weapon to destroy hated social programs on which a large part of the population relies. The highly respected economics correspondent Martin Wolf, of the Financial Times, writes, “It is not that tackling the US fiscal position is urgent.… The US is able to borrow on easy terms, with yields on 10-year bonds close to 3 per cent, as the few non-hysterics predicted. The fiscal challenge is long term, not immediate.” Significantly, he adds: “The astonishing feature of the federal fiscal position is that revenues are forecast to be a mere 14.4 per cent of GDP in 2011, far below their postwar average of close to 18 per cent.

University of Maryland–College Park, “Public’s Budget Priorities Differ Dramatically from House and Obama,” press release, Newswise.com, 2 March 2011, http://www.newswise.com/articles/publics-budget-priorities-differ-dramatically-from-house-and-obama. 20. Catherine Lutz, Neta Crawford, and Andrea Mazzarino, “Costs of War,” Brown University Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/. 21. Martin Wolf, “From Italy to the US, Utopia vs. Reality,” Financial Times (London), 12 July 2011. 22. Lawrence Summers, “Relief at an Agreement Will Give Way to Alarm,” Financial Times (London), 2 August 2011. 23. “Health Care Budget Deficit Calculator,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, http://www.cepr.net/calculators/hc/hc-calculator.html. 24.


pages: 334 words: 98,950

Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Brownian motion, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, liberal world order, liberation theology, low skilled workers, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, mega-rich, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, principal–agent problem, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, urban sprawl, World Values Survey

The incentive to conduct research may have been increased, but there is no one to take advantage of it. It is like the story of my son, Jin-Gyu, which I discussed in chapter 3. If the capability is not there, it does not matter what the incentives are. This is why even the renowned British financial journalist Martin Wolf, a self-proclaimed defender of globalization (despite his full awareness of its problems and limitations), describes IPR as ‘a rent-extraction device’ for most developing countries, ‘with potentially devastating consequences for their ability to educate their people (because of copyright), adapting designs for their own use (ditto) and deal with severe challenges of public health’.48 As I keep emphasizing, the foundation of economic development is the acquisition of more productive knowledge.

But what distinguishes them is their belief that this relationship is mainly, if not exclusively, mediated by the (free) market. They argue that democracy promotes free markets, which, in turn, promote economic development, which then promotes democracy: ‘The market underpins democracy, just as democracy should normally strengthen the market’, writes Martin Wolf, the British financial journalist, in his renowned book, Why Globalisation Works.20 According to the neo-liberal view, democracy promotes free markets because a government that can be unseated without resorting to violent measures has to be restrained in its predatory behaviour. If they don’t have to worry about losing power, rulers can impose excessive taxes with impunity and even confiscate private property, as numerous autocrats have done throughout history.When this happens, incentives to invest and generate wealth are destroyed and market forces distorted, impeding economic development.


pages: 347 words: 99,317

Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat to Global Prosperity by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Brownian motion, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, liberal world order, liberation theology, low skilled workers, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, mega-rich, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, principal–agent problem, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, urban sprawl, World Values Survey

The incentive to conduct research may have been increased, but there is no one to take advantage of it. It is like the story of my son, Jin-Gyu, that I discussed in chapter 3. If the capability is not there, it does not matter what the incentives are. This is why even the renowned British financial journalist Martin Wolf, a self-proclaimed defender of globalization (despite his full awareness of its problems and limitations), describes IPR as ‘a rent-extraction device’ for most developing countries, ‘with potentially devastating consequences for their ability to educate their people (because of copyright), adapting designs for their own use (ditto) and deal with severe challenges of public health’.48 As I keep emphasizing, the foundation of economic development is the acquisition of more productive knowledge.

But what distinguishes them is their belief that this relationship is mainly, if not exclusively, mediated by the (free) market. They argue that democracy promotes free markets, which, in turn, promote economic development, which then promotes democracy: ‘The market underpins democracy, just as democracy should normally strengthen the market’, writes Martin Wolf, the British financial journalist, in his renowned book, Why Globalisation Works.20 According to the neo-liberal view, democracy promotes free markets because a government that can be unseated without resorting to violent measures has to be restrained in its predatory behaviour. If they don’t have to worry about losing power, rulers can impose excessive taxes with impunity and even confiscate private property, as numerous autocrats have done throughout history.


pages: 364 words: 99,613

Servant Economy: Where America's Elite Is Sending the Middle Class by Jeff Faux

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, back-to-the-land, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, centre right, classic study, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disruptive innovation, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, guns versus butter model, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, informal economy, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, McMansion, medical malpractice, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, new economy, oil shock, old-boy network, open immigration, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, price mechanism, price stability, private military company, public intellectual, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Solyndra, South China Sea, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Suez crisis 1956, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade route, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, working poor, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War, you are the product

Prominent economists, including Nobel Prize winners Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, said that the stimulus was too small. Krugman later noted that it was a matter of historical record that countries hit by a severe financial crisis normally experience long periods of economic pain, so “the inadequacy of the stimulus was obvious from the beginning.”7 When the plan was made public in January 2009, columnist Martin Wolf of the Financial Times complained that the deficit should be allowed to become larger—and continue for a long time. “The US,” he wrote, “must run big fiscal deficits if it is to sustain full employment.”8 Summers himself told ABC News in February 2009 that the economic crisis was “worse than any time since the Second World War.

Barack Obama, “House upon a Rock,” speech at Georgetown University, April 14, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/04/14/The-House-Upon-a-Rock. 6. Gerald F. Seib, “In Crisis, Opportunity for Obama,”Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2008. 7. Paul Krugman, “Falling into the Chasm,” New York Times, October 24, 2010. 8. Martin Wolf, “Why Obama’s Plan Is Still Inadequate and Incomplete,”Financial Times, January 13, 2009. 9. “Larry Summers and Michael Steele,” This Week with Christiane Amanpour, ABC News, February 8, 2009. 10. CNN Politics, Election Center, November 24, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2010/results/polls.main. 11.


pages: 417 words: 97,577

The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition by Jonathan Tepper

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air freight, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, bank run, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Bob Noyce, Boston Dynamics, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, computer age, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, diversification, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Dunbar number, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, eurozone crisis, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, full employment, gentrification, German hyperinflation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Google bus, Google Chrome, Gordon Gekko, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, late capitalism, London Interbank Offered Rate, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Maslow's hierarchy, means of production, merger arbitrage, Metcalfe's law, multi-sided market, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, passive investing, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, prediction markets, prisoner's dilemma, proprietary trading, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, tech billionaire, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, undersea cable, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, very high income, wikimedia commons, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, you are the product, zero-sum game

What has emerged over the past forty years is not free-market capitalism, but a predatory form of monopoly capitalism. Capitalists will, alas, always prefer monopoly. Only the state can restore the competition we need, but it will do so only under the direction of an informed public. This, then, is a truly important book. Read, learn and act.” —Martin Wolf, Chief EconomicsCommentator, Financial Times “Tepper and Hearn make a compelling case that the United States economy is straying increasingly far from capitalism, a process that is having deleterious consequences for both productivity growth and inequality. The villain in their story is the growth of monopolies and oligopolies, abetted in many cases by government policies that either turned a blind eye to increasing concentration or actively encouraged it by creating rules to entrench incumbents.

—Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4, Marcellus to Horatio In the months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the bailout of almost all global banks, politicians, businessmen, and pundits were convinced that we were in the midst of a crisis of capitalism that would bring about far reaching reforms. Nothing would ever be the same again, we were told. “Another ideological god has failed,” the dean of financial commentators, Martin Wolf, wrote in the Financial Times. Companies will “fundamentally reset” the way they work, said the CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt. “Capitalism will be different,” said Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Months and years later, nothing has changed. Frustration boiled over, and people took to the streets and town halls.


pages: 358 words: 106,729

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy by Raghuram Rajan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, assortative mating, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, business climate, business cycle, carbon tax, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, diversification, Edward Glaeser, financial innovation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, illegal immigration, implied volatility, income inequality, index fund, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, low interest rates, machine readable, market bubble, Martin Wolf, medical malpractice, microcredit, money market fund, moral hazard, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, Phillips curve, price stability, profit motive, proprietary trading, Real Time Gross Settlement, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, school vouchers, seminal paper, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, tail risk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, upwardly mobile, Vanguard fund, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

I owe special thanks to Viral Acharya at New York University’s Stern School of Business, who gave me very detailed comments on the chapters on finance. I have also benefited greatly from conversations with Marshall Bouton, John Cochrane, Arminio Fraga, Shrinivas Govindarajan, David Johnson, Randall Kroszner, Charles Prince, Edward Snyder, Joyce van Grondelle, Robert Vishny, Martin Wolf, and Naomi Woods. I thank Rishabh Sinha and Swapnil Sinha for their research assistance. The time I spent at the International Monetary Fund between August 2003 and December 2006 taught me a lot about the politics of international finance. I learned a great deal from Anne Krueger and Rodrigo de Rato, as well as from my colleagues in the research department there, especially Timothy Callen, Charles Collyns, Kalpana Kochhar, Paolo Mauro, Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, Jonathan Ostry, Eswar Prasad, David Robinson, and Arvind Subramanian.

.: Manchester University Press, 2003), 42. 10 The photograph is widely accessible, for example on the website of the International Political Economy Zone, ipezone.blogspot.com/2007/09/flashback-camdessus-suharto-pic.html, accessed March 10, 2010. Chapter Four. A Weak Safety Net 1 I have concealed real names here. 2 The ideas in this chapter evolved out of an initial office conversation with Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, to whom I owe thanks. 3 Stacey Schreft, Aarti Singh, and Ashley Hodgson, “Jobless Recoveries and the Wait-and-See Hypothesis,” Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (4th quarter, 2005): 81–99. 4 R. Haskin and I. Sawhill, Creating an Opportunity Society (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009), 111. 5 Erica Groshen and Simon Potter, “Has Structural Change Contributed to a Jobless Recovery?”


pages: 459 words: 103,153

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure by Tim Harford

An Inconvenient Truth, Andrew Wiles, banking crisis, Basel III, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Boeing 747, business logic, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, charter city, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dava Sobel, Deep Water Horizon, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, double entry bookkeeping, Edmond Halley, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fermat's Last Theorem, financial engineering, Firefox, food miles, Gerolamo Cardano, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Harrison: Longitude, knowledge worker, loose coupling, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Netflix Prize, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, PageRank, Piper Alpha, profit motive, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, rolodex, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South China Sea, SpaceShipOne, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, the market place, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, trade route, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Virgin Galactic, web application, X Prize, zero-sum game

I am also hugely grateful to my colleagues at the Financial Times and the BBC More or Less team, in particular: Lionel Barber, Dan Bogler and Lisa MacLeod for their patience while I worked on the book; my colleagues on the leader-writing team; Sue Norris, Sue Matthias, Andy Davis and Caroline Daniel at FT Magazine; Peter Cheek and Bhavna Patel of the FT library; the ‘economics faculty’ of the FT, Chris Cook, Chris Giles, Robin Harding, Martin Sandbu and Martin Wolf; and at the BBC Richard Knight and Richard Vadon. A large number of people were kind enough to agree to be interviewed or simply to provide suggestions or brief comments. I have also relied on the reporting of other writers, whom I hope I have properly acknowledged in the notes, but whom I wish to thank here where the debt is particularly great.

Chapter Five: Gabrielle Walker, David King, James Cameron, Cameron Hepburn, Mark Williamson, Euan Murray, Justin Rowlatt, David MacKay, Tim Crozier-Cole, Geoffrey Palmer and Prashant Vaze. Chapter Six: Sophy Harford, James Reason, Charles Perrow, Gillian Tett, Philippe Jamet, Ed Crooks, Steve Mitchelhill, Peter Higginson, Andrew Haldane, Martin Wolf, Raghuram Rajan, Jeremy Bulow and Paul Klemperer. Chapter Seven: Sandie Kanthal and Peter Higginson. Chapter Eight: Richard Wiseman. Although I did not interview them for this book, at certain points I drew heavily on the writing or broadcasting of the following people: Loren Graham, Thomas Ricks, David Cloud, Greg Jaffe, George Packer, Leo McKinstry, Dava Sobel, Ian Parker, Sebastian Mallaby, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jennifer Hughes, Gary Hamel, Peter Day, Michael Buerk, Twyla Tharp and Kathryn Schulz.


pages: 662 words: 180,546

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown by Philip Mirowski

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Adam Curtis, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Roth, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, asset-backed security, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Swan, blue-collar work, bond market vigilante , bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Brownian motion, business cycle, capital controls, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, constrained optimization, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, dark matter, David Brooks, David Graeber, debt deflation, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, disinformation, do-ocracy, Edward Glaeser, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Hernando de Soto, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, income inequality, incomplete markets, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, joint-stock company, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, loose coupling, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market design, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Naomi Klein, Nash equilibrium, night-watchman state, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, precariat, prediction markets, price mechanism, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, random walk, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, school choice, sealed-bid auction, search costs, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, Steven Levy, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, The Myth of the Rational Market, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, tontine, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, working poor

A man who reportedly earned millions for having advised hedge funds one day a week for a year shortly before serving in the Obama Administration (and who is quite likely, now that he’s out, to do so again), he ought to have been patriotic and intellectually honest enough to provide a real answer.6 The most interesting moment at a recent conference held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire—site of the 1945 conference that created today’s global economic architecture—came when Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf quizzed former United States Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, President Barack Obama’s ex-assistant for economic policy. “[Doesn’t] what has happened in the past few years,” Wolf asked, “simply suggest that [academic] economists did not understand what was going on?” . . . For Summers, the problem is that there is so much that is “distracting, confusing, and problem-denying in . . . the first year course in most PhD programs.”

Kalle Lasn Associates has also published an anti-textbook entitled Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics which contains contributions by George Akerlof and Joseph Stiglitz. At least the graphics were radical. Similar ideas were promoted in the curiously titled Occupy Handbook, which included chapters by Raghuram Rajan, Tyler Cowen, Martin Wolf, David Graeber, Jeffrey Sachs, and Robert Shiller.6 Besotted by the millenarian idea of starting anew, and lacking any sense of the history of protest and political organization, both neoliberals and neoclassical economists rapidly addled whatever political curiosity and radical inclinations that the well-intentioned protestors might have had.

The Tea Party demonstrators outside the New Hampshire conference thus demonstrated once again that their grasp of the practical politics of Soros and his organization was less than sound. 10 Speakers included Deepak Lal, Amity Shales, John B. Taylor, Peter Boettke, Steve Forbes, Niall Ferguson, Hannes Gissurarson, Timothy Congdon, Martin Wolf, and Gary Becker. The papers, once available on the Mont Pèlerin website, have since been removed. For some further description, see Plehwe, “Neoliberal Think Tanks and the Crisis.” The dominant neoliberal narrative of the crisis, which had stabilized by 2010, blaming it entirely on government policies, is described below in chapter 5. 11 Lehmann, “Let Them Eat Dogma.” 12 This statement takes into account the numerous assertions of “reform,” from the Dodd-Frank bill in the U.S. to the Basel III international bank regulations.


pages: 741 words: 179,454

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Andy Kessler, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, capital asset pricing model, carbon credits, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, Celtic Tiger, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deal flow, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, discrete time, diversification, diversified portfolio, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, Edward Thorp, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, financial thriller, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Goodhart's law, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute cuisine, Herman Kahn, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Bogle, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, Jones Act, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Kelly, laissez-faire capitalism, load shedding, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, National Debt Clock, negative equity, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Nixon shock, Northern Rock, nuclear winter, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, pets.com, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Satyajit Das, savings glut, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, tail risk, Teledyne, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the market place, the medium is the message, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, The Predators' Ball, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Turing test, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, Yogi Berra, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Economist Robert Wade disagreed: [Greenspan] and other U.S. officials see it as imperative to make sure that the troubles in Asia are blamed on the Asians and that free capital markets are seen as key to world economic recovery and advance; the idea that international capital markets are themselves the source of speculative disequilibria and retrogression must not be allowed to take root.10 The Greenspan put ensured that at the first sign of trouble central bankers—“pawnbrokers of last resort”11—flooded the system with money, lowering interest rates to protect risk takers. The strategy ensured successive, larger blow-ups in financial markets in 1987, 1991, 1994, 1998, 2001, and 2007. Martin Wolf, the chief economics writer for the Financial Times, argued: “What we have [in banking] is a risk-loving industry guaranteed as a public utility.”12 Greenspan did not see any contradictions in the bailout of LTCM: “some moral hazard, however slight, may have been created by the Federal Reserve’s involvement.

Robert Wade “The Asian financial crisis and the global economy” (November 1998) (www.wright.edu); Peter Temple (2001) Hedge Funds: The Courtesans of Capitalism, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester: 141. 11. Yves Smith “Covert nationalization of the banking system” (3 August 2008) (www.nakedcapitalism.com). 12. Martin Wolf “Why banking is an accident waiting to happen” (27 November 2007) Financial Times. 13. Roger Lowenstein (2000) When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management, Fourth Estate, London: 230. 14. Quoted in Temple, Hedge Funds: 110. 15. NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (13 February 1996), PBS. 16.

Jack Wetherford (1997) The History of Money, Three Rivers Press, New York. R. Christopher Whalen (2011) Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream, John Wiley, New Jersey. Mark T. Williams (2010) Uncontrolled Risk: The Lessons of Lehman Brothers and How Systemic Risk Can Still Bring Down the World Financial System, McGraw-Hill, New York. Martin Wolf (2010) Fixing Global Finance, Yale University Press, London. Christopher Wood (2006) The Bubble Economy: Japan’s Extraordinary Speculative Boom of the 80s and the Dramatic Bust of the 90s, Solstice Publishing, Jakarta. Bob Woodward (2000) Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom, Simon & Schuster, New York.


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Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises by Timothy F. Geithner

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, Atul Gawande, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, break the buck, Buckminster Fuller, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, David Brooks, Doomsday Book, eurozone crisis, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, implied volatility, Kickstarter, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, McMansion, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nate Silver, negative equity, Northern Rock, obamacare, paradox of thrift, pets.com, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Saturday Night Live, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, selection bias, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, tail risk, The Great Moderation, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Tobin tax, too big to fail, working poor

An actor playing me opened Saturday Night Live by announcing that my solution to the crisis was to give $420 billion to the first caller with a solution to the crisis. The substantive critiques were just as withering. “Someone should have told Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that the one thing to avoid at a time of uncertainty is raising more questions,” the New York Times editorial board declared. The widely respected Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf actually began his analysis: “Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed?” It was a bad speech, badly delivered, rattling confidence at a bad time. I somehow managed to convince the public we’d be overly generous to Wall Street while convincing the markets we wouldn’t be generous enough. Our populist critics concluded we were more eager than ever to shovel cash to arsonists; former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz described our plan as “banks win, investors win—and taxpayers lose.”

The weekend before my speech, I mentioned to Mark Patterson that I was pleased I could still walk around in public without being recognized. “That’s not going to last much longer,” Patterson said. MY SPEECH, as I mentioned in the introduction to this book, sucked. Barclays Capital’s chief U.S. economist called my speech “shock and ugh.” Martin Wolf’s Financial Times column about the already-doomed Obama presidency called our plan “yet another child of the failed interventions of the past one and a half years: optimistic and indecisive.” The consensus view was that my inept delivery and lack of detail had dramatically increased uncertainty in the financial system.

He presumably would have liked a more definitive show of confidence. On March 23, we finally got some positive feedback from the markets, after we unveiled some details of our Public-Private Investment Program for buying toxic assets. Prominent economists and journalists portrayed it as yet another giveaway to Wall Street, “a vulture fund relief scheme,” as Martin Wolf of the Financial Times put it. Paul Krugman dubbed it “financial hocus-pocus” and “cash for trash,” while the economist Jeffrey Sachs, who had already accused us of ripping off taxpayers to enrich bankers, called it “even more potentially disastrous.” But the markets loved it. Stocks rose 7 percent, the first day of mostly good news in my two months at Treasury.


Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics by Robert Skidelsky

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Alan Greenspan, anti-globalists, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, constrained optimization, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Growth in a Time of Debt, guns versus butter model, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kondratiev cycle, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, land bank, law of one price, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, liquidity trap, long and variable lags, low interest rates, market clearing, market friction, Martin Wolf, means of production, Meghnad Desai, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, new economy, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, nudge theory, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, placebo effect, post-war consensus, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, short selling, Simon Kuznets, structural adjustment programs, technological determinism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, tontine, too big to fail, trade liberalization, value at risk, Washington Consensus, yield curve, zero-sum game

Obama was supported by economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Shiller, Larry Summers, Nouriel Roubini and Brad DeLong. But ‘expansionary fiscal consolidation’ became the consensual view of Europe’s finance ministers.11 The majority of financial economists supinely followed the lead of the consolidators. Of the UK’s top economic journalists, Martin Wolf and Samuel Brittan of the Financial Times and Larry Elliott of the Guardian were lonely dissenters. This was at a time when global output was still 5 per cent below what it had been pre-crash.12 The British economics profession was largely silent. This change of gear presumed that the recovery from the slump that had started in the third quarter of 2009 had gained strong independent momentum, and that fiscal consolidation was needed to maintain this momentum.

Marcus Miller and Robert Skidelsky fronted a reply in the Financial Times on 18 February, arguing that the ‘timing of the measures should depend on the strength of the recovery’. Each letter got the support of a Nobel Prize-winner. The war of the economists had resumed. It has continued ever since. Martin Wolf explained the state of opinion in mid-2010. The cutters emphasized that world economic recovery had been stronger than expected, that government deficits ‘crowd out’ private spending, and (if they were Austrian economists) that a deep slump was needed to purge past excesses. More moderate cutters argued that cutting the deficit would avoid a spike in borrowing costs, pointing to the peaking of Greek government debt at 12 per cent.

In the Eurozone, north-western Europe, led by Germany, was the main surplus area, with the Mediterranean countries running persistent deficits. (see Figure 64) This pattern of imbalances, while somewhat worrying, was regarded as temporary. Ben Bernanke wrote: ‘Fundamentally, I see no reason why the whole process [of rebalancing] should not proceed smoothly.’4 Martin Wolf, the respected Financial Times columnist, published a book in 2004 called Why Globalization Works. He saw globalization Figure 63. Current account balances, pre-crash: China and USA5 (per cent of GDP) 12 10 8 China USA 6 4 2 0 -2 -4 -6 -8 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 334 2005 2006 2007 g l ob a l i m b a l a n c e s Figure 64.


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The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, asset-backed security, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cashless society, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commodity super cycle, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency peg, currency risk, David Graeber, debt deflation, deglobalization, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, equity risk premium, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Extinction Rebellion, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greenspan put, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, Japanese asset price bubble, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, land bank, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, margin call, Mark Spitznagel, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, megaproject, meme stock, Michael Milken, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mohammed Bouazizi, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, pensions crisis, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, quantitative easing, railway mania, reality distortion field, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Satoshi Nakamoto, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, tech billionaire, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Haywood, time value of money, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Walter Mischel, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, yield curve

Like Truman, we feel that things are not right. In an unscripted moment in the show, Truman falls in love with a girl who tries to warn him that everything is fake. She wears a badge with the words, ‘How will it end?’ Nobody knows. 13 Your Mother Needs to Die Wipe out rentiers with cheap money. Martin Wolf, 2014 We have seen in earlier chapters how interest affects both the valuation and allocation of capital. Interest also influences how much saving takes place. When people save for a rainy day or for retirement, they must consume less today. The exercise of thrift is not an easy task. Immediate pleasures generally rank higher than deferred gratification.

This subsidy was estimated to have been worth $180 billion over the previous decade. 46. Nouriel Roubini, ‘Public Losses for Private Gain’, Guardian, 18 September 2008. 47. See Piketty, Capital, p. 135, and Galbraith, Inequality and Instability, p. 4. 48. Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done? (London, 2015), p. 5. 49. Martin Wolf, ‘Lunch with the FT: Ben Bernanke’, Financial Times, 23 October 2015. 50. Wolff, Century of Wealth, p. 677. 51. In April 2014, JP Morgan economists suggested that the ‘wealth effect’ on consumption had fallen to 1.7 per cent per dollar of extra wealth, from 3.8 per cent historically. One explanation for the falling wealth effect is that capital gains induced by a falling discount rate have less impact on consumption than gains induced by a rise in expected future incomes.

Joel Kotkin claimed that the young were losing faith in democracy in the United States, across much of Europe and in Australia and New Zealand. Young Europeans were three times as likely as their parents to believe that democracy was failing. Joel Kotkin, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class (New York, 2020). 44. Martin Wolf, ‘Negative Rates are Not the Fault of Central Banks’, Financial Times, 12 April 2016. 45. Wilhelm Röpke, Crises and Cycles (London, 1936), pp. 9–10. 46. The title of a collection of Hayek’s essays on inflation published by the Institute of Economic Affairs. 47. The Icelandic Central Bank, ‘Ten Years Later – Iceland’s Crisis and Recovery’, The Economy of Iceland, 2018, ch. 6. 48.


pages: 474 words: 120,801

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be by Moises Naim

"World Economic Forum" Davos, additive manufacturing, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, deskilling, disinformation, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, intangible asset, intermodal, invisible hand, job-hopping, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, liberation theology, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, megacity, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, new economy, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, open borders, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, price mechanism, price stability, private military company, profit maximization, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, radical decentralization, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

Thanks are due to those who over the long period of this book’s gestation gave me their time, shared their insights, critiqued my ideas, and in some cases, read and commented on early drafts of individual chapters: Mort Abramowitz, Jacques Attali, Ricardo Avila, Carlo de Benedetti, Paul Balaran, Andrew Burt, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Tom Carver, Elkyn Chaparro, Lourdes Cue, Wesley Clark, Tom Friedman, Lou Goodman, Victor Halberstadt, Ivan Krastev, Steven Kull, Ricardo Lagos, Sebastian Mallaby, Luis Alberto Moreno, Evgeny Morozov, Dick O’Neill, Minxin Pei, Maite Rico, Gianni Riotta, Klaus Schwab, Javier Solana, George Soros, Larry Summers, Gerver Torres, Martin Wolf, Robert Wright, Ernesto Zedillo, and Bob Zoellick. A special note of thanks goes to Professor Mario Chacón of New York University, who prepared the appendix, a detailed analysis of empirical data showing the manifestations of the decay of power in national politics worldwide. I had superb research assistants throughout the period I worked on this book.

Ivan Arreguín-Toft, “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict,” International Security 26, no. 1 (2001): 93–128; Ivan Arreguín-Toft, “How a Superpower Can End Up Losing to the Little Guys,” Nieman Watchdog, March 23, 2007, www.niemanwatchdog.org. On the impact of IEDs, see Tom Vanden Brook, “IED Attacks in Afghanistan Set Record,” USA Today, January 25, 2012. 10. Martin Wolf, “Egypt Has History on Its Side,” Financial Times, February 15, 2011. The updated figure for 2011 is from the Polity IV Project’s Global Report 2011, which was compiled at George Mason University (Wolf’s original source). 11. Emmanuel Saez, “Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (Updated with 2009 and 2010 Estimates),” March 2, 2012, http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2010.pdf. 12.


Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking by Michael Bhaskar

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, call centre, carbon tax, charter city, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cognitive load, Columbian Exchange, coronavirus, cosmic microwave background, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, cyber-physical system, dark matter, David Graeber, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, discovery of penicillin, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, energy security, energy transition, epigenetics, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, Eroom's law, fail fast, false flag, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, GPT-3, Haber-Bosch Process, hedonic treadmill, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, hive mind, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, invention of the steam engine, invention of the telegraph, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, James Watt: steam engine, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, liberation theology, lockdown, lone genius, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megacity, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, minimum viable product, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Gell-Mann, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, nuclear winter, nudge unit, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, post-truth, precautionary principle, public intellectual, publish or perish, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, rent-seeking, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, skunkworks, Slavoj Žižek, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, techlash, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, total factor productivity, transcontinental railway, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, When a measure becomes a target, X Prize, Y Combinator

Whether measured in output per hour or per person, not only has the 3IR seen slower growth, but also ‘the unmeasured improvements in the quality of everyday life created by 3IR are less significant than the more profound set of unmeasured benefits of the earlier industrial revolution.’ 22 In the words of the economist Martin Wolf, ‘We're living in an age . . . of really slow and boring technological change compared to what our ancestors managed to generate.’ 23 Or Peter Thiel, again succinctly expressing the technological stagnation view: ‘I don't think we're living in an incredibly fast technological age.’ 24 In reality, the 3IR has funnelled progress into the area of least resistance: software.25 Whereas the 2IR saw innovation across almost every endeavour, the 3IR boiled it all down to little screens.

utm_source=twitterShare White, Curtis (2003), The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco White, Curtis (2014), The Science Delusion: Asking the Big Questions in a Culture of Easy Answers, New York: Melville House Whitehead, A.N. (1925), Science and the Modern World, London: Macmillan Williams, Jeffrey J. (2018), ‘The Rise of the Promotional Intellectual’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, accessed 22 August 2018, available at https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-rise-of-the-promotional-intellectual/ Wilson, Edward O. (2017), The Origins of Creativity, London: Allen Lane Winchester, Simon (2008), The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom, New York: HarperCollins Wolf, Martin (2019), ‘On the Technological Slowdown’, Foreign Affairs, accessed 14 July 2019, available at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-11-19/martin-wolf-innovation-slowdown Wong, May (2017), ‘Scholars say big ideas are getting harder to find’, Phys.org, accessed 10 October 2018, available at https://phys.org/news/2017-09-scholars-big-ideas-harder.html Wootton, David (2015), The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution, London: Allen Lane Wright, Robert (2000), Nonzero: History, Evolution and Human Cooperation, New York: Pantheon Books Wright, Ronald (2006), A Short History of Progress, Edinburgh: Canongate Wu, L., Wang, D., and Evans, J.A. (2019), ‘Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology’, Nature 566, pp. 378–82 Wuchty, Stefan, Jones, Benjamin F., and Uzzi, Brian (2007), ‘The Increasing Dominance of Teams in Production of Knowledge’, Science, Vol. 316 No. 5827, pp. 1036–9 Xinhua (2019), ‘China to build scientific research station on Moon's south pole’, Xinhua, accessed 18 January 2021, available at http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-04/24/c_138004666.htm Yueh, Linda (2018), The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today, London: Penguin Viking Index ‘0,10’ exhibition 103 ‘0-I’ ideas 31 Aadhaar 265 abstraction 103 AC motor 287, 288 academia 209 Académie des sciences 47 Adam (robot) 235–6 Adams, John 211 Adler, Alfred 188 Adobe 265 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) 180, 247, 253, 296, 317 AEG 34 aeroplanes 62–6, 68–70, 71, 219 Aeschylus 3 Africa 267, 279–80, 295 age/ageing 122, 158–60, 193 AGI see artificial general intelligence Agrarian Revolution 252 agricultural production 92–3 AI see artificial intelligence Akcigit, Ufuk 193 Alexander the Great 159 Alexander, Albert 52 Alexandrian Library 4, 295, 304 algorithms 175, 185, 196, 224, 235, 245 aliens 240–1, 306, 308–9, 337 Allison, Jim 58 Alphabet 193, 225, 265, 294, 295 AlphaFold software 225–6, 227, 228–9, 233 AlphaGo software 226–7, 228, 233 AlQuraishi, Mohammed 225, 226, 229 Amazon 84–5, 214, 272 Amazon Prime Air 71 American Revolution 139 amino acids 223, 226 Ampère, André-Marie 74–5 Anaximander 35 ancestors 10–12 ancient Greeks 1–6, 7–8, 291, 303–4 Anderson, Kurt 106 Angkor Wat 43 anthrax 47–8, 51 Anthropocene 14–15 anti-reason 211–12 anti-science 211–12 antibacterials 234 antibiotics 38, 52–3, 124, 125, 217, 315 resistance to 235 Apollo missions 70, 315, 316, 317, 318 Apple 33, 85, 159, 185, 186, 193, 272, 296, 312 Aquinas, Thomas 36 AR see augmented reality archaeology 153–4 Archimedes 1–6, 7–8, 19, 27, 32, 37, 39, 291, 304 architecture 103, 115, 188 ARIA 297 Aristarchus 5 Aristotle 24, 108, 282, 304 Arkwright, Richard 25, 26, 34, 253 Armstrong, Louis 103 ARPA see Advanced Research Projects Agency art 99–104, 107–8, 176–7, 236, 321, 339 Artemis (Moon mission) 71, 218 artificial general intelligence (AGI) 226, 237–8, 249, 250, 310, 313, 330, 341 artificial intelligence (AI) 225–9, 233–41, 246–7, 248, 249–52, 262, 266, 300, 310, 312–13, 323, 329, 330, 331, 338 arts 152, 293 see also specific arts Artsimovich, Lev 147 arXiv 116 Asia 264, 267–8, 273, 275 Asimov, Isaac, Foundation 45 Astor, John Jacob 288 astronomy 30, 231, 232 AT&T 85, 181, 183, 185, 197 Ates, Sina T. 193 Athens 24, 295 Atlantis 154 augmented reality (AR) 241–2, 338 authoritarianism 112–13, 284 autonomous vehicles 71, 72, 219 ‘Axial Age’ 108 Azoulay, Pierre 317–18 Bach, J.S. 236 bacillus 46 Bacon, Francis 25, 259 bacteria 38, 46, 53 Bahcall, Safi 31 Ballets Russes 99–100 Baltimore and Ohio railway 67 Banks, Iain M. 310 Bardeen, John 182 BASF 289 Batchelor, Charles 286 Bates, Paul 226 Bayes, Thomas 289 Beagle (ship) 36 Beethoven, Ludwig van 26 Beijing Genomics Institute 257, 294–5 Bell Labs 180–4, 186–8, 190, 206, 214, 217, 289, 296, 322 Benz, Karl 68, 219, 330 Bergson, Henri 109 Bessemer process 80 Bezos, Jeff 71, 326 Bhattacharya, Jay 201, 202, 321 Biden, Joe 59 Big Bang 117, 174, 181 Big Big Ideas 79–80 big ideas 5, 8, 11, 13–19 adoption 28 and an uncertain future 302–36 and art 99–103 artificial 223–38 and the Big Ideas Famine 13 and bisociation 36 blockers to 17–18 and breakthrough problems 46–73, 77, 86, 98, 222, 250, 301 and the ‘burden of knowledge’ effect 154–65, 175, 178, 235, 338 and business formation 95 ceiling 18 conception 37 definition 27–8, 40–1 Enlightenment 132–40, 136–40 era of 109–10 erroneous 176 evidence for 222, 223–54 execution 37 ‘fishing out’ mechanism 152 future of 45, 98, 302–36, 337–43 harmful nature 41–2 how they work 23–45 and the Idea Paradox 178–9, 187, 191, 217, 226, 250, 254, 283–4, 301, 312, 342 and the Kardashev Scale 337–43 long and winding course of 4, 5, 35–8, 136 and the low-hanging fruit paradox 149–54, 167, 178 and luck 38–9 moral 136, 138 nature of 169–72 necessity of 41–3 need for 42–3 normalisation of 171–5, 178 originality of 28 paradox of 143–79 and patents 97 process of 37–8 purchase 37–8 and resources 128 and rights 132–40 and ‘ripeness’ 39 and short-termism 192 slow death of 106–7 slowdown of 98 society's reaction to 216 and specialisation 156, 157–8 today 21–140 tomorrow 141–343 big pharma 31, 60, 185, 217–18, 226 Big Science 118–19 Bill of Rights 137 Bingham, Hiram 153 biology 243–8, 300 synthetic 245–6, 251, 310, 329 BioNTech 218, 298 biotech 195–6, 240, 246, 255–8, 262, 266, 307 bisociation 36 Björk 104 Black, Joseph 26 ‘black swan’ events 307, 310 Bletchley Park 180, 296 Bloom, Nick 91, 92, 93 Boeing 69, 72, 162, 165, 192, 238 Bohr, Niels 104, 118, 159 Boltsmann, Ludwig 188 Boston Consulting Group 204 Botha, P.W. 114 Bowie, David 107 Boyer, Herbert 243 Boyle, Robert 232 Brahe, Tycho 36, 229, 292 brain 166, 246–8, 299–300 collective 299, 300–1 whole brain emulations (‘ems’) 248–9, 341 brain drains 197 brain-to-machine interfaces 247–8 Branson, Richard 71 Brattain, Walter 182 Brazil 266–7, 268, 279 breakthrough organisations 294–9 breakthrough problems 46–73, 77, 86, 98, 222, 234, 250, 301 breakthroughs 2–5, 27–8, 32–7, 41, 129, 152, 156 and expedition novelty 333 hostility to 187 medical 58–60 missing 175 near-misses 160 nuclear power 145 price of 87–98 and short-termism 192 slowdown of 87, 94 society's reaction to 216 and universities 204 see also ‘Eureka’ moments breast cancer 94 Brexit referendum 2016: 208 Brin, Sergey 319, 326 Britain 24, 146, 259, 283, 297 see also United Kingdom British Telecom 196 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom 67 Brunelleschi 232 Bruno, Giordano 216 Buddhism 108, 175, 264–5, 340 Buhler, Charlotte 188–9 Buhler, Karl 188–9 ‘burden of knowledge’ effect 154–65, 175, 178, 235, 338 bureaucracy 198–87, 280–1 Bush, George W. 211 Bush, Vannevar 168, 314–15, 317 business start-ups 95–6 Cage, John 104 Callard, Agnes 111 Caltech 184 Cambridge University 75, 76, 124, 235–6, 257, 294–6 canals 67 cancer 57–61, 76, 93–4, 131, 234, 245, 318 research 59–61 capital and economic growth 88 gray 192, 196 human 275, 277 capitalism 36, 111–13, 186, 189, 191–8 CAR-Ts see chimeric antigen receptor T-cells carbon dioxide emissions 220–1 Cardwell's Law 283 Carey, Nessa 244 Carnap, Rudolf 189 Carnarvon, Lord 153 cars 289 electric 71 flying 71 Carter, Howard 153 Carter, Jimmy 58 Carthage 3, 43 Cartright, Mary 163 CASP see Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction Cassin, René 135 Catholic Church 206, 230 Cavendish Laboratory 76, 294 Cell (journal) 234 censorship 210–11 Census Bureau (US) 78 Centers for Disease Control 212 Cerf, Vint 253 CERN 118, 233, 239, 252, 296 Chain, Ernst 52, 60, 124 Champollion, Jean-François 155 Chang, Peng Chun 135 change 10–13, 18–19, 24 rapid 30, 32 resistance to 222 slowdown 85 chaos theory 163 Chaplin, Charlie 104 Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de 300 Charpentier, Emmanuelle 244, 256 chemistry 49, 56, 104, 117, 118, 124, 149–50, 159, 241, 244 chemotherapy 57 Chicago 10 chicken cholera 46 chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-Ts) 58, 61 China 15, 25, 71–2, 111, 112, 138, 208, 213, 216, 255–64, 265, 266, 267, 268, 275, 277, 279, 280, 283, 284–5, 312, 313, 314, 319, 328 Han 259, 260 Ming 284, 308, 309 Qing 260 Song 24, 259–60, 306 Tang 259–60 Zhou 259 Christianity 108, 303–4, 340 Church, George 245 cities 270–2, 308–9, 340 civilisation collapse 42–4 decay 187 cleantech 195 climate change 219–21, 284, 313–14, 338 clinical trials 218 cliodynamics 339 coal 23, 24, 26, 80, 220 Cocteau, Jean 101 cognitive complexity, high 332–3 cognitive diversity 281–3 Cognitive Revolution 252 Cohen, Stanley N. 243, 244 collective intelligence 339 collectivism 282 Collison, Patrick 117, 272 colour 75 Coltrane, John 104 Columbian Exchange 177 Columbus 38 comfort zones, stepping outside of 334 communism 111, 133, 134, 173, 217, 284 companies creation 95–6 numbers 96–7 competition 87, 283 complacency 221–2 complexity 161–7, 178, 204, 208, 298, 302, 329 high cognitive 332–3 compliance 205–6 computational power 128–9, 168, 234, 250 computer games 107 computers 166–7, 240, 253 computing 254 see also quantum computing Confucianism 133, 259 Confucius 24, 108, 109, 282 Congressional Budget Office 82 connectivity 272 Conon of Samos 4 consciousness 248, 340 consequences 328–9 consolidation, age of 86 Constantine 303 convergence 174, 311–12 Copernicus 29, 30, 41, 152, 171, 229, 232, 292 copyright 195 corporations 204–5 cosmic background microwave radiation 117, 181 cotton weaving, flying shuttle 24–5 Coulomb, Charles-Augustin de 74–5 counterculture 106 Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic 13, 14, 15, 55, 86, 113–14, 193, 202, 208, 212, 218, 251–2, 263, 283–4, 297–8, 309, 318, 327 vaccine 125, 245 Cowen, Tyler 13, 82, 94–5, 221 cowpox 47 creativity 188, 283 and artificial intelligence 236 crisis in 108 decrease 106–8 and universities 203 Crete 43 Crick, Francis 119, 296 CRISPR 243, 244, 251, 255–8, 299 Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) 224–6, 228 Cronin, Lee 242 crop yields 92–3 cultural diversity 281–3 cultural homogenisation 177 cultural rebellion 106–7 Cultural Revolution 114, 305 culture, stuck 106 Cunard 67 Curie, Marie 104, 144, 203, 289–90, 332 Daniels, John T. 62–3 Daoism 259 dark matter/energy/force 338 DARPA see Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Darwin, Charles 34, 35–6, 37–8, 41, 77, 109, 118, 171, 289 Darwin, Erasmus 35 data 233 datasets, large 28 Davy, Sir Humphrey 149, 150 Debussy, Claude 100–1 decision-making, bad 43–4 Declaration of Independence 1776: 137 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen 1789: 137 DeepMind 225–9, 296 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 315 democracy 111–12 Deng Xiaoping 261 deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) 119, 223–4, 243, 251, 255, 339 DNA sequencing 56 Derrida, Jacques 109 Deutsch, David 126, 203 Diaghilev, Sergei 99–101 Diamond, Jared 42 Digital Age 180 digital technology 241–2, 243 diminishing returns 87, 91, 94, 97, 118, 123, 126, 130–1, 150, 161, 169, 173, 222, 250, 276, 285, 301 Dirac, Paul 159–60 disruption 34, 96, 109, 119, 157 diversity, cultural 281–3 DNA see deoxyribonucleic acid Dorling, Danny 171 Doudna, Jennifer 244, 251, 256 Douglas, Mary 290 Douthat, Ross 14, 106 drag 65 Drake equation 306 Drezner, Daniel 214 drones, delivery 71, 72 Drucker, Peter 189 drugs 55–7, 124, 235 Eroom's Law 55, 57, 61, 92–3, 119, 161, 234, 245, 338 and machine learning 234 research and development 55–7, 61, 92–4, 119, 161, 172–3, 217–18, 234, 245, 315, 338 see also pharmaceutical industry Duchamp, Marcel 103, 171 DuPont 184 Dutch East India Company 34 Dyson, Freeman 120 dystopias 305–8 East India Company 34 Easter Island 42–3 Eastern Europe 138 ecocides 42–3 economic growth 240, 272, 273, 316 endogenous 94 and ideas 88, 89–92, 95 process of 87–8 slowdown 82, 83, 84, 85, 178 economics 87–9, 98, 339, 340 contradictions of 87 Economist, The (magazine) 188 Edelman annual trust barometer 209 Edison, Thomas 183–4, 286–9, 290, 293 education 127, 277, 324–8 Einstein, Albert 11, 29, 74, 77, 104, 109, 117, 119, 124, 159–60, 203, 332 Eisenstein, Elizabeth 231 Eldredge, Niles 30 electric cars 71 electricity 11, 74–7, 81, 286–7, 289 electromagnetic fields 76 electromagnetic waves 75, 76 elements (chemical) 149–50 Elizabeth II 144–5 employment 204–5 Encyclopædia Britannica 97, 128, 155 ‘End of History’ 112 energy 337–8, 341–2 availability 85 use per capita 85 see also nuclear power engineering 243 England 25, 144–5, 309 Englert, François 118 Enlightenment 130, 136–40, 252 see also Industrial Enlightenment; neo-Enlightenment Eno, Brian 295 entrepreneurship, decline 96 epigenetics 164 epigraphy 236–7 epistemic polarisation 210 Epstein, David 334 Eratosthenes 5 Eroom's Law 55, 57, 61, 92–3, 119, 161, 234, 245, 338 ethical issues 256–7 Euclid 3, 304 ‘Eureka’ moments 2–5, 35, 36–7, 129, 163 Europe 95, 247, 258–60, 268, 268, 271, 283, 304, 308 European Space Agency 71 European Union (EU) 206, 216, 262, 266 Evans, Arthur 153 evolutionary theory 30, 35–6 expedition novelty 333 experimental spaces 296–8 Expressionism 104 Facebook 34, 159, 170, 197 Fahrenheit 232 failure, fear of 335 Faraday, Michael 75 FCC see Future Circular Collider FDA see Food and Drug Administration Federal Reserve (US) 82 Feigenbaum, Mitchell 163 fermentation 49 Fermi, Enrico 143, 159, 306 Fermi Paradox 306 Fernández-Armesto, Felipe 109 fertility rates 269 Feynman, Richard 77, 166, 332 film 104, 106–7, 108, 115 financialism 191–8, 206–7, 214, 217, 219 Firebird, The (ballet) 99–100 ‘first knowledge economy’ 25–6 First World War 54, 99, 104, 187, 188–9 Fisk, James 182 Fleming, Alexander 38, 52, 60, 332 flight 36, 62–6, 68–70, 71, 335 Flint & Company 64 flooding 220, 284 Florey, Howard 52, 60, 124, 332 Flyer, the 62–4, 66, 72 Foldit software 225 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 55, 60, 93, 212 food supply 81 Ford 34, 253 Ford, Henry 68, 104, 219 Fordism 81 Foucault, Michel 110 Fraenkel, Eduard 124 France 49–51, 54, 64, 67, 95, 279, 309, 332 franchises 31 Franklin, Benjamin 119, 211 Frederick the Great 292 French Revolution 137, 275 Freud, Sigmund 34, 36, 77, 104, 171, 188, 190, 216 frontier 278–9, 283–4, 302, 310–11 Fukuyama, Francis 111–12 fundamentalism 213 Future Circular Collider (FCC) 239 futurology 44 Gagarin, Yuri 70 Galen 303 Galileo 206, 231, 232, 291, 322 Galois, Évariste 159 GDPR see General Data Protection Regulation Gell-Mann, Murray 77 gene editing 243–4, 251, 255–8 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 206 General Electric (GE) 33, 184, 265, 288, 333 General Motors 289 Generation Z 86 genes 223–4 genetic engineering 243–4, 251, 253, 255–8 genetic science 163–4, 202 genius 26 genome, human 119, 202, 244, 255–7, 296, 313 genome sequencing 243–4 germ theory of disease 50–1, 53 Germany 54, 95, 96, 279, 283, 292, 332 Gesamtkunstwerk 99 Gibson, William 241 Glendon, Mary Ann 135 global warming 147 globalisation 177 Go 226–7 Gödel, Kurt 41, 168 Goldman Sachs 197 Goodhart's Law 199 Google 34, 85, 185, 197, 240, 272, 318 20 per cent time 319–20 Google Glass 241 Google Maps 86 Google Scholar 116 Google X 294 Gordon, Robert 13, 83, 94–5 Gouges, Olympe de 137 Gould, Stephen Jay 30 Gove, Michael 208 government 205, 207, 214, 216, 252, 267–8, 297 funding 185–6, 249, 252, 314–19, 321 GPT language prediction 234, 236 Graeber, David 13–14, 111 grants 120, 185–6, 195, 202, 316, 317, 319, 321–3 gravitational waves 117–18, 119 Great Acceleration 309–10 Great Convergence 255–301, 339 Great Disruption 96 Great Enrichment (Great Divergence) 23, 26, 258 Great Exhibition 1851: 293, 309 Great Stagnation Debate 13–14, 16, 17, 45, 72, 82–3, 87, 94–6, 129, 150, 240, 279, 338 Greenland 42 Gropius, Walter 103 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 82, 90, 128, 278, 318 GDP per capita 23, 78, 82 growth cultures 25 growth theory, endogenous 88–9, 94 Gutenberg, Johannes 36 Guzey, Alexey 200, 322 Haber, Fritz 332 Haber-Bosch process 289 Hadid, Zaha 152 Hahn, Otto 144 Hamilton, Margaret 316 Harari, Yuval Noah 114–15, 236 Harris, Robert 307 Harvard Fellows 200 Harvard, John 156 Harvey, William 34, 291–2 Hassabis, Demis 229, 233 Hayek, Friedrich 189 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 36 Heisenberg, Werner 41, 159, 168, 332 heliocentric theory 5, 29, 118, 232, 304 helium 145 Hendrix, Jimi 105 Henry Adams curve 85 Hero of Alexandria 39 Herper, Matthew 55 Hertz, Heinrich 76 Herzl, Theodor 188 Hesse, Herman 307 Hieron II, king of Syracuse 1–2 Higgs, Peter 118 Higgs boson 117–18, 119, 239 Hinduism 133 Hiroshima 144 Hitler, Adolf 138, 188 Hodgkin, Dorothy 124, 332 Hollingsworth, J.


Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now by Guy Standing

basic income, Bernie Sanders, carbon tax, centre right, collective bargaining, decarbonisation, degrowth, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Extinction Rebellion, full employment, future of work, Gini coefficient, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), job automation, labour market flexibility, Lao Tzu, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, open economy, pension reform, precariat, quantitative easing, rent control, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, universal basic income, Y Combinator

Mansour, ‘New Ranking Reveals Corporate Tax Havens Behind Breakdown of Global Corporation Tax System; Toll of UK’s Tax War Exposed’, Tax Justice, 28 May 2019. 15 Geoff Crocker has presented a series of papers elaborating on this argument. Other commentators have embraced something similar, including a group at the New Economics Foundation, Larry Elliott of The Notes 123 Guardian, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, Adair Turner, former chair of the Financial Services Authority, and Anatole Kaletsky, current chair of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. 16 S. Lansley and H. Reed, A Basic Income for All: From Desirability to Feasibility, London: Compass, January 2019. 17 For an important contribution to the fund approach, see A.


pages: 602 words: 120,848

Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer-And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Paul Pierson, Jacob S. Hacker

accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bonfire of the Vanities, business climate, business cycle, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, desegregation, employer provided health coverage, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Home mortgage interest deduction, Howard Zinn, income inequality, invisible hand, John Bogle, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, moral hazard, Nate Silver, new economy, night-watchman state, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Powell Memorandum, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, three-martini lunch, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, union organizing, very high income, War on Poverty, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce

For the financial sector, however, the new instruments and expanding freedom to use them created astonishing opportunities: to increase the number of transactions (with intermediaries taking a cut on each one), to ratchet up leverage (and thus potential profits), and to increase the complexity and opacity in ways that advantaged insiders. Not coincidentally, all of these developments increased the risk to the system as a whole. However, that would be someone else’s problem—or, as economists gently put it, an “externality.” As Martin Wolf of the Financial Times observed acerbically in 2008, “No industry has a comparable talent for privatizing gains and socializing losses.”58 At the very top, those privatized gains were mind-boggling. Wages in the financial sector took off in the 1980s. The pace of the rise accelerated in the 1990s, and again after the millennium.

Hall and Kevin Murphy, “The Trouble with Stock Options,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17, no. 3 (2003): 51. 56 Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef, “Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry: 1909–2006,” NBER Working Paper No. 14644 (January 2008). 57 Justin Lahart, “Has the Financial Industry’s Heyday Come and Gone?” Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2008. 58 Martin Wolf, “Regulators Should Intervene in Bankers’ Pay,” Financial Times, January 16, 2008. 59 Jenny Anderson, “Atop Hedge Funds, Richest of the Rich Get Even More So,” New York Times, May 26, 2006; Jenny Anderson and Julie Creswell, “Top Hedge Fund Managers Earn Over $240 Million,” New York Times, April 24, 2007; Jenny Anderson, “Wall Street Winners Get Billion-Dollar Paydays,” New York Times, April 16, 2008. 60 Christine Harper, “Wall Street Bonuses Hit Record $39 Billion for 2007,” Bloomberg, January 17, 2008, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?


The Economics Anti-Textbook: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Microeconomics by Rod Hill, Anthony Myatt

American ideology, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, bank run, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, biodiversity loss, business cycle, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, different worldview, electricity market, endogenous growth, equal pay for equal work, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, failed state, financial innovation, full employment, gender pay gap, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Gunnar Myrdal, happiness index / gross national happiness, Home mortgage interest deduction, Howard Zinn, income inequality, indoor plumbing, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, medical malpractice, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, Paradox of Choice, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Peter Singer: altruism, positional goods, prediction markets, price discrimination, price elasticity of demand, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, publication bias, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, random walk, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, search costs, shareholder value, sugar pill, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, ultimatum game, union organizing, working-age population, World Values Survey, Yogi Berra

International organizations have the resources to undertake such studies; but, to the best of my knowledge, they haven’t done so.’ He rightly adds that examples like this do not make a case against free trade, as such, but they do show that the case for free trade must include a consideration of its environmental impacts. Defenders of globalization, such as economist Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, dismiss such concerns about exports being, in effect, subsidized by externalized costs. 231 10  |  Trade and globalization tion’ produces complex and ever-changing outcomes. No simple conclusions are possible. Instead of the traditional trade policies – tariffs, quotas and so on – ex­amined in the textbooks in the context of an infant industry, these ideas highlight the importance of broad, economy-wide policies to influence productivity and techno­logical change, and thereby the dynamic pattern of comparative advantage.

Richard Wray (2008) reports that ‘Thousands of discarded computers from western Europe and the U.S. arrive in the ports of west Africa every day, ending up in massive toxic dumps where children burn and pull them apart to extract metals for cash.’ A CBS 60 Minutes (CBS News 2008) investigation found a flow of illegal e-waste from the United States to a place in southern China run by ‘gangsters’ with ‘the highest levels of cancercausing dioxins in the world’ and where ‘seven out of ten kids have too much lead in their blood’. Martin Wolf’s view, quoted earlier, is the economist’s standard response to this situation: all the exchanges here are voluntary, so everyone must be better off than they would otherwise be. The Chinese workers, for example, felt sick and knew that their work was damaging their health, but their pay of $8 a day looked good given their destitution.


pages: 481 words: 120,693

Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, assortative mating, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, Bullingdon Club, business climate, call centre, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, double helix, energy security, estate planning, experimental subject, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, high net worth, income inequality, invention of the steam engine, job automation, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, liberation theology, light touch regulation, linear programming, London Whale, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, NetJets, new economy, Occupy movement, open economy, Peter Thiel, place-making, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, postindustrial economy, Potemkin village, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, stem cell, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, the long tail, the new new thing, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, trade route, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wage slave, Washington Consensus, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

Though the china is Sèvres and the paintings are Old Masters, the dinner table conversation would not be out of place in a graduate seminar. Mrs. Kravis takes pride in bringing together not only plutocrats such as her husband and Michael Bloomberg, but also thinkers and policy makers such as Richard Holbrooke, Robert Zoellick, and Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, and leading them in discussion of issues ranging from global financial imbalances to the war in Afghanistan. In fact, the idea conference is so trendy that a couple of New Yorkers recently hosted an ideas wedding. When David Friedlander and Jacqueline Schmidt married in Brooklyn in December 2011, their guests were issued name tags that asked them to declare a commitment.

My Atlantic cover story on the global super-elite was my first public articulation of the ideas in this book; research I did for my Atlantic essay on Skolkovo, the Russian Silicon Valley, also proved useful. My weekly column for Reuters and the International Herald Tribune was a valuable space for working out my thinking, as were Reuters video interviews and the Reuters magazine. I am grateful to many colleagues, editors, and sparring partners. Chief among them: Martin Wolf, Alison Wolf, John Lloyd, David Hoffman, John Gapper, Felix Salmon, Jim Impoco, Jim Ledbetter, Mike Williams, Stuart Karle, Alison Smale, Anatole Kaletsky, David Rohde, David Wighton, Gary Silverman, Francesco Guerrera, John Thornhill, Alan Beattie, Krishna Guha, Robert Thomson, Annalena McAfee, Andrew Gowers, Richard Lambert, Daniel Franklin, Sebastian Mallaby, Fareed Zakaria, David Frum, Arianna Huffington, Eliot Spitzer, Steve Brill, Anya Schiffrin, Steve Clemons, Susan Glasser, and Ali Velshi.


The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor

activist lawyer, banking crisis, corporate governance, credit crunch, Deng Xiaoping, financial innovation, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, haute couture, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, income inequality, invisible hand, kremlinology, land reform, Martin Wolf, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, old-boy network, one-China policy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pre–internet, reserve currency, risk/return, Shenzhen special economic zone , South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Upton Sinclair

Before the meeting, the department issued twenty general guidelines for editors in the choice of news for the year. Edict nineteen directed them to ‘strictly control reports on the ninetieth anniversary of the October Revolution and not to play up the disintegration of the Soviet Union’. When around the same time the author and economics columnist for the Financial Times Martin Wolf was negotiating to have his book on globalization released in China, the changes insisted on by Citic Publishing, a major state organ, all centred on his characterization of the Soviet Union and communist dictators. Instead of the ‘communist dictatorship’ of the Soviet Union, the Chinese publisher wanted to substitute ‘Soviet leaders at the time’ the Soviet ‘communist system’ was to be replaced by ‘centrally planned economy’ and in a list of power-hungry dictators, including Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Lenin, Mao’s and Lenin’s names were to be removed.

Economic growth is the single most important pillar supporting the Party at home and the force behind the power that China now projects around the world. Growth sustains living standards, policy flexibility, the internal patronage network and global leverage. The Chinese growth model has well-documented flaws and is unsustainable in its present form. Martin Wolf, the Financial Times economics commentator, summed up in late 2009 the deep distortions of a system that has suppressed personal consumption in favour of investment and exports with a devastatingly simple calculation. ‘In 2007, personal consumption was just 35 per cent of GDP. Meanwhile, China was investing 11 per cent of GDP in low-yielding foreign assets, via its current account surplus,’ he wrote.


Because We Say So by Noam Chomsky

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, Chelsea Manning, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, high-speed rail, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, Malacca Straits, Martin Wolf, means of production, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, Powell Memorandum, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Slavoj Žižek, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

One primary justification for the design is what Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz called the “religion” that “markets lead to efficient outcomes,” which was recently dealt yet another crushing blow by the collapse of the housing bubble that was ignored on doctrinal grounds, triggering the current financial crisis. Claims are also made about the alleged benefits of the radical expansion of financial institutions since the 1970s. A more convincing description was provided by Martin Wolf, senior economic correspondent for the FINANCIAL TIMES: “An out-of-control financial sector is eating out the modern market economy from inside, just as the larva of the spider wasp eats out the host in which it has been laid.” The EPI study observes that the FAILURE BY DESIGN is class-based. For the designers, it has been a stunning success, as revealed by the astonishing concentration of wealth in the top 1 percent, in fact the top 0.1 percent, while the majority has been reduced to virtual stagnation or decline.


Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business process, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Doha Development Round, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, happiness index / gross national happiness, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, invisible hand, John Markoff, Jones Act, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, microcredit, moral hazard, negative emissions, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil rush, open borders, open economy, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, statistical model, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, union organizing, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

I suspect that I may not win many converts, but I have, I think, made an effort to engage on the issues, to uncover the differences in underlying assumptions and values. The public debate about globalization has been especially lively within the last half decade, with important contributions by Martin Wolf (Why Globalization Works), Jagdish Bhagwati (In Defense of Globalization), Bill Easterly (The Elusive Quest for Growth), Jeff Sachs (The End of Poverty), and Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat). Onstage and offstage, we have continued these debates with each other, and I believe we have all benefited—even if we have not been able to convince each other of the merits of our positions.

Stiglitz, “Helping Infant Economies Grow: Foundations of Trade Policies for Developing Countries,” American Economic Review, vol. 96, no. 2 (May, 2006), pp. 141–46. 22.See UNDP, Making Global Trade Work for People (London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan Publications, 2003). For arguments that globalization and/or trade would lead to more growth, see Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Jagdish N. Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); World Bank, Globalization, Growth, and Poverty: Building an Inclusive World Economy (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2002); Jeffrey D. Sachs and Andrew M.


Adam Smith: Father of Economics by Jesse Norman

active measures, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, business process, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, electricity market, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial engineering, financial intermediation, frictionless, frictionless market, future of work, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, incomplete markets, information asymmetry, intangible asset, invention of the telescope, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jean Tirole, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, lateral thinking, loss aversion, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, mirror neurons, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, moral panic, Naomi Klein, negative equity, Network effects, new economy, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, random walk, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, scientific worldview, seigniorage, Socratic dialogue, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, time value of money, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Veblen good, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, working poor, zero-sum game

But as with economics, as with financial markets, so some would go further still, and place the ultimate blame for these failures of capitalism on Adam Smith himself. Are not Smith and his ideas at the heart of the causes of global populism and the revolt against the elites of the early twenty-first century? Particular attention has rightly focused on the excesses of the banking system. In the words of the financial commentator Martin Wolf, ‘Banking seems inefficient, costly, riddled with conflicts of interest, prone to unethical behaviour, and, not least, able to generate huge crises.’ The world of international banking operates as a semi-cartel, in which regulation designed to prevent malfeasance and abuse is used to restrict competition, support established players and deter new entrants.

Jones, Daniel Cox, Betsy Cooper and Rachel Lienesch, ‘Anxiety, Nostalgia and Mistrust: Findings from the 2015 American Values Survey’, Public Religion Research Institute 2015, http://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/PRRI-AVS-2015-1.pdf McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission: US Supreme Court (12-536), 2 April 2014 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: US Supreme Court (08-205), 24 March 2009 Inefficiency and conflicts in UK banking: Martin Wolf, ‘Good news—fintech could disrupt finance’, Financial Times, 8 March 2016. Also see Andy Haldane, ‘Finance Version 2.0?’, Bank of England/London Business School 2016 Increase in bank regulation and regulators: Andy Haldane, ‘The Dog and the Frisbee’, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City 366th Economic Policy Symposium, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 31 August 2012 Effects of large financial sectors: Jean-Louis Arcand, Enrico Berkes and Ugo Panizza, ‘Too Much Finance?’


pages: 459 words: 138,689

Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration―and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives by Danny Dorling, Kirsten McClure

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Anthropocene, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, clean water, creative destruction, credit crunch, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Extinction Rebellion, fake news, Flynn Effect, Ford Model T, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Greta Thunberg, Henri Poincaré, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, It's morning again in America, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, jimmy wales, John Harrison: Longitude, Kickstarter, low earth orbit, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, negative emissions, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, Overton Window, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, random walk, rent control, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, School Strike for Climate, Scramble for Africa, sexual politics, Skype, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, Suez crisis 1956, the built environment, Tim Cook: Apple, time dilation, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, very high income, wealth creators, wikimedia commons, working poor

Yet, for a decade its rate has been close to zero. The bank has been in good company. The US Federal Reserve has managed to raise its federal funds rate to 2.5 per cent, but only with difficulty. The European Central Bank’s rate is still near zero, as is the Bank of Japan’s. The latter’s rate has been close to zero since 1995. —Martin Wolf, 7 May 2019 England, the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution, would be pivotal in the transition that took place during the favorable seasons of human population expansion. By 2005, more carbon had been placed in the atmosphere, per person, due to the current and historical activities of people living in the United Kingdom than anywhere else on the planet.1 That record has since been overtaken by other states.

Choe Sang-Hun, “Running out of Children, a South Korea School Enrolls Illiterate Grandmothers,” New York Times, 27 April 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/world/asia/south-korea-school-grandmothers.html. 33. James Gallagher, “‘Remarkable’ Decline in Fertility Rates,” BBC Health, 9 November 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46118103. CHAPTER 9. Economics Epigraph: Martin Wolf, “How Our Low Inflation World Was Made,” Financial Times, 7 May 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/1b1e0070-709b-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5. 1. H. D. Matthews, T. L. Graham, S. Keverian, C. Lamontagne, D. Seto, and T. J. Smith, “National Contributions to Observed Global Warming,” Environmental Research Letters 9, no. 1 (2014): 1–9, http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/1/014010/pdf. 2.


pages: 491 words: 131,769

Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance by Nouriel Roubini, Stephen Mihm

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centralized clearinghouse, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, global reserve currency, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, laissez-faire capitalism, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Minsky moment, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, Paradox of Choice, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, price stability, principal–agent problem, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, random walk, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, short selling, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez crisis 1956, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, unorthodox policies, value at risk, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, yield curve, Yom Kippur War

Giancarlo Corsetti, Paolo Pesenti, Bernardo Guimarães, Paolo Manasse, Vittorio Grilli, and Fabrizio Perri have been among my coauthors of academic research on international macroeconomics and financial crises; I have learned much from them. Market practitioners, analysts, and other thinkers with whom I’ve had a productive dialogue include Martin Wolf, Steve Roach, David Rosenberg, Mark Zandi, Jim O’Neill, Luis Oganes, Joyce Chang, Lewis Alexander, Don Hanna, Stephen King, Manu Kumar, Jens Nystedt, Robert Kahn, Chris Whalen, Joshua Rosner, Barry Ritholtz, Yves Smith, Wolfgang Munchau, Gillian Tett, Ian Bremmer, Michael Pettis, Steve Drobny, Satyajit Das, Katerina Alexandraki, Daniel Alpert, Charles Morris, Richard Bookstaber, Edward Chancellor, and Walter Molano.

Senate, February 16, 2005, online at http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/hh/2005/february/testimony.htm. 81 determined in global markets: See, for example, Tao Wu, “Globalization’s Effects on Interest Rates and the Yield Curve,” Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, September 2006, 1-8; online at http://www.dallasfed.org/research/eclett/2006/el0609.pdf. 82 Leverage has been on the increase: Minsky, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, 265; Martin Wolf, “Seeds of Its Own Destruction,” Financial Times, March 8, 2009; Susan Webber, “No Leverage,” Conference Board Review, May-June 2009, 61-65. 83 Leverage comes in many flavors: See, for example, Charles R. Morris, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 147-49; Katia D’Hulster, “The Leverage Ratio,” World Bank Crisis Response Note no. 11, December 2009, online at http://rru.worldbank.org/documents/CrisisResponse/Note11.pdf.


pages: 197 words: 49,296

The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac

3D printing, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, David Attenborough, decarbonisation, DeepMind, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Extinction Rebellion, F. W. de Klerk, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gail Bradbrook, General Motors Futurama, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Benioff, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mustafa Suleyman, Nelson Mandela, new economy, ocean acidification, plant based meat, post-truth, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, the scientific method, trade route, uber lyft, urban planning, urban sprawl, Yogi Berra

Sanjayan, Steve Sawyer, Jerome Schmitt, Kirsty Schneeberger, Seth Schultz, Klaus Schwab, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeff Seabright, Maros Sefcovic, Leah Seligmann, Peter Seligmann, Oleg Shamanov, Kevin Sheekey, Feike Sijbesma, Nat Simons, Paul Simpson, Michael Skelly, Erna Solberg, Andrew Steer, Achim Steiner, Todd Stern, Tom Steyer, Irene Suárez, Mustafa Suleyman, Terry Tamminen, Ratan Tata, Astro Teller, Tessa Tenant, Halldór Thorgeirsson, Greta Thunberg, Svante Thunberg, Susan Tierney, Halla Tomasdottir, Laurence Tubiana, Keith Tuffley, Jo Tyndall, Hamdi Ulukaya, Gino van Begin, Ben van Beurden, Andy Vesey, Mark Watts, Dominic Waughray, Meridith Webster, Scott Weiner, Helen Wildsmith, Antha Williams, Dessima Williams, Mark Wilson, Justin Winters, Martin Wolf, Farhana Yamin, Zhang Yue, Mohammed Yunus, Jochen Zeitz, and Xie Zhenhua. We would like to thank each and every one of the outstanding colleagues of the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the always thorough UN security personnel, and the exemplary Mission 2020 team.


pages: 172 words: 50,777

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future by Julia Hobsbawm

8-hour work day, Airbnb, augmented reality, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cal Newport, call centre, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Graeber, death from overwork, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, digital nomad, driverless car, emotional labour, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Greensill Capital, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Ocado, pensions crisis, remote working, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snow Crash, social distancing, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Upton Sinclair, WeWork, work culture

Peter Scott and Guy Judge, ‘Cycles and Steps in British Commercial Property Values’, Applied Economics, 32 (10): 1287–97, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24074467_Cycles_and_Steps_in_British_Commercial_Property_Values 8. ‘Global Commercial Real Estate: Market Size 2005–2007’, IbisWorld, 2 August 2021, https://www.ibisworld.com/global/market-size/global-commercial-real-estate/ 9. Carl Sandburg, ‘Skyscraper’, Chicago Poems (University of Illinois Press, 1992) 10. See Martin Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned – and Have Still to Learn – from the Financial Crisis (Allen Lane, 2014) 11. Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine (Granta, 2011) 12. The metaverse of virtual reality became thrown into the public spotlight at the end of 2021 when Facebook’s parent company name was rebranded by Mark Zuckerberg as ‘Meta’.


Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Prosperity by Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore, Elizabeth Truss

Airbnb, banking crisis, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, clockwatching, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, demographic dividend, Edward Glaeser, eurozone crisis, fail fast, fear of failure, financial engineering, glass ceiling, informal economy, James Dyson, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, long peace, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megacity, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Neil Kinnock, new economy, North Sea oil, oil shock, open economy, paypal mafia, pension reform, price stability, profit motive, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Suez crisis 1956, tech worker, Walter Mischel, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, working-age population, Yom Kippur War

Other influences at Harvard included Lawrence Katz, who became chief economist at the Labour Department, and Robert Reich who served as Secretary of Labour.52 Much of their thought could still be seen in New Labour’s later minimum wage and New Deal initiatives. 26 Britannia Unchained Returning back to the UK, Balls took the job as a journalist at the Financial Times where he later caught the attention of Gordon Brown. At first, he was unsure whether to take the position (and the lower salary) of working for Brown, and asked his journalist friends for advice: Martin Wolf of the Financial Times thought he should turn it down, William Keegan of the Observer told him to go for it, while Will Hutton of the Guardian could not decide.53 It was only when his newspaper refused his request to spend a couple of years in Africa that he finally made his mind up. Brown, too, had worked hard as a pupil, and soon found himself drawn to academia and journalism.


Rethinking Islamism: The Ideology of the New Terror by Meghnad Desai

Ayatollah Khomeini, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Dr. Strangelove, full employment, global village, illegal immigration, income per capita, invisible hand, liberal capitalism, liberation theology, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, means of production, Meghnad Desai, Nelson Mandela, oil shock, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Timothy McVeigh, Yom Kippur War

฀I฀argued฀there฀ that฀what฀caused฀the฀terrorism฀was฀not฀Islam฀as฀a฀religion฀or฀even฀ the฀ lifestyle฀ or฀ culture฀ of฀ Muslims฀ in฀ Britain฀ but฀ an฀ ideology,฀ Global฀ Islamism,฀ whose฀ nature฀ had฀ to฀ be฀ grasped฀ if฀ we฀ were฀ to฀ fight฀ terrorism.฀ I฀ drew฀ an฀ analogy฀ between฀ Soviet฀ Communism฀ and฀ Global฀ Islamism฀ as฀ ideologies฀ which฀ had฀ an฀ anti-Western฀ agenda฀ and฀ asked฀ whether฀ we฀ could฀ combat฀ one฀ ideology฀ as฀ we฀ did฀ the฀ other.฀ The฀ letter฀ elicited฀ a฀ response฀ by฀ Martin฀ Wolf฀ in฀ the฀FT฀as฀well฀as฀some฀correspondence.฀I฀was฀then฀approached฀by฀ Alex฀Wright฀of฀I.B.฀Tauris฀and฀invited฀to฀submit฀a฀book฀proposal฀ developing฀my฀argument. viii ฀  This฀ short฀ book฀ –฀ really฀ an฀ extended฀ essay฀ –฀ is฀ the฀ result.฀ I฀ examine฀the฀history฀of฀the฀Middle฀East฀over฀the฀last฀hundred฀years.฀ I฀ look฀ at฀ the฀ nature฀ of฀ ideology฀ in฀ general,฀ examining฀ Marxism– Leninism,฀anarchism,฀Nazism฀and฀nationalism฀as฀likely฀analogues฀to฀ Global฀Islamism.


pages: 223 words: 58,732

The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, call centre, carried interest, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, cognitive dissonance, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, computer age, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Santayana, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, imperial preference, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meritocracy, microaggression, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, offshore financial centre, one-China policy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, reshoring, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, Snapchat, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, telepresence, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, unpaid internship, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, white flight, World Values Survey, Yogi Berra

I have also benefited greatly from the insights of Michael Lind of the New America Foundation, whose work on the trajectory of US democracy and whose conversations with me on and around many of the topics addressed in this book have proved invaluable. Michael deserves far greater recognition for anticipating the crisis we find ourselves confronting. Others who have kindly lent me their brains on a frequent basis, and to whom I am deeply grateful, include Tyler Cowen, Jonathan Rauch, Larry Summers, David Rothkopf, Martin Wolf, Jonathan Kirshner, Bill Galston, E. J. Dionne, Thomas Wright, Richard Porter, Eric Li, Lloyd Green, Alexander Dynkin, Steve Clemons, David Frum, Jim Pethkoukis, Jane Mayer, Tom Friedman, Matthias Matthjis, William Wallis, Sidney Blumenthal, Karim Sajadpour, Yascha Mounk, Francis Fukuyama, Niall Ferguson, Lou Susman, Richard Longworth, Kori Schake, Denis Staunton, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Gillian Tett, Gideon Rachman, Demetri Sevastopulo, and Liaquat Ahamed.


pages: 184 words: 60,229

Re-Educated: Why It’s Never Too Late to Change Your Life by Lucy Kellaway

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Broken windows theory, cognitive load, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, Donald Trump, fake news, George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, imposter syndrome, lockdown, Martin Wolf, stakhanovite, wage slave

I once referred to someone as the ‘late’ so-and-so when (as his wife subsequently pointed out in a letter to the paper) he was still alive, if a little poorly. Once I made a mistake in a news story and managed to make a second, different, mistake in the subsequent correction. The second value is the paper’s high-mindedness, which I like even though I’ve spent my career dragging the newspaper downmarket. Martin Wolf, the newspaper’s most serious columnist, accused me early on of running a one-woman campaign to turn the FT into the Daily Star after I wrote an article slagging off the dress sense of some of Britain’s captains of industry. The third is the most splendid of all. The FT has old- fashioned views about Church and State – we journalists can write whatever we like without worrying about who is paying our salaries.


pages: 614 words: 176,458

Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie

agricultural Revolution, air gap, Albert Einstein, back-to-the-land, Boris Johnson, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Community Supported Agriculture, deindustrialization, en.wikipedia.org, food miles, Food sovereignty, Garrett Hardin, gentleman farmer, Haber-Bosch Process, household responsibility system, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Just-in-time delivery, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, megacity, military-industrial complex, Northern Rock, Panamax, peak oil, precautionary principle, refrigerator car, rewilding, scientific mainstream, sexual politics, stem cell, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, University of East Anglia, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

The watermill wasn’t developed until 1,000 years after it was invented, because slaves could do the job cheaper.39 How many potential agricultural improvements are there which have remained ignored because they can’t compete with fossil fuels? A notable example is the huge discrepancy between conventional UK wheat yields of around eight tonnes per hectare, which are dependent upon high applications of synthetic nitrogen, and average yields of organic wheat which are little more than half as much. Martin Wolfe, of Elm Farm Research Station, has drawn attention to the curious fact that the same does not hold for other grains: In 2000, six modern wheat varieties yielded, on average, 10 tonnes per hectare across national trials under standard non-organic conditions. When these varieties were grown organically the yield fell to less than 4 tonnes per hectare.

.), History of Soybeans and Soyfoods in China, unpublished, http://www.soyinfocenter.com/HSS/history.php; World Resource Institute, Country Profiles, http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_profiles/ene_cou_156.pdf 39 Marc Bloch (1967), ‘The Advent and Triumph of the Watermill’ in Land and Work in Medieval Europe, Routledge and Kegan Paul. 40 Martin Wolfe (2001), Recognizing and Realizing the Potential of Organic Agriculture, presentation at Global Ag 2020 conference, John Innes Centre, 19 April 2001, www.biotech-info.net/organic_potential.html 41 Rabenandrasana, Justin (n.d.), Revolution in Rice Intensification in Madagascar, ILEIA Newsletter, www.farmingsolutions.org/successtories/stories.asp?


pages: 596 words: 163,682

The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind by Raghuram Rajan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, airline deregulation, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Build a better mousetrap, business cycle, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, central bank independence, computer vision, conceptual framework, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, data acquisition, David Brooks, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, facts on the ground, financial innovation, financial repression, full employment, future of work, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, household responsibility system, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, income inequality, industrial cluster, intangible asset, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, Les Trente Glorieuses, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Money creation, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, race to the bottom, Richard Thaler, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Indeed, such harmonization can be taken to comic levels: European Commission Regulation No. 2257/94 required all bananas sold in stores within the Union to be “free of abnormal curvature” and at least 14 cm in length, and all cucumbers to be “practically straight” and bent by a gradient of no more than one-tenth.5 It is easy to imagine the anger of a Portuguese grocer, cursing foreign-imposed idiocy as she measured her vegetables with ruler and protractor. These regulations were eventually laughed out, but even when the attempt at harmonization is more serious, it is often a step too far, as emphasized, for example, by the economist and Financial Times commentator, Martin Wolf.6 For one, it tramples over the preferences of citizens of small countries. When countries get together to decide whose rules will prevail, typically, the voices of small countries are drowned by larger and more powerful ones. Moreover, the views of negotiators from large powerful countries are shaped all too often by what will favor their largest corporations, rather than what can genuinely benefit their own country, let alone the world.

Simon Dawson, “Chlorine-washed Chicken Q&A: Food Safety Expert Explains Why US Poultry Is Banned in the EU,” The Conversation, August 2, 2017, http://theconversation.com/chlorine-washed-chicken-qanda-food-safety-expert-explains-why-us-poultry-is-banned-in-the-eu-81921. 5. Jon Swaine, “Bent Banana and Curved Cucumber Rules Dropped,” The Telegraph, July 24, 2008, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/2453204/Bent-banana-and-curved-cucumber-rules-dropped-by-EU.html. 6. Martin Wolf, “Globalization and Global Economic Governance,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 20, no. 1, 2004. 7. See, for example, Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008). 8. Josh Lerner, “The Empirical Impact of Intellectual Property Rights on Innovation: Puzzles and Clues,” American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 99: 2, 343–48, 2009. 9.


pages: 234 words: 63,149

Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World by Ian Bremmer

airport security, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, clean water, creative destruction, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, global rebalancing, global supply chain, Global Witness, income inequality, informal economy, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, no-fly zone, nuclear winter, Parag Khanna, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, smart grid, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stuxnet, trade route, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

“Maldives Cabinet Makes a Splash,” BBC News, October 17, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8311838.stm. 3. See Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005); and Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). 4. See Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy (New York: Norton, 2011); Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, 2nd ed. (Pincourt, Quebec: Global Research, 2003); and Harold James, The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). 5.


pages: 232 words: 76,830

Dreams of Leaving and Remaining by James Meek

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, anti-communist, bank run, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, centre right, Corn Laws, corporate governance, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Etonian, full employment, global supply chain, illegal immigration, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Leo Hollis, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, Neil Kinnock, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Shenzhen special economic zone , Skype, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, working-age population

For almost fifty years in the middle of the twentieth century, the era Americans commonly consider their golden age of prosperity and power, the wealthiest among them – fewer than 1 per cent – were paying federal income tax at an average rate of 81 cents on the dollar. If the past were a guide, the wealthier part of British society would be paying much more in tax now than it does. Income taxes are lower than they were in mid-century – much lower for the well-off. And yet we’ve been through a damaging financial crisis that, as Martin Wolf of the Financial Times puts it, hurt the British and American public finances as much as a world war. Even critics of the present government’s economic course agree Britain has to make inroads into debt in the longer term. Rather than, as in the past, repairing the damage by some combination of tax increases and public spending cuts – and Keynesian economists maintain that cuts are more harmful than tax rises – we are being prescribed cuts, cuts, cuts.


pages: 183 words: 17,571

Broken Markets: A User's Guide to the Post-Finance Economy by Kevin Mellyn

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, call centre, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, disintermediation, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial innovation, financial repression, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Home mortgage interest deduction, index fund, information asymmetry, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, labor-force participation, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, Michael Milken, mobile money, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, negative equity, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, quantitative easing, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, rising living standards, Ronald Coase, Savings and loan crisis, seigniorage, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, Solyndra, statistical model, Steve Jobs, The Great Moderation, the payments system, Tobin tax, too big to fail, transaction costs, underbanked, Works Progress Administration, yield curve, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

They are the thrifty, hardworking ants and paragons of virtue. However, the decadent and lazy grasshoppers resent them, as they find virtue creepy and dislike those to whom they owe money. The ants and grasshoppers are, in fact, dependent on each other. The formal term global imbalance—a topic that sage economic commentator Martin Wolf often returns to in the pages of the Financial Times as a core threat to global prosperity—is largely one of too much saving in Asia, and too much spending in Europe and especially the United States. The ideal solution— one China has specifically targeted in its 12th five-year plan (yes, China is still formally a communist country with five-year plans)—is for much higher domestic consumption in the countries that save too much, and higher savings in countries that scarcely save at all, such as the United States and United Kingdom.


pages: 290 words: 76,216

What's Wrong With Economics: A Primer for the Perplexed by Robert Skidelsky

additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, business cycle, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, cognitive bias, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, full employment, George Akerlof, George Santayana, global supply chain, global village, Gunnar Myrdal, happiness index / gross national happiness, hindsight bias, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, loss aversion, Mahbub ul Haq, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market friction, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, paradox of thrift, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, precariat, price anchoring, principal–agent problem, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

Most of East Asia had these; most of Latin America and Africa did not; hence the different results. Who is right? A flavour of the difference between the structuralist and orthodox views of development is given by the following exchanges in 2002 between Professor Robert Wade of the London School of Economics and Martin Wolf, chief economic commentator of the Financial Times.17 This took place in the heyday of the Washington Consensus, before the collapse of 2008. They start with a dispute about the facts. Wade denied that globalisation had lifted hundreds of millions of people out of primary poverty. World Bank figures showed that the numbers of people in absolute poverty (with incomes of less than $1 a day) remained roughly constant in 1987 and 1998 at around 1.2 billion.


pages: 286 words: 79,305

99%: Mass Impoverishment and How We Can End It by Mark Thomas

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, additive manufacturing, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banks create money, behavioural economics, bitcoin, business cycle, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, central bank independence, circular economy, complexity theory, conceptual framework, creative destruction, credit crunch, CRISPR, declining real wages, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, fake news, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, full employment, future of work, Gini coefficient, gravity well, income inequality, inflation targeting, Internet of things, invisible hand, ITER tokamak, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, laissez-faire capitalism, Larry Ellison, light touch regulation, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, North Sea oil, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, Own Your Own Home, Peter Thiel, Piper Alpha, plutocrats, post-truth, profit maximization, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Steve Jobs, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tyler Cowen, warehouse automation, wealth creators, working-age population

FALSEHOOD #1: PROFLIGATE GOVERNMENTS WERE THE CAUSE OF THE EUROZONE CRISIS One of the reasons we think we know that the crisis was caused by profligate governments is that we have been told so many times by those who ought to be in a position to know. Indeed, it is expansionary policies and weak fiscal positions that created the current problems of high debt and low competitiveness in the crisis countries in the first place. Ludger Schuknecht3 The sentence above comes from a letter from Ludger Schuknecht of the German Finance Ministry to Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. Mr Schuknecht is a senior member of that ministry and an outspoken and confident commentator on economic issues. It is interesting, therefore, to compare his very clear pronouncement with the equally clear data in the IMF database. The obvious yardstick to measure whether a government is behaving prudently or in a profligate way is compliance with criteria 2 and 3 of the Maastricht Treaty, to which EU governments signed up in February 1992.


pages: 275 words: 84,980

Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From Money That We Understand to Money That Understands Us (Perspectives) by David Birch

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banks create money, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, business cycle, capital controls, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, clockwork universe, creative destruction, credit crunch, cross-border payments, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, dematerialisation, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, double entry bookkeeping, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fake news, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial exclusion, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, index card, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of the telegraph, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, Irish bank strikes, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, land bank, large denomination, low interest rates, M-Pesa, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, new economy, Northern Rock, Pingit, prediction markets, price stability, QR code, quantitative easing, railway mania, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, social graph, special drawing rights, Suez canal 1869, technoutopianism, The future is already here, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, wage slave, Washington Consensus, wikimedia commons

In the podcast, Felix sensibly attempts to refute some of my crackpot theories about London having its own money and Scotland launching the first wholly virtual fiat currency, but I feel that the tectonic plates underlying currency have shifted in my direction. Once again, let’s pop over to the Financial Times to see what the great and good have said about this, as distinct from wide-eyed techno-determinists like me. What about Martin Wolf? He said that London is far richer than Scotland, and could easily be fiscally self-sufficient (Wolf 2013). If we are recognizing the age of cities, recognizing that there are no national economies, then ‘it is high time that London became a true city state’. How true this is. And the right place to start would be to stop London from distorting the UK economy further by making it have its own money.


pages: 290 words: 83,248

The Greed Merchants: How the Investment Banks Exploited the System by Philip Augar

Alan Greenspan, Andy Kessler, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, business cycle, buttonwood tree, buy and hold, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate raider, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, deal flow, equity risk premium, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, high net worth, information retrieval, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, Michael Milken, new economy, Nick Leeson, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, proprietary trading, regulatory arbitrage, risk free rate, Sand Hill Road, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, systematic bias, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, The Predators' Ball, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, tulip mania, value at risk, yield curve

Roger Lowenstein, Origins of the Crash (Penguin Press, 2004), p. 230. 23. Hintz, op. cit., p. 20. 24. Daily Telegraph (6 June 1998). 25. American Lawyer (July 2003), p. 147; Freeman & Co., 2002 and Beyond, p. 6 (www.freeman-co.com). 26. Freeman & Co., 2001 and Beyond www.freeman-co.com), p. 27. 27. Calculations from SIA Fact Book 2004. Chapter 5 1. Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works (Yale University Press, 2004). Quote from Financial Times (5 May 2004). 2. Lawrence Summers, former US Treasury Secretary, 2001, quoted in Plender, John, Going Off the Rails (John Wiley, 2003), p. 7. 3. Industry data in this chapter from Securities Industry Association Fact Book 2004. 4.


pages: 438 words: 84,256

The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival by Charles Goodhart, Manoj Pradhan

asset-backed security, banks create money, Berlin Wall, bonus culture, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, commodity super cycle, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, deglobalization, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, en.wikipedia.org, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, financial repression, fixed income, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Greta Thunberg, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, job automation, Kickstarter, long term incentive plan, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, middle-income trap, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, open economy, paradox of thrift, Pearl River Delta, pension reform, Phillips curve, price stability, private sector deleveraging, quantitative easing, rent control, savings glut, secular stagnation, shareholder value, special economic zone, The Great Moderation, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, working poor, working-age population, yield curve, zero-sum game

Footnotes 1Previously published in Auerbach, A., Devereux, M. P., Keen, M. and J. Vella, ‘Destination-Based Cash Flow Taxation’, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation, Working Paper 2017/1. Reproduced with permission. 2In an article entitled ‘Rethink the purpose of the corporation’ (Financial Times, 12 December 2018), Martin Wolf criticises the mantra of shareholder value maximisation, affirming that in the cases of highly leveraged banking the Anglo American model of corporate governance does not work. He refers to a number of books—including Colin Mayer’s 2018 Prosperity—that suggest that capitalism is substantially broken


pages: 322 words: 84,580

The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All by Martin Sandbu

air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, collective bargaining, company town, debt deflation, deindustrialization, deskilling, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial intermediation, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gini coefficient, green new deal, hiring and firing, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, intangible asset, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, liquidity trap, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, meta-analysis, mini-job, Money creation, mortgage debt, new economy, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, pattern recognition, pink-collar, precariat, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, social intelligence, TaskRabbit, total factor productivity, universal basic income, very high income, winner-take-all economy, working poor

My FT writing, especially the Free Lunch column and newsletter where my team leader Andrew Jack let me roam freely, has been the nurturing incubator for the arguments that have grown into this book. Those arguments are the better for the many exchanges I have had with FT colleagues about these issues, even—especially—when they disagreed with me. I want to mention in particular Sarah O’Connor, David Gardner, Tim Harford, and Martin Wolf, all of whom generously read early chapter drafts, as well as the many other colleagues with whom I have discussed economics and populism, including Chris Giles, Delphine Strauss, Valentina Romei, Gavyn Jackson, Simon Kuper, Ed Luce, and Gideon Rachman. Second, the writing of this book would not have happened without the generous award of a Journalist Fellowship from the Friends Provident Foundation.


pages: 338 words: 85,566

Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel, Stian Westlake

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Andrei Shleifer, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, book value, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, Charles Lindbergh, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, congestion charging, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decarbonisation, Diane Coyle, Dominic Cummings, Donald Shoup, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, equity risk premium, Erik Brynjolfsson, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, facts on the ground, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, general purpose technology, gentrification, Goodhart's law, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, index fund, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, inflation targeting, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, job-hopping, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Marc Andreessen, market design, Martin Wolf, megacity, mittelstand, new economy, Occupy movement, oil shock, patent troll, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, postindustrial economy, pre–internet, price discrimination, quantitative easing, QWERTY keyboard, remote working, rent-seeking, replication crisis, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Sam Peltzman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, skeuomorphism, social distancing, superstar cities, the built environment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, urban planning, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, work culture , X Prize, Y2K

We are very grateful for the insightful and generous comments we received from Martin Brassell, Stephen Cecchetti, Tyler Cowen, Diane Coyle, Chris Dillow, Daniel Finkelstein, Martin Fleming, Rana Foroohar, Bill Gates, John Harris, Constance Hunter, Richard Jones, John Kay, William Kerr, Saul Klein, Arnold Kling, Baruch Lev, Yuval Levin, Ehsan Masood, George Molloan, Ataman Ozyilidirim, Robert Peston, Reihan Salam, Michael Saunders, Dan Sichel, David Smith, Tom Sutcliffe, Bart Van Ark, Callum Williams, Martin Wolf, and many others. We thank our collaborators for their continual inspiration: Sam Bowman, Carol Corrado, Janice Eberly, Harald Edquist, Peter Goodridge, Massimilliano Iommi, Cecilia Jona-Lasinio, Paul Mizen, Gavin Wallis, and Giles Wilkes. We are grateful to our generous funders: Ericsson; the UK Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC); McKinsey & Company; the Programme on Innovation and Diffusion, ES/V009478/1; the Productivity Institute, ES/V002740/1; and to our employers, the Bank of England, the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Imperial College, and the Royal Statistical Society, who have both supported our endeavours and provided us with countless practical insights into the matters discussed in the book.


pages: 1,242 words: 317,903

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan by Sebastian Mallaby

airline deregulation, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, balance sheet recession, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, central bank independence, centralized clearinghouse, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, conceptual framework, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency peg, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, equity premium, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, full employment, Future Shock, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, inventory management, invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, Kitchen Debate, laissez-faire capitalism, Lewis Mumford, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market bubble, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Myron Scholes, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, paper trading, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, plutocrats, popular capitalism, price stability, RAND corporation, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, rent-seeking, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, secular stagnation, short selling, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tipper Gore, too big to fail, trade liberalization, unorthodox policies, upwardly mobile, We are all Keynesians now, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y2K, yield curve, zero-sum game

Greenspan’s unlucky timing left him looking isolated. Deutsche Bank had recently signed on as a Greenspan consulting client, but the day after the FT op-ed appeared, Deutsche’s boss staked out the opposite position: “I no longer believe in the market’s self-healing power,” he declared flatly.29 Martin Wolf, the FT’s chief economics commentator, had recently published an upbeat book titled Why Globalization Works. But now he sounded dark. “The dream of global free-market capitalism died,” Wolf declared after the failure of Bear Stearns. “Deregulation has reached its limits.”30 Amid mounting doubts about markets, Greenspan tried again to defend his perspective.

In February 1997, for example, he suggested that asset prices should be part of the target. “Product prices alone should not be the sole criterion if we are going to maintain a stable, viable financial system whose fundamental goal, let us remember, is the attainment of maximum sustainable economic growth.” 23. Greenspan had met Martin Wolf and Michael Prowse of the Financial Times on June 25, 1996. 24. At the FOMC meeting beginning February 4, 1997, Greenspan reiterated his view that a public commitment to an inflation target would be unhelpful. “There is no evidence in my experience that words have had the slightest effect.

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, “The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report: The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States” (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, January 2011), 150–53, http://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-reports/fcic_final_report_full.pdf. 29. “Global Credit Crunch: Deutsche Bank Head Calls for Government Help,” Der Spiegel, March 18, 2008, http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/global-credit-crunch-deutsche-bank-head-calls-for-government-help-a-542140.html. 30. Martin Wolf, “The Rescue of Bear Stearns Marks Liberalization’s Limit,” Financial Times, March 26, 2008, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8ced5202-fa94-11dc-aa46-000077b07658.html#axzz3ZBRa IhqN. 31. Alan Greenspan, “The Fed Is Blameless on the Property Bubble,” Financial Times, April 7, 2008, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/81c05200-03f2-11dd-b28b-000077b07658.html#axzz 3ZBRaIhqN. 32.


pages: 354 words: 92,470

Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History by Stephen D. King

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, Admiral Zheng, air freight, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bilateral investment treaty, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, global supply chain, global value chain, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, moral hazard, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, paradox of thrift, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, post-truth, price stability, profit maximization, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Skype, South China Sea, special drawing rights, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, trade liberalization, trade route, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Given the amount of history contained within Grave New World, I inevitably had to stand on the shoulders of historians or, at the very least, their books: many such volumes are listed in the bibliography. Those who have offered me advice and inspiration in equal measure on the economic aspects of globalization include Martin Wolf, Gideon Rachman, George Magnus, Shamik Dhar, David Bloom, Simon Williams, Murat Ulgen, Robin Down and Simon Wells. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the various anonymous referees who provided comments at various stages during the book’s progress. Policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic (and the Pacific) have been enormously helpful (although I suspect they would rather be thanked in spirit rather than in name).


pages: 323 words: 95,492

The Rise of the Outsiders: How Mainstream Politics Lost Its Way by Steve Richards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, David Brooks, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, driverless car, Etonian, eurozone crisis, fake news, falling living standards, full employment, gentrification, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Jeremy Corbyn, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Neil Kinnock, obamacare, Occupy movement, post-truth, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon

Democratic politics would benefit from a more robust debate between centre left and centre right, in the aftermath of the financial crash. The centre-left case for a Keynesian response to the 2008 financial crash was put much more confidently by a few newspaper columnists – Paul Krugman in The New York Times, Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, William Keegan in The Observer – than it was by politicians. The centre-left politicians, with their nervy eyes on the voters, could not find a way of explaining why a deficit could be addressed by more government borrowing. With the centre left in retreat, the centre right had much of the stage to itself and, in imposing an excess of spending cuts, made itself so unpopular that it gave space to those even further to the right, who put the case for government hyperactivity.


pages: 346 words: 90,371

Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing by Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd, Laurie Macfarlane

agricultural Revolution, asset-backed security, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, debt deflation, deindustrialization, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, foreign exchange controls, full employment, garden city movement, George Akerlof, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, Hernando de Soto, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, land bank, land reform, land tenure, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market bubble, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, Minsky moment, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, negative equity, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Pareto efficiency, place-making, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, profit maximization, quantitative easing, rent control, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Right to Buy, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Solow, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, subprime mortgage crisis, the built environment, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, universal basic income, urban planning, urban sprawl, working poor, working-age population

With very few exceptions, the banks’ primary business consisted of non-mortgage lending to companies both in 1928 and 1970. In 2007, banks in most countries had turned primarily in to real estate lenders. OSCAR JORDA ET AL. (2016, P. 16) [T]he US and UK economies … turned their populations in to highly leveraged speculators in a fixed asset that dominates most portfolios and impairs personal mobility. MARTIN WOLF (2008) 5.1 Introduction In Bishops’ Avenue, a grand street in a desirable part of North London, a third of the mansions on the road are empty (Booth, 2014). Many have fallen into a state of disrepair and been unoccupied for many years. This is striking. How could once beautiful buildings on a plot of land so well located in one of the world’s fastest growing cities be left to rot?


pages: 250 words: 88,762

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World by Tim Harford

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, business cycle, colonial rule, company town, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, double entry bookkeeping, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, European colonialism, experimental economics, experimental subject, George Akerlof, income per capita, invention of the telephone, Jane Jacobs, John von Neumann, Larry Ellison, law of one price, Martin Wolf, mutually assured destruction, New Economic Geography, new economy, Patri Friedman, plutocrats, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the market place, the strength of weak ties, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Tyler Cowen, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Every day at the Financial Times brings me new ideas, but I particularly wish to thank my colleagues on the leader-writing team, David Gardner, Robin Harding, and Alison Smith; my FT Magazine editors, Isabel Berwick, Rosie Blau, Pilita Clark, Michael Skapinker, and Graham Watts; Chris Giles and Martin Wolf; and Lionel Barber and Dan Bogler for so quickly agreeing to give me some time to write this book. I am also grateful to the Financial Times for allowing me to use my articles as the basis for some sections of this book. Beyond the FT, David Plotz of Slate and Elisabeth Eaves, Dave Ewalt, and Michael Noer of Forbes improved articles that served as preparation for writing this book.


pages: 310 words: 90,817

Paper Money Collapse: The Folly of Elastic Money and the Coming Monetary Breakdown by Detlev S. Schlichter

bank run, banks create money, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, currency peg, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, German hyperinflation, global reserve currency, inflation targeting, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, open economy, Ponzi scheme, price discovery process, price mechanism, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, reserve currency, rising living standards, risk tolerance, savings glut, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, We are all Keynesians now, Y2K

Hayek, Volume 9 (London: Routledge: 1995), pp. 74–120. 17. Ludwig von Mises, Geldwertstabilisierung und Konjunkturpolitik, p. 1. 18. Ben S. Bernanke, The Global Savings Glut and the US Current Account Deficit (Federal Reserve Board, Washington DC, March 2005), http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2005/200503102/ 19. For example: Martin Wolf, Fixing Global Finance: How to Curb Financial Crises in the 21st Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009). 20. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 435 (n.), p. 450. Chapter 10 Beyond the Cycle Paper Money’s Endgame There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.


pages: 312 words: 91,835

Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization by Branko Milanovic

Asian financial crisis, assortative mating, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, Branko Milanovic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gini coefficient, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, income per capita, invisible hand, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, mittelstand, moral hazard, Nash equilibrium, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, open immigration, Paul Samuelson, place-making, plutocrats, post scarcity, post-industrial society, profit motive, purchasing power parity, Ralph Nader, Robert Solow, Second Machine Age, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, special economic zone, stakhanovite, trade route, transfer pricing, very high income, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

The most important feature of these theories of imperialism is that the roots of every foreign policy have to be sought in domestic social and economic relations, and not, as for example in David Landes’s (1961) theory of imperialism, in the disproportion of economic and military power between the states. 41. The outbreak of World War I has always been an extremely unpleasant problem for those who believe in the fundamentally benign character of globalization and are not concerned with income inequality. In 2004, before he became more skeptical about the benefits of globalization, Martin Wolf published Why Globalization Works, in which he attributed the war to German militarism and nationalism (p. 125). But militarism was not specific to Germany. What was specific was that German capitalists, being latecomers to the game, wanted to have the same advantages as the French and English, but most of the world had already been parceled out. 42.


pages: 372 words: 92,477

The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State by John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Asian financial crisis, assortative mating, banking crisis, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, cashless society, central bank independence, Chelsea Manning, circulation of elites, classic study, Clayton Christensen, Corn Laws, corporate governance, credit crunch, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, disintermediation, Disneyland with the Death Penalty, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Etonian, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gunnar Myrdal, income inequality, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, mobile money, Mont Pelerin Society, Nelson Mandela, night-watchman state, Norman Macrae, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, old age dependency ratio, open economy, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, pension reform, pensions crisis, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, popular capitalism, profit maximization, public intellectual, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, school choice, school vouchers, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, Skype, special economic zone, TED Talk, the long tail, three-martini lunch, too big to fail, total factor productivity, vertical integration, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, working-age population, zero-sum game

Gurcharan Das, India Grows at Night: A Liberal Case for a Strong State (New York: Allen Lane, 2012). 8. The outstanding value of domestic bonds stood at $70 trillion; government bonds accounted for 61 percent of that. “Bond Markets,” Financial Markets Series published by TheCityUK, London, October 2012. 9. “Working-Age Shift,” The Economist, January 26, 2013. 10. Two canny optimists are Martin Wolf (“The Reality of America’s Fiscal Future,” Financial Times, October 22, 2013) and Lawrence Summers (“The Battle over the US Budget Is the Wrong Fight,” Financial Times, October 13, 2013). 11. Ezra Klein, “The U.S. Government: An Insurance Conglomerate Protected by a Large, Standing Army,” Ezra Klein: Economic and Domestic Policy, and Lots of It (blog), WashingtonPost.com, February 14, 2011. 12.


pages: 288 words: 89,781

The Classical School by Callum Williams

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Charles Babbage, complexity theory, Corn Laws, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, full employment, Gini coefficient, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, helicopter parent, income inequality, invisible hand, Jevons paradox, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, means of production, Meghnad Desai, minimum wage unemployment, Modern Monetary Theory, new economy, New Journalism, non-tariff barriers, Paul Samuelson, Post-Keynesian economics, purchasing power parity, Ronald Coase, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, spinning jenny, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, universal basic income

“The universal rule of finances”, Colbert said to the King, “should be always to watch, and use every care, and all the authority of Your Majesty, to attract money into the kingdom.”8 Contrary to modern economists, who basically argue that it is possible for all countries to get richer at once, Colbert implied that France could only get rich at the expense of other places. “Commerce amounts to a perpetual combat, in peace and in war, between the nations of Europe,” he told Louis in 1669.9 Historians have noted that under the watchful eye of Colbert there was a clear change in French government policy from what had come before. Martin Wolfe, for instance, finds little evidence of high import tariffs in Renaissance France. By the 17th century that had decisively changed. “The famous mercantilist principle of the balance of trade and its connection with the nation’s stock of money”, Wolfe argues, “is nowhere to be found in Renaissance France–at least not as we see it in Colbert’s time.”


pages: 976 words: 235,576

The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite by Daniel Markovits

8-hour work day, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, algorithmic management, Amazon Robotics, Anton Chekhov, asset-backed security, assortative mating, basic income, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, carried interest, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, compensation consultant, computer age, corporate governance, corporate raider, crony capitalism, David Brooks, deskilling, Detroit bankruptcy, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Emanuel Derman, equity premium, European colonialism, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, fear of failure, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, high net worth, hiring and firing, income inequality, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, junk bonds, Kevin Roose, Kiva Systems, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, machine readable, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, medical residency, meritocracy, minimum wage unemployment, Myron Scholes, Nate Silver, New Economic Geography, new economy, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, precariat, purchasing power parity, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, savings glut, school choice, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, six sigma, Skype, stakhanovite, stem cell, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thomas Davenport, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, total factor productivity, transaction costs, traveling salesman, universal basic income, unpaid internship, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero-sum game

Melinda Pitts, John Robertson, and Ellyn Terry, “Reasons for the Decline in Prime-Age Labor Force Participation,” Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Macroblog, April 10, 2014, http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2014/04/reasons-for-the-decline-in-prime-age-labor-force-participation-.html. See also Martin Wolf, “America’s Labor Market Is Not Working,” Financial Times, November 3, 2015. The share of U.S. prime-aged adults to have left the labor force is large, compared to advanced economies. For men, the analogous shares today are 8 percent in the United Kingdom, 7 percent in Germany and France, and 4 percent in Japan; for women, only Italy has a lower labor force participation rate among the G-7.

See Benedict Carey, “Life in the Red,” New York Times, January 14, 2013, accessed November 19, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/science/in-debt-and-digging-deeper-to-find-relief.html; and Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (London: Allen Lane, 2013). ideologically opposed to outright redistribution: See Rajan, Fault Lines. This phenomenon also had an international and macroeconomic dimension. On the global savings glut, see Martin Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis (London: Allen Lane, 2014). an almost actuarial logic: These observations attribute debt and financialization to deep structural—and in this sense necessary—features of social and economic arrangements.


pages: 308 words: 99,298

Brexit, No Exit: Why in the End Britain Won't Leave Europe by Denis MacShane

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, centre right, Corn Laws, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Etonian, European colonialism, fake news, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, fixed income, Gini coefficient, greed is good, illegal immigration, information security, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, labour mobility, liberal capitalism, low cost airline, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open borders, open economy, post-truth, price stability, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reshoring, road to serfdom, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Thales and the olive presses, trade liberalization, transaction costs, women in the workforce

It is all too easy to set up the straw man of the EU, which has undertaken and is still undertaking the herculean task of bringing the backward, impoverished, ex-dictatorship nations of Europe up to the level of modern economic functioning all would wish to achieve. Britain’s productivity, indebtedness, deficit, education standards for poorer members of the community, much of its public transport, old-age care, balance of trade deficits, failure to collect taxes, its bloated prison population are not hallmarks of a highly advanced nation. Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, lists the UK’s longstanding supply-side failings. The list includes: low investment, particularly in infrastructure; inadequate basic education of much of the population and the innumeracy of its elite; a grossly distorted housing market; over-centralisation of government; and a corporate sector whose leaders are motivated more by the share price than by the long-term health of the business.


pages: 436 words: 98,538

The Upside of Inequality by Edward Conard

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, assortative mating, bank run, Berlin Wall, book value, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Climatic Research Unit, cloud computing, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, future of work, Gini coefficient, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the telephone, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, liquidity trap, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meta-analysis, new economy, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, Paul Samuelson, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, survivorship bias, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, total factor productivity, twin studies, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, University of East Anglia, upwardly mobile, War on Poverty, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game

Angus Deaton, “Measuring and Understanding Behavior, Welfare and Poverty,” Nobel Prize Lecture, December 8, 2015, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2015/deaton-lecture.html. 53. Paul Krugman, “The Conscience of a Liberal: Monetary Policy in a Liquidity Trap,” New York Times, April 11, 2013, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/monetary-policy-in-a-liquidity-trap. 54. Martin Wolf, “Lunch with the FT: Ben Bernanke,” Financial Times, October 23, 2015, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/0c07ba88-7822-11e5-a95a-27d368e1ddf7.html. 55. “Pushing on a String,” Wikipedia, accessed December 18, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_on_a_string. 56. Paul Krugman, “The Conscience of a Liberal: Rethinking Japan,” New York Times, October 20, 2015, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/rethinking-japan. 57.


pages: 325 words: 99,983

Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language by Robert McCrum

Alistair Cooke, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, British Empire, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, colonial rule, credit crunch, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, Etonian, export processing zone, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, invention of movable type, invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, jimmy wales, knowledge economy, Livingstone, I presume, Martin Wolf, Naomi Klein, Norman Mailer, Parag Khanna, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Republic of Letters, Ronald Reagan, sceptred isle, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, Steven Pinker, the new new thing, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, upwardly mobile

I am indebted to Dr Jacques for his help with my research in China. 5 the cultural revolution of my generation: from the vast literature of ‘globalisation’, I recommend A Brief History of Globalization by Alex MacGillivray (London, 2006), Globalisation and its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz (London, 2004), and Why Globalisation Works by Martin Wolf (New Haven, 2004). 6 expressed by America’s Founding Fathers: these words are found in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, and they reflect values expressed by Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown. ‘When, at my meeting with President Bush,’ said Brown, ‘I talk of a joint inheritance – not just of shared history but shared values founded on a shared destiny – I mean the idea that everyone is created equal, that there should be freedom of expression for all faiths, that arts and culture should celebrate diversity, that government should be open and accountable, that there should be opportunity for all – for all men and women–and a belief in free trade.’


pages: 391 words: 97,018

Better, Stronger, Faster: The Myth of American Decline . . . And the Rise of a New Economy by Daniel Gross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, asset-backed security, Bakken shale, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, congestion pricing, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, demand response, Donald Trump, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, illegal immigration, index fund, intangible asset, intermodal, inventory management, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, LNG terminal, low interest rates, low skilled workers, man camp, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, money market fund, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, plutocrats, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, risk tolerance, risk/return, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, the High Line, transit-oriented development, Wall-E, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game, Zipcar

By the fall of 2009 it was expanding at a 3.8 percent annual rate. That’s a change in the rate of annual growth of 10.5 percent in a six-month period—unprecedented in modern history. Objectively speaking, in the aggregate, the United States has come back better, stronger, and faster than its peers. In June 2011 Martin Wolf, the sage Financial Times columnist, wrote, “Of the six biggest advanced economies—the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, the U.K. and Italy—only the U.S. and Germany had higher gross domestic product in the first quarter of 2011 than three years before.” Three years after the September 2008 meltdown, the United States was leaving its credit mess behind.


pages: 307 words: 96,543

Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl Wudunn

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, basic income, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, carried interest, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, David Brooks, Donald Trump, dumpster diving, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, epigenetics, full employment, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, impulse control, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, job automation, jobless men, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, mandatory minimum, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, Mikhail Gorbachev, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, randomized controlled trial, rent control, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Shai Danziger, single-payer health, Steven Pinker, The Spirit Level, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, Vanguard fund, War on Poverty, working poor

As recently as 2010, more than two-thirds of Americans aged eighteen to twenty-nine had positive views of capitalism; today, according to Gallup, Americans in that age group have more positive views of socialism (51 percent) than of capitalism (45 percent). The problems are most stark in America, but they are also evident in Britain and to a lesser extent in some other developed countries; Martin Wolf of the Financial Times argues that we are undergoing a “crisis of democratic capitalism.” The first lesson of our journey and theme of this book is that to a degree unnoticed in more privileged parts of America, working-class communities have collapsed into a miasma of unemployment, broken families, drugs, obesity and early death.


pages: 393 words: 91,257

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, Alvin Toffler, Andy Kessler, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bread and circuses, Brexit referendum, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, clean water, company town, content marketing, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, data science, deindustrialization, demographic transition, deplatforming, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, edge city, Elon Musk, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Future Shock, gentrification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Google bus, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, guest worker program, Hans Rosling, Herbert Marcuse, housing crisis, income inequality, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job polarisation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, life extension, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Occupy movement, Parag Khanna, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-industrial society, post-work, postindustrial economy, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, profit motive, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Richard Florida, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Salesforce, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Satyajit Das, sharing economy, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superstar cities, technological determinism, Ted Nordhaus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Virgin Galactic, We are the 99%, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce, work culture , working-age population, Y Combinator

shareToken=stabbe53f26f544566a3b04fc3361af876&reflink=article_email_share; Deirdre McCloskey, “The Myth of Technological Employment,” Reason, AugustSeptember 2017, http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/11/the-myth-of-technological-unem; Vanessa Fuhrmans, “How the Robot Revolution Could Create 21 Million Jobs,” Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-robot-revolution-could-create-21-million-jobs-1510758001; Oren Cass, “Is Technology Destroying the Labor Market?” City Journal, Spring 2018, https://www.city-journal.org/html/technology-destroying-labor-market-15829.html. 28 Martin Wolf, “Seven charts that show how the developed world is losing its edge,” Financial Times, July 19, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/1c7270d2-6ae4-11e7-b9c7-15af748b60d0; Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 601–4. 29 David P. Goldman, “The Triumph of Inequality,” PJ Media, August 14, 2017, https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2017/08/14/the-triumph-of-inequality/. 30 See Joel Kotkin, “The Growth Dilemma,” Quillette, January 9, 2020, https://quillette.com/2020/01/09/the-growth-dilemma/. 31 Johannes Niederhauser, “An Interview with John Gray: ‘Human Progress Is a Lie,’” Vice, March 28, 2013, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbwqem/john-gray-interview-atheism. 32 Austin Williams, The Enemies of Progress: The Dangers of Sustainability (Exeter: Societas, 2008), 8–9, 59.


pages: 352 words: 98,561

The City by Tony Norfield

accounting loophole / creative accounting, air traffic controllers' union, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banks create money, Basel III, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, continuation of politics by other means, currency risk, dark matter, Edward Snowden, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, financial intermediation, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, G4S, global value chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Irish property bubble, Leo Hollis, linked data, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, Londongrad, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, Money creation, money market fund, mortgage debt, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, seigniorage, Sharpe ratio, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, The Great Moderation, transaction costs, transfer pricing, zero-sum game

3 The prospect of such reforms did not prevent him from suggesting that, by 2050, UK-based bank assets could grow much further to reach nine times GDP, assuming that the UK’s share of global banking activity remained constant. These remarks, made at the Financial Times 125th anniversary celebration, were so much in favour of expanding finance – safely, of course – that even his hosts were taken aback. Martin Wolf, the veteran Financial Times columnist, wrote that Carney had placed a ‘big bet on finance’ and, while he admired his ‘bravura’, he doubted his ‘wisdom’.4 Finance is such an integral part of the economics of British imperialism that it has been consistently promoted by a succession of UK governments that would otherwise claim to have different economic priorities.


pages: 328 words: 96,678

MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them by Nouriel Roubini

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, 9 dash line, AI winter, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, game design, geopolitical risk, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, GPS: selective availability, green transition, Greensill Capital, Greenspan put, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meme stock, Michael Milken, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Mustafa Suleyman, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, negative equity, Nick Bostrom, non-fungible token, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, paradox of thrift, pets.com, Phillips curve, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, reshoring, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, Second Machine Age, short selling, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, universal basic income, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Many financial markets experts and gurus have allowed me to connect my macroeconomic ideas with their market and asset price implications: Mohamed El Erian, George Soros, Louis Bacon, Alan Howard, Chris Rokos, Ray Dalio, Byron Wien, Stelios Zavvos, Steve Roach, David Rosenberg, Mark Zandi, Jim O’Neill, Luis Oganes, Joyce Chang, Lewis Alexander, Jens Nystedt, Robert Kahn, Joshua Rosner, Bill Janeway, Ron Perelman, Avi Tiomkin, Arnab Das, George Magnus, Christian Keller, Jan Hatzius, Richard Koo, Michael Milken, John Paulson, Xavier Botteri, Richard Hurowitz, Jeff Greene. There are also many public intellectuals and some media commentators who have shaped my thinking and views: Ian Bremmer, Martin Wolf, Fareed Zakaria, Eric Schmidt, Nicholas Berggruen, Gillian Tett, Richard Haass, Mustafa Suleyman, Jared Cohen, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jacques Attali, Tom Keene, Jon Ferro. Discover Your Next Great Read Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors. Tap here to learn more.


pages: 405 words: 109,114

Unfinished Business by Tamim Bayoumi

Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, book value, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, Doha Development Round, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, housing crisis, inflation targeting, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, market bubble, Martin Wolf, moral hazard, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, price stability, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, random walk, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Rubik’s Cube, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The Myth of the Rational Market, the payments system, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, value at risk

Werner (1970): Pierre Werner, “Report to the Council and the Commission on the Realisation by Stages of Economic and Monetary Union in the Community”, (Werner Report), October 1970, available online at the Archive of European Integration. Wessel (2009): David Wessel, In FED We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic, Crown Business, New York, 2009. Wolf (2014): Martin Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis, The Penguin Press, London, 2014. INDEX Abe, Shinzo, (i) ABM AMRO (Dutch bank), (i) accounting standards, (i) Alaska (US state), (i) Amalienborg castle, Denmark, (i) Andreotti, Giulio, (i) Anglo-Irish Bank, (i) Argentina, (i) Asia financial crisis (1990s), (i), (ii), (iii) inflows, (i) asset prices and bubbles, (i), (ii), (iii) Australia banking system, (i) seeks to revive MAP, (i) Austria expansion in assets, (i) trade boost, (i) Baer, Gunter, (i) Bagehot, Walter, (i) Baker, James, (i) Balladur, Edouard, (i) Baltic region: banking crashes, (i) Banco Nazionale di Lavoro, (i) Banco Português de Negócios, (i) Bank of America (US bank) assets, (i) as national bank, (i), (ii) as regulated bank, (i) strongly capitalized, (i) Bank Brussels Lambert, (i) Bank of England handles government finances, (i) stabilizes failing banks, (i) Bank Holding Company Act (US, 1956), (i) Bank for International Settlements, (i), (ii) Bank One Corporation (US bank), (i) Bankers Trust (US bank), (i), (ii) Bangkok International Banking Facility, (i) Bankia (Spanish bank), (i) Banking Act (US, 1933), (i) Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act (US, 2005), (i) banks accounting standards and practices, (i) borrowing rates, (i) capital buffers, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi), (xii), (xiii), (xiv), (xv), (xvi), (xvii) capital standards, (i), (ii), (iii) collateral in repo deals, (i) commercial and investment separated, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) deposits and loans, (i) dual system (US), (i) equity and total assets, (i) European interest rates, (i) failures and corrective action (US), (i) government support for, (i) herding, (i) internal discipline, (i), (ii), (iii) liquidity standards redefined, (i), (ii) market opportunities, (i) and North Atlantic crisis, (i), (ii) proposed union in Europe, (i) regulation in Europe, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) risk models, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) shadow (US), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix) system reformed after North Atlantic crisis, (i) US national (interstate), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) see also central banks Banque de France, (i) Barclays (UK bank) acquires Lehman Brothers post-bankruptcy remnants, (i) backing, (i) competes with major US banks, (i) as LTCM creditor, (i) Baring Brothers (UK bank), (i), (ii) Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and banking regulation, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) and creation of Euro mega-banks, (i) on internal risk models and capital buffers, (i) and market risk, (i) and measures of capital buffers, (i) membership, (i) and repo market, (i) rules upgraded, (i) and US housing market collapse, (i) and voluntary regulation, (i), (ii) Basel 1 Accord, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Basel 2 Accord, (i), (ii), (iii) Basel 2.5 system, (i) Basel 3 agreement, (i), (ii) Basel (i), (ii) BBVA (Spanish bank), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Bear Stearns (US investment bank) assets, (i) bankruptcy, (i) and European competition, (i), (ii) as investement bank, (i), (ii) lightly capitalized, (i), (ii) merges, (i) as regulated bank, (i) rescued, (i), (ii) and upgrading of Basel (i), (ii) Belgium bank assets, (i) banking expansion, (i), (ii), (iii) banking system (2002), (i), (ii) close economic ties with Germany, (i) debt ratio, (i) in European Coal and Steel Community, (i) and financial crisis, (i) and investment banking, (i) and monetary union, (i), (ii) trade boost, (i) Benelux countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg), (i) benign neglect, (i), (ii), (iii) Berlin Wall: falls (1989), (i), (ii), (iii) Bernanke, Ben, (i) Better Regulation Action Plan (UK, 2005), (i) BIS, see Bank for International Settlements Bismarck, Prince Otto von, (i) Black Wednesday (Europe, September 16, 1992), (i) BNP Paribas (French bank) assets reduced, (i) competes with major US banks, (i) expansion, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) suspends Net Asset Value calculation, (i) BNP Paribas ABS EONIA, (i) BNP Paribas ABS EURIBOR, (i) Brandt, Willy, (i) Brazil debts, (i) exchange rate collapse (1999), (i) Bretton Woods break-up of system, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) conference, (i), (ii), (iii) fixed exchange rate system, (i), (ii), (iii) and monetary policy, (i) Brexit, (i) broker-dealers, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) see also investment banking; USA: shadow banks Brown, Gordon, (i) Bryan, William Jennings, (i) budgets: planning, (i) Buffet, Warren, (i) Bundesbank ceases support for pound and lira, (i), (ii) on cooperation of fiscal and monetary policy, (i) and European exchange rate system, (i), (ii) and European integration, (i), (ii) and European monetary union, (i) and formation of European Central Bank, (i) Frankfurt location, (i) and German reunification, (i) on independence of European Central Bank, (i) raises interest rates, (i) Burns, Arthur, (i) Bush, George W., (i) business cycle, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) California: house price fall, (i) Canada banking system, (i) in Basel Committee, (i) and Louvre Accord, (i) Case Shiller house price index, (i) central banks and effect of inflation, (i), (ii) failure to apologise for crisis, (i) and fiscal expansion, (i) independence, (i), (ii) and inflation targeting, (i) and monetary policy, (i), (ii) and quantitative easing, (i) responsibility for controlling macroeconomic fluctuations, (i) responsibility for delivering low inflation, (i) revive growth and inflation, (i) role, (i) see also European Central Bank Centre for Economic Policy Decisions, (i) Chaebol (South Korea), (i) Charlemagne, Emperor, (i) Chase Manhattan Bank (US bank), (i) Chemical Bank (US bank), (i) China currency depreciation, (i) Euro area trade with, (i) in G20 group, (i) investments in US, (i) joins World Trade Organization, (i), (ii) rise as economic power, (i) Citigroup (US bank), (i), (ii), (iii) assets, (i) banking model, (i) low capital buffer, (i) as national bank, (i) rescued, (i) strongly capitalized, (i) collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), (i), (ii) Collins amendment (US), (i) see also Dodd–Frank Act Commerzbank (German bank), (i), (ii), (iii) Commodity Futures Trading Commission (US), (i) Comptroller of the Currency (US) see Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Congressional Research Service (US), (i) Consolidated Supervision Entities (CSE), (i) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (US), (i), (ii) Consumer Protection Act (US, 2010), (i) Continental Illinois Bank and Trust Company (US bank) Bank of America acquires, (i) failure (1984), (i), (ii) Copenhagen European leaders summit (1978), (i) copyright, (i) Council of Governors (Committee of Governors of the Central Banks; Europe), (i), (ii) Cox, Christopher, (i) Credit Agricole (French bank), (i), (ii) Credit Suisse First Boston (Swiss/US bank), (i), (ii) Cummings, Christine, (i) currency unions, (i), (ii) see also European Monetary Union Cyprus, (i) dealers see broker-dealers debt flows (international), (i), (ii) debts: repayment, (i) Declaration of Strengthening the Financial System (G20, 2009), (i) Delors, Jacques advocates strong franc, (i) Committee and Report, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) and common currency, (i) as President of European Commission, (i) Denmark accepts Basel capital rules, (i) and currency fluctuations, (i) invited to join European Economic Community, (i) rejects European Monetary Union, (i), (ii) in Scandinavian monetary union, (i) Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act (US, 1980), (i) deposits: uninsured, (i) derivatives, (i), (ii) Deutsche Bank (German bank) assets reduced, (i) backing, (i) branches abroad, (i) and capital buffers, (i) capital ratios, (i) competes with US major banks, (i) expansion, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) international scope, (i) power, (i), (ii) under pressure to accept reform, (i) Deutsche mark appreciates against dollar, (i) dominance, (i), (ii) revalued, (i) Dexia (French/Belgian bank), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Dodd–Frank Act (US, 2010), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Doha round of trade talks (2001), (i) dollar appreciates (early 1980s), (i) devalued, (i) and fixed exchange rate system, (i), (ii) as central currency, (i) oil priced in, (i) value pegged to gold, (i) Draghi, Mario, (i), (ii), (iii) Duisenberg, Wim, (i), (ii) dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models (DSGE models), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) East Germany: Ostmarks converted to Deutsche marks, (i), (ii) eastern Europe and labor market, (i) trade with Euro area, (i) economic models distort policymaking, (i), (ii) see also dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models ‘Economists’ (Euro area): differences from ‘Monetarists’, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) efficient market hypothesis, (i), (ii) Eichengreen, Barry, (i) Emergency Home Finance Act (US, 1970), (i) Emminger, Otmar, (i) employment: and fiscal and monetary policy, (i) Euro area (and Europe) accepts Basel 3 framework, (i) bank assets reduced since 2008, (i) bank internal risk models, (i), (ii) bank lending expansion, (i) bank resolution system (2014), (i) banking system expansion and transformation (1985–2002), (i), (ii), (iii) banking system in 2002, (i), (ii) banking system shrinks since 2009, (i) and banking union, (i) banks fund US housing bubble, (i) banks under ECB supervision, (i) banks’ overseas expansion, (i), (ii), (iii) bond yields, (i), (ii) borrowing rates converge, (i) business cycles, (i) capital gains, (i) causes of financial crisis, (i) causes of regional separation, (i) centralized bank regulation and support, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) core and periphery banks, (i), (ii), (iii) debt breaks, (i) depression, (i) domestic (national) banking, (i) early national banking system (1980), (i) effect of post-crisis changes on banks, (i), (ii) and exchange rate instability, (i) failure to achieve integrated banking, (i) financial reform in, (i) fiscal deficits limited, (i), (ii), (iii) fiscal policies tightened, (i) foreign banks in, (i) foreign trade, (i) growth forecasts, (i) house prices, (i), (ii) inadequate fiscal buffers, (i), (ii) inflation rates, (i) institutional changes, (i) internal exchange rates, (i) investment spending, (i) labor markets and migration, (i) lends to US, (i), (ii) limited support for troubled banks, (i) mega-banks, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii), (ix), (x), (xi) member countries, (i) monetary (currency) union, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) move to banking union, (i), (ii), (iii) move to economic integration, (i) need for area-wide bank support system, (i) and origins of World War I, (i) outflows, (i), (ii) output losses, (i), (ii) overbanked, (i) political divisions, (i) post 2002 financial boom, (i) product market, (i) and proposed leverage ratios, (i) residential spending, (i) resolution fund for insolvent banks, (i) responsibility for macroprudential policies, (i) single currency, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) spending boom, (i) stock market fall from 2007, (i), (ii) surveillance of members reduced, (i) trade balance, (i) universal bank expansion in US, (i), (ii) unprepared for crisis, (i) Euro (currency) as boost to integrated economy, (i), (ii) introduced (1999), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) European Banking Authority (EBA), (i) European Central Bank (ECB) agreed by Delors Committee, (i) aided by expansion, (i) and bank supervision, (i), (ii), (iii) committed to low inflation, (i) effect of, (i) financial supervision centralized in, (i) and Greek debt crisis, (i) guiding principles, (i) ignores US financial problems, (i) injects liquidity into markets, (i) Joint Supervisory Team, (i) and Maastricht Treaty, (i) and move to banking union, (i) non-adoption of leverage ratio, (i) policy rate, (i) raises rates, (i) vets European Stability Mechanism, (i) weakness, (i) European Coal and Steel Community, (i) European Commission Brussels location, (i) confederated structure, (i) created, (i) European Capital Adequacy Directive, (i) and European integration, (i) Monetary Committee, (i) plans for integrated banking system, (i) and proposed monetary union, (i), (ii) rules on excessive debts, (i) Second Banking Directive, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and Stability and Growth Pact, (i) vets European Stability Mechanism, (i) European Community Council of Ministers (ECOFIN), (i) European Council, (i), (ii) European Currency Unit (ECU), (i), (ii) see also Euro European Economic Community Common Agricultural Policy, (i) currency fluctuations, (i) customs union, (i) fixed exchange rates, (i) formed, (i), (ii) and free movement of capital, (i) see also European Union European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism, (i) see also European Stability Mechanism European Financial Stability Facility, (i) see also European Stability Mechanism European Monetary Cooperation Fund, (i), (ii) European Monetary Fund, (i), (ii) European Monetary Union (EMU) and bank deposit insurance, (i) design, (i) and fall of interest rates, (i), (ii), (iii) future, (i), (ii) and increasing economic integration, (i) initial members, (i) long-term expectation, (i) Maastricht Treaty initiates, (i) positive effects, (i), (ii) principles and flaws, (i) reduces risk premiums, (i) trade and single currency, (i) European Reserve Fund, (i) European Stability Mechanism (ESM), (i), (ii) European System of Central Banks (ESCB), (i), (ii), (iii) European Union alterations at times of distress, (i) and banking regulation, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) commitment to closer (federated) union, (i) economy contracts, (i) and free movement of goods, services, labor and capital, (i) implements Basel (i), (ii) integrated banking system, (i), (ii) name adopted, (i), (ii) single currency (Euro), (i), (ii) on supervision of investment banking groups, (i) see also European Economic Community Evian, Switzerland, (i) Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) Balladur proposes reforms, (i) and Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) crisis (1992-3), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) and Delors Committee, (i), (ii) and German reunification, (i) introduced, (i), (ii), (iii) suffers from speculative attacks, (i) exchange rates determined by private markets, (i) Europe introduces, (i) and floating exchange rate system, (i) and international debt flows, (i) Fannie Mae (government-sponsored enterprise, US) capital buffers, (i) collapses, (i) dominates securitization market, (i) expansion, (i) formed, (i) issues mortgage-backed securities, (i), (ii), (iii) nationalized, (i), (ii) profits squeezed, (i) upper loan limits, (i) Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC, US), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (US, 1991), (i) Federal Home Loans Banks (US), (i) Federal Reserve Bank see United States Federal Reserve Bank financial crises causes and effects, (i) and regulation reform, (i) see also North Atlantic crisis financial markets see markets (financial) Finançial Services Agency (UK), (i) Financial Stability Board (earlier Forum), (i) Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC, US), (i), (ii) Finland escapes crisis, (i) expansion in assets, (i) trade boost, (i) fiscal policy, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) FleetBoston Financial Corporation (US bank), (i) Ford, Gerald, (i) Fortis (Belgium/Netherlands bank), (i), (ii) France agricultural lobby, (i) aims for integrated Europe, (i) bank assets, (i) bank branches in other countries, (i) banking expansion, (i), (ii), (iii) banking system (2002), (i) banking system nationalized under President Mitterrand, (i), (ii) close economic ties with Germany, (i) differences with Germany over monetary union, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) and ERM crisis (1992), (i) in European Coal and Steel Community, (i) and European exchange rate system, (i), (ii) favours political control of central bank, (i) and financial crisis, (i) franc fort policy, (i) high inflation, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) interest rates, (i) internal risk models, (i) leaves and rejoins snake, (i) and investment banking, (i) outflows, (i) reduces fiscal deficit, (i) and single currency, (i), (ii), (iii) status in European Commission, (i) suspends sanctions for high fiscal deficits, (i) Freddie Mac (government-sponsored enterprise, US) capital buffers, (i) dominates securitization market, (i) expansion, (i) mortgage-backed securities, (i), (ii) nationalized, (i), (ii) profitability, (i) upper loan limits, (i) Friedman, Milton, (i) funding corporations, (i) G7 leaders’ summits, (i) Hokkaido Toyako (2008), (i) Venice (1987), (i) G20 group Chengdu (2016), (i) London (2009), (i), (ii) Pittsburg (2009), (i) and fiscal stimulus, (i), (ii) and Financial Stability Board, (i) and policy cooperation, (i), (ii) and reform of banking system, (i) regular meetings, (i) Geithner, Timothy, (i) General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), (i) General Motors: share value, (i) Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, (i), (ii) Germany accepts monetary union, (i) aims for integrated Europe, (i) bank assets, (i) bank branches in other countries, (i) banking expansion, (i), (ii), (iii) banking system (2002), (i) controls inflation, (i) debts move to, (i) differences with France over monetary union, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) dominance in monetary union, (i) Dutch exports to, (i) empire founded (1871), (i) enforces rules, (i) and European exchange rate system, (i) export-led economy, (i) favours independent central bank, (i) favours national bank supervision, (i) and financial crisis, (i) foreign banks in, (i) interest rates, (i), (ii), (iii) internal risk models, (i), (ii) Landesbanken, (i) and ERM crisis, (i) and investment banking, (i) reluctance to support periphery countries, (i) response to financial crisis, (i) reunification following fall of Berlin Wall, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and single currency, (i), (ii) small banks, (i) and snake, (i) status in European Commission, (i) strength of currency, (i) supply chain with eastern Europe, (i) suspends sanctions for high fiscal deficits, (i) tax reforms under Louvre Accord, (i) and value of currency, (i) warns of effect of Greek debt, (i) Giscard d’Estaing, Valérie, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Glass–Steagall Act (US, 1933), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) Glicenstein, Gilles, (i) globalization, (i), (ii), (iii) gold and Long Depression, (i) standard, (i), (ii) and US dollar, (i), (ii) Gold Pool, (i) Goldman Sachs (US investment bank) applies for bank holding company status, (i) assets, (i) becomes regulated bank, (i) competes as investment bank, (i) and competition with European banks, (i) lightly capitalized, (i) as LTCM creditor, (i) as shadow bank, (i) government borrowing, (i) government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs, US), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Graham–Leach–Bliley Act (US, 1999), (i) Great Depression (1930s), (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) great moderation, the, (i), (ii) Greece accepts Basel capital rules, (i) adopts Euro, (i) fall in interest rate, (i) in currency union periphery, (i) economic recovery program, (i) in Euro area, (i) European aid to, (i), (ii) excessive borrowing and debts, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii) expansion in assets, (i) financial crisis in, (i), (ii), (iii) fiscal mismanagement, (i) high interest rates, (i) joins Euro area, (i) loans from other countries, (i) product market improvements, (i) reduces fiscal deficit, (i) role of central government, (i) Greenspan, Alan on bank supervision and regulation, (i), (ii) on bank regulation, (i) favors reform of Basel (i), (ii) and predictability of policies, (i) on risks posed by investment banks, (i) The Age of Turbulence, (i) Group of Ten, (i) GSEs, see government-sponsored enterprises Hawaii, (i) HBV (German bank), (i) hedge funds, (i), (ii) helicopter money, (i) Hoechst (corporation), (i) homo economicus, (i), (ii) Hong Kong: and Asian crisis, (i) house purchases and prices, (i), (ii) see also United States of America households: in economic theory, (i) houses: investment value, (i) Housing and Urban Development Act (US, 1968), (i) HSBC (UK bank): in US, (i) Hugo, Victor, (i) human beings fads and crazes, (i) sociability, (i), (ii) IFRB (accounting standards), (i) IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG (German bank), (i), (ii) Illinois (US state): state banking regulations, (i) incomes: stagnation, (i) Indonesia, (i), (ii), (iii) inflation rates, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi), (vii), (viii) information technology and financial procedures, (i) and investment banks, (i) ING (Netherlands bank) accepts government capital injection, (i) expansion, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Institute for International Finance, (i) insurance: and mortgage-backed assets, (i) interest rates and borrowing costs, (i) capped in US, (i), (ii), (iii) and exchange rate, (i) and inflation, (i) reduced to zero, (i) International Monetary Fund (IMF) and perceived anti-China measures, (i) on benefits from open capital markets, (i) and European Stability Mechanism loans, (i) and exchange rate, (i) funds increased, (i) support in Asia crisis, (i) loans available, (i) as model for European Monetary Fund, (i) output gaps, (i) resources fall behind increase in world trade, (i) on size of global economy, (i) international monetary system debt flows, (i) history of crises, (i) International Swaps and Derivatives Association, (i) Intesa Sanpaolo (Italian bank), (i), (ii), (iii) investment banking see also shadow banking benefit from nontraditional cash deposits, (i) funding, (i) and hedge funds, (i) and information technology, (i) regulation, (i) role and conduct, (i) Ireland accepts Basel capital rules, (i) bankers in, (i) banking expansion, (i), (ii) borrowing excesses, (i) as ‘Celtic tiger’, (i) and currency fluctuations, (i) in currency union periphery, (i) in Euro area, (i) European aid to, (i) invited to join European Economic Community, (i) expansion in bank assets, (i) financial crisis in, (i), (ii), (iii) foreign investments in, (i) ‘light touch’ regulation, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) reduces fiscal deficit, (i) successful effect of reforms, (i) Italy borrowing interest rate, (i) commercial loans, (i) connected firms in, (i) in currency union periphery, (i) debt ratio, (i) in Exchange Rate Mechanism, (i) expansion in bank assets, (i) financial crisis in, (i), (ii) high interest rates, (i) housing boom, (i) inflation rises, (i), (ii) joins European Coal and Steel Community, (i) large outflows, (i) leaves Exchange Rate Mechanism, (i) low growth, (i) and monetary union, (i) product market improvements, (i) reduces fiscal deficit, (i) supports suspension of sanctions for high fiscal deficits, (i) ten-year bonds, (i) see also lira ITT (corporation), (i) Japan banking system, (i) in Basel Committee, (i) controls inflation, (i) debts outflow to, (i), (ii) depression, (i) economic growth, (i) floating exchange rates, (i) and Louvre Accord, (i) Prime Minister Abe’s economic reforms (‘Abenomics’), (i), (ii), (iii) JP Morgan Chase (US bank), (i) acquires Bear Sterns, (i) assets, (i) banking model, (i) as national bank, (i), (ii) Keynes, John Maynard, (i), (ii) King, Mervyn, (i), (ii), (iii) Kohl, Helmut, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Kohn, Donald L., (i) labor markets: Euro area versus US, (i) Lamfalussy, Alexandre, (i) Larosière, Jacques de, (i) Latin America: debt crisis, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v), (vi) Latin League (1865), (i), (ii) Lawrence, T.E.


pages: 367 words: 108,689

Broke: How to Survive the Middle Class Crisis by David Boyle

anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, call centre, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, Desert Island Discs, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, gentrification, Goodhart's law, housing crisis, income inequality, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, John Bogle, junk bonds, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, mega-rich, Money creation, mortgage debt, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, Ocado, Occupy movement, off grid, offshore financial centre, pension reform, pensions crisis, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, Ponzi scheme, positional goods, precariat, quantitative easing, school choice, scientific management, Slavoj Žižek, social intelligence, subprime mortgage crisis, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, Walter Mischel, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, work culture , working poor

None of their econometric models showed how rising housing wealth fed into consumer loans and debt. Nor did house prices behave in the same way uniformly across Europe (in Germany, they have barely moved for a generation). We knew all that, but we still cheered. It took an intelligent commentator like Martin Wolf of the Financial Times to break the log-jam. ‘It is mad to applaud ever rising prices,’ he wrote in 2008.[20] And so it is. It is also easy to blame the revolutionaries in the Thatcher government in 1979 and 1980. The decision to end exchange controls made the demise of the Corset and Cartel inevitable too, and you might argue that the cosy world of the building societies in those days — refusing to lend in some neighbourhoods or to single women — sealed their fate.


pages: 410 words: 106,931

Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra

anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Brexit referendum, British Empire, classic study, colonial rule, continuation of politics by other means, creative destruction, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fellow of the Royal Society, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Santayana, global village, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, informal economy, invisible hand, liberal capitalism, Mahatma Gandhi, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Nelson Mandela, Oklahoma City bombing, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, planetary scale, plutocrats, power law, precariat, public intellectual, Republic of Letters, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, smart cities, Snapchat, stem cell, technological solutionism, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Timothy McVeigh, trade route, traveling salesman, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, wage slave, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

The establishment of the European Union (EU) seemed to vindicate Nicolas de Condorcet, who had insisted that Europe formed a single society. And the universalist religion of human rights seemed to be replacing the old language of justice and equality within sovereign nation states. The ‘magic of the market’, in the exuberant phrase of the Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf, seemed to be bringing about the homogenization of all human societies. As Louis Vuitton opened in Borneo, and the Chinese turned into the biggest consumers of French wines, it seemed only a matter of time before the love of luxury was followed by the rule of law, the enhanced use of critical reason, and the expansion of individual freedom


pages: 364 words: 104,697

Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? by Thomas Geoghegan

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, An Inconvenient Truth, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bob Geldof, business logic, collective bargaining, corporate governance, cross-subsidies, dark matter, David Brooks, declining real wages, deindustrialization, disinformation, Easter island, ending welfare as we know it, facts on the ground, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, income inequality, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, McJob, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, pensions crisis, plutocrats, Prenzlauer Berg, purchasing power parity, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, union organizing, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce

Now, this book is not a defense of the euro, a project unrelated to social democracy. Paul Krugman himself would agree they’re unrelated. But let me suggest that, while the existence of the euro creates some big problems, it may still turn out to be a good thing. I admit to being influenced here by the views of Martin Wolf in the Financial Times. Free of the euro, imprudent debtor countries like Spain and Ireland might make an easier comeback. If they had their own individual currencies, like the peso or the pound, the currencies would be cheap, because no one would trust the credibility of Spain or Ireland. As a result, in these countries imports would be shockingly expensive.


pages: 363 words: 107,817

Modernising Money: Why Our Monetary System Is Broken and How It Can Be Fixed by Andrew Jackson (economist), Ben Dyson (economist)

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, cashless society, central bank independence, credit crunch, David Graeber, debt deflation, double entry bookkeeping, eurozone crisis, financial exclusion, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Greenspan put, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, land bank, land reform, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Northern Rock, Post-Keynesian economics, price stability, profit motive, quantitative easing, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, risk-adjusted returns, Savings and loan crisis, seigniorage, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, technological determinism, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, unorthodox policies

The current system cannot be fixed by subjecting it to ever more rules and regulations; houses built on sand will eventually collapse no matter how careful the occupants are asked to be. The issue that must be addressed is the ability of the banking sector to create money. For decades, such concerns have been sidelined. Yet these concerns are becoming more widespread that ever before, with even the chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, Martin Wolf, expressing the view that: “It is the normal monetary system, in which the ‘printing’ of money is delegated to commercial banks, that needs defending. This delegates a core public function - the creation of money - to a private and often irresponsible commercial oligopoly.” (Wolf, 2012) This core public function is one upon which the stability of the entire economy depends.


pages: 385 words: 111,807

A Pelican Introduction Economics: A User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, antiwork, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, discovery of the americas, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, Haber-Bosch Process, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, income inequality, income per capita, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, inventory management, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land reform, liberation theology, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, post-industrial society, precariat, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, search costs, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, structural adjustment programs, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey

While it pushed the Asian economies themselves on in a more market-oriented direction, the Asian crisis – and the Brazilian and the Russian crises that immediately followed it – actually planted the first seed of scepticism about post-Cold War free-market triumphalism. There were serious discussions about the need to reform the global financial system, much of them along the same lines as the ones that we have seen following the 2008 global financial crisis. Even many leading advocates of globalization – like the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf and the free-trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati – started questioning the wisdom of allowing free international capital flows. All was not well with the new global economy. The false dawn: from the dot.com boom to the Great Moderation When these crises were brought under control, talk of global financial reform receded.


pages: 421 words: 110,272

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case, Angus Deaton

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Boeing 737 MAX, business cycle, call centre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, company town, Corn Laws, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, crack epidemic, creative destruction, crony capitalism, declining real wages, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial engineering, fulfillment center, germ theory of disease, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joseph Schumpeter, Ken Thompson, Kenneth Arrow, labor-force participation, Les Trente Glorieuses, low skilled workers, Martin Wolf, meritocracy, Mikhail Gorbachev, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pensions crisis, pill mill, randomized controlled trial, refrigerator car, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, working-age population, zero-sum game

In particular, we would like to acknowledge Orley Ashenfelter, Lisa Berkman, Tim Besley, Eric Caine, Dave Card, Susan Case, Daniel Chandler, Andrew Cherlin, Jim Clifton, Francis Collins, Janet Currie, David Cutler, Jason Doctor, Bill Easterly, Janice Eberly, Hank Farber, Vic Fuchs, Jason Furman, Leonard Gelosa, Debbi Gitterman, Dana Goldman, Oliver Hart, Susan Higgins, Joe Jackson, Danny Kahneman, Arie Kapteyn, Lane Kenworthy, Jenna Kowalski, Nancy Krieger, Ilyana Kuziemko, Anna Lembke, David Lipton, Adriana Lleras-Muney, Trevon Logan, Michael Marmot, Sara McLanahan, Ellen Meara, Alice Muehlhof, Frank Newport, Judith Novak, Barack Obama, Sam Preston, Bob Putnam, Julie Ray, Leonard Shaeffer, Andrew Schuller, Jon Skinner, Jim Smith, Joe Stiglitz, Arthur Stone, Bob Tignor, John van Reenen, Nora Volkov, David Weir, Gil Welch, Miquelon Weyeneth, Dan Wikler, Norton Wise, Martin Wolf, Owen Zidar, and Luigi Zingales. We are particularly grateful to those noneconomists who were prepared to help us think and to avoid at least some of the blunders that we would otherwise have made. We hope they will forgive any errors and misinterpretations that remain, all of which are our own.


pages: 297 words: 108,353

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles by William Quinn, John D. Turner

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, AOL-Time Warner, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Corn Laws, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, debt deflation, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, discounted cash flows, Donald Trump, equity risk premium, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial deregulation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Akerlof, government statistician, Greenspan put, high-speed rail, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Irish property bubble, Isaac Newton, Japanese asset price bubble, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, land bank, light touch regulation, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, oil shock, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, railway mania, Right to Buy, Robert Shiller, Shenzhen special economic zone , short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, the built environment, total factor productivity, transaction costs, tulip mania, urban planning

Other elements of the news media were critical of the bubble, advising investors to avoid technology stocks. Some of this advice came too early: Fortune, for example, ran an article reporting the willingness of policemen and baristas to offer stock recommendations as early as April 1996.28 But other advice was well timed, and used arguments that have since aged well. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times argued in December 1998 that US equity prices were ‘unsustainable’, and stressed the need to anchor valuations to a realistic estimate of the equity risk premium.29 Near the peak of the boom, The Economist published an article disputing the validity of several common arguments that tried to justify the level of share prices, concluding that share prices assumed ‘an implausible rate of growth in profits’.30 Most narratives of the dot-com era date the end of the bubble to the spring of 2000; Rory Cellan-Jones, for example, calls 14 March ‘the day the bubble burst’.31 The next month saw a series of dramatic falls in price: between 10 and 14 April the NASDAQ fell by 25 per cent, a record for a single trading week, while the S&P 500 fell by 10 per cent.32 Even those sceptical of technology stocks were caught out by the speed of the drop.


pages: 397 words: 112,034

What's Next?: Unconventional Wisdom on the Future of the World Economy by David Hale, Lyric Hughes Hale

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, classic study, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, diversification, energy security, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global reserve currency, global village, high net worth, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, index fund, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inverted yield curve, invisible hand, Just-in-time delivery, Kenneth Rogoff, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage tax deduction, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, passive investing, payday loans, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, precautionary principle, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, risk/return, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tobin tax, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, yield curve

In November 2009 the figure was $1,327.6 billion, compared with $1,173.1 billion a year earlier; in November 2010—after hundreds of billions of write-offs—it was $1,362.6 billion. The media alleged at various points in the crisis that the US banking system was “bust” or “insolvent.” Even columnists such as Martin Wolf of the Financial Times—taking his cue from Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics—have indulged in this sort of scare-mongering. Of course, no banking system can withstand slides in asset values of, say, 40 to 70 percent. But, despite severe asset price oscillations from 2007 to 2010, the US commercial banking system plainly was not bust at any stage in the Great Recession.


pages: 443 words: 112,800

The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World by Jeremy Rifkin

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Albert Einstein, American ideology, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bike sharing, borderless world, carbon footprint, centre right, clean tech, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate governance, decarbonisation, deep learning, distributed generation, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Ford Model T, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, income inequality, industrial cluster, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, job automation, knowledge economy, manufacturing employment, marginal employment, Martin Wolf, Masdar, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open borders, peak oil, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, purchasing power parity, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, scientific worldview, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, supply-chain management, systems thinking, tech billionaire, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, urban planning, urban renewal, Yom Kippur War, Zipcar

The ratio of countries’ oil import bills to GDP is nearing the levels seen in 2008, just before the collapse of the global economy, leading the IEA to publicly worry that “the oil import bills are becoming a threat to the economic recovery.”15 On the same day that the IEA made its 2010 report public, Martin Wolf, the economic columnist for the Financial Times, wrote an essay on the historic convergence taking place in “output per head” in China, India, and the Western powers. According to data published by the US Conference Board, between the 1970s and 2009, the ratio of Chinese output per head to that of the United States rose from 3 percent to 19 percent.


pages: 464 words: 116,945

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism by David Harvey

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alvin Toffler, bitcoin, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, call centre, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, classic study, clean water, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, company town, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, drone strike, end world poverty, falling living standards, fiat currency, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Food sovereignty, Frank Gehry, future of work, gentrification, global reserve currency, Great Leap Forward, Guggenheim Bilbao, Gunnar Myrdal, Herbert Marcuse, income inequality, informal economy, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Money creation, Murray Bookchin, new economy, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, peak oil, phenotype, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wages for housework, Wall-E, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds’, Working Paper 18315, Cambridge, MA, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012. The public reaction to Gordon’s arguments are covered in Thomas Edsall, ‘No More Industrial Revolutions’, New York Times, 15 October 2012. The general public reaction was that Gordon probably had a point but that he was too pessimistic on the future impact of innovations. Martin Wolf, an influential economist with the Financial Times, however, accepted much of what Gordon had to say and concluded that economic elites in the high-income world would welcome the future that Gordon described but everyone else would like it ‘vastly less. Get used to this. It will not change.’ Other contributions would be Tyler Cowen, The Great Stagnation: How America Ate all the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, E-special from Dutton, 2011.


pages: 378 words: 120,490

Roads to Berlin by Cees Nooteboom, Laura Watkinson

Berlin Wall, centre right, Deng Xiaoping, Fall of the Berlin Wall, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Martin Wolf, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, Peace of Westphalia, Plato's cave, Potemkin village, Prenzlauer Berg, rent control

Carefully camouflaged turbulence is the political watchword, designed to allay the turmoil in markets, minds and parties. If, like me, you have kept clippings from European newspapers over the past year, you can attempt in retrospect to catch up with that velocity and turbulence, but it is sure to make you giddy. “Thinking through the unthinkable,” writes the clairvoyant Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, who predicted the extent of the current crisis some years ago. “Barroso openly fears end of the euro,” says De Volkskrant of November 17, 2011. “Mario Monti presents a cabinet of professors.” “Merkel and Sarkozy clash over treaty revisions.” And then the Financial Times again: “The steely headmistress with Europe in her thrall.”


pages: 450 words: 113,173

The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties by Christopher Caldwell

1960s counterculture, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, classic study, computer age, crack epidemic, critical race theory, crony capitalism, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Attenborough, desegregation, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Edward Snowden, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Firefox, full employment, Future Shock, George Gilder, global value chain, Home mortgage interest deduction, illegal immigration, immigration reform, informal economy, James Bridle, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, junk bonds, Kevin Kelly, Lewis Mumford, libertarian paternalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, messenger bag, mortgage tax deduction, Nate Silver, new economy, Norman Mailer, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, open immigration, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, post-industrial society, pre–internet, profit motive, public intellectual, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, Skype, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, Whole Earth Catalog, zero-sum game

“President Obama is taking action”: “Fact Sheet: Opportunity for All: President Obama Launches My Brother’s Keeper Initiative to Build Ladders of Opportunity for Boys and Young Men of Color,” White House, February 27, 2014, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/02/27/fact-sheet-opportunity-all-president-obama-launches-my-brother-s-keeper-. “The My Brother’s Keeper Initiative logo”: “Logo and Usage,” White House, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/my-brothers-keeper#section-logo. Between 2012 and 2014: Luigi Zingales, “Does Finance Benefit Society?,” Address to the American Finance Association, January 2015. Cited in Martin Wolf, “Why Finance Is Too Much of a Good Thing,” Financial Times, May 27, 2015. U.S. financial enforcement agencies collected: Historical Tables: Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1994 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Management and Budget, 1993), table 1.1. a move for which his defenders claimed: Bruce Ackerman, “Like the Emancipation Proclamation, Obama’s Order Forces Democracy,” Los Angeles Times, November 21, 2014.


pages: 426 words: 118,913

Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet by Roger Scruton

An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, corporate social responsibility, demand response, Easter island, edge city, endowment effect, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, food miles, garden city movement, Garrett Hardin, ghettoisation, happiness index / gross national happiness, Herbert Marcuse, hobby farmer, Howard Zinn, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, market friction, Martin Wolf, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, precautionary principle, rent-seeking, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Sam Peltzman, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, tacit knowledge, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the market place, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, urban planning, urban sprawl, Vilfredo Pareto, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

See Charles Murray, Losing Ground, New York, 1998, on the welfare trap, and, for a countervailing view, Peter Gosselin, High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families, New York, 2008. 192 See Roger Scruton, ‘Virtue and Profit’, in Samuel Gregg and James Stoner, eds., Profit, Prudence and Virtue: Essays in Ethics, Business and Management, St Andrews, 2009. 193 Kenneth J. Arrow, Essays in the Theory of Risk-Bearing, Amsterdam, 1976. 194 See Martin Wolf, Fixing Global Finance, Baltimore, 2008. As Wolf puts it, the distortions introduced by government guarantees ‘create an overwhelming incentive to privatize gains and socialize losses’. 195 Hence, under the state socialist regimes of the Soviet Empire, it was impossible for firms to go bankrupt, all debts being redistributed across the economy as a whole by a process of ‘economic arbitrage’, which served to maintain useless industries indefinitely. 196 I refer to the Austrian School arguments concerning price and calculation, as presented by von Mises and Hayek.


pages: 504 words: 126,835

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard by Fredrik Erixon, Bjorn Weigel

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American ideology, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, BRICs, Burning Man, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, classic study, Clayton Christensen, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, commodity super cycle, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, dark matter, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, financial engineering, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, George Gilder, global supply chain, global value chain, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Herman Kahn, high net worth, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, industrial robot, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Martin Wolf, mass affluent, means of production, middle-income trap, Mont Pelerin Society, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, Peter Thiel, Potemkin village, precautionary principle, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, Productivity paradox, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subprime mortgage crisis, technological determinism, technological singularity, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transportation-network company, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, University of East Anglia, unpaid internship, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, Yogi Berra

If you get bored by all those who just repeat the conventional wisdom about the economy and how it evolves, pick any work from these economic thinkers and you will immediately be reinvigorated: David Autor, Tyler Cowen, Deirdre McCloskey, Malcolm Gladwell, David Graeber, Deepak Lal, Joel Mokyr, Matt Ridley, Richard Sennett, Robert Solow, Lawrence Summers, Peter Thiel, and Martin Wolf. Their works have contributed to our thinking for this book. Likewise, there are many successful investors and entrepreneurs whose thinking about innovation and business creation have inspired us. Innovation happens through entrepreneurship and it is impossible to grasp innovation without understanding the business motivations behind it.


pages: 421 words: 120,332

The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future by Laurence C. Smith

Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, clean water, climate change refugee, Climategate, colonial rule, data science, deglobalization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, Easter island, electricity market, energy security, flex fuel, G4S, global supply chain, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, guest worker program, Hans Island, hydrogen economy, ice-free Arctic, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of agriculture, invisible hand, land tenure, Martin Wolf, Medieval Warm Period, megacity, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Urbanism, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, purchasing power parity, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, side project, Silicon Valley, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, standardized shipping container, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, urban planning, Washington Consensus, Y2K

The New York Times, January 2, 2008. 26 For a brief introduction to globalization see Manfred Steger’s Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). See also Global Transformations by David Held et al., eds. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999); Runaway World by Anthony Giddens (New York: Routledge, 2000); Why Globalization Works by Martin Wolf (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Globalization and the Race for Resources by Steven Bunker and Paul Ciccantell (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power by John A. Agnew (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005); In Defense of Globalization by Jagdish Bhagwati (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization’s Rough Landscape by Harm de Blij (USA: Oxford University Press, 2008); Social Economy of the Metropolis: Cognitive-Cultural Capitalism and the Global Resurgence of Cities by Allen J.


pages: 538 words: 121,670

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It by Lawrence Lessig

air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, carbon tax, carried interest, circulation of elites, cognitive dissonance, corporate personhood, correlation does not imply causation, crony capitalism, David Brooks, Edward Glaeser, Filter Bubble, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Glass-Steagall Act, Greenspan put, invisible hand, jimmy wales, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Pareto efficiency, place-making, profit maximization, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, TSMC, Tyler Cowen, upwardly mobile, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

“Trade Offs—National Priorities Project: Bringing the Federal Budget Home,” available at link #149 (last visited June 21, 2011) (Select “State: United States; “Program: proposed Unemployment Compensation in FY2012”; “Trade Off: All”). 40. Hacker and Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics, 1. 41. Krugman, “Zombie Financial Ideas”; Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has described it similarly. See Hacker and Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics, 67. 42. Luigi Zingales, “A Market-Based Regulatory Policy to Avoid Financial Crisis,” Cato Journal 30, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 535 43. Luigi Zingales has another method not tied to controlling the size of banks.


pages: 400 words: 121,988

Trading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets by Donald MacKenzie

algorithmic trading, automated trading system, banking crisis, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, Cambridge Analytica, centralized clearinghouse, Claude Shannon: information theory, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, disintermediation, diversification, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, family office, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Google Earth, Hacker Ethic, Hibernia Atlantic: Project Express, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inventory management, Jim Simons, level 1 cache, light touch regulation, linked data, lockdown, low earth orbit, machine readable, market design, market microstructure, Martin Wolf, proprietary trading, Renaissance Technologies, Satoshi Nakamoto, Small Order Execution System, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, Steven Levy, The Great Moderation, transaction costs, UUNET, zero-sum game

Thereafter, their relative salaries rose markedly, so that eventually senior executives in finance were earning two and a half times more than their equivalents elsewhere (Philippon and Reshef 2012). Although there is no definitive proof, what may be involved in this dramatic change in the fortunes of the finance sector is an increase in what an economist would call “rent,” defined by the commentator Martin Wolf (2019) as “rewards over and above those required to induce the desired supply of goods, services, land or labour.”32 In effect, the financial system may be exacting rents from the rest of the economy, and, of course, among the expected consequences of this would be slower growth of the wider economy.


pages: 403 words: 132,736

In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Bretton Woods, call centre, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, company town, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, demographic dividend, digital divide, dual-use technology, energy security, financial independence, friendly fire, Future Shock, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Haight Ashbury, informal economy, job-hopping, Kickstarter, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, megacity, new economy, plutocrats, profit motive, purchasing power parity, Silicon Valley, trade liberalization, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment, urban planning, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y2K

Estimates provided by India’s Planning Commission. 25. Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Geneva. 26. Cited in Jo Johnson, “Road to Ruin,” Financial Times, August 13, 2005. 27. United Nations Development Program, 2005 Human Development Report. 28. Johnson, “Road to Ruin.” 29. Ibid. 30. Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’ main economics commentator and assistant editor, who worked extensively on India in the 1970s when he was employed by the World Bank. 31. Quoted in Johnson, “Road to Ruin.” 32. Cited in Christophe Jaffrelot, ed., The Sangh Parivar, A Reader (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 4–12. 33.


pages: 457 words: 143,967

The Bank That Lived a Little: Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market by Philip Augar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, break the buck, business logic, call centre, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, family office, financial deregulation, financial innovation, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, hiring and firing, index card, index fund, interest rate derivative, light touch regulation, loadsamoney, Long Term Capital Management, long term incentive plan, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, money market fund, moral hazard, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, out of africa, prediction markets, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, risk free rate, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, Sloane Ranger, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, too big to fail, vertical integration, wikimedia commons, yield curve

In June 2010 the new chancellor, George Osborne, announced that the FSA would be split up.24 The Bank of England would once again have the lead in banking supervision through a new Prudential Regulatory Authority, and a new Financial Conduct Authority would take over the rest of the old FSA remit. An Independent Banking Commission was set up to investigate the industry headed by Sir John Vickers, professor of political economy and Warden of All Souls College, Oxford. The other members were Clare Spottiswoode, a former gas regulator; Bill Winters, a former J. P. Morgan banker; Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times; and one Martin Taylor. The ‘tough on banks’ theme was continued with the introduction of a special tax on banks’ balance sheets. Cable, by now business secretary in the coalition government, expressed his concerns about Diamond’s appointment, and at the soon to be dismembered FSA, Sants and Turner pondered how to reflect the new mood in government.


pages: 497 words: 143,175

Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies by Judith Stein

1960s counterculture, accelerated depreciation, activist lawyer, affirmative action, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blue-collar work, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, centre right, collective bargaining, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, desegregation, do well by doing good, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial deregulation, floating exchange rates, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, income per capita, intermodal, invisible hand, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Martin Wolf, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open economy, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, post-industrial society, post-oil, price mechanism, price stability, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Simon Kuznets, strikebreaker, three-martini lunch, trade liberalization, union organizing, urban planning, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, working poor, Yom Kippur War

Robert Ingersoll, “Nixon-Tanaka Summit Background Paper V: Trade and Payments—Issues and Recommendations, June 29, 1972, Central Foreign Policy Files, 1970–73, POL 7 Japan, RG 59, DNSA. 118. William A. Lovett, Alfred E. Eckes Jr., and Richard L. Brinkman, U.S. Trade Policy: History, Theory, and the WTO (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 14–15. 119. Martin Wolf, “Why Obama Must Mend a Sick World Economy,” Financial Times, Jan. 20. 2009; Nouriel Roubini, “Bretton Woods III?” http://www forbes.com/2009/04/19/bretton-woods-economic-ecrisis-renminbi-opinions. CHAPTER 3. 1972 1. Arthur H. Miller, Warren E. Miller, Alden S. Raine, and Thad A. Brown, “A Majority Party in Disarray: Policy Polarization in the 1972 Election,” The American Political Science Review, 70 (Sept. 1976), 755. 2.


pages: 515 words: 132,295

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business by Rana Foroohar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Alvin Roth, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, bank run, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Big Tech, bonus culture, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, buy and hold, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, centralized clearinghouse, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, data science, David Graeber, deskilling, Detroit bankruptcy, diversification, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, electricity market, Emanuel Derman, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial intermediation, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, High speed trading, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Internet of things, invisible hand, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", John Bogle, John Markoff, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market design, Martin Wolf, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, new economy, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, pensions crisis, Ponzi scheme, principal–agent problem, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, Rana Plaza, RAND corporation, random walk, rent control, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, TED Talk, The Chicago School, the new new thing, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Tobin tax, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, zero-sum game

Gillian Tett, Fool’s Gold: The Inside Story of J.P. Morgan and How Wall Street Greed Corrupted Its Bold Dream and Created a Financial Catastrophe (New York: Free Press, 2010), 97. 73. My favorites include Alan Blinder, After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead (New York: Penguin Press, 2013); and Martin Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis (New York: Penguin Press, 2014). For specifics on the complex securitization leading up to the crisis, see Charles R. Morris, The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009); and Tett, Fool’s Gold. 74.


pages: 476 words: 139,761

Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World by Tom Burgis

active measures, Anton Chekhov, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, collapse of Lehman Brothers, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, disinformation, do-ocracy, Donald Trump, energy security, Etonian, failed state, fake news, Gordon Gekko, high net worth, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, invisible hand, Julian Assange, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, trade route, WikiLeaks

McCormick told the author that this was untrue: neither the purported recommendation, nor his telling Novosyolov about it, took place years in prison: Surzhenko and Nikolsky, ‘Lubyanka does not sleep’ Bob Dudley started to feel ill: Connie Bruck, ‘The billionaire’s playlist’, The New Yorker, January 13, 2014, newyorker.com/magazine/2014/01/20/the-billionaires-playlist say a few words: Tim Webb, ‘The mining firm that found itself in a deep hole’, Guardian, August 10, 2008, theguardian.com/business/2008/aug/10/lonmin.mining1 ‘It’s so exciting’: Interview with Kazakh businessman Chapter 3: Tunnels Cheapside: Peter Ackroyd, London: The biography, Vintage, 2001, pp.26, 180, 366 ‘creates much of the wealth’: Tony Blair’s speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, November 14, 2005, webarchive.national archives.gov.uk/20080909042558/http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page8524 ‘the world market is open’: Imogen Foulkes, ‘Swiss Gotthard rail tunnel – an engineering triumph’, BBC News, June 1, 2016, bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36416506 collaborated with the Nazis: Gerald Posner, God’s Bankers, Simon & Schuster, 2015, p.127; Arthur Spiegelman, ‘Vatican bank dealt with Reichsbank in war – document’, Reuters, August 3, 1997 a story that reversed the truth: Nick Shaxson, Treasure Islands, The Bodley Head, 2011, pp.49–51 increased tenfold: Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, University of Chicago Press, 2015, p.14 amass a quarter of all increases in incomes: Martin Wolf, ‘Inequality is a threat to our democracies’, Financial Times, December 19, 2017, ft.com/content/47e3e014-e3ea-11e7-97e2-916d4fbac0da grew to $7.6 trillion: Zucman, Hidden Wealth, chapter 2 double the single biggest reserves . . . half the global total: China’s central bank put its reserves at $3.3 trillion in 2015, the year of Zucman’s estimate.


pages: 561 words: 138,158

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy by Adam Tooze

2021 United States Capitol attack, air freight, algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Benchmark Capital, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blue-collar work, Bob Geldof, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, clean water, cognitive dissonance, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, floating exchange rates, friendly fire, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, junk bonds, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, oil shale / tar sands, Overton Window, Paris climate accords, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, Potemkin village, price stability, Productivity paradox, purchasing power parity, QR code, quantitative easing, remote working, reserve currency, reshoring, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, social distancing, South China Sea, special drawing rights, stock buybacks, tail risk, TikTok, too big to fail, TSMC, universal basic income, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, yield curve

It could feel at times as though the invisible threat of the virus was stressing the weakest parts of our personalities and our most intimate relationships. * * * — There have been far more lethal pandemics. What was dramatically new about coronavirus in 2020 was the scale of the response. And that begs a question. As the Financial Times’s chief economic commentator Martin Wolf put it, Why . . . has the economic damage of such a comparatively mild pandemic been so huge? The answer is: because it could be. Prosperous people can easily dispense with a large proportion of their normal daily expenditures, while their governments can support affected people and businesses on a huge scale. . . .


India's Long Road by Vijay Joshi

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, blue-collar work, book value, Bretton Woods, business climate, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, congestion charging, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, financial intermediation, financial repression, first-past-the-post, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, hiring and firing, income inequality, Indoor air pollution, Induced demand, inflation targeting, invisible hand, land reform, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, Martin Wolf, means of production, microcredit, moral hazard, obamacare, Pareto efficiency, price elasticity of demand, price mechanism, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, school choice, school vouchers, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, special drawing rights, The Future of Employment, The Market for Lemons, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, universal basic income, urban sprawl, vertical integration, working-age population

Reddy, Dani Rodrik, Manish Sabharwal, Shyam Saran, Abhijit Sen, Amartya Sen, Anupama Sen, Kunal Sen, Shekhar Shah, Shylashri Shankar, Alok Sheel, Parthasarathi Shome, Rukshad Shroff, Henry Shue, Abhijit Singh, Manmohan Singh, Nirvikar Singh, Devinder Sivia, T. N. Srinivasan, Margaret Stevens, Frances Stewart, Duvvuri Subbarow, Arvind Subramanian, Kate Sullivan, Kamakshya Trivedi, Maya Tudor, Ravi Vaidya, John Vickers, David Vines, Bhaskar Vira, Arvind Virmani, Jessica Wallack, Michael Walton, Andrew Whitehead, John Williamson, Dominic Wilson, Martin Wolf, Ngaire Woods, Simon Wren-​Lewis, and Yogendra Yadav. I have also learned a great deal from my participation in the highly stimulating India Policy Forum annual conferences in Delhi, organized by the Brookings Institution and the National Council of Applied Economic Research. For all the people mentioned above, the usual disclaimer applies with more than the customary force.


pages: 582 words: 160,693

The Sovereign Individual: How to Survive and Thrive During the Collapse of the Welfare State by James Dale Davidson, William Rees-Mogg

affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, bank run, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, borderless world, British Empire, California gold rush, classic study, clean water, colonial rule, Columbine, compound rate of return, creative destruction, Danny Hillis, debt deflation, ending welfare as we know it, epigenetics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Gilder, Hernando de Soto, illegal immigration, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information retrieval, Isaac Newton, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Macrae, offshore financial centre, Parkinson's law, pattern recognition, phenotype, price mechanism, profit maximization, rent-seeking, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Sam Peltzman, school vouchers, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, spice trade, statistical model, telepresence, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, trade route, transaction costs, Turing machine, union organizing, very high income, Vilfredo Pareto

Clive Jenkins and Barrie Sherman, The Collapse of Work (London: Methuen, 1979),p. 103. 7. Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Societv (New York: The Free Press, 1995). 322 8. Clay Chandler, 'Buchanan's Success Frightens Business," Washington Post, February 22, 1996, p. D12. 9. Stephanie Flanders and Martin Wolfe, "Haunted by the Trade Spectre," Financial Times, July 24, 1995, p.11. They quote from the World Bank's most recent world development report, on workers in an integrating world economy. 10. See Mancur Olson, "Diseconomies of Scale and Development," Cato Journal, vol.7, no.1 (Spring/Summer 1987). 11.


pages: 790 words: 150,875

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, Atahualpa, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, conceptual framework, Copley Medal, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Dean Kamen, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Easter island, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, guns versus butter model, Hans Lippershey, haute couture, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, invention of movable type, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, John Harrison: Longitude, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kitchen Debate, land reform, land tenure, liberal capitalism, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, Pearl River Delta, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, reserve currency, retail therapy, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, spinning jenny, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Great Moderation, the market place, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, trade route, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, undersea cable, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment, wage slave, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, work culture , World Values Survey

Kotkin, Armageddon Averted. 17. Guan and Li, ‘GDP and Economic Structure’. 18. Maddison, World Economy. 19. http://gcr.weforum.org/gcr2010/. 20. http://www.conference-board.org/data/economydatabase/. 21. I am grateful to Jim O’Neill at Goldman Sachs for providing me with the relevant dataset. 22. Martin Wolf, ‘Will China’s Rise Be Peaceful?’, Financial Times, 16 November 2010. 23. Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, World Population Prospects: The 2008 Revision, http://esa.un.org/unpp, 27 November 2010. 24. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, tables 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4.3, 4.5, 4.6. 25.


pages: 538 words: 147,612

All the Money in the World by Peter W. Bernstein

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, book value, call centre, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, clean tech, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, currency peg, David Brooks, Donald Trump, estate planning, Fairchild Semiconductor, family office, financial engineering, financial innovation, George Gilder, high net worth, invisible hand, Irwin Jacobs: Qualcomm, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job-hopping, John Markoff, junk bonds, Larry Ellison, Long Term Capital Management, Marc Andreessen, Martin Wolf, Maui Hawaii, means of production, mega-rich, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, Norman Mailer, PageRank, Peter Singer: altruism, pez dispenser, popular electronics, Quicken Loans, Renaissance Technologies, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, school vouchers, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, shareholder value, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, SoftBank, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tech baron, tech billionaire, Teledyne, the new new thing, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, traveling salesman, urban planning, wealth creators, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce

David Brock, a former conservative journalist-turned-whistleblower: David Brock, “How I Almost Brought Down the President,” The Guardian, Mar. 12, 2002. 40. Scaife is not exactly: Robert G. Kaiser, “The Conservative Godfather,” Austin American-Statesman, May 9, 1999. 41. In 1970 he pledged $100,000: Kuntz, “Citizen Scaife.” 42. in 1972 he donated: John Kay, Richard Lambert, Geoffrey Owen, and Martin Wolf, “Spending Power,” Financial Times, Nov. 13, 2004. 43. He then went on to fund: Kuntz, “Citizen Scaife.” 44. When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992: Brock, “How I Almost Brought Down the President.” 45. The relentless attacks: Kaiser, “The Conservative Godfather.” 46. Ford owned the Michigan weekly: Hardy Green, “A Titan of Industry—and a Bigot,” BusinessWeek, Jan. 21, 2002. 47.


pages: 524 words: 155,947

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy by Philip Coggan

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, anti-communist, Apollo 11, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bletchley Park, Bob Noyce, Boeing 747, bond market vigilante , Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, Columbine, Corn Laws, cotton gin, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, currency peg, currency risk, debt deflation, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, Donald Trump, driverless car, Easter island, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, Fairchild Semiconductor, falling living standards, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, German hyperinflation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global value chain, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, Haber-Bosch Process, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, hydraulic fracturing, hydroponic farming, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, inflation targeting, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Snow's cholera map, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Jon Ronson, Kenneth Arrow, Kula ring, labour market flexibility, land reform, land tenure, Lao Tzu, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Blériot, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, M-Pesa, Malcom McLean invented shipping containers, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, Murano, Venice glass, Myron Scholes, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Phillips curve, popular capitalism, popular electronics, price stability, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, railway mania, Ralph Nader, regulatory arbitrage, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, spice trade, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, TaskRabbit, techlash, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Great Moderation, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, V2 rocket, Veblen good, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, world market for maybe five computers, Yom Kippur War, you are the product, zero-sum game

Reinhart, “Eight years later: post-crisis recovery and deleveraging”, op. cit. 30. An aggrieved Economist reader pointed out that the UK nations could be recast as “SWINE”, Scotland, Wales, Ireland (Northern) and England. 31. Charlemagne, “What Makes Germans So Very Cross About Greece?”, The Economist, February 23rd 2010 32. See, for example, Martin Wolf, “Germany is a weight on the world”, Financial Times, November 5th 2013. 33. The economies were Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, the UK and the US. Source: https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-deficit.htm 34. Larry Elliott, “Austerity policies do more harm than good, IMF study concludes”, The Guardian, May 27th 2016 35.


pages: 655 words: 156,367

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era by Gary Gerstle

2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, AOL-Time Warner, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, David Graeber, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, European colonialism, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, George Floyd, George Gilder, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, green new deal, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, Haight Ashbury, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Ida Tarbell, immigration reform, informal economy, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kitchen Debate, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, new economy, New Journalism, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, oil shock, open borders, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Powell Memorandum, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, Ralph Nader, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Seymour Hersh, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, super pumped, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Chicago School, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, urban decay, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Y2K, Yom Kippur War

Others who might have held important roles were Austin Goolsbee of the University of Chicago, Robert Reich and Laura Tyson of Berkeley, and Gary Gensler, a onetime Rubin protégé now breaking with the Goldman Sachs model of economic management. 92.Tooze, Crashed, 280; Dickerson, Homeownership and America’s Financial Underclass, passim. 93.Tooze, Crashed, 463. 94.Martin Wolf, “The Rescue of Bear Stearns Marks Liberalisation’s Limit,” The Financial Times, March 25, 2008, https://www.ft.com/content/8ced5202-fa94-11dc-aa46-000077b07658, accessed August 31, 2021. Chapter 7 1.Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), 160–161.


pages: 540 words: 168,921

The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism by Joyce Appleby

1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, commoditize, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, cotton gin, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, Doha Development Round, double entry bookkeeping, epigenetics, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, Firefox, fixed income, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Francisco Pizarro, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, General Magic , Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, informal economy, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, knowledge economy, land bank, land reform, Livingstone, I presume, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, PalmPilot, Parag Khanna, pneumatic tube, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, refrigerator car, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, spice trade, spinning jenny, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thorstein Veblen, total factor productivity, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, two and twenty, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban renewal, vertical integration, War on Poverty, working poor, Works Progress Administration, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War

Diethelm Prowe, “Economic Democracy in Post–World War II Germany: Corporatist Crisis Response, 1945–1948,” Journal of Modern History, 57 (1985): 452–58. 7. Paul L. Davies, “A Note on Labour and Corporate Governance in the U.K.,” in Klaus J. Hopt et al, eds., Comparative Corporate Governance: The State of the Art and Emerging Research (Oxford, 1999), 373; Martin Wolf, “European Corporatism Must Embrace Change,” Financial Times, January 23, 2007. 8. Maddison, Dynamic Forces in Capitalist Development, 274–75; Frieden, Global Capitalism, 289. 9. John Gillingham, “The European Coal and Steel Community: An Object Lesson,” in Barry Eichengreen, ed., Europe’s Post-War Recovery (Cambridge, 1995), 152–53, 166. 10.


pages: 605 words: 169,366

The World's Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations by Sebastian Mallaby

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Asian financial crisis, bank run, battle of ideas, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, capital controls, clean water, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, export processing zone, failed state, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, gentleman farmer, guns versus butter model, Hernando de Soto, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, land tenure, lateral thinking, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, microcredit, oil shock, Oklahoma City bombing, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, structural adjustment programs, the new new thing, trade liberalization, traveling salesman, War on Poverty, Westphalian system, Yom Kippur War

Thanks also to Caroline Anstey and Mark Malloch Brown, who were especially generous with their time, and to Jimmy Kolker, who had me to stay in Kampala and helped me to understand the country. Among journalists, I learned much from my Washington Post colleague Paul Blustein; from Stephen Fidler, Robert Chote, Martin Wolf, and Alan Beattie of the Financial Times; and from my ex-colleagues at The Economist, notably Zanny Minton Beddoes, the magazine’s economics correspondent in Washington. Zanny is more than my teacher; she is also my wife. I could never have completed this project without her. The morning after Jim Wolfensohn’s seventieth birthday party, which I describe in my last chapter, Zanny gave birth to our daughter; and the morning after that she cheerfully told me to get back to my computer.


pages: 569 words: 165,510

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic bias, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business climate, call centre, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, first-past-the-post, food desert, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, housing crisis, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lockdown, low skilled workers, Lyft, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, meme stock, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, Paris climate accords, pension reform, QAnon, ransomware, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, statistical model, Steve Bannon, The Chicago School, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, University of East Anglia, urban decay, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working poor, Yom Kippur War, young professional

McMaster, Tom McTague, Anand Menon, Claire and David Merkel, Greg Miller, Molly Montgomery, Sarah Moor, Edwina Morton, Simon Marks, Yascha Mounk, Daniel Mulhall, Michael Mullen, Grant Murphy, Vivek Murthy, Nancy Nachbar, Elena Nachmanoff, Ellen Nakashima, James Nixey, Toria Nuland, Melanie Okuneye, Arkady Ostrovsky, Meghan O’Sullivan, Bob Otto, Gene Park, Bruce Parrott, Norma Percy, Emily Perkins, Tom Pickering, Karen Pierce, Alexander Pivovarsky, Ruth Pojman, Jane Prokop, Manveen Rana, Jamie Raskin, Brian Reed, Dakota Roberson, Lori Robinson, Chuck Rosenberg, Jonathan Rozenberg, Trudy Rubin, Blair Ruble, Andrew Sanders, John Scarlett, Lucas Schoch, Daniela Schwarzer, Jim Sciutto, Anula Seelawathie, Klaus Segbers, Demetri Sevastopulo, Minouche Shafik, Jeremy Shapiro, David Shimer, Zach Shore, Katy Simmons, Amanda Sloat, Ben Smith, Jason Smith, Stephen Kennedy Smith, Yuri Somov, David Speedie, Lesley Stahl, Paul Starobin, Danica Starks, Angela Stent, “Sully” Sullenberger, Tammy Sun, Barrett Takesian, Michael Tatham, Bill Taylor, David Taylor, Kim Teri, Hannah Thoburn, Harold Trinkunas, Robert Tsai, Misha Tsypkin, Charlie Undeland, Alexandra Vacroux, Justin Vaisse, Ian Vasey, Alex Vindman, Tessa Walker, Joe Wang, Melissa Weintraub, Andrew Weiss, Gavin Wilde, Clete Willems, Ted Wittenstein, Martin Wolf, Beatrix von Watzdorf, Casimir Yost, Marie Yovanovitch, Daniel Ziblatt, Tim Ziemer, and Fabian Zuleeg. Many of this large group of friends, colleagues, and distant acquaintances provided insights and raised important questions about core ideas. They also flagged articles in the press that I might not otherwise have seen, suggested individuals I should approach for interviews, and sent me their own and other publications for reference.


pages: 652 words: 172,428

Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order by Colin Kahl, Thomas Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, circular economy, citizen journalism, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, deglobalization, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, future of work, George Floyd, German hyperinflation, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, it's over 9,000, job automation, junk bonds, Kibera, lab leak, liberal world order, lockdown, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, megacity, mobile money, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, one-China policy, open borders, open economy, Paris climate accords, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, social distancing, South China Sea, spice trade, statistical model, subprime mortgage crisis, W. E. B. Du Bois, World Values Survey, zoonotic diseases

Emmanuel Macron, quoted in Victor Mallet and Roula Khalaf, “FT Interview: Emmanuel Macron Says It Is Time to Think the Unthinkable,” Financial Times, April 16, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/3ea8d790-7fd1-11ea-8fdb-7ec06edeef84.   32.  Schmitt-Roschmann, “After Glimpsing ‘Abyss’”; Rinke and Wacket, “Coronavirus Pandemic Is Historical Test”; Sánchez, “Europe’s Future Is at Stake”; Mallet and Khalaf, “FT Interview: Emmanuel Macron.”   33.  Martin Wolf, “German Court Decides to Take Back Control with ECB Ruling,” Financial Times, May 12, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/37825304-9428-11ea-af4b-499244625ac4.   34.  “Rebuilding the Trans-Atlantic Relationship After COVID-19,” webinar, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, June 16, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/fp_20200616_transatlantic_covid_transcript.pdf.   35.  


pages: 767 words: 208,933

Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist by Alex Zevin

"there is no alternative" (TINA), activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, centre right, Chelsea Manning, collective bargaining, Columbine, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, desegregation, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, imperial preference, income inequality, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, Jeremy Corbyn, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, junk bonds, Khartoum Gordon, land reform, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, means of production, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, New Journalism, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, no-fly zone, Norman Macrae, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, post-war consensus, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, railway mania, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Seymour Hersh, Snapchat, Socratic dialogue, Steve Bannon, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, unorthodox policies, upwardly mobile, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Obama would dispel ‘myths’ about the US just by being president: ‘it would be far harder for the spreaders of hate to denounce the Great Satan if it were led by a black man whose middle name is Hussein’; at home, ‘he would salve, if not close, the ugly racial wounds left by America’s history and lessen the tendency of American blacks to blame all their problems on racism’: ‘It’s Time’, 1 November 2008. 101.New Labour had many faults after thirteen years, but the financial crisis was not one of them. ‘Britain was always likely to get mauled in the credit crunch’: ‘Bagehot’, 16 October 2008. 102.See, ‘The Comeback Keynes’, Time, 23 October 2008; ‘The New Big Old Thing in Economics’, Wall Street Journal, 8 January 2009; Martin Wolf, ‘Keynes Offers Us the Best Way to Think about the Financial Crisis’, Financial Times, 23 December 2008. 103.‘Capitalism is the best economic system man has invented yet’: ‘Capitalism at Bay’, 16 October 2008. 104.Governments must bail out, but not exert control over, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the US and Northern Rock in the UK.


pages: 1,034 words: 241,773

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, access to a mobile phone, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alignment Problem, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Eddington, artificial general intelligence, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charlie Hebdo massacre, classic study, clean water, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Eddington experiment, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, endogenous growth, energy transition, European colonialism, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, frictionless market, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hacker Conference 1984, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, Laplace demon, launch on warning, life extension, long peace, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahbub ul Haq, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, obamacare, ocean acidification, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, radical life extension, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, Social Justice Warrior, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey, Y2K

From Letters Concerning the English Nation, cited in Porter 2000, p. 21. 14. Porter 2000, pp. 21–22. 15. Data on GDP per capita from Maddison Project 2014, displayed in Marian Tupy’s HumanProgress, http://www.humanprogress.org/f1/2785/1/2010/France/United%20Kingdom. 16. The Great Convergence: Mahbubani 2013. Mahbubani credits the term to the columnist Martin Wolf. Radelet (2015) calls it the Great Surge; Deaton (2013) includes it in what he calls the Great Escape. 17. Countries with rapidly growing economies: Radelet 2015, pp. 47–51. 18. According to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals Report 2015, “The number of people in the working middle class—living on more than $4 a day—has almost tripled between 1991 and 2015.


pages: 1,066 words: 273,703

Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bond market vigilante , book value, Boris Johnson, bread and circuses, break the buck, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, business logic, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, company town, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, dark matter, deindustrialization, desegregation, Detroit bankruptcy, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial engineering, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, friendly fire, full employment, global reserve currency, global supply chain, global value chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Growth in a Time of Debt, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, large denomination, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, margin call, Martin Wolf, McMansion, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, military-industrial complex, mittelstand, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, negative equity, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, obamacare, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paradox of thrift, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, post-truth, predatory finance, price stability, private sector deleveraging, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, Steve Bannon, structural adjustment programs, tail risk, The Great Moderation, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade liberalization, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, white flight, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, yield curve, éminence grise

It was not motivated by some radical ideological turn to the Left or the Right. There was precious little time for thought or wider consideration. Intervention was driven by the financial system’s own malfunctioning and the impossibility of separating individual business failure from its wider systemic repercussions. Martin Wolf, the Financial Times’s esteemed chief economic commentator, dubbed March 14, 2008, “the day the dream of global free-market capitalism died.”1 That was the day the Bear Stearns rescue was announced. It was only the beginning. I Bailout battles were fought all along the contours of the integrated Atlantic financial economy—in the United States, Iceland, Ireland, Britain, France, Germany, the Benelux, Switzerland.