Download or read book Principles of Economics for a Post Meltdown World written by John Komlos and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-16 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brief emphasizes the ways in which introductory economics textbooks incorrectly rely on assumptions about the free market, the rational agent model, market fundamentalism, and standard long-standing assumptions in economics, and in doing so disregard the effects of incomplete and asymmetric information on choice and on allocation, and maintain a general but flawed belief that competitive markets can always provide efficient solutions automatically. In other words, the standard economics principles textbook is anachronistic, they assume that tastes are exogenous, they overlook interdependencies and externalities not only in production but in consumption of goods, and they overlook the fact that path-dependence is a major hindrance to optimization. Mainstream principles of economics textbooks distort our worldview with immense political and cultural consequences. Students of these principles deserve a more complete perspective, and this brief critiques that conventional worldview and provides an alternative perspective, with an emphasis on free-market economics wherein the human element should be paramount and moral judgments should override market outcomes. In other words, what is important is not GNP as much as the quality of life, not institutions but how people live and fare in them. This brief argues that economics cannot be a science; it has too many ideological aspects, and in many ways conventional textbooks are not providing a true-to-life depiction of the economy. This Brief will be a reference or supplemental text for college and university students enrolled in such applied undergraduate and graduate courses and seminars in economics and economic theory.
Download or read book Money Meltdown written by Judy Shelton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-11-24 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this analysis, Shelton calls for a unified international monetary regime—a new Bretton Woods—to lay the foundation for worldwide stability and prosperity in the post-Cold War era. Despite worldwide rhetoric about free trade and the global economy, the leading economic powers have done little to address the most insidious form of protectionism—the inherently unstable international monetary system. In outlining steps toward a new world monetary structure, Judy Shelton elevates the needs of individual producers—who actually create wealth in the global economy—over the programmes of governments.
Download or read book Understanding the Private Public Divide written by Avner Offer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-07 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A distinctive new account of why markets focus on short-term goals, while government needs to concentrate on society's long-term interests.
Download or read book The Impoverishment of Nations written by Leigh Skene and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-07-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in 2007 Leigh Skene warned of the danger of a meltdown in global markets. Now, while governments spend furiously to rescue the global economy, he again challenges received wisdom. In The Impoverishment of Nations, he prescribes a different solution, outlining a plan to deal with a very different economic future, following the financial crisis that ended the longest period of prosperity for some five hundred years. We have entered a period of uncertainty, which has placed a huge burden on public finances. Governments have spent $10 trillion on bailing out financial institutions and other firms, including General Motors. We are at a tipping point and the future will be unlike the past - one of the most dangerous economic stages any generation can face. In his penetrating analysis, Leigh Skene traces how we got here and what has to happen for the global economy to recover the ground it has lost in less than two years. He looks at the shift of economic power to emerging nations, the inevitability of deflation, the unfitness for purpose of the financial markets, how governments' share of output must shrink, how solvency not liquidity caused the current crisis, and how it is wrong to think you can borrow your way to growth.
Download or read book Meltdown written by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a foreword from Ron Paul, Meltdown is the free-market answer to the Fed-created economic crisis. As the new Obama administration inevitably calls for more regulations, Woods argues that the only way to rebuild our economy is by returning to the fundamentals of capitalism and letting the free market work.
Download or read book Aftershock written by David Wiedemer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-11-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the authors who predicted with unmatched precision the domino impacts of the real estate, stock market, and other bubbles that led to 2008's market meltdown comes the definitive look at what is still to come and what investors can do to protect themselves Just as many are wrongly forecasting a full recovery ahead, Aftershock, now updated and revised, warns of a very different economic future. Home prices and stocks will continue to fall, inflation and unemployment will rise, and the current recession will not automatically cycle back to recovery. Unlike most books, Aftershock goes beyond the outdated notion of "market cycles" to help readers clearly recognize and quickly respond to the rapidly evolving economy. Instead of going back to how things were before, we are moving forward through uncharted territory, with new challenges and opportunities few people anticipate. The book shows you how to: Protect assets before and during the second wave of the financial meltdown Make wise investment decisions regarding stocks, bonds, real estate, and more Know which jobs, careers, and businesses will fare the best Profit from the collapsing bubbles Other titles by Wiedemer, Wiedemer, and Spitzer: America's Bubble Economy Aftershock is easy-to-read, entertaining, and practical book guides readers to seek safety and profits in these evolving economic conditions.
Download or read book What Every Economics Student Needs to Know and Doesn t Get in the Usual Principles Text written by John Komlos and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This short book explores a core group of 40 topics that tend to go unexplored in an Introductory Economics course. Though not a replacement for an introductory text, the work is intended as a supplement to provoke further thought and discussion by juxtaposing blackboard models of the economy with empirical observations.
Download or read book Foundations of Real World Economics written by John Komlos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-11 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2008 financial crisis, the rise of Trumpism and the other populist movements which have followed in their wake have grown out of the frustrations of those hurt by the economic policies advocated by conventional economists for generations. Despite this, textbooks continue to praise conventional policies such as deregulation and hyperglobalization. This textbook demonstrates how misleading it can be to apply oversimplified models of perfect competition to the real world. The math works well on college blackboards but not so well on the Main Streets of America. This volume explores the realities of oligopolies, the real impact of the minimum wage, the double-edged sword of free trade, and other ways in which powerful institutions cause distortions in the mainstream models. Bringing together the work of key scholars, such as Kahneman, Minsky, and Schumpeter, this book demonstrates how we should take into account the inefficiencies that arise due to asymmetric information, mental biases, unequal distribution of wealth and power, and the manipulation of demand. This textbook offers students a valuable introductory text with insights into the workings of real markets not just imaginary ones formulated by blackboard economists. A must-have for students studying the principles of economics as well as micro- and macroeconomics, this textbook redresses the existing imbalance in economic teaching. Instead of clinging to an ideology that only enriched the 1%, Komlos sketches the outline of a capitalism with a human face, an economy in which people live contented lives with dignity instead of focusing on GNP.
Download or read book Global Slump written by David McNally and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2010-12-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global Slump analyzes the global financial meltdown as the first systemic crisis of the neoliberal stage of capitalism. It argues that—far from having ended—the crisis has ushered in a whole period of worldwide economic and political turbulence. In developing an account of the crisis as rooted in fundamental features of capitalism, Global Slump challenges the view that its source lies in financial deregulation. The book locates the recent meltdown in the intense economic restructuring that marked the recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s. Through this lens, it highlights the emergence of new patterns of world inequality and new centers of accumulation, particularly in East Asia, and the profound economic instabilities these produced. Global Slump offers an original account of the “financialization” of the world economy during this period, and explores the intricate connections between international financial markets and new forms of debt and dispossession, particularly in the Global South. Analyzing the massive intervention of the world’s central banks to stave off another Great Depression, Global Slump shows that, while averting a complete meltdown, this intervention also laid the basis for recurring crises for poor and working class people: job loss, increased poverty and inequality, and deep cuts to social programs. The book takes a global view of these processes, exposing the damage inflicted on countries in the Global South, as well as the intensification of racism and attacks on migrant workers. At the same time, Global Slump also traces new patterns of social and political resistance—from housing activism and education struggles, to mass strikes and protests in Martinique, Guadeloupe, France and Puerto Rico—as indicators of the potential for building anti-capitalist opposition to the damage that neoliberal capitalism is inflicting on the lives of millions.
Download or read book Freefall America Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy written by Joseph E. Stiglitz and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-10-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incisive look at the global economic crisis, our flawed response, and the implications for the world’s future prosperity. The Great Recession, as it has come to be called, has impacted more people worldwide than any crisis since the Great Depression. Flawed government policy and unscrupulous personal and corporate behavior in the United States created the current financial meltdown, which was exported across the globe with devastating consequences. The crisis has sparked an essential debate about America’s economic missteps, the soundness of this country’s economy, and even the appropriate shape of a capitalist system. Few are more qualified to comment during this turbulent time than Joseph E. Stiglitz. Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Stiglitz is “an insanely great economist, in ways you can’t really appreciate unless you’re deep into the field” (Paul Krugman, New York Times). In Freefall, Stiglitz traces the origins of the Great Recession, eschewing easy answers and demolishing the contention that America needs more billion-dollar bailouts and free passes to those “too big to fail,” while also outlining the alternatives and revealing that even now there are choices ahead that can make a difference. The system is broken, and we can only fix it by examining the underlying theories that have led us into this new “bubble capitalism.” Ranging across a host of topics that bear on the crisis, Stiglitz argues convincingly for a restoration of the balance between government and markets. America as a nation faces huge challenges—in health care, energy, the environment, education, and manufacturing—and Stiglitz penetratingly addresses each in light of the newly emerging global economic order. An ongoing war of ideas over the most effective type of capitalist system, as well as a rebalancing of global economic power, is shaping that order. The battle may finally give the lie to theories of a “rational” market or to the view that America’s global economic dominance is inevitable and unassailable. For anyone watching with indignation while a reckless Wall Street destroyed homes, educations, and jobs; while the government took half-steps hoping for a “just-enough” recovery; and while bankers fell all over themselves claiming not to have seen what was coming, then sought government bailouts while resisting regulation that would make future crises less likely, Freefall offers a clear accounting of why so many Americans feel disillusioned today and how we can realize a prosperous economy and a moral society for the future.
Download or read book What Every Economics Student Needs to Know and Doesn t Get in the Usual Principles Text written by John Komlos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-17 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This short book explores a core group of 40 topics that tend to go unexplored in an Introductory Economics course. Though not a replacement for an introductory text, the work is intended as a supplement to provoke further thought and discussion by juxtaposing blackboard models of the economy with empirical observations. Each chapter starts with a short "refresher" of standard neoclassical economic modelling before getting into real world economic life. Komlos shows how misleading it can be to mechanically apply the perfect competition model in an oligopolistic environment where only an insignificant share of economic activity takes place in perfectly competitive conditions. Most economics texts introduce the notion of oligopoly and differentiate it from the perfect competition model with its focus on "price takers." Komlos contends that oligopolies are "price makers" like monopolies and cause consumers and economies nearly as much harm. Likewise, most textbook authors eschew any distortions of market pricing by government, but there is usually little discussion of the real impact of minimum wages, which Komlos corrects. The book is an affordable supplement for all basic economics courses or for anyone who wants to review the basic ideas of economics with clear eyes.
Download or read book Aftershocks written by Anton Hemerijck and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Aftershocks was written in the midst of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Although it would be premature to presume to identify the repercussions of the crisis, it is clear that it will have profound aftershock effects in the political, economic, and social spheres. The book contains essays based on semi-structured interviews with leading scholars, European politicians and representatives from the world of business. They reflect on the origins of the crisis as well as the possible social, economic, and political transformations it may engender."--Publisher's description.
Download or read book The Economic Consequences of the Peace written by John Maynard Keynes and published by Simon Publications LLC. This book was released on 1920 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Maynard Keynes, then a rising young economist, participated in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as chief representative of the British Treasury and advisor to Prime Minister David Lloyd George. He resigned after desperately trying and failing to reduce the huge demands for reparations being made on Germany. The Economic Consequences of the Peace is Keynes' brilliant and prophetic analysis of the effects that the peace treaty would have both on Germany and, even more fatefully, the world.
Download or read book Taking Economics Seriously written by Dean Baker and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-04-02 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading economist's exploration of what our economic arrangements might look like if we applied basic principles without ideological blinders. There is nothing wrong with economics, Dean Baker contends, but economists routinely ignore their own principles when it comes to economic policy. What would policy look like if we took basic principles of mainstream economics seriously and applied them consistently? In the debate over regulation, for example, Baker—one of the few economists who predicted the meltdown of fall 2008—points out that ideological blinders have obscured the fact there is no “free market” to protect. Modern markets are highly regulated, although intrusive regulations such as copyright and patents are rarely viewed as regulatory devices. If we admit the extent to which the economy is and will be regulated, we have many more options in designing policy and deciding who benefits from it. On health care reform, Baker complains that economists ignore another basic idea: marginal cost pricing. Unlike all other industries, medical services are priced extraordinarily high, far above the cost of production, yet that discrepancy is rarely addressed in the debate about health care reform. What if we applied marginal cost pricing—making doctors' wages competitive and charging less for prescription drugs and tests such as MRIs? Taking Economics Seriously offers an alternative Econ 101. It introduces economic principles and thinks through what we might gain if we free ourselves from ideological blinders and get back to basics in the most troubled parts of our economy.
Download or read book A World Without a Safety Net written by W. Croft Frederick W. Croft and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As global competition heats up and drives the economy, it touches many businesses and industries. A World without a Safety Net is a hands-on guide to the tough new world of business performance. Author Frederick W. Croft, an expert who has built value for private equity buyers and major corporations, provides options for managing more effectively in a global world. He examines global competition what companies are doing and how they are doing it. As managers cope with the permanent changes in management performance resulting from the economic crisis; the failure of the financial engineering approaches that drove share value in the past two decades; and the end of cheap capital, they must build value or they'll fail. Croft, a restructuring expert, shows managers how to create value through three essential disciplines: managing information, managing execution, and managing decision-making. With straight talk, specific tools, real-world practices and the experiences of U.S. and multinational companies, A World without a Safety Net equips managers to work more effectively and keep businesses alive and thriving in the unforgiving world of the post-crisis economy.
Download or read book Busted Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown written by Edmund L. Andrews and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-05-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fiasco that sank millions of Americans, including one journalist, who thought he knew better. A veteran New York Times economics reporter, Ed Andrews was intimately aware of the dangers posed by easy mortgages from fast-buck lenders. Yet, at the promise of a second chance at love, he succumbed to the temptation of subprime lending and became part of the economic catastrophe he was covering. In surprisingly short order, he amassed a staggering amount of debt and reached the edge of bankruptcy. In Busted, Andrew bluntly recounts his misadventures in mortgages and goes one step further to describe the brokers, lenders, Wall Street players, and Washington policymakers who helped bring that money to his door. The result is a penetrating and often acerbic look at the binge and bust that nearly bankrupted the United States. Enabled by know-nothing complacency in Washington, Wall Street wizards used "collateralized debt obligations," "conduits," and other inscrutable financial "innovations" to put American home financing into hyperdrive. Millions of Americans abandoned the safety of thirty-year, fixed-rate mortgages and loaded up on debt. While regulators insisted that the markets knew best, Wall Street firms fragmented and repackaged unsound loans into securities that the rating agencies stamped with triple-A seals of approval. Andrews describes a remarkably democratic debacle that made fools out of people up and down the financial food chain. From a confessional meeting with Alan Greenspan to a trek through the McMansion bubble of the OC, he maps the arc of the Frankenstein loans that brought the American economy to the brink. With on-the-ground reporting from the frothiest quarters of the crisis, Andrews locates what is likely to be the high-water mark in America's long-term embrace of higher borrowing, higher risk-taking, and the fervent belief in the possibility of easy profits.
Download or read book Market Regulations and Finance written by Ratan Khasnabis and published by . This book was released on 2014-04-30 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
