Public Economics

Populists on both sides of the political aisle routinely announce that the American Dream is dead. According to them, the game has been rigged by elites, workers can't get ahead, wages have been stagnant for decades, and the middle class is dying. Michael R. Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, disputes this rhetoric as both wrong and dangerous. In this succinctly argued volume, he shows that, on measures of economic opportunity and quality of life, there has never been a better time to be alive in America.

Oxford economist E. F. Schumacher provides an enlightening study of our economic system and its purpose, challenging the current state of excessive consumption in our society. Offering a crucial message for the modern world struggling to balance economic growth with the human costs of globalisation, Small Is Beautiful puts forward the revolutionary yet viable case for building our economies around the needs of communities, not corporations.

From the man who was in the very middle of this perfect economic storm, On the Brink is Paulson's fast-paced retelling of the key decisions that had to be made with lightning speed. Paulson puts the listener in the room for all the intense moments as he addressed urgent market conditions, weighed critical decisions, and debated policy and economic considerations with of all the notable players.

A national best-seller, Dead Aid unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth. In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined - and millions continue to suffer. Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Dambisa Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing the development of the world's poorest countries.

According to most economics textbooks, human beings are super-rational creatures who know what is in their own best interests and always act accordingly. When making a decision to purchase, the rational consumer would not buy something on the spur of the moment, or on the recommendation of a friend. Sound realistic?

On March 14, 2012, more than three million people read Greg Smith's bombshell op-ed in the New York Times titled Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs. The column immediately went viral, became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter, and drew passionate responses from former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, legendary General Electric CEO Jack Welch, and New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg.

In 2006, Ben S. Bernanke was appointed chair of the Federal Reserve, capping a meteoric trajectory from a rural South Carolina childhood to professorships at Stanford and Princeton, to public service in Washington's halls of power. There would be no time to celebrate, however - the burst of the housing bubble in 2007 set off a domino effect that would bring the global financial system to the brink of meltdown.

In the early 2000s, as a Wall Street escapee writing a financial column for the Dallas Morning News, Booth attracted attention for her bold criticism of the Fed's low interest rate policies and her cautionary warnings about the bubbly housing market. Nobody was more surprised than she when the folks at the Dallas Federal Reserve invited her aboard. Figuring she could have more of an impact on Fed policies from the inside, she accepted the call to duty and rose to be one of Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher's closest advisors.

The roads we drive on; the pipes that supply our drinking water; the farmland that provides our food; energy systems for electricity and heat; hospitals, schools, and the homes in which many of us live—all now swell asset managers' bulging investment portfolios. As the owners of more and more of the basic building blocks of everyday life, asset managers shape the lives of each and every one of us in profound and disturbing ways. In this eye-opening follow-up to Rentier Capitalism, Brett Christophers peels back the veil on "asset manager society."

Best-selling author Chris Turner brings listeners onto the streets of Fort McMurray, showing the myriad ways the oil sands of Alberta impact our lives and demanding that we ask the question: To both fuel the world and to save it, what do we do about the Patch? This is no conventional story about the oil business. Rather, it is a portrait of the life cycle of the Patch, showing just how deeply it continues to impact the lives of everyone around the world.

Why are measures of stress and anxiety on the rise when economists and politicians tell us we have never had it so good? While statistics tell us that the vast majority of people are getting steadily richer, the world most of us experience day in and day out feels increasingly uncertain, unfair, and ever more expensive. In Angrynomics, Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth explore the rising tide of anger, sometimes righteous and useful, sometimes destructive and ill-targeted, and propose radical new solutions for an increasingly polarized and confusing world.

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.

When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for "a new Bretton Woods" to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of 44 nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization.

Over 4,000 students gathered at the University of Michigan to hear Republican Party candidate Ron Paul speak. As he began to address the topics of monetary policy and the coming depression, a chant rose from the crowd, "End the Fed! End the Fed!" As dollar bills were lit on fire and thrown into the night skies, it became clear that the real problem, one that nobody in the media was talking about, was the central bank-an unconstitutional entity and a political, economic, and moral disaster.

We have entered an age of disruption. Financial collapse, climate change, resource depletion, and a growing gap between rich and poor are but a few of the signs. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer ask, why do we collectively create results nobody wants? Meeting the challenges of this century requires updating our economic logic and operating system from an obsolete “ego-system” focused entirely on the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that emphasizes the well-being of the whole.

They say John Maynard Keynes called gold a "barbarous relic." They say there isn’t enough gold to support finance and commerce. They say the gold supply can’t increase fast enough to support world growth. They’re wrong. In this bold manifesto, best-selling author and eco­nomic commentator James Rickards steps forward to defend gold — as both an irreplaceable store of wealth and a standard for currency.

China's economic growth is sputtering, the Euro is under threat, and the United States is combating serious trade disadvantages. Another Great Depression? Not quite. Noted economist and China expert Michael Pettis argues instead that we are undergoing a critical rebalancing of the world economies.

In his giant New York Times best seller, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Mark Steyn predicted collapse for the rest of the Western World. Now, he adds, America has caught up with Europe on the great rush to self-destruction. What will a world without American leadership look like? It won’t be pretty—not for you and not for your children. America’s decline won’t be gradual, like an aging Europe sipping espresso at a café until extinction. No, America’s decline will be a wrenching affair marked by violence and possibly secession.

In an astonishing, tough firsthand reportage, Chris Hedges draws on stories from inside communities across America and reveals how the hurricanes of change have allowed an array of pathologies to arise: the opioid crisis, the retreat into gambling, the corporate coup d'état of government, the pornification of culture, the rise of magical thinking, the emboldening of violence and hate, the plagues of suicides, and the global upheaval caused by catastrophic climate change.

The Economics of Belonging argues that we should step back and take a fresh look at the root causes of our current challenges. In this original, engaging book, Martin Sandbu argues that economics remains at the heart of our widening inequality and it is only by focusing on the right policies that we can address it. He proposes a detailed, radical plan for creating a just economy where everyone can belong. Sandbu demonstrates that the rising numbers of the left behind are not due to globalization gone too far.