This is a lighthearted tale about one mans adventure of moving from secure work in the Western Australian construction industry to a remote area of Sulawesi (Indonesia). He could not speak a word of Indonesian, and the local people spoke just a handful of English words.

A major work of financial theory and practice with immediate relevance to the rebuilding of the economy, and restoring the promise of equality When the government decides to spend money, it simply creates the necessary funds for itself--as if out of thin air. That's how we pay for interstate highways, post offices, wars, social services, and economic stimulus packages. If it's that easy to make money . . . can't we all get more of it? Absolutely. And we should. So argue financial regulation expert Robert Hockett and bestselling philosopher Aaron James in this eye-opening, irreverent, and inspiring exploration of what the dollar really is. And better still, they show how we can build an economy that works for everybody without unwanted taxes and added regulations. In the process, we learn how disingenuous the political rhetoric surrounding inflation can be, how the demonized concept of the deficit is really just another way of tallying our collective national wealth, and how a strong central bank could free us from the abuses of private banking. With broad historical background and ambitious yet practical institutional proposals, Hockett and James offer a new vision of public finance--people's banking for a people's economy. Armed with this new outlook, we can even stop worrying debt and learn to love a strong, accountable, and transparent Federal Reserve as a cornerstone of our democracy.

The “witty and accessible” bestseller by the Atlantic Monthly editor who rules on linguistic disputes (San Francisco Chronicle). Atlantic Monthly senior editor Barbara Wallraff first began answering grammar questions on AOL in the 1990s, and the site’s success soon morphed into a regular magazine feature. In Word Court, Wallraff moves beyond her column to preside over common and uncommon cases, establishing rules for such issues as turns of phrase, slang, name usage, punctuation, and newly coined vocabulary. With true wit, she deliberates and decides on the right path for lovers of language, ranging from classic questions (is “a historical” or “an historical” correct?) to awkward issues (How long does someone have to be dead before we should all stop calling her “the late”?). The result is a warmly humorous, reassuring, and brilliantly perceptive tour of how and why we speak the way we do. “A logophile’s delight.” —San Diego Union-Tribune “Her approach to language is a beguiling mix of charm and research” —USA Today

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, on May 10, 2012, stated that the national debt is the single biggest threat to national security. The deficit spending and accumulated debt of many nations, including the United States, is a topic of wide discussion and concern. Offering provocative and compelling solutions for remedying the country’s banking system, The Next Money Crash—and How to Avoid It presents a transcription of the conference, “Fixing the Banking System for Good,” organized by the Global Interdependence Center. This conference offered a variety of speakers presenting differing views of key issues, all with a common goal—to moderate the financial disruptions the current system allows; to provide a sound, stable currency; to compel, through market forces, more transparency in the activities of financial institutions; and to take taxpayers off the hook. In all of the plans, more capital and more transparency are key elements, along with the end to government guarantees, which provide advantages to large, opaque financial institutions. The Next Money Crash—and How to Avoid It compiles the latest thinking of many leading minds in finance and economics and provides a clear prescription for fixing the banking system as well as the global monetary system.

This book offers a series of statistical tests to determine if the “crowd out” problem, known to hinder the effectiveness of Keynesian economic stimulus programs, can be overcome by monetary programs. It concludes there are programs that can do this, specifically “accommodative monetary policy.” They were not used to any great extent prior to the Quantitative Easing program in 2008, causing the failure of many fiscal stimulus programs through no fault of their own. The book includes exhaustive statistical tests to prove this point. There is also a policy analysis section of the book. It examines how effectively the Federal Reserve’s anti-crowd out programs have actually worked, to the extent they were undertaken at all. It finds statistical evidence that using commercial and savings banks instead of investment banks when implementing accommodating monetary policy would have markedly improved their effectiveness. This volume, with its companion volume Why Fiscal Stimulus Programs Fail, Volume 2: Statistical Tests Comparing Monetary Policy to Growth, provides 1000 separate statistical tests on the US economy to prove these assertions.

Global crises are very rare events. After the Great Depression and the Great Stagflation, new macroeconomic paradigms associated with a new policy regime emerged. This book addresses how some macroeconomic ideas have failed, and examines which theories researchers should preserve and develop. It questions how the field of economics Ð still reeling from the global financial crisis initiated in the summer of 2007 Ð will respond. The contributors, nine highly-renowned macroeconomists, highlight the virtues of eclectic macroeconomics over an authoritarian normative approach, and illustrate that macroeconomic reasoning can still be a useful tool for carrying out practical policy analysis. As for emerging research programmes, their wide-ranging chapters remind us that there are positive approaches to and reasons to believe in old-fashioned macroeconomics. This challenging and thought-provoking book will prove a stimulating read for researchers, academics and students of economics, as well as for professional economists.