Showing titles in Economic Conditions

America is at a crossroads. The global economic downturn that began in 2008 has laid bare the structural weakness of our economy, putting the country through its most severe test since the Great Depression. Yet our political and business leaders have failed to prepare us because they are in the grip of a set of “dead ideas” about how a modern economy should work. Miller shows how today’s financial crisis has finally stripped these dead ideas of their power, offering hope for a durable recovery.

Financial crises are often blamed on unforeseeable events, the unforgiving nature of capital markets, or just plain bad luck. Too Smart for Our Own Good argues that these crises are caused by certain alluring investment strategies that promise both high returns and safety of capital. In other words, the severe and widespread crises we have suffered in recent decades were not perfect storms. Instead, they were made by us. By understanding how and why this is so, we may be able to avoid or ameliorate future crises - and maybe even anticipate them.

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.

AlterNet editor Joshua Holland demolishes the Right's biggest and most outrageous myths about the economy. Taxes kill growth. Labor unions hurt their members. Government regulation destroys jobs. These are just a few of the biggest lies in the web of misinformation spun by conservatives and the chamber of commerce. Holland's book dissects each malicious fiction to show how the Right is just plain wrong on the economy, wrong on jobs, wrong on the deficit, wrong on taxes, wrong on trade.

Ryan D'Agostino wanted to know how the extremely wealthy in America got that way. So he asked. Knocking on 500 doors in 20 neighborhoods in the most affluent ZIP codes in America, D'Agostino met with 50 regular (but very rich) men and women who welcomed him in and shared some of their most difficult financial decisions, toughest setbacks, greatest strategies, most triumphant moments, and deepest insights into what it means to have money.

Just as the industrial capitalism of the 19th century gave way to corporate capitalism in the 20th, recent decades have witnessed corporate capitalism evolving into a new phase, which Ehrenreich calls "Third Wave Capitalism." Third Wave Capitalism is marked by apparent contradictions: Rapid growth in productivity and lagging wages; fabulous wealth for the one percent and the persistence of high levels of poverty; increases in the standard of living and increases in mental illness, and much more.

The writing of history is always in terms of a framework, a philosophical and ultimately religious conceptual structure in the mind of the historian. To the orthodox Christian, the shabby incarnations of the reigning historiographies are both absurd and offensive. A Christian historiography and a Christian revisionism are thus for him moral imperatives. These essays are studies in Christian revisionism. There purpose is to call attention those aspects of American history that are currently neglected.

After the bursting of the real-estate bubble, the US pushed a monetary and fiscal policy that is, at best, blatantly wrong, and, at worst, carries enormous financial risk. And because Washington knows this, America's greatest weapon - its propaganda machine - has been called into service, diverting attention away from the fact that it was and continues to be government interference in the market economy that's lead us to where we are now, namely at the end of one financial calamity and the beginning of yet another.

Over the past three decades, our daily lives have changed slowly but dramatically. Boundaries between leisure and work, public space and private space, and home and office have blurred and become permeable. How many of us now work from home, our wireless economy allowing and encouraging us to work 24/7? How many of us talk to our children while scrolling through e-mails on our BlackBerrys? How many of us feel overextended, as we are challenged to play multiple roles - worker, boss, parent, spouse, friend, and client - all in the same instant?

Dalton Conley, social scientist and writer, provides us with an X-ray view of our new social reality. In Elsewhere, U.S.A., Conley connects our daily experience with occasionally overlooked sociological changes: women's increasing participation in the labor force; rising economic inequality generating anxiety among successful professionals; the individualism of the modern era - the belief in self-actualization and expression - being replaced by the need to play different roles in the various realms of one's existence. In this groundbreaking book, Conley offers an essential understanding of how the technological, social, and economic changes that have reshaped our world are also reshaping our individual lives.

Although most Americans attribute shifting practices in the financial industry to the invisible hand of the market, Mark H. Rose reveals the degree to which presidents, legislators, regulators, and even bankers themselves have long taken an active interest in regulating the industry.

Plastic surgery has become the answer for many Americans, and in American Plastic sociologist Laurie Essig explores how we arrived at this particular solution. Over the last decade there has been a 465 percent increase in cosmetic work, and we now spend over $12 billion annually on procedures like liposuction, face-lifts, tummy tucks, and boob jobs.

The United States faces a serious retirement challenge. Many of today's workers will lack the resources to retire at traditional ages and maintain their standard of living in retirement. Solving the problem is a major challenge in today's environment in which risk and responsibility have shifted from government and employers to individuals. For this reason, Charles D. Ellis, Alicia H. Munnell, and Andrew D. Eschtruth have written this concise guide for anyone concerned about their own—and the nation's—retirement security.

The second global downturn in a dozen years is upon us - but do lessons learned during the Great Recession still apply? What must you and your business do, now, to ensure you come out the other side intact? Global Recession: Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you understand the smartest ways to cut costs intelligently, find opportunities amid upheaval, and reshape your business to seize advantage in the upswing.

Published to mark the 30th anniversary of the financial revolution known as Big Bang, Crash Bang Wallop tells the gripping story of how the changes introduced in the 1980s in the City of London transformed our world. Attitudes to money and the way we measure value and status were completely reshaped by Big Bang, and it had an extraordinary impact on politics, on style, on technology, on the class system, on questions of public ownership, and on the geography of London.

America is in decline, and the rise of the East suggests a bleak future for the world’s only superpower - so goes the conventional wisdom. But what if the traditional measures of national status are no longer as important as they once were? What if America’s well-being was assessed according to entirely different factors? In The Upside of Down, Charles Kenny argues that America’s so-called decline is only relative to the newfound success of other countries.

In this funny, thought-provoking book based on the popular film of the same name, activists John de Graaf (coauthor of the best-selling Affluenza) and David Batker tackle 13 economic issues, challenging the listener to consider the point of our economy. Emphasizing powerful American ideals, including teamwork, pragmatism, and equality, de Graaf and Batker set forth a simple goal for any economic system: The greatest good for the greatest number over the longest run.

La economía afecta nuestra vida cotidiana, y los cristianos deben pensar en cómo aplicar los principios bíblicos al dinero, la inversión, los préstamos y los gastos. También necesitan entender el sistema de libre empresa y saber defender el capitalismo.Los capítulos de este libro no solo consideran principios económicos generales, sino que una sección del libro está dedicada a los desafíos que enfrentamos en el siglo XXI desde la globalización y los difíciles tiempos económicos. Una sección del libro también proporciona una mirada en profundidad a otros problemas sociales y ...

We have released the genie from the bottle: climate change is coming, and there's no stopping it. The question, according to Matthew Kahn, is not how were going to avoid a hotter future but how were going to adapt to it. In Climatopolis, Kahn, one of the worlds foremost experts on the economics of the environment, argues that cities and regions will adapt to rising temperatures over time, slowly transforming our everyday lives.

With the US market in shambles, investors are looking for other places to put their money. Europe has become the destination of choice and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

"Everything Is Already Priced In" is a darkly humorous exploration of the efficient market hypothesis taken to its logical extreme. Through a series of increasingly absurd scenarios, the book illustrates how every conceivable piece of information—from the most mundane to the most outlandish—has already been factored into stock prices. Readers will find themselves questioning the nature of free will and original thought as they confront a market that seems to know everything before it happens. Part financial satire, part existential crisis, this book challenges readers to reconsider ...