World Finance

Did Wall Street cause the mess we are in? Should Washington place stronger regulations on the financial industry? Can we lower unemployment rates by controlling the free market? Answer: no. Not only is free-market capitalism good for the economy, it is our only hope for recovery. As the nation’s longest-serving CEO of one of the top 25 financial institutions, John Allison has had a unique inside view of the events leading up to the financial crisis.

Corporate executives struggle to harness the power of social technologies. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube are where customers discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals but how do you integrate these activities into your broader marketing efforts?

To be successful in the market today, you must possess two strategic assets: a compelling product and a meaningful platform. In this step-by-step guide, Michael Hyatt, former CEO and current Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, takes readers behind the scenes, into the new world of social media success. He shows you what best-selling authors, public speakers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and other creative minds are doing differently to win customers in today’s crowded marketplace.

Entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer Jeff Bezos is a success story of the business world. The executive chairman of Amazon and founder of Blue Origin, he became the first centibillionaire on the Forbes wealth index and one of the world's most recognizable names in modern history. This book explores his empire of achievement and how his vision and hands-on efforts have led him from a start-up in his garage to his legacy today.

In The Great Lockdown: Lessons Learned During the Pandemic from Organizations Around the Globe, expert strategists Shivaji Das, Aroop Zutshi, and Janesh Janardhanan deliver an insightful exploration of this once-in-a-lifetime event to unearth invaluable learnings for the future. Told through the experiences of CXOs at billion-dollar companies, star start-ups, and nonprofits from around the world, the book chronicles the ups and downs of sophisticated organizations as they navigated the COVID-19 crisis through initiatives impacting people, processes, and technology.

Dexter Roberts lived in Beijing for two decades working as a reporter on economics, business and politics for Bloomberg Businessweek. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Roberts explores the reality behind today's financially-ascendant China and pulls the curtain back on how the Chinese manufacturing machine is actually powered.

This is not your father's financial system. Jimmy Stewart, the trustworthy, honest banker in the movie, It's a Wonderful Life, is dead. And so is his small-town bank, Bailey Savings & Loan. Instead, we're watching It's a Horrible Mess with Wall Street (aka the Vegas Strip) playing ever larger craps with our economy and our tax dollars. This audiobook, written by one of the world's most respected economists, describes in lively, humorous, simple, but also deadly serious terms the big con underlying the big game. But is also proposes a solution - Limited Purpose Banking.

Gupta and Wang explain how many MNCs view China and India solely from the lens of off-shoring and cost-reduction, and focusing their marketing strategies on only the top 5-10% of the population. This is a missed opportunity. China and India are the only two countries that constitute four realities that are strategically crucial for the global enterprise.

As recent events in Japan, the Middle East, and Haiti have shown, Twitter offers a unique platform to connect individuals and influence change in ways that were unthinkable only a short time ago. Twitter for Good is a groundbreaking book that contains the most effective tactics for tapping into the power of Twitter as a real-time information network.

A groundswell is sweeping through your customers. Right now, they are writing about your products on blogs and recutting your commercials on YouTube. They're defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you in social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomenon - the groundswell - that has created a permanent shift in the way the world works. Most companies see it as a threat. It's time to see it an opportunity.

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 the 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.

In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life. Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream.

From two-time, international best-selling author and futurist Doug Stephens, Resurrecting Retail is not just a riveting story of the unprecedented crash of an industry during this time of crisis but a road map for its rebirth. Meticulously researched in real time from inside the crisis, Resurrecting Retail provides a comprehensive and surprising vision of how COVID-19 will reshape every aspect of consumer life, including the very essence of why we shop.

Water scarcity is on everyone's mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has entered the realm of economics, politics, and people's food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts - even as a swath of California farmland has been left fallow and extremist groups worldwide exploit the desperation of people losing livelihoods to desertification - many are finding new routes to water security with key implications for food access, economic resilience, and climate change.

Inventing the Future is a bold new manifesto for life after capitalism. Against the confused understanding of our high-tech world by both the right and the left, this book claims that the emancipatory and future-oriented possibilities of our society can be reclaimed. Instead of running from a complex future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams demand a postcapitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work and developing technologies that expand our freedoms.

China has more than one billion people. That's one billion potential customers. China Now is your must-have guide to this exciting world of opportunity, written by a top corporate advisor and a renowned business professor who specialize in East-West business strategy. Together, Mark Lam and John Graham have worked with dozens of Fortune 500 companies and thousands of American and Chinese executives, and now share with you their most successful strategies, tactics, and insights.

The 21st century has seen a rise in the global middle class that brings an unprecedented convergence of interests and perceptions, cultures and values. Kishore Mahbubani is optimistic. We are creating a new global civilization. Eighty-eight percent of the world's population outside the West is rising to Western living standards, and sharing Western aspirations. Yet Mahbubani, one of the most perceptive global commentators, also warns that a new global order needs new policies and attitudes.

In 1784, when Americans first voyaged to China, they confronted Chinese authorities who were unaware that the United States even existed. Nevertheless, a long, complicated, and fruitful trade relationship was born after American traders, missionaries, diplomats, and others sailed to China with lofty ambitions: to acquire fabulous wealth, convert China to Christianity, and even command a Chinese army. In America's First Adventure in China, John Haddad provides a colourful history of the evolving cultural exchange and interactions between these countries.

Our world is in a mess. The challenges of climate change, inequality, hunger and a global pandemic mean our way of life seems more imperilled and society more divided than ever; but economics can help! From parenting to organ donation, housing to anti-social behaviour, economics provides the tools we need to fix the biggest issues of today. Far from being a means to predict the stock market or enrich the elite, economics provides a lens through which we can better understand how things work.

Winner Take All is about the commodity dynamics that the world will face over the next several decades. In particular, it is about the implications of China’s rush for resources across all regions of the world. The scale of China’s resource campaign for hard commodities (metals and minerals) and soft commodities (timber and food) is among the largest in history.