The Gods that Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets Has Cost Us Our Future

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The Gods that Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets Has Cost Us Our Future (eBook) Pub. Date: 2/3/2009 Publisher: Avalon Publishing Group
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The Gods That Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets Has Cost Us Our Future Pub. Date: 2/3/2009 Publisher: Avalon Publishing Group

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Overview

The Gods That Failed tells the story of the financial elite—the Wall Street and City of London high rollers and their ideological allies in the academy—that has brought us to financial collapse. It shows how over the past three decades, democratic governments have ceded control of the world economy to a new elite of super-rich, free-market operatives and their colleagues in national and international institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. This new elite promised economic stability but delivered chaos. It promised the bracing air of financial freedom, but in the end relied on a taxpayer bailout. The Gods Thai Failed, a lively and forensic examination of these latter-day masters of the universe, offers a series of bold proposals on how to reform our financial system—and stave off a new Depression.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Latest in the parade of where-were-they-a-year-ago expert financial authors are economics editors Elliott (of the Guardian) and Atkinson (of Britain's Mail on Sunday). Likening Wall Street professionals to "New Olympians" who opened a "Pandora's Box" of financial evils, the two are less than skilled with their analogies, but possess great knowledge and a perspective encompassing London, Wall Street and Washington DC. While it's true that free-market philosophies have been increasingly adopted, even by the left (Jimmy Carter's deregulation of airlines and telecommunications, Bill Clinton's NAFTA), the authors blame the current mess, somewhat fantastically, on an international group of 38 economic theorists (including Friedrich von Hayek, Karl Popper and Milton Friedman) who, meeting in Switzerland in 1947, set the course for "classical liberalism" to fight back against "what was seen as the tyranny of the collective." Aside from this, the authors provide an excellent, witty explanation for the past few years of economic boom and bust, with a broad approach that makes clear the multiple forces working to sink the economy (rather than focusing exclusively on, say, Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve). Though it's not impartial, this is a well-written, well-informed guide to today's crisis and a sharp critique of free market philosophies.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781568584409
Publisher: Avalon Publishing Group
Publication date: 4/6/2010
Edition description: First Trade Paper Edition
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 5.70 (w) x 8.80 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet the Author

Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson are economics editors of The Guardian and The Mail on Sunday, respectively. They are the coauthors of The Age of Insecurity. They live in London.

Chapter 1 Under the Volcano 1

1929–1913–20??

Chapter 2 The Rock and the Bear 27

A Tale of Two Banks

Chapter 3 Let's Go Round Again 49

The Free Marketeers' Sixty Years War

Chapter 4 Sunday, Monday, Happy Days 87

The Goldilocks Economy

Chapter 5 The Rainy Season 107

Middle America Feels the Squeeze

Chapter 6 The Odd Couple 131

Alan Greenspan, Gordon Brown, and the World's Biggest Bubble

Chapter 7 Here There Be Monsters 159

The Perils Lurking in the Uncharted Waters of the Financial Markets

Chapter 8 Last Tango on Wall Street 189

The Fall of the “American Miracle”

Chapter 9 Thunder in the West 217

Scanning the Horizon for the Perfect Storm

Chapter 10 After the Gold Rush 243

How the New Populism Makes the Financial System Safer, Gives Ordinary People a Bigger Slice of the Cake, and Puts the New Olympians Back in Their Cage

Afterword 273

Index 277

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