Stolen

How to Save the World from Financialisation

By: Grace Blakeley

Narrated by: Grace Blakeley

Length: 7 hrs

Publisher's Summary

For decades, it has been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. 

In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, booming banks, rising house prices, and cheap consumer goods propped up living standards in the rich world. Thirty years of rocketing debt and financial wizardry had masked the deep underlying fragility of finance-led growth, and in 2008 we were forced to pay up. 

The decade since has witnessed all kinds of morbid symptoms, as all around the rich world, wages and productivity are stagnant, inequality is rising, and ecological systems are collapsing. 

Stolen is a history of finance-led growth and a guide as to how we might escape it. We've sat back as financial capitalism has stolen our economies, our environment and even the future itself. Now, we have an opportunity to change course. What happens next is up to us.

©2019 Grace Blakeley (P)2019 Watkins Media Limited

Socialist alternatives to recent capitalism

One of many critiques of recent economic trends called neoliberalism and financialization. Talk of "contradictions" of capitalism leading to talk of what "must" be done. The recommendations are for new allegedly democratic organizations called "peoples'" this and "citizens'" that. Relative to these policy recommendations there was little if any discussion of what has happened in the past when contradictions of capitalism and talk of what must be done led to the well-known history of the Soviet Union and of China under Mao. Questions are answered with vague generalities and references to social justice. Hard questions are dodged. Must we entwine the fight against climate change with the fight for social justice, thereby possibly delaying progress against an ineluctable physical danger that may require a different analysis of the problem altogether from the analysis Marx partially worked out almost 200 years ago? Under socialism, what is to motivate people to work, or would we simply draft industrial armies, a la the Communist Manifesto? And is not the author's vision really one of state capitalism, consisting of a basically capitalist system that has been nationalized but remains largely intact in its essentials? I guess I should not expect too much from a 26-year-old with an undergraduate degree. She still has plenty of time and talent to investigate the hard questions that need to be answered before we get too far down the road she recommends.

Griftopedia across the pond, plus theory & history

Read by the author herself too, quite a plus from this woman, covering in a brilliantly succinct fashion a very arcane topic.

Nice listen with lots of real world factss

A really good basic round up of recent financial and political recent history with tons of examples. Finished off with some great ideas to change the future with Socialism.

Brilliant and informative.

At times it sounded like the opening narration of a dystopian film about the end of civilisation.
Brilliantly narrated and full of hope for the future.

Chilling exploration of capitalism

Grace Blakely is a brilliant economist and picks apart the roots of neo liberalism, from its earliest roots to the chaos and misery it has wrought and the dangers still to come if it is not tackled head on.

Thorough analysis of modern political economics

Great explanation of how the post-war consensus ultimately failed, how the neoliberal consesus collasped and how a new economic model must be designed to end the stagnant productivity and falling wages seen since.

Great introduction for the non economics reader.

It's useful as a history narrative as to how we have arrived at this section in time.

read this if youve ever asked "can it be better?"

grace blakely is a rising superstar of the left. this book well and truly cements her place as one of the most thoughtful, articulate and optimistic voices of the left. if you've ever thought that out society and its economic model isnt working, and wondered if we could be doing things better, then this is a great place to start. she gives a detailed bit accessible history of politics and econkmics over the last 40 years, including how we gpt into this mess, and outlines a ohenomenal case for how we get ourselves out of this. I'd put her alongside Yanis Varoufakis!

Great read, but too fast on Audible

I love the topic but struggling to follow the audio which feels about 10% too fast. Slowing it down to the Audible 75# is no good either...