Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us

Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis

James Rickards · 288 pages

In 1971, President Nixon imposed national price controls and took the United States off the gold standard, an extreme measure intended to end an ongoing currency war that had destroyed faith in the U.S. dollar. Today we are engaged in a new currency war, and this time the consequences will be far worse than those that confronted Nixon. Currency wars are one of the most destructive and fear

The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism

David Harvey · 256 pages

After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead

Alan S. Blinder · 476 pages

Many fine books on the financial crisis were first drafts of history--books written quickly to fill the need for immediate understanding. Alan S. Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, held off, taking the time to understand the crisis and create a truly comprehensive and coherent narrative of how the worst economic crisis in postwar American history happened, what the governm

The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

David A. Stockman · 743 pages

Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom

Bob Woodward · 279 pages

Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises

Timothy F. Geithner · 592 pages

From the former Treasury Secretary, the definitive account of the unprecedented effort to save the U.S. economy from collapse in the wake of the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

Michael Lewis · 220 pages

As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wante

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy

Raghuram G. Rajan · 283 pages

https://archive.org/details/faultlineshowhid0000raja/page/n7/ 2010006031 Printed on acid-free paper. https://archive.org/details/faultlineshowhid0000raja/page/n279/ 978-0-691-14683-6

This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

Carmen M. Reinhart, Kenneth Rogoff · 487 pages

A Short History of Financial Euphoria

John Kenneth Galbraith · 113 pages

How is it that, with all the financial know-how and experience of the wizards on Wall Street and elsewhere, the market still goes boom and bust? How come people are so willing to get caught up in the mania of speculation when history tells us that a collapse is almost sure to follow? In A Short History of Financial Euphoria, renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith reviews, with insight and wit,

Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises

Robert Z. Aliber · 397 pages

Since its introduction in 1978, this book has charted and followed the volatile world of financial markets. Charles Kindleberger's brilliant, panoramic history revealed how financial crises follow a pattern. Events of recent years and the current Eurozone continue to dominate policy and headline debates around the globe. In this updated and expanded seventh edition, Robert Z. Aliber probes the mos

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

Matt Taibbi · 262 pages

The financial crisis that exploded in 2008 was only a prologue. The rise, fall, and rescue of Wall Street in the bubble-and-bailout era was the coming-out party for the network of looters who sit at the nexus of American political and economic power. The grifter class--made up of the largest players in the financial industry and the politicians who do their bidding--has been growing in power for a

The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire

Neil Irwin · 448 pages

Explores the work of the world's most powerful central bankers-- --Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, and Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank--offering a view from the cockpit of the global economy as the three men struggled to keep it from going down.

The Myth of the Rational Market: Wall Street's Impossible Quest for Predictable Markets

Justin Fox · 382 pages

Chronicling the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox's The Myth of the Rational Market is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the perils and possibilities of risk. The book brings to life the people and ideas that forged modern finance and investing, from the formative days of Wall Street through

Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street

Neil Barofsky · 279 pages

In this account of his stranger-than-fiction baptism into the corrupted ways of Washington, Neil Barofsky offers an irrefutable indictment, from an insider of the Bush and Obama administrations, of the mishandling of the $700 billion TARP bailout fund. In behind-the-scenes detail, he reveals proof of the extreme degree to which our government officials bent over backward to serve the interests of

The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World

Alan Greenspan · 544 pages

The Age Of Turbulence is Alan Greenspan's incomparable reckoning with the contemporary financial world, channeled through his own experiences working in the command room of the global economy longer and with greater effect than any other single living figure. Following the arc of his remarkable life's journey through his more than eighteen-year tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board to th

The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy

Mervyn King · 430 pages

The former governor of the Bank of England recounts his country's experiences throughout the Great Recession while outlining a blueprint for recovery-era capitalism that is more resilient to modern boom-and-bust cycles.

How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say — And What It Really Means

John Lanchester · 268 pages

Discusses how the world of finance and economics really works, from the terms and conditions of personal checking accounts to the deliberate concealments of bankers, and explains hundreds of common economic terms.

Confidence Men

Ron Suskind · 515 pages

Draws on hundreds of hours of interviews and in-depth research to relate the complete story of the nation's financial meltdown, from the trading floors of lower Manhattan to the power corridors inside the Beltway.

More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite

Sebastian Mallaby · 482 pages

Based on unprecedented access to the industry, including three hundred hours of interviews, economist/journalist Sebastian Mallaby tells the inside story of hedge funds, from their origins in the 1960s and 1970s to their role in the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Wealthy, powerful, and potentially dangerous, hedge fund moguls have become the It Boys of 21st century capitalism. Ken Griffin started

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash

Charles R. Morris · 256 pages

Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy

Barry Ritholtz, Bill Fleckenstein, Aaron Task · 332 pages

An engaging look at what led to the financial turmoil we now find ourselves in 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 today's most popular economic bloggers and a well-established industry pundit, this book skillfully explores how the United States evolved

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business

Rana Foroohar · 388 pages

"Eight years on from the biggest market meltdown since the Great Depression, the key lessons of the crisis of 2008 still remain unlearned--and our financial system is just as vulnerable as ever. Many of us know that our government failed to fix the banking system after the subprime mortgage crisis. But what few of us realize is how the misguided financial practices and philosophies that nearly top

Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics

Henry Hazlitt · 205 pages

An introduction to free-market economics.