Argues that international financial cooperation is the only way out of the global economic crisis, and compares today's poor economic climate to the Great Depression.

A new way to understand financial crises—and a blueprint for tomorrow's recovery The Leaderless Economy reveals why international financial cooperation is the only solution to today's global economic crisis. In this timely and important book, Peter Temin and David Vines argue that our current predicament is a catastrophe rivaled only by the Great Depression. Taking an in-depth look at the history of both, they explain what went wrong and why, and demonstrate why international leadership is needed to restore prosperity and prevent future crises. Temin and Vines argue that the financial collapse of the 1930s was an "end-of-regime crisis" in which the economic leader of the nineteenth century, Great Britain, found itself unable to stem international panic as countries abandoned the gold standard. They trace how John Maynard Keynes struggled for years to identify the causes of the Great Depression, and draw valuable lessons from his intellectual journey. Today we are in the midst of a similar crisis, one in which the regime that led the world economy in the twentieth century—that of the United States—is ending. Temin and Vines show how America emerged from World War II as an economic and military powerhouse, but how deregulation and a lax attitude toward international monetary flows left the nation incapable of reining in an overleveraged financial sector and powerless to contain the 2008 financial panic. Fixed exchange rates in Europe and Asia have exacerbated the problem. The Leaderless Economy provides a blueprint for how renewed international leadership can bring today's industrial nations back into financial balance--domestically and between each other.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve read a more interesting, informing, and inspiring book.”—Bill Moyers What can we do beyond Occupy Wall Street? Political and economic systems are failing us, and it’s time for citizens to create change—individually and collaboratively. In The Leaderless Revolution, Carne Ross sounds a call to action. With dramatic stories from the United States and around the world, Ross’s analysis contrasts with the naïve, Panglossian optimism of globalization boosters like Thomas Friedman. Uncontrolled economic volatility, perpetual insecurity, rampant inequality, and accelerating climate change are heading us into a dangerous period of prolonged crisis. Ross—a former British diplomat to Iraq who resigned over his nation’s involvement in the U.S.-led invasion—draws from his own experiences to offer an empowering new vision of how we can put things right.

Lessons from the Great Depression provides an integrated view of the depression, covering the experience in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. Do events of the 1930s carry a message for the 1990s? Lessons from the Great Depression provides an integrated view of the depression, covering the experience in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. It describes the causes of the depression, why it was so widespread and prolonged, and what brought about eventual recovery. Peter Temin also finds parallels in recent history, in the relentless deflationary course followed by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and the British government in the early 1980s, and in the dogged adherence by the Reagan administration to policies generated by a discredited economic theory—supply-side economics.

Why the United States has developed an economy divided between rich and poor and how racism helped bring this about. The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America, and outlines ways to work toward greater equality so that America will no longer have one economy for the rich and one for the poor. Many poorer Americans live in conditions resembling those of a developing country—substandard education, dilapidated housing, and few stable employment opportunities. And although almost half of black Americans are poor, most poor people are not black. Conservative white politicians still appeal to the racism of poor white voters to get support for policies that harm low-income people as a whole, casting recipients of social programs as the Other—black, Latino, not like "us." Politicians also use mass incarceration as a tool to keep black and Latino Americans from participating fully in society. Money goes to a vast entrenched prison system rather than to education. In the dual justice system, the rich pay fines and the poor go to jail.

"After five years of groundbreaking research, Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom share some gripping stories. The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional "spiders," which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary "starfish," which rely on the power of peer relationships. This book explores what happens when starfish take on spiders (such as the music industry vs. Napster, Kazaa, and the P2P services that followed). It reveals how established companies and institutions, from IBM to Intuit to the U.S. government, are also learning how to incorporate starfish principles to achieve success."--BOOK JACKET.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The definitive full-scale portrait of J. Pierpont Morgan’s tumultuous life, both in and out of the public eye History has remembered him as a complex and contradictory figure, part robber baron and part patron saint. J. Pierpont Morgan earned his reputation as “the Napoleon of Wall Street” by reorganizing the nation’s railroads and creating industrial giants such as General Electric and U.S. Steel. At a time when the country had no Federal Reserve system, he appointed himself a one-man central bank. He had two wives, three yachts, four children, six houses, mistresses, and one of the finest art collections in America. In this extraordinary book, drawing extensively on new material, award-winning biographer Jean Strouse vividly portrays the financial colossus, the avid patron of the arts, and the entirely human character behind all the myths. Praise for Morgan “Magnificent . . . the fullest and most revealing look at this remarkable, complex man that we are likely to get.”—The Wall Street Journal “A masterpiece . . . No one else has told the tale of Pierpont Morgan in the detail, depth, and understanding of Jean Strouse.”—Robert Heilbroner, Los Angeles Times Book Review “It is hard to imagine a biographer coming any closer to perfection.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Strouse is in full command of Pierpont Morgan’s personal life, his financial operations, his collecting, and his benefactions, and presents a rich, vivid picture of the background against which they took place. . . . A magnificent biography.”—The New York Review of Books “With uncommon intelligence, maturity, and psychological insight, Morgan: American Financier is that rare masterpiece biography that enables us to penetrate the soul of a complex human being.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer