House Economics

Two decades into the twenty-first century, the stagnation of living standards has become the defining trend of American life. Life expectancy has declined, economic inequality has soared, and, after some progress, the Black-white wage gap is once again as large as it was in the 1950s. How did this happen in the world’s most powerful country? And what happened to the “American dream”—the promise of a happier, healthier, more prosperous future—which was once such an inextricable part of our national identity?

Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were the weapons of choice at Wall Street investment bank Lazard Frères & Co. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard jeopardized all they had built.

The music industry is a leading indicator of today's economy; it is among the first to be disrupted by the latest wave of technology. Drawing on interviews with leading band members, music executives, managers, promoters, and using the latest data on revenues, royalties, streaming tour dates, and merchandise sales, Rockonomics takes listeners backstage to show how the music industry really works - who makes money and how much, and how the economics of the music industry has undergone a radical transformation during recent decades.

In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Groups are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

One need not look hard to see how the incredible advances in artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, biotechnologies, and the Internet of things are transforming society in unprecedented ways. But the fourth industrial revolution is just beginning, says Schwab. And at a time of such tremendous uncertainty and such rapid change, he argues it's our actions as individuals and leaders that will determine the trajectory our future will take.

Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets - among economists as well as many ordinary citizens - is a form of religion. And, it turns out, that in a deeper, more historically grounded sense there is something to that idea. Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as an entirely secular product of the Enlightenment, Benjamin M. Friedman demonstrates that religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset.

Based on the single largest neuromarketing study ever conducted, Buyology reveals surprising truths about what attracts our attention and captures our dollars.

In March 2008, Bear Stearns, a swashbuckling 84-year-old financial institution, was forced to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase for an outrageously low price in a deal brokered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who was desperately trying to prevent the impending catastrophic market crash. But mere months before, an industry-wide boom had "the Bear" clocking a record high stock price. How did a giant investment bank with $18 billion in cash on hand disappear in a mere 10 days?

The high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook. Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends - outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women. The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively listenable story of innocence lost - and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way people relate to one another.

The dramatic story behind the most audacious power grab in American history. The financial crisis that exploded in 2008 isn’t past but prologue. The stunning rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era was the coming-out party for the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. The grifter class - made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding - has been growing in power for a generation, transferring wealth upward through increasingly complex financial mechanisms.

In the heart of the Scientific Revolution, when new theories promised to explain the affairs of the universe, Britain was broke, facing a mountain of debt accumulated in war after war it could not afford. But that same Scientific Revolution - the kind of thinking that helped Isaac Newton solve the mysteries of the cosmos - would soon lead clever, if not always scrupulous, men to try to figure a way out of Britain’s financial troubles.

In this passionate manifesto for Canadian renewal, business leaders Assaf, Hejazi, and Manget draw on interviews with over 100 thought leaders, politicians, CEOs, and union leaders to craft a new way of thinking about our national opportunities. Now that technology has democratized the tools of modern productivity, they argue, we need to shift our focus from tired old industrial strategies and protectionist policies to nurturing individual talent.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Thomas Friedman, in The World Is Flat, declared globalization the new economic order. But the reign of globalization as we’ve known it is over, argues Financial Times columnist and CNN analyst Rana Foroohar, and the rise of local, regional, and homegrown business is now at hand.

In the first half of the twentieth century the Keynesian brand of economics, which saw government spending as a necessary spur to economic growth, prevailed. Then in the 1970s, conservatives fought back. Once they got people to believe a few simple ideas instead—that only the free market could produce growth, that taxes and regulation stifle growth—the battle was won.

George Friedman has forecasted the coming trends (politics, technology, population, and culture) of the next century in The Next 100 Years, and focused his predictions on the coming ten years in The Next Decade. Now, in Flashpoints, Friedman zooms in on the region that has, for 500 years, been the cultural hotbed of the world - Europe - and examines the most basic and fascinating building block of the region: culture.

Howard Hughes was one of the most amazing, intriguing, and controversial figures of the 20th century. He was the billionaire head of a giant corporation, a genius inventor, an ace pilot, a matinee-idol-handsome playboy, a major movie-maker who bedded a long list of Hollywood glamour queens, a sexual sultan with a harem of teenage consorts, a political influencer with intimate ties to Watergate, a Las Vegas kingpin, and, ultimately, a bizarre recluse.

Our current economic path is coming to an end. The signposts are all around us: sluggish growth, rising inequality, stubbornly high pockets of unemployment, and jittery financial markets, to name a few. Soon we will reach a fork in the road: One path leads to renewed growth, prosperity, and financial stability, the other to recession and market disorder.

Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the United Kingdom, is a desperate young soccer agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as “Godwin”—an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Lionel Messi.

China is hot. The world sees a glorious future for this sleeping giant, three times larger than the United States, predicting it will blossom into the world's biggest economy by 2010. According to Chang, however, a Chinese American lawyer and China specialist, the People's Republic is a paper dragon. Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao's death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere....

In looking at the forces that shaped the 2016 presidential election, one thing is clear: Much of the population believes that our economic system is rigged to enrich the privileged elites at the expense of hard-working Americans. This is a belief held equally on both sides of political spectrum, and it seems only to be gaining momentum.