The US is slowly recovering from the aftermath of the burst of the 'new economy' bubble - which was one of the worst in monetary history. Philip Arestis and Elias Karakitsos examine the causes and consequences of the burst of the 'new economy' bubble and investigate the impact on financial markets. The risks and long-term prospects for the economy and financial markets are also examined.
Why do stock and housing markets sometimes experience amazing booms followed by massive busts and why is this happening more and more frequently? In order to answer these questions, William Quinn and John D. Turner take us on a riveting ride through the history of financial bubbles, visiting, among other places, Paris and London in 1720, Latin America in the 1820s, Melbourne in the 1880s, New York in the 1920s, Tokyo in the 1980s, Silicon Valley in the 1990s and Shanghai in the 2000s. As they do so, they help us understand why bubbles happen, and why some have catastrophic economic, social and political consequences whilst others have actually benefited society. They reveal that bubbles start when investors and speculators react to new technology or political initiatives, showing that our ability to predict future bubbles will ultimately come down to being able to predict these sparks.
The US is slowly recovering from the aftermath of the burst of the 'new economy' bubble - which was one of the worst in monetary history. Philip Arestis and Elias Karakitsos examine the causes and consequences of the burst of the 'new economy' bubble and investigate the impact on financial markets. The risks and long-term prospects for the economy and financial markets are also examined.
The authors challenge this view here and develop two alternative interpretations. Both are based on the notion that a bubble (the "dot-com" bubble) has been driving the stock market, but differ in their assumptions about the interactions between this bubble and fiscal policy (the "Bush" deficits). The "benevolent" view holds that a change in investor sentiment led to the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the Bush deficits were a welfare-improving policy response to this event. The "cynical" view holds instead that the Bush deficits led to the collapse of the dot-com bubble as the new administration tried to appropriate rents from foreign investors. The authors discuss the implications of each of these views for the future evolution of the U.S. economy and, in particular, its net foreign asset position."
America’s Bubble Economy is the first book to focus on several simultaneous financial bubbles that are interacting to temporarily boost—and ultimately threaten—the United States and world economies. Filled with expert analysis and straight talk, this book will show you how to turn the coming economic transformation into a once-in-a-lifetime wealth-building opportunity.
Why the global economy has become increasingly unstable, and how financial “de-carbonization” could break the pattern of bubble-driven wealth destruction. The global economy has become increasingly, perhaps chronically, unstable. Since 2008, we have heard about the housing bubble, subprime mortgages, banks “too big to fail,” financial regulation (or the lack of it), and the European debt crisis. Wall Street has discovered that it is more profitable to make money from other people's money than by investing in the real economy, which has limited access to capital—resulting in slow growth and rising inequality. What we haven't heard much about is the role of natural resources—energy in particular—as drivers of economic growth, or the connection of “global warming” to the economic crisis. In The Bubble Economy, Robert Ayres—an economist and physicist—connects economic instability to the economics of energy. Ayres describes, among other things, the roots of our bubble economy (including the divergent influences of Senator Carter Glass—of the Glass-Steagall Law—and Ayn Rand); the role of energy in the economy, from the “oil shocks” of 1971 and 1981 through the Iraq wars; the early history of bubbles and busts; the end of Glass-Steagall; climate change; and the failures of austerity. Finally, Ayres offers a new approach to trigger economic growth. The rising price of fossil fuels (notwithstanding “fracking”) suggests that renewable energy will become increasingly profitable. Ayres argues that government should redirect private savings and global finance away from home ownership and toward “de-carbonization”—investment in renewables and efficiency. Large-scale investment in sustainability will achieve a trifecta: lowering greenhouse gas emissions, stimulating innovation-based economic growth and employment, and offering long-term investment opportunities that do not depend on risky gambling strategies with derivatives.
The US is slowly recovering from the aftermath of the burst of the 'new economy' bubble - which was one of the worst in monetary history. In this updated edition, Philip Arestis and Elias Karakitsos examine the causes and consequences of the burst of the 'new economy' bubble and investigate the impact on financial markets.
For the second time this decade, the U.S. economy is sinking into a recession due to the collapse of a financial bubble. In this book, Baker documents the fundamental policy changes since 1980 that destabilized the economy and eroded the broad prosperity of the post-war period.
Dean Baker, codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research recounts the strategies used by the country’s top economic policymakers to conceal their failure to recognize the housing bubble or take steps to rein it in before it grew to unprecedented levels, resulting in the loss of millions of jobs, homes, and the life savings of tens of millions of people. He quashes dire warnings of looming rampant inflation and spiraling debt with solid historic evidence to the contrary—evidence that supports more stimulus, not less. With a dose of optimism, Baker outlines a thoughtful progressive program for rebuilding the economy and reshaping the financial system, including new financial transaction taxes that will reduce or eliminate economic waste while providing stimulus and incentives where and when they are most needed.
The bursting of the economic bubble in the 1990s shook the very foundation of the post-war economic 'miracle' and marked the beginning of a gradual shift in the environmental consciousness of the Japanese. Yet, it by no means removed consumption from the pivotal position it occupied within Japanese society. Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan argues that consumption in Japan today is no longer simply a component of everyday economic activities, but rather a reflection of a society guided by the 'logic of late capitalism'. The volume pins down the contradictory nature of the setting in which consuming occurs in Japan today: the veneration of material comfort and convenience on the one hand, and the new rhetoric of recycling and energy conservation on the other. Theoretical insights developed as part of an art-historical enquiry, such as notions of socially engaged art and its critique, offer a new paradigm for investigating this dilemma. By combining case studies analysing the production and consumption of contemporary art with ethnographic material related to ordinary commodities and shopping, this volume provides a novel, transdisciplinary approach to exploring how a 'society of consumers' operates in post-bubble Japan and how contemporary life is a 'consuming project'.