The economic crisis has created a host of problems for working people: collapsing wages, lost jobs, ruined pensions, and the anxiety that comes with not knowing what tomorrow willbring. Compounding all this is a lack of reliable information that speaks to the realities of workers. Commentators and pundits seem more confused than anyone, and economists—the so-called "experts"—still cling to bankrupt ideologies that failed to predict the crisis and offer nothing to explain it. In this short, clear, and concise book, Fred Magdoff and Michael D. Yates explain the nature of the economic crisis. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors demonstrate that this crisis is not some aberration from a normally benign capitalism but rather the normal and even expected outcome of a thoroughly irrational and destructive system. No amount of tinkering with capitalism, whether it be discredited neoliberalism or the return of Keynesianism and a "new" New Deal, can overcome the core contradiction of the system: the daily exploitation and degradation of the majority of the world’s people by a tiny minority of business owners. While the current economic maelstrom has laid bare the web of greed, corruption, and propaganda that are central to capitalism, only an aroused public, demanding the right to health care, decent employment, a secure old age, and a clean and healthy environment, can lead the United States and the world out of the worst crisis since the Great Depression and toward a system of production and distribution conducive to human happiness. This book is aimed primarily at working people, students, and activists, who want not just to understand the world but to change it.

Succeeding in a 21st Century world requires learning and employing 21st Century tools. Buy & Hope is a last-century strategy that has investors riding the Wall Street rollercoaster in the 21st Century. Learn easy-as-a-pie-chart strategies that earned gains in the last two recessions and have outperformed the bull markets in between. This system is so easy and efficacious that it is enthusiastically recommended by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker, the former chairman of TD AMERITRADE Joe Moglia and thousands of people who have transformed their lives and relationship with money as a result of reading and implementing these time-proven strategies. Also learn why annual rebalancing is a Buy Low, Sell High plan on auto-pilot that takes the emotions out of investing, when you are using it side-by-side with our easy, pie-chart nest egg strategies.The Thrive Budget will teach you how to thrive, rather than struggling to survive. Cutting out café lattes might make you cranky, but it won't make you rich. Neither will putting money in piggy banks and jars. Learn what does work, and where the real holes in your budget are - in the big-ticket bills - and what you can do to stop making everyone else rich and start living a richer life. The 2020 Recession presents challenges that you should not ignore. Being informed and having wisdom as your guide (rather than a broker-salesman) allows you to be the boss of your money, protect your wealth and position yourself best in the challenging years that lie ahead.

Textbook for students at many levels provides the fundamentals for understanding the changing international economic system. The principles of international trade and finance are highlighted by the historical context that shapes their development. The book is written in simple, nontechnical language, but it neither trivializes the international sector, as introductory textbooks usually do, nor does it mathematize the subject, which is the approach of most advanced texts. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A second, updated edition of this accessible and myth-dispelling introduction to our current economic system.