Using transcripts of Greenspan's FOMC meetings as well as testimony before Congress, this book delivers a timeline of his most devastating mistakes and weaves together the connection between every economic calamity of the past 19 years.
Ben Bernanke's swearing in as Federal Reserve chairman in 2006 marked the end of Alan Greenspan's long, legendary career. To date, the new chair has garnered mixed reviews. Business economists see him as the best-qualified successor to Greenspan, while many traders and investors worry that he's too academic for the job. Meanwhile, many ordinary Americans do not even know who he is. How will Bernanke's leadership affect the Fed's actions in the coming years? How will Bernanke build on Greenspan's success, but also put his own stamp on the Fed? What will all this imply for businesses and investors? In Ben Bernanke's Fed, Ethan Harris provides exceptional insights into these crucial issues. As a leading "Fed watch" economist, Harris draws on Bernanke's academic research, his speeches as a governor of the Fed, and his first two years on the job to shed light on: · How the Federal Reserve analyzes and manages the economy using a synthesis of classical and Keynesian theory · Bernanke's strategies for fighting inflation · The implications of the new chair's remarkably plain-spoken style · How Bernanke has cultivated diverse viewpoints but still builds consensus within the Fed Engaging and discerning, this book demystifies the man who has stepped into what many describe as the second most powerful job in America.
From the bestselling author of The Map and the Territory and Capitalism in America The Age Of Turbulence is Alan Greenspan’s incomparable reckoning with the contemporary financial world, channeled through his own experiences working in the command room of the global economy longer and with greater effect than any other single living figure. Following the arc of his remarkable life’s journey through his more than eighteen-year tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board to the present, in the second half of The Age of Turbulence Dr. Greenspan embarks on a magnificent tour d’horizon of the global economy. The distillation of a life’s worth of wisdom and insight into an elegant expression of a coherent worldview, The Age of Turbulence will stand as Alan Greenspan’s personal and intellectual legacy.
Economists broadly define financial asset price bubbles as episodes in which prices rise with notable rapidity and depart from historically established asset valuation multiples and relationships. Financial economists have for decades attempted to study and interpret bubbles through the prisms of rational expectations, efficient markets, and equilibrium, arbitrage, and capital asset pricing models, but they have not made much if any progress toward a consistent and reliable theory that explains how and why bubbles (and crashes) evolve and can also be defined, measured, and compared. This book develops a new and different approach that is based on the central notion that bubbles and crashes reflect urgent short-side rationing, which means that, as such extreme conditions unfold, considerations of quantities owned or not owned begin to displace considerations of price.
ÔHasan CšmertÕs timely book reaches us during the prolonged conditions of the global great recession. By providing a thorough and detailed econometric analysis of the institutional and historical developments of the hegemonic leader of capitalism, Cšmert reveals that the simplistic monetary policy tools of the central banks of the so-called Òmodern great moderationÓ era are over, and we are now at cross-roads of a paradigmatic shift. CšmertÕs book suggests itself as one of the first leading examples of this shift.Õ Ð Erini Yeldan, Yasar University, Turkey ÔThis provocative book shows that the Federal Reserve has, in the last four decades, gradually lost influence over credit and financial markets. This argument, supported by institutional analysis and econometric tests, has two explosive implications: first, Federal Reserve policy did not cause the subprime crisis; second, central banks no longer have instruments for intervening in economies whose growth they are now expected to restore. Anyone concerned with the future of global capitalism should consider ComertÕs work as a matter of urgency.Õ Ð Gary Dymski, Leeds University Business School, UK and University of California, Riverside, US ÔPrior to the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, mainstream economists celebrated a ÒNew ConsensusÓ on monetary policy in which independent central banks were assumed able to bring about a ÒGreat ModerationÓ of low inflation and high economic growth by manipulating short-term interest rates. In this important and interesting book, Hasan Cšmert demonstrates convincingly, through institutional analysis and econometrics, that central banks lost control of the price and quantity of credit starting two decades before this celebration. He shows that central banks themselves, through their support of financial market deregulation and globalization, helped bring about both monetary policy impotence and the global crisis. ItÕs a must-read.Õ Ð James Crotty, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, there has been increasing debate over the appropriate role of central banks in mitigating economic disaster. This timely volume combines detailed historical and econometric analyses to explore the profound changes that occurred within the US financial system from the 1980s to the present, and shows how these changes have affected the US economy. Hasan Cšmert demonstrates how dramatic shifts in the financial system undermined the ability of the US Federal Reserve to control the price and quantity of credit. He identifies several key factors that facilitated this loss of control, including deregulation, rapid financial innovations, increased financial integration and a number of policy decisions implemented within the Federal Reserve itself. Through a combination of several methods, including historical and institutional analyses, descriptive statistics, simulation and econometric techniques, the author provides a well-rounded and vitally important picture of the US financial system and offers insightful policy recommendations for the future. Students, professors and policymakers with an interest in economics, finance, banking and monetary policy will no doubt find this book a fascinating and invaluable resource.
This timely and authoritative set explores three centuries of good times and hard times in major economies throughout the world. More than 400 signed articles cover events from Tulipmania during the 1630s to the U.S. federal stimulus package of 2009, and introduce readers to underlying concepts, recurring themes, major institutions, and notable figures. Written in a clear, accessible style, "Booms and Busts" provides vital insight and perspective for students, teachers, librarians, and the general public - anyone interested in understanding the historical precedents, causes, and effects of the global economic crisis. Special features include a chronology of major booms and busts through history, a glossary of economic terms, a guide to further research, an appendix of primary documents, a topic finder, and a comprehensive index. It features 1,050 pages; three volumes; 8-1/2" X 11"; topic finder; photos; chronology; glossary; primary documents; bibliography; and, index.
Capitalism, Coronavirus and War investigates the decay of neoliberal financialised capitalism as revealed in the crisis the novel coronavirus triggered but did not cause, a crisis that has been deepened by the conflict over Ukraine and its repercussions across the globe. Leading domestically to economic and political breakdown, the pandemic accelerated the decline of the US-led capitalist world’s imperial power, intensifying the tendency to lash out with aggression and militarism, as seen in the US-led West’s New Cold War against China and the proxy war against Russia over Ukraine. The geopolitical economy of the decay and crisis of this form of capitalism suggests that the struggle with socialism that has long shaped the fate of capitalism has reached a tipping point. The author argues that mainstream and even many progressive forces take capitalism’s longevity for granted, misunderstand its historical dynamics and deny its formative bond with imperialism. Only a theoretically and historically accurate account of capitalism’s dynamics and historical trajectory, which this book provides, can explain its current failures and predicament. It also reveals why, though the pandemic—by revealing capitalism’s obscene inequality and shocking debility—prompted the most serious critiques of capitalism to emerge in decades, hopes of ‘building back better’ were so quickly dashed. This book sheds searching light on the dominant narratives that have normalised the neoliberal financialised capitalism and the dollar creditocracy dominating the world economy, with even critics unable to link capitalism’s neoliberal turn to its financialisations, historical decay, productive debility and international decline. It contends that only by appreciating the seriousness of the crisis and rectifying our understanding of capitalism can progressive forces thwart a future of chaos and/or authoritarianism and begin the long task of building socialism. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and researchers of international relations, international political economy, comparative politics and global political sociology. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched www.knowledgeunlatched.org
An updated examination of what's weakening the U.S. economy, and how to fix it The Committee to Destroy the World: Inside the Plot to Unleash a Super Crash on the Global Economy is a passionate and informed analysis of the struggling global economy. In this masterfully conceived and executed work, Michael Lewitt, one of Wall Street's most respected market strategists and money managers, updates his groundbreaking examination of the causes of the 2008 crisis and argues that economic and geopolitical conditions are even more unstable today. His analysis arrives in time for the impending economic and geopolitical debates of the 2016 election season. Lewitt explains in detail how debt has now overrun the world's capacity, how federal policies of the past few decades have created a downward vortex sapping growth and vitality from the American economy, and how greed and corruption are preventing reform. The financial crisis created tens of trillions of debt, leaving investors to pay a huge price for these policy failures: The highest asset inflation we've seen in our lifetimes, although the government claims there isn't enough inflation More than $2 trillion of stock buybacks funded with low cost debt that are artificially inflating stock prices The Federal Reserve and other global central banks becoming the largest buyers of government debt in order to suppress interest rates An M&A boom resulting from companies needing to find growth outside of their core businesses While the financial media misses the story, Lewitt pulls no punches explaining how all of these trends are leading to the brink of another crisis. Lewitt lays out a survival plan for the average investor to protect their assets when the debt bubble bursts. The first edition of this book expressed hope that policymakers would not let the financial crisis go to waste. This book urges investors to learn from the crushed hope and take action before the next crisis.
In The Social Life of Financial Derivatives Edward LiPuma theorizes the profound social dimensions of derivatives markets and the processes, rituals, and belief systems that drive them. In response to the 2008 financial crisis and drawing on his experience trading derivatives, LiPuma outlines how they function as complex devices that organize speculative capital as well as the ways derivative-driven capitalism not only produces the conditions for its own existence, but also penetrates the fabric of everyday life. Framing finance as a form of social life and highlighting the intrinsically social character of financial derivatives, LiPuma deepens our understanding of derivatives so that we may someday use them to serve the public well-being.