The Economic Crisis Reader | Dollars & Sense

March 11, 2011 by

Description:

The Economic Crisis Reader, 2nd Edition, November 2010, ISBN 978-1-878585-84-4, $34.95 (411 pp).

EXPANDED AND UPDATED: The second edition of The Economic Crisis Reader features the latest news and analysis of the causes, consequences, and possible ways out of the ongoing economic crisis, including the financial meltdown, Fed policy, stimulus and deficits, housing, unemployment, global dimensions, and much more. Editors: Gerald Friedman, Fred Moseley, Chris Sturr, and the D&S Collective.The mainstream pundits tell us that “no one” anticipated the massive economic shocks of the past few years. The Economic Crisis Reader debunks that myth and many other misdiagnoses of the current crisis. With more than 60 well-researched, clearly written articles, this lively reader explains the causes, consequences, and possible solutions to the ongoing economic crisis. Chapters focus on the housing boom and bust, the financial meltdown, Fed policy, fiscal stimulus, the impact on workers, global dimensions, and more. The updated second edition includes the latest news and analysis, including thought-provoking ideas for reforming our economic system to prevent similar crises in the future.

Reviews

Praise for The Economic Crisis Reader:

“The Economic Crisis Reader is another exceptional collection of essays about important subjects from the venerable Dollars & Sense. A first-class group of economists and journalists cover every aspect of the most severe economic collapse since the Great Depression: the causes of the crisis, the events leading up to it, its impact on working people and their responses to it, the ins-and-outs of financial markets, the U.S. government’s inadequate responses to the crisis, international dimensions, and numerous suggestions for the reforms of and more radical changes in our economic system that would avoid such crises in the future. Every chapter is clearly written, and even the most complex topics—from mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps to the mechanics of monetary policy and the crowding-out effect—are made eminently comprehensible. This book should be used in every undergraduate economics class in every college in the world and in every worker-education course and study group. Teachers, including especially those who have been preaching economic orthodoxy, had better read it too!”
—MICHAEL YATES, author of The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know and Associate Editor, Monthly Review

“This is distinguished public service. The Economic Crisis Reader brings together many short essays by those who were actually in the right as the crisis unfolded, as well as useful and accessible analysis from a left perspective. This effort is worth a truckload of recent mainstream journal articles.”
—JAMES K. GALBRAITH, Professor, LBJ School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin, and author of The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too

“This is a book full of unexpected little jewels. Readers will find just the right fit. The range of themes and materials is all-encompassing. Every structural aspect of the dodgy, pillaging, rentier U.S. economy is explained, detailed, and assessed. To their credit, heterodox analysts—most particularly by the stalwart contributors to this impressive, timely collection—anticipated the current crisis…. Talent seems to be in excess supply at Dollars & Sense: 30 authors, many well-known and the rest soon to be, take on the thorniest and often most abstruse issues. They do all this with aplomb, swift dispatch and, should we say, economy.
“This book will stand the test of time. It will be one of a small handful of classics revealing the savage rot of neoliberalism, the arrogant complacency of mainstream neoclassical economists, and the enabling contemporary economic policies at the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the Congress that have brought the U.S. to its current, ugly, impasse.”
—JAMES CYPHER, Research Professor, Doctoral Program in Development Studies, Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico

For information on how to order this book, visit the link below:

The Economic Crisis Reader | Dollars & Sense.


Filed Under: Books, Economic Crisis, Economy

Amazon.com: Failure by Design: The Story behind America’s Broken Economy (Economic Policy Institute/A State of Working America Publica) (9780801450150): Josh Bivens: Books

March 9, 2011 by

Description

In Failure by Design, the Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens takes a step back from the acclaimed State of Working America series, building on its wealth of data to relate a compelling narrative of the U.S. economy’s struggle to emerge from the Great Recession of 2008. Bivens explains the causes and impact on working Americans of the most catastrophic economic policy failure since the 1920s. As outlined clearly here, economic growth since the late 1970s has been slow and inequitably distributed, largely as a result of poor policy choices. These choices only got worse in the 2000s, leading to an anemic economic expansion. What growth we did see in the economy was fueled by staggering increases in private-sector debt and a housing bubble that artificially inflated wealth by trillions of dollars. As had been predicted, the bursting of the housing bubble had disastrous consequences for the broader economy, spurring a financial crisis and a rise in joblessness that dwarfed those resulting from any recession since the Great Depression. The fallout from the Great Recession makes it near certain that there will be yet another lost decade of income growth for typical families, whose incomes had not been boosted by the previous decade’s sluggish and localized economic expansion.In its broad narrative of how the economy has failed to deliver for most Americans over much of the past three decades, Failure by Design also offers compelling graphic evidence on jobs, incomes, wages, and other measures of economic well-being most relevant to low- and middle-income workers. Josh Bivens tracks these trends carefully, giving a lesson in economic history that is readable yet rigorous in its analysis. Intended as both a stand-alone volume and a companion to the new State of Working America website that presents all of the data underlying this cogent analysis, Failure by Design will become required reading as a road map to the economic problems that confront working Americans.

About the Author
Josh Bivens has been an economist at the Economic Policy Institute since 2002. He is the author most recently of Everybody Wins, Except for Most of Us — What Economics Teaches About Globalization.

Amazon.com: Failure by Design: The Story behind America’s Broken Economy (Economic Policy Institute/A State of Working America Publica) (9780801450150): Josh Bivens: Books.


Filed Under: Books, Economy, History, Inequality, Poverty, United States

FREE TRADE DOESN’T WORK, BY Ian Fletcher

February 22, 2011 by

Is FREE TRADE the hidden factor behind our problems ranging from financial crises to weak job creation?
• Our economy has ceased generating net new jobs in internationally traded sectors.
• Currency manipulation gives foreign companies an unfair advantage, but our government does nothing.
• American workers now compete with nations where average pay is just over a dollar an hour.
• We run trade deficits around $500 billion a year, borrowing from abroad and selling off our wealth.
But Americans remain afraid to do anything because conventional economics keeps telling us everything is
fine, free trade is good, and protectionism is snake oil.
This book is about why conventional economics is wrong.

FREE TRADE DOESN’T WORK, BY Ian Fletcher.

Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace it and Why

By Ian Fletcher

  • Paperback: 348 pages
  • Publisher: U.S. Business & Industry Council (January 22, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0578048205
  • ISBN-13: 978-0578048208

    • Book Description from Amazon.com

    Are you wondering how Americans can compete with nations like China where the average manufacturing wage is 57 cents an hour? Are you wondering how, if they can offshore call centers, computer programming, and accounting, there will be any good jobs left they can’t offshore? Are you wondering how America can keep importing and running up debt without going bankrupt? Are you wondering how America can be a powerful nation without an industrial base? Are you wondering why the politicians keep denying all of these problems? Are you wondering whether the economics you learned in school and hear on TV is really valid? Are you wondering who you can trust? This very readable book is aimed at both ordinary concerned citizens and people with a bit of sophistication about economics. It is a systematic examination of why free trade is slowly bleeding America’s economy to death and what can be done about it. It explains in detail why the standard economic arguments free traders use all the time are false, and what kind of economic ideas – well within the grasp of the average American – justify protectionism instead. It examines the history and politics of free trade and explains how America came to adopt its present disastrous free trade policy. It looks at the breakdown of specific industries and how we can rebuild them and bring millions of high-paying jobs back to this country. It examines what’s wrong with NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO, and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is sharply critical of the current establishment, but from a bipartisan point of view, so it should satisfy progressives, conservatives, and everyone in between. Unlike many past critiques of free trade, it is economically-literate; it also explains New Trade Theory, the hot new area of economics that critiques free trade.


    Filed Under: Books, Trade

    ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism (9780230620513): Yves Smith: Books

    February 11, 2011 by

    Review

    “The helplessness you feel, in the face of the demonic complexity of modern finance…set it aside, and pick up Yves Smith book ECONned.  Indignation and clarity and omnivorous knowledge come together in her writing, to explain how we, the taxpayers, are being meticulously fleeced.  Never go into an argument about the financial crisis unarmed again.”–Stephen Metcalf, Slate Columnist


    “In ECONned, Smith blows the top wide open on the role that economists and policy makers had in enabling Wall Street greed and misdeeds. This fascinating book reads like a detective story uncovering the roots of our disastrous financial philosophy– the book must be read by everyone from Wall Street to Washington.”–Nouriel Roubini, Professor of Economics at New York University and founder of RGE Monitor


    “Yves Smith has written a wonderful book which combines first hand knowledge of financial markets with a devastating attack on the scientific pretensions of economics. It is required reading by all those who want to dig below the surface of the worst economic collapse since the war to the intellectual and regulatory rottenness underlying it.”–Lord  Skidelsky, author of Keynes: The Return of the Master


    “This book is a fascinating and insightful reminder that economics is like any other powerful tool.  It can be used to help understand the world and solve important problems—or to rationalize ridiculous behavior and overwhelm common sense.  Smith provides a brilliantly researched tour of good ideas gone bad.”–Charles Wheelan, author of Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science


    “Lost your job, lost your life savings, the country’s going down the proverbial – want to know who did it? Yves Smith tells the tale of how bad economics created the foundations for the ‘Madoff economy’. After you read the book, just collect your pitchforks and get ready to march on the University of Chicago or Wall Street or both! A refreshingly sane and honest analysis.”–Satyajit Das, author of Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns & Unknowns in the Wonderful World of Derivatives

    “If you only read one book on the global financial crisis, it should be Econned by “Yves Smith”, an entertaining, thorough and damning indictment of the way that Western economists, bankers and politicians together messed up – and are still messing up – the global financial and economic system.”– Kevin Rafferty, South China Morning Post

     
    “ECONned by Yves Smith has three great merits: what it says is largely accurate, largely interesting, and largely new.”  –Central Banking Journal

    Amazon.com: ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism (9780230620513): Yves Smith: Books.


    Filed Under: Books, Economy

    Maynard’s Revenge: The Collapse of Free Market Macroeconomics (9780674050464): Lance Taylor: Books

    February 10, 2011 by

    Editorial Reviews
    Review
    Lance Taylor has written a tome for our times. It is engaging and forceful, the analysis is of the highest order, and the exposition of very complex ideas is wonderfully clear.
    –Geoffrey Harcourt, University of New South Wales

    There is a need for a careful analysis of why exactly much of mainstream macroeconomics is irrelevant and problematic, and whether a more useful and realistic kind of economic analysis exists which can provide a better understanding of real world events. Lance Taylor’s book fills this need, providing an authoritative presentation of a more useful and realistic kind of macroeconomic analysis and deftly mingling theoretical analysis and critique with discussions of basic economic concepts. It is essential reading for anyone interested in how the economy works and how to make it work better and more humanely.
    –Amitava Dutt, University of Notre Dame

    Maynard’s Revenge offers a broad rigorous account of the creation, consolidation, and eventual eclipse of Keynesian theory, as well as the phoenix-like return of Keynesianism. With his nose to the empirical ground, Lance Taylor compellingly builds his case that Keynes was correct about how to do macroeconomics in our world. But Taylor goes beyond Keynes, showing how ‘ideas from the Master’ have been extended by his many disciples into an impressive body of thought.”
    –Servaas Storm, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
    Product Description

    It is now widely agreed that mainstream macroeconomics is irrelevant and that there is need for a more useful and realistic economic analysis that can provide a better understanding of the ongoing global financial and economic crisis. Lance Taylor’s book exposes the unrealistic assumptions of the rational expectations and real business cycle approaches and of mainstream finance theory. It argues that in separating monetary and financial behavior from real behavior, they do not address the ways that consumption, accumulation, and the government play in the workings of the economy.

    Taylor argues that the ideas of J. M. Keynes and others provide a more useful framework both for understanding the crisis and for dealing with it effectively. Keynes’s basic points were fundamental uncertainty and the absence of Say’s Law. He set up machinery to analyze the macro economy under such circumstances, including the principle of effective demand, liquidity preference, different rules for determining commodity and asset prices, distinct behavioral patterns of different collective actors, and the importance of thinking in terms of complete macro accounting schemes. Economists working in this tradition also worked out growth and cycle models.

    Employing these ideas throughout Maynard’s Revenge, Taylor provides an analytical narrative about the causes of the crisis, and suggestions for dealing with it.


    Amazon.com: Maynard’s Revenge: The Collapse of Free Market Macroeconomics (9780674050464): Lance Taylor: Books.


    Filed Under: Books, Economic Policy, Economy
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