Who Elected the Bankers?

Who Elected the Bankers? PDF Author: Louis W. Pauly
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501732293
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A former banker and staff member of the International Monetary Fund, Louis W. Pauly explains why people are deeply concerned about the emergence of a global economy and the increasingly integrated capital markets at its heart. In nations as diverse as France, Canada, Russia, and Mexico, the lives of citizens are disrupted when national policy falls out of line with the expectations of international financiers. Such dilemmas, ever more conspicuous around the world, arise from the disjuncture between a rapidly changing international economic system and a political order still constituted by sovereign states. The evolution of global capital markets inspires an understandable fear among people that the governing authorities accountable to them are losing the power to make substantive decisions affecting their own material prospects and those of their children. Pauly points out that today's capital markets resulted from decisions taken over many years by sovereign states, and particularly by the leading industrial democracies, who simultaneously crafted the instrument of multilateral economic surveillance. The effort to build adequate political foundations for global capital markets spans the twentieth century and links the histories of such institutions as the League of Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and the Group of Seven.

Who Elected the Bankers?

Who Elected the Bankers? PDF Author: Louis W. Pauly
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501732293
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A former banker and staff member of the International Monetary Fund, Louis W. Pauly explains why people are deeply concerned about the emergence of a global economy and the increasingly integrated capital markets at its heart. In nations as diverse as France, Canada, Russia, and Mexico, the lives of citizens are disrupted when national policy falls out of line with the expectations of international financiers. Such dilemmas, ever more conspicuous around the world, arise from the disjuncture between a rapidly changing international economic system and a political order still constituted by sovereign states. The evolution of global capital markets inspires an understandable fear among people that the governing authorities accountable to them are losing the power to make substantive decisions affecting their own material prospects and those of their children. Pauly points out that today's capital markets resulted from decisions taken over many years by sovereign states, and particularly by the leading industrial democracies, who simultaneously crafted the instrument of multilateral economic surveillance. The effort to build adequate political foundations for global capital markets spans the twentieth century and links the histories of such institutions as the League of Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and the Group of Seven.

Unelected Power

Unelected Power PDF Author: Paul Tucker
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691196303
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 662

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Book Description
Tucker presents guiding principles for ensuring that central bankers and other unelected policymakers remain stewards of the common good.

13 Bankers

13 Bankers PDF Author: Simon Johnson
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030747660X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In spite of its key role in creating the ruinous financial crisis of 2008, the American banking industry has grown bigger, more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever. Anchored by six megabanks whose assets amount to more than 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, this oligarchy proved it could first hold the global economy hostage and then use its political muscle to fight off meaningful reform. 13 Bankers brilliantly charts the rise to power of the financial sector and forcefully argues that we must break up the big banks if we want to avoid future financial catastrophes. Updated, with additional analysis of the government’s recent attempt to reform the banking industry, this is a timely and expert account of our troubled political economy.

Why Save the Bankers?

Why Save the Bankers? PDF Author: Thomas Piketty
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0544663292
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Reflections on politics, the economy, and the modern world by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Thomas Piketty’s work has proved that unfettered markets lead to increasing inequality, and that without meaningful regulation, capitalist economies will concentrate wealth in an ever smaller number of hands, threatening democracy. For years, his newspaper columns have pierced the surface of current events to reveal the economic forces underneath. Why Save the Bankers? collects these columns from the period between the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. In crystalline prose, Piketty examines a wide range of topics, and along the way he decodes the European Union’s economic troubles, weighs in on oligarchy in the United States, wonders whether debts actually need to be paid back, and discovers surprising lessons about inequality by examining the career of Steve Jobs. Coursing with insight and flashes of wit, these brief essays offer a view of recent history through the eyes of one of the most influential economic thinkers of our time. “Easy to follow for readers without much knowledge of economics, especially when [Piketty] picks apart topics that defy classical economic logic; in this he resembles Paul Krugman, who similarly writes clearly on complex topics . . . Helps make sense of recent financial history.” —Kirkus Reviews “Anyone with an interest in politics, monetary policy, or international diplomacy will get a kick out of Piketty’s clear discussion.” —Shelf Awareness “If you have been influenced by Piketty’s landmark work on inequality, make sure to read this next.” —Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything

Banker to the World: Leadership Lessons From the Front Lines of Global Finance

Banker to the World: Leadership Lessons From the Front Lines of Global Finance PDF Author: William Rhodes
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
ISBN: 0071704248
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
"From Ukraine to China and Nigeria to Egypt debt and finance are central to global stability and United States interests. No one else has nearly as much experience on the front lines as Bill Rhodes. All who care about the 21st century will profit from close study of his thoughts." —Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard University, former Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, and former Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama In more than five decades with Citi, William "Bill" Rhodes, the firm's former senior vice chairman and senior international officer, has worked with senior business leaders, statesmen, and strongmen and brokered immense financial deals while looking across the table at finance ministers . . . and up the barrels of guns trained on him. He has earned the cooperation of Fidel Castro over cigars and the admiration of Rupert Murdoch, who said of Rhodes, "By dogged hard work, Bill forms important and great relationships. Everyone knows Bill. Everyone trusts Bill." From these and other experiences, Rhodes has learned a lifetime of lessons about managing amid crises--and, more important, how to lead prudently, decisively, and effectively to prevent crises from ever happening in the first place. In Banker to the World, Rhodes presents his collected wisdom, best-practices, analysis, and anecdotes in one essential volume on the creation of value through leadership--and on the importance of leading by one's values. Dramatically illustrated by more than two dozen examples, Rhodes's principles offer an excellent foundation for leaders at all levels. Having honed his skills in high-level negotiations around the world--including those with the Sandinistas, heads of state, and corporate CEOs in situations ranging from the opening of post-apartheid South Africa and the defusing of the Latin American "debt bomb" to the forestalling of the nationalization of Citi assets in Venezuela—Rhodes dispenses invaluable advice, including: Lead boldly and decisively: Know when to disregard caution for caution's sake--and always insist on a neutral negotiating atmosphere. Anticipate problems by visualizing their impact: Get ahead of risk by taking a comprehensive view of potential obstacles. Confront problems directly and proactively: When faced with a critical situation, going directly to its epicenter is what turns a crisis into an opportunity. You may not be presented with challenges such as restructuring a nation’s multibillion-dollar debt or dealing with Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. But in Banker to the World, Bill Rhodes gives takeaway lessons on leading with character, tact, and determination that any manager, executive, or government official will use again and again to evaluate challenges, anticipate responses, and be more decisive in navigating crises of any size.

All the Presidents' Bankers

All the Presidents' Bankers PDF Author: Nomi Prins
Publisher: Nation Books
ISBN: 156858749X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
Prins shows how powerful Wall Street bankers partnered with presidents to became the unelected leaders of the 20th century.

The Currency of Ideas

The Currency of Ideas PDF Author: Kathleen R. McNamara
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501711938
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Why have the states of Europe agreed to create an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a single European currency? What will decide the fate of this bold project? This book explains why monetary integration has deepened in Europe from the Bretton Woods era to the present day. McNamara argues that the development of a neoliberal economic policy consensus among European leaders in the years after the first oil crisis was crucial to stability in the European Monetary System and progress towards EMU. She identifies two factors, rising capital mobility and changing ideas about the government's proper role in monetary policymaking, as critical to the neoliberal consensus but warns that unresolved social tensions in this consensus may provoke a political backlash against EMU and its neoliberal reforms.McNamara's findings are relevant not only to European monetary integration, but to more general questions about the effects of international capital flows on states. Although this book delineates a range of constraints created by economic interdependence, McNamara rejects the notion that international market forces simply dictate government policy choice. She demonstrates that the process of neoliberal policy change is a historically dependent one, shaped by policymakers' shared beliefs and interpretations of their experiences in the global economy.

Fragile by Design

Fragile by Design PDF Author: Charles W. Calomiris
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168350
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
Why stable banking systems are so rare Why are banking systems unstable in so many countries—but not in others? The United States has had twelve systemic banking crises since 1840, while Canada has had none. The banking systems of Mexico and Brazil have not only been crisis prone but have provided miniscule amounts of credit to business enterprises and households. Analyzing the political and banking history of the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil through several centuries, Fragile by Design demonstrates that chronic banking crises and scarce credit are not accidents. Calomiris and Haber combine political history and economics to examine how coalitions of politicians, bankers, and other interest groups form, why they endure, and how they generate policies that determine who gets to be a banker, who has access to credit, and who pays for bank bailouts and rescues. Fragile by Design is a revealing exploration of the ways that politics inevitably intrudes into bank regulation.

The Alchemists

The Alchemists PDF Author: Neil Irwin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101605804
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
When the first fissures became visible to the naked eye in August 2007, suddenly the most powerful men in the world were three men who were never elected to public office. They were the leaders of the world’s three most important central banks: Ben Bernanke of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Mervyn King of the Bank of England, and Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank. Over the next five years, they and their fellow central bankers deployed trillions of dollars, pounds and euros to contain the waves of panic that threatened to bring down the global financial system, moving on a scale and with a speed that had no precedent. Neil Irwin’s The Alchemists is a gripping account of the most intense exercise in economic crisis management we’ve ever seen, a poker game in which the stakes have run into the trillions of dollars. The book begins in, of all places, Stockholm, Sweden, in the seventeenth century, where central banking had its rocky birth, and then progresses through a brisk but dazzling tutorial on how the central banker came to exert such vast influence over our world, from its troubled beginnings to the Age of Greenspan, bringing the reader into the present with a marvelous handle on how these figures and institutions became what they are – the possessors of extraordinary power over our collective fate. What they chose to do with those powers is the heart of the story Irwin tells. Irwin covered the Fed and other central banks from the earliest days of the crisis for the Washington Post, enjoying privileged access to leading central bankers and people close to them. His account, based on reporting that took place in 27 cities in 11 countries, is the holistic, truly global story of the central bankers’ role in the world economy we have been missing. It is a landmark reckoning with central bankers and their power, with the great financial crisis of our time, and with the history of the relationship between capitalism and the state. Definitive, revelatory, and riveting, The Alchemists shows us where money comes from—and where it may well be going.

Lords of Finance

Lords of Finance PDF Author: Liaquat Ahamed
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781594201820
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
Argues that the stock market crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression occurred as a result of poor decisions on the part of four central bankers who jointly attempted to reconstruct international finance by reinstating the gold standard.