Globalizing capital

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Susan Strange

"The world's financial system is crazier and even more out of control than it was ten years ago. Mad Money analyzes the erratic nature of change and innovation in financial business in recent years and discusses the weak points--political as well as economic and technical--of a system driven more by volatile markets than by governments. The central issue is global finance "mad money" is how Susan Strange characterizes the alternately rampant and depressed financial markets of recent years. She sets out here to diagnose the sources and nature of the problem of markets having outgrown governments and to examine its social and political ramifications. Opinionated and brilliantly argued, Mad Money will surely provoke controversy and generate many conversations. Susan Strange's previous book, Casino Capitalism, established her as an authority on international finance and the basic structures of the international political economy. This sequel will reach not only scholars and students but a wider readership, including everyone worried by the yo-yoing of stock markets, the currency turmoil in Asia, and the general mismanagement of money by governments and international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank"--Publisher description.

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Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance.Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot, lucre, moolah, readies, the wherewithal: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it's the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it's the chains of labor. But in The Ascent of Money, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What's more, he reveals financial history as the essential backstory behind all history.Through Ferguson's expert lens familiar historical landmarks appear in a new and sharper financial focus. Suddenly, the civilization of the Renaissance looks very different: a boom in the market for art and architecture made possible when Italian bankers adopted Arabic mathematics. The rise of the Dutch republic is reinterpreted as the triumph of the world's first modern bond market over insolvent Habsburg absolutism. And the origins of the French Revolution are traced back to a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scot murderer.With the clarity and verve for which he is known, Ferguson elucidates key financial institutions and concepts by showing where they came from. What is money? What do banks do? What's the difference between a stock and a bond? Why buy insurance or real estate? And what exactly does a hedge fund do?This is history for the present. Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can't provide adequate protection against catastrophe. He delves into the origins of the subprime mortgage crisis.Perhaps most important, The Ascent of Money documents how a new financial revolution is propelling the world's biggest countries, India and China, from poverty to wealth in the space of a single generation—an economic transformation unprecedented in human history.Yet the central lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts—sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers, sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that's why, whether you're scraping by or rolling in it, there's never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.

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Lawrence H. Officer

This book studies the dollar-sterling exchange rate from 1791 to 1931. Gold standards are examined from the perspective of the precise location of the exchange rate. Professor Officer begins with a historical perspective of the monetary standards of the United States and Britain, following which he develops new data on exchange rates, mint parity, and gold points. The book presents and examines new data on the exchange rate and related variables, and will serve as a dollar-sterling handbook for those interested in this important aspect of international monetary history. In its presentation of theories and results centred on the precise location of the exchange rate, the book breaks new ground in our understanding of the gold standard.

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Roy E. Allen

"This book explains the rise and fall of economies in Asia, Central America and Europe since 1980 and discusses these crises in the context of continuing economic globalization." "Roy Allen provides policy recommendations for the G7, World Bank, IMF and various nations which will also prove invaluable to students and scholars of financial economics, international economics and international political economy."--BOOK JACKET.