Book reviews and mentions from Economics blogs...

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

Raghuram Rajan was one of the few economists who warned of the global financial crisis before it hit. Now, as the world struggles to recover, it's tempting to blame what happened on just a few greedy bankers who took irrational risks and left the rest of us to foot the bill. In Fault Lines, Rajan argues that serious flaws in the economy are also to blame, and warns that a potentially more devastating crisis awaits us if they aren't fixed.

Rajan shows how the individual choices...

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

Raghuram Rajan was one of the few economists who warned of the global financial crisis before it hit. Now, as the world struggles to recover, it's tempting to blame what happened on just a few greedy bankers who took irrational risks and left the rest of us to foot the bill. In Fault Lines, Rajan argues that serious flaws in the economy are also to blame, and warns that a potentially more devastating crisis awaits us if they aren't fixed.

Rajan shows how the individual choices that collectively brought about the economic meltdown--made by bankers, government officials, and ordinary homeowners--were rational responses to a flawed global financial order in which the incentives to take on risk are incredibly out of step with the dangers those risks pose. He traces the deepening fault lines in a world overly dependent on the indebted American consumer to power global economic growth and stave off global downturns. He exposes a system where America's growing inequality and thin social safety net create tremendous political pressure to encourage easy credit and keep job creation robust, no matter what the consequences to the economy's long-term health; and where the U.S. financial sector, with its skewed incentives, is the critical but unstable link between an overstimulated America and an underconsuming world.

In Fault Lines, Rajan demonstrates how unequal access to education and health care in the United States puts us all in deeper financial peril, even as the economic choices of countries like Germany, Japan, and China place an undue burden on America to get its policies right. He outlines the hard choices we need to make to ensure a more stable world economy and restore lasting prosperity.

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The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It
Julian Cribb

In The Coming Famine, Julian Cribb lays out a vivid picture of impending planetary crisis--a global food shortage that threatens to hit by mid-century--that would dwarf any in our previous experience. Cribb's comprehensive assessment describes a dangerous confluence of shortages--of water, land, energy, technology, and knowledge--combined with the increased demand created by population and economic growth. Writing in brisk, accessible prose, Cribb explains how the food system interacts...

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The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It
Julian Cribb

In The Coming Famine, Julian Cribb lays out a vivid picture of impending planetary crisis--a global food shortage that threatens to hit by mid-century--that would dwarf any in our previous experience. Cribb's comprehensive assessment describes a dangerous confluence of shortages--of water, land, energy, technology, and knowledge--combined with the increased demand created by population and economic growth. Writing in brisk, accessible prose, Cribb explains how the food system interacts with the environment and with armed conflict, poverty, and other societal factors. He shows how high food prices and regional shortages are already sending shockwaves into the international community. But, far from outlining a doomsday scenario, The Coming Famine offers a strong and positive call to action, exploring the greatest issue of our age and providing practical suggestions for addressing each of the major challenges it raises.

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Bailout Nation, Revised and Updated: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy
Barry Ritholtz

An engaging look at what led to the financial turmoil we now find ourselves in

Bailout Nation offers one of the clearest looks at the financial lenders, regulators, and politicians responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. Written by Barry Ritholtz, one of today's most popular economic bloggers and a well-established industry pundit, this book skillfully explores how the United States evolved from a rugged independent nation to a soft Bailout Nation-where fi...

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Bailout Nation, Revised and Updated: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy
Barry Ritholtz

An engaging look at what led to the financial turmoil we now find ourselves in

Bailout Nation offers one of the clearest looks at the financial lenders, regulators, and politicians responsible for the financial crisis of 2008. Written by Barry Ritholtz, one of today's most popular economic bloggers and a well-established industry pundit, this book skillfully explores how the United States evolved from a rugged independent nation to a soft Bailout Nation-where financial firms are allowed to self-regulate in good times, but are bailed out by taxpayers in bad times.

Entertaining and informative, this book clearly shows you how years of trying to control the economy with easy money has finally caught up with the federal government and how its practice of repeatedly rescuing Wall Street has come back to bite them.

• The definitive book on the financial crisis of 2008
• Names the culprits responsible for this tragedy-from financial regulators to politicians
• Shows how each bailout throughout modern history has impacted what happened in the future
• Examines why the consumer/taxpayer is left suffering in an economy of bubbles, bailouts, and possible inflation
• Ritholtz operates a hugely popular blog, www.ritholtz.com/blog

Scathing, but fair, Bailout Nation is a voice of reason in these uncertain economic times.

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The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050
Joel Kotkin

Visionary social thinker Joel Kotkin looks ahead to America in 2050, revealing how the addition of one hundred million Americans by midcentury will transform how we all live, work, and prosper.

In stark contrast to the rest of the world's advanced nations, the United States is growing at a record rate and, according to census projections, will be home to four hundred million Americans by 2050. This projected rise in population is the strongest indicator of our long-term econ...

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The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050
Joel Kotkin

Visionary social thinker Joel Kotkin looks ahead to America in 2050, revealing how the addition of one hundred million Americans by midcentury will transform how we all live, work, and prosper.

In stark contrast to the rest of the world's advanced nations, the United States is growing at a record rate and, according to census projections, will be home to four hundred million Americans by 2050. This projected rise in population is the strongest indicator of our long-term economic strength, Joel Kotkin believes, and will make us more diverse and more competitive than any nation on earth.

Drawing on prodigious research, firsthand reportage, and historical analysis, The Next Hundred Million reveals how this unprecedented growth will take physical shape and change the face of America. The majority of the additional hundred million Americans will find their homes in suburbia, though the suburbs of tomorrow will not resemble the Levittowns of the 1950s or the sprawling exurbs of the late twentieth century. The suburbs of the twenty-first century will be less reliant on major cities for jobs and other amenities and, as a result, more energy efficient. Suburbs will also be the melting pots of the future as more and more immigrants opt for dispersed living over crowded inner cities and the majority in the United States becomes nonwhite by 2050.

In coming decades, urbanites will flock in far greater numbers to affordable, vast, and autoreliant metropolitan areas-such as Houston, Phoenix, and Las Vegas-than to glamorous but expensive industrial cities, such as New York and Chicago. Kotkin also foresees that the twenty-first century will be marked by a resurgence of the American heartland, far less isolated in the digital era and a crucial source of renewable fuels and real estate for a growing population. But in both big cities and small towns across the country, we will see what Kotkin calls "the new localism"-a greater emphasis on family ties and local community, enabled by online networks and the increasing numbers of Americans working from home.

The Next Hundred Million provides a vivid snapshot of America in 2050 by focusing not on power brokers, policy disputes, or abstract trends, but rather on the evolution of the more intimate units of American society-families, towns, neighborhoods, industries. It is upon the success or failure of these communities, Kotkin argues, that the American future rests.

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The City: A Global History (Modern Library Chronicles)
Joel Kotkin

If humankind can be said to have a single greatest creation, it would be those places that represent the most eloquent expression of our species’s ingenuity, beliefs, and ideals: the city. In this authoritative and engagingly written account, the acclaimed urbanist and bestselling author examines the evolution of urban life over the millennia and, in doing so, attempts to answer the age-old question: What makes a city great?

Despite their infinite variety, all cities essentially serve ...

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The City: A Global History (Modern Library Chronicles)
Joel Kotkin

If humankind can be said to have a single greatest creation, it would be those places that represent the most eloquent expression of our species’s ingenuity, beliefs, and ideals: the city. In this authoritative and engagingly written account, the acclaimed urbanist and bestselling author examines the evolution of urban life over the millennia and, in doing so, attempts to answer the age-old question: What makes a city great?

Despite their infinite variety, all cities essentially serve three purposes: spiritual, political, and economic. Kotkin follows the progression of the city from the early religious centers of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China to the imperial centers of the Classical era, through the rise of the Islamic city and the European commercial capitals, ending with today’s post-industrial suburban metropolis.

Despite widespread optimistic claims that cities are “back in style,” Kotkin warns that whatever their form, cities can thrive only if they remain sacred, safe, and busy–and this is true for both the increasingly urbanized developing world and the often self-possessed “global cities” of the West and East Asia.

Looking at cities in the twenty-first century, Kotkin discusses the effects of developments such as shifting demographics and emerging technologies. He also considers the effects of terrorism–how the religious and cultural struggles of the present pose the greatest challenge to the urban future.

Truly global in scope, The City is a timely narrative that will place Kotkin in the company of Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and other preeminent urban scholars.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids
Bryan Caplan

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Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids
Bryan Caplan

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The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (New Edition)
Bryan Caplan

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.

Boldly calling in...

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The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (New Edition)
Bryan Caplan

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.

Boldly calling into question our most basic assumptions about American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an analysis of Americans' voting behavior and opinions on a range of economic issues, he makes the convincing case that noneconomists suffer from four prevailing biases: they underestimate the wisdom of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse. Caplan lays out several bold ways to make democratic government work better--for example, urging economic educators to focus on correcting popular misconceptions and recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack.

The Myth of the Rational Voter takes an unflinching look at how people who vote under the influence of false beliefs ultimately end up with government that delivers lousy results. With the upcoming presidential election season drawing nearer, this thought-provoking book is sure to spark a long-overdue reappraisal of our elective system.

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Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and unknowns in the dazzling world of derivatives Revised edition (Financial Times Series)
Satyajit Das

Traders Guns and Money is a wickedly comic expose of the culture, games and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world. And played out with other people's money. A sensational insider's view of the business of trading and marketing derivatives, this revised edition explains the frighteningly central role that derivatives and financial products played in the global financial crisis. This worldwide bestseller reveals the truth about derivatives: those financial tools...

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Traders, Guns and Money: Knowns and unknowns in the dazzling world of derivatives Revised edition (Financial Times Series)
Satyajit Das

Traders Guns and Money is a wickedly comic expose of the culture, games and pure deceptions played out every day in trading rooms around the world. And played out with other people's money. A sensational insider's view of the business of trading and marketing derivatives, this revised edition explains the frighteningly central role that derivatives and financial products played in the global financial crisis. This worldwide bestseller reveals the truth about derivatives: those financial tools memorably described by Warren Buffett as financial weapons of mass destruction'. Traders, Guns and Money will introduce you to the players and the practices and reveals how the real money is made and lost. The global financial crisis took almost everyone by surprise and even now new problems keep appearing and solutions continue to be elusive. In the original version of Traders, Guns and Money, Satyajit Das provided a highly prescient insight into the structure and risk of the world financial system exposing the problems that are becoming readily apparent. In a 2006 speech The Coming Credit Crash Das argued that: "an informed analysis shows that risk is not better spread but more leveraged and (arguably) more concentrated . This does not improve the overall stability and security of the financial system but exposes it to increased risk of a "crash". this is possibly the best insider account of a career in investments since Michael Lewis's book Liar's Poker .I can't recommend this book strongly enough.' www. dna.bloggingstocks.com a true rarity: a derivatives book that keeps your attention all the way through...' Kristina West FOW A worthwhile read for anyone with connection to the financial world.' WorldFinance.com ...this revealing insider's account ...the book is peppered with cautionary tales...Das wittily exposes the mechanisms behind the arcane language ...' Carol Kennedy, UKCorporate Director Traders, Guns and Moneywill be useful for anyone with connection to finance.' Patrick Norwood, Society of Business Economists Book Review given the dramatic impact of derivatives, this book is a must-read.' NYSSA News contains more than investor advice, with plenty of tales of gluttonous excess and trading floor antics...' Cameron DueckSouth China Morning Post . must read for all CEOs, CFOs, bankers and anyone who cares about what banks are doing with their money.' Lara Wozniak, www.financeasia.com The murky and complex world of finances and derivatives is scrupulously and frantically told in this brilliant narrative a collection and recollection of exquisite financial tales well worth your time.' Convergence 'an amusing, down-to-earth look behind the scenes of the derivatives market .There were several times I laughed out loud .' www.runningofthebools.typepad.com About the authors Satyajit Das is an international expert on financial derivatives and has over 30 years' experience in the financial markets. Having worked both on the sell side and the buy side for banks such as the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Citicorp Investment Bank, Merrill Lynch and the TNT Group, he now acts as a consultant advising banks and corporations and presenting seminars on derivatives throughout the world. He is a frequent interviewee and widely quoted in the financial press in the USA, Canada, UK/ Europe, South Africa, Australia, NZ and Asia. Das is recognised for his capacity to communicate complex financial subjects and trends in simple and non-technical language. Das is the author of a number of key reference works on derivatives and risk management including Swaps/ Financial Derivatives Library Third Edition(2005) (a 4 volume 4,200 page reference work for practitioners on derivatives) and Credit Derivatives, CDOs and Structured Credit Products Third Edition (2005). He is also the author (with Jade Novakovic) of In Search of the Pangolin: The Accidental Eco-Tourist (2006).

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Balance Sheet Recession: Japan's Struggle with Uncharted Economics and its Global Implications
Richard C. Koo

In this groundbreaking book, leading international economist, Richard Koo argues that far from being the sick man of Asia, Japan is suffering from a temporary but highly unusual economic aberration.

Economists and business commentators have always assumed that the majority of companies in any economy are forward looking and are trying to maximize profits. They never considered the possibility that a vast majority of companies may be placing their highest priorities on minimizing deb...

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Balance Sheet Recession: Japan's Struggle with Uncharted Economics and its Global Implications
Richard C. Koo

In this groundbreaking book, leading international economist, Richard Koo argues that far from being the sick man of Asia, Japan is suffering from a temporary but highly unusual economic aberration.

Economists and business commentators have always assumed that the majority of companies in any economy are forward looking and are trying to maximize profits. They never considered the possibility that a vast majority of companies may be placing their highest priorities on minimizing debt in order to repair their balance sheets. But that remote possibility has been the reality in Japan for the past decade, and more recently in many other countries including at least a part of the US.

Balance Sheet Recession argues that contrary to popular belief, it is this massive shift in corporate behavior, instead of structural problems, that is the root cause of both the deflation and the non-performing loan problems that have troubled Japan for so long. It argues that when the causality runs from the corporate balance sheet problems to deflation and banking problems, a highly unconventional policy response is needed to stabilize the economy. After all, the last time anything similar has happened was the 1930s in the US.

Richard Koo's experience in dealing with both the US banking crisis of the early 1980s and the Japanese balance sheet and banking problems of the last ten years makes him unique qualified to comment on this situation. He clearly explains how such a recession can happen in any economy following an asset price bubble, and how best to deal with it.

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Our Kind of Traitor: A Novel
John le Carre

The unrivaled master of spy fiction returns with a taut and suspenseful of dirty money and dirtier politics.

For nearly half a century, John le Carré's limitless imagination has enthralled millions of readers and moviegoers around the globe. From the cold war to the bitter fruits of colonialism to unrest in the Middle East, he has reinvented the spy novel again and again. Now, le Carré makes his Viking debut with a stunning tour-de-force that only a craftsman of his caliber c...

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Our Kind of Traitor: A Novel
John le Carre

The unrivaled master of spy fiction returns with a taut and suspenseful of dirty money and dirtier politics.

For nearly half a century, John le Carré's limitless imagination has enthralled millions of readers and moviegoers around the globe. From the cold war to the bitter fruits of colonialism to unrest in the Middle East, he has reinvented the spy novel again and again. Now, le Carré makes his Viking debut with a stunning tour-de-force that only a craftsman of his caliber could pen. As menacing and flawlessly paced as The Little Drummer Girl and as morally complex as The Constant Gardener, Our Kind of Traitor is signature le Carré.

. Perry and Gail are idealistic and very much in love when they splurge on a tennis vacation at a posh beach resort in Antigua. But the charm begins to pall when a big-time Russian money launderer enlists their help to defect. In exchange for amnesty, Dima is ready to rat out his vory (Russian criminal brotherhood) compatriots and expose corruption throughout the so-called legitimate financial and political worlds. Soon, the guileless couple find themselves pawns in a deadly endgame whose outcome will be determined by the victor of the British Secret Service's ruthless internecine battles.

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Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics
Eric D. Beinhocker

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Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics
Eric D. Beinhocker

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The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics, Revised Edition: Lessons from Japans Great Recession
Richard C. Koo

The revised edition of this highly acclaimed work presents crucial lessons from Japan's recession that could aid the US and other economies as they struggle to recover from the current financial crisis.

This book is about Japan's 15-year long recession and how it affected current theoretical thinking about its causes and cures. It has a detailed explanation on what happened to Japan, but the discoveries made are so far-reaching that a large portion of economics literature will have ...

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The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics, Revised Edition: Lessons from Japans Great Recession
Richard C. Koo

The revised edition of this highly acclaimed work presents crucial lessons from Japan's recession that could aid the US and other economies as they struggle to recover from the current financial crisis.

This book is about Japan's 15-year long recession and how it affected current theoretical thinking about its causes and cures. It has a detailed explanation on what happened to Japan, but the discoveries made are so far-reaching that a large portion of economics literature will have to be modified to accommodate another half to the macroeconomic spectrum of possibilities that conventional theorists have overlooked.

The author developed the idea of yin and yang business cycles where the conventional world of profit maximization is the yang and the world of balance sheet recession, where companies are minimizing debt, is the yin. Once so divided, many varied theories developed in macro economics since the 1930s can be nicely categorized into a single comprehensive theory- The Holy Grail of Macro Economics

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Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance
Nouriel Roubini

BRAND NEW 2010 HARDBACK EDITION, SOME SHELFWEAR MARKS. OVERSTOCK MARK

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Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance
Nouriel Roubini

BRAND NEW 2010 HARDBACK EDITION, SOME SHELFWEAR MARKS. OVERSTOCK MARK

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Risk and Liquidity (Clarendon Lectures in Finance)
Hyun Song Shin

This book presents the Clarendon Lectures in Finance by one of the leading exponents of financial booms and crises. Hyun Song Shin's work has shed light on the recent global financial crisis and he has been a central figure in the policy debates.

The paradox of the global financial crisis is that it erupted in an era when risk management was at the core of the management of the most sophisticated financial institutions. This book explains why. The severity of the crisis is explaine...

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Risk and Liquidity (Clarendon Lectures in Finance)
Hyun Song Shin

This book presents the Clarendon Lectures in Finance by one of the leading exponents of financial booms and crises. Hyun Song Shin's work has shed light on the recent global financial crisis and he has been a central figure in the policy debates.

The paradox of the global financial crisis is that it erupted in an era when risk management was at the core of the management of the most sophisticated financial institutions. This book explains why. The severity of the crisis is explained by financial development that put marketable assets at the heart of the financial system, and the increased sophistication of financial institutions that held and traded the assets. Step by step, the lectures build an analytical framework that take the reader through the economics behind the fluctuations in the price of risk and the boom-bust dynamics that follow. The book examines the role played by market-to-market accounting rules and securitisation in amplifying the crisis, and draws lessons for financial architecture, financial regulation and monetary policy.

This book will be of interest to all serious students of economics and finance who want to delve beneath the outward manifestations to grasp the underlying dynamics of the boom-bust cycle in a modern financial system - a system where banking and capital market developments have become inseparable.

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A Journey: My Political Life
Tony Blair

Tony Blair is a politician who defines our times. His emergence as Labour Party leader in 1994 marked a seismic shift in British politics. Within a few short years, he had transformed his party and rallied the country behind him, becoming prime minister in 1997 with the biggest victory in Labour’s history, and bringing to an end eighteen years of Conservative government. He took Labour to a historic three terms in office as Britain’s dominant political figure of the last two decades.

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