| |
Review: ‘If we had listened to Leigh Skene’s warnings before the crash we might have avoided the worst of the financial meltdown. Now with this book he warns us that our recovery is way off course — that economies are weaker than people think, that populist solutions do not work and that the west should not expect to be rescued by the emerging economies. His stark message — that big government makes things worse — is one which should heeded by politicians, financiers and most of all by ordinary voters.’
Anthony Hilton
Description: Two years before the global credit crisis hit, Leigh Skene identified the key factors behind it. He also predicted that the combination of excessive leverage in the global financial system with the bursting of the credit bubble would cause bankruptcy rates to soar and asset prices to fall, with many trillions of dollars of losses arising as a result.
The credit crunch brought us into a period of uncertainty, which has placed a huge burden on public finances. Governments around the world have spent more than ten trillion dollars on bailing out financial institutions. While financial markets responded positively in the short term, Skene strongly asserts that government actions, well intentioned as they are, have placed us at a tipping point where the future we must prepare for will be unlike the past — one of the most dangerous economic phases any generation can find itself in.
In his penetrating analysis, Skene traces how we got to this point and outlines what has to happen for the global economy to recover the ground it has lost in the past three years. He looks at the shift of economic power to emerging nations, the inevitability of deflation, the dysfunctionality of financial markets, how governments’ share of output must eventually shrink, how solvency not liquidity caused the current crisis, and how it is wrong to think you can borrow your way to growth.
In conclusion, The Impoverishment of Nations prescribes a radically different solution to the reform of the international monetary system following a financial crisis that marked the end of the longest period of prosperity for the last five hundred years.
Contents: Introduction • Structural impediments to rising living standards • Emerging nations are becoming global leaders • Is inflation inevitable? • The global financial system: not fit for purpose • We cannot borrow our way out of debt • Credit and financial markets • Populist policies do not work • IndexISBN - 9781846683329
|
| |
Pages : 224
|