Showing titles in Macroeconomics

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic made it painfully clear that governments across the world could not adequately protect their citizens. Millions of people suffered and died in just two years, while administrations around the globe blundered; prize-winning economists overlooked devastating trade-offs from the collapse of trade; and elites escaped to isolated retreats. In this compelling economic, political and financial history, veteran journalists Bethany McClean and Joseph Nocera analyse the American response to the pandemic as a case study, to offer fresh and provocative answers.

According to conventional wisdom, innovation is best left to the dynamic entrepreneurs of the private sector, and government should get out of the way. But what if all this was wrong? What if, from Silicon Valley to medical breakthroughs, the public sector has been the boldest and most valuable risk taker of all?

There are, in the United States, a significant and growing number of families who live on less than $2.00 per person, per day. That figure, the World Bank measure of poverty, is hard to imagine in this country - most of us spend more than that before we get to work or school in the morning.

Central banking is magic. With a few words, the Fed can lift the stock market out of desperation and catapult it towards euphoric highs. With a few keystrokes, the Fed can conjure up trillions of dollars and fund virtually unlimited Federal spending. And with a few poor decisions, the Fed can plunge the entire world into a recession. The Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful institutions in the world, and also one of the most difficult to understand.

Too often, textbooks turn the noteworthy details of economics into tedious discourse that would put even Joseph Stiglitz to sleep. Economics 101 cuts out the boring explanations and instead provides a hands-on lesson that keeps you engaged as you explore how societies allocate their resources for maximum benefit. From quantitative easing to marginal utility, this primer is packed with hundreds of entertaining tidbits and concepts that you won't be able to get anywhere else.

Noam Chomsky is widely regarded as the most influential thinker of our time, but never before has he devoted a major book to one topic: income inequality. Requiem for the American Dream is not an essay collection but an entire work of some 70,000 words, based on four years of interviews with Chomsky by the editors. It is a book that makes Chomsky's breadth and depth accessible and at the same time gives us his most powerful political ideas with unprecedented, breathtaking directness.

The Blue Sweater is the inspiring story of a woman who left a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to understand global poverty. It all started back home in Virginia, with the blue sweater, a gift that quickly became her prized possession - until the day she outgrew it and gave it away to Goodwill. Eleven years later in Africa, she spotted a young boy wearing that very sweater, with her name still on the tag inside.

Since 1946, Henry Hazlitt's best-selling Economics in One Lesson has popularized the belief that economics can be boiled down to one simple lesson: market prices represent the true cost of everything. But one-lesson economics tells only half the story. It can explain why markets often work so well, but it can't explain why they often fail so badly - or what we should do when they stumble. In Economics in Two Lessons, John Quiggin teaches both lessons, offering a masterful introduction to the key ideas behind the successes - and failures - of free markets.

Economist Richard Holden examines the virtues and risks of low interest rates, mobile money, and cryptocurrencies and explains how these three elemental forces will continue to play out—in our wallets, on the blockchain, and throughout major economies—in the decades to come. Holden weaves in the stories of three people who have exerted massive influence over the future of modern money: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, and Raghuram Rajan, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

The climate is the fundamental issue of our time, yet it seems we can barely agree on what is really going on, let alone what needs to be done. We urgently need facts. The Carbon Almanac is a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between hundreds of writers, researchers, thinkers and leaders that focuses on what we know, what has come before and what might happen next. With thousands of data points, articles and charts explaining carbon's impact on everything in our society, it is the definitive source for facts and the basis for a global movement to fight climate change.

Analyzing the political and banking history of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil through several centuries, Fragile by Design demonstrates that chronic banking crises and scarce credit are not accidents due to unforeseen circumstances. Rather, these fluctuations result from the complex bargains made between politicians, bankers, bank shareholders, depositors, debtors, and taxpayers.

We all have the sense that the American economy - and its government - tilts toward big business, but as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains in his powerful new book, People, Power, and Profits, a few corporations dominate entire sectors of the economy, contributing to skyrocketing inequality and slow growth. This is how the financial industry has managed to write its own regulations, tech companies have accumulated reams of personal data with little oversight, and the government has negotiated trade deals that fail to represent the interests of workers.

With more than 65 years of participation in and observation of political and economic systems -beginning with the Great Depression, extending through World War II, the postwar era of hope for a better life, the Cold War, the subjugation of democracy by oligarchy, and the subtle but continuous militarization of America - Paul T. Hellyer analyzes what he believes has gone wrong with the world and its economy.

The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide.

Why did the size of the US economy increase by three percent on one day in mid-2013 - or Ghana's balloon by 60 percent overnight in 2010? Why did the UK financial industry show its fastest expansion ever at the end of 2008 - just as the world’s financial system went into meltdown? And why was Greece’s chief statistician charged with treason in 2013 for apparently doing nothing more than trying to accurately report the size of his country’s economy? The answers to all these questions lie in the way we define and measure national economies around the world: Gross Domestic Product.

Is it possible that the consensus around what caused the 2008 Great Recession is almost entirely wrong? It's happened before. Just as Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz led the economics community in the 1960s to reevaluate its view of what caused the Great Depression, the same may be happening now to our understanding of the first economic crisis of this century.

The bankruptcy of the investment bank Lehman Brothers was the pivotal event of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed. Ever since the bankruptcy, there has been heated debate about why the Federal Reserve did not rescue Lehman in the same way it rescued other financial institutions, such as Bear Stearns and AIG. The Fed's leaders from that time, especially former Chairman Ben Bernanke, have strongly asserted that they lacked the legal authority to save Lehman because it did not have adequate collateral for the loan it needed to survive.

"The Economic Consequences of the Peace" is a book written by John Maynard Keynes, a British economist, in 1919. The book was a critique of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I and imposed harsh economic sanctions on Germany. In the book, Keynes argued that the treaty would have disastrous economic consequences for Germany and for Europe as a whole. He believed that the sanctions would cripple Germany's economy and lead to political instability, which would in turn lead to further economic problems for the rest of Europe.

Conventional wisdom says income inequality is rising and harmful to nearly everyone, and the rich are to blame. But as Ed Conard shows, anyone who can produce a product valued by the entire economy will find his or her income growing faster than those who are limited by the number of customers they can serve, such as schoolteachers, plumbers, doctors, and lawyers.

This guidebook covers the essentials of macroeconomics and examines, in a simple and intuitive way, the core ideas of output, money, and expectations. Early chapters leave you with an understanding of everything from fiscal policy and central banking to business cycles and international trade. Later chapters provide a brief monetary history of the United States as well as the basics of macroeconomic accounting. You'll learn why countries trade, why exchange rates move, and what makes an economy grow.