The global economic downturn that followed the collapse of major US financial institutions is no doubt the most significant crisis of our times. Its effects on corporate and governmental balance sheets have been devastating, as have been its impacts on the employment and well being of tens of millions of citizens. It continues to pose major challenges to national policymakers and institutions around the world. Managing public uncertainty and anxiety is vital in coping with financial crises. This requires not just prompt action but, most of all, persuasive communication by government leaders. At the same time, the very occurrence of such crises raises acute questions about the effectiveness and robustness of current government policies and institutions. With the stakes being so high, defining and interpreting what is going on, how and why it happened, and what ought to be done now become key questions in the political and policy struggles that crises invariably unleash. In this volume, we study how heads of government, finance ministers and national bank governors in eight countries as well as the EU engage in such 'framing contests', and how their attempts to interpret the cascading events of the economic downturn were publicly received. Using systematic content analysis of speeches and media coverage, this volume offers a unique comparative assessment of public leadership in times of crisis.

This volume examines the considerable economic, social and political consequences of the present global crisis for world society. It focuses on central issues including crisis impacts on world society structures, crisis perceptions and public discourses, and experience of global crisis at local and regional levels.

As the banking crisis and its effects on the world economy have made plain, the stock market is of colossal importance to our livelihoods. In Framing Finance, Alex Preda looks at the history of the market to figure out how we arrived at a point where investing is not only commonplace, but critical, as market fluctuations threaten our plans to send our children to college or retire comfortably. As Preda discovers through extensive research, the public was once much more skeptical. For investing to become accepted, a deep-seated prejudice against speculation had to be overcome, and Preda reveals that over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries groups associated with stock exchanges in New York, London, and Paris managed to redefine finance as a scientific pursuit grounded in observational technology. But Preda also notes that as the financial data in which they trafficked became ever more difficult to understand, charismatic speculators emerged whose manipulations of the market undermined the benefits of widespread investment. And so, Framing Finance ends with an eye on the future, proposing a system of public financial education to counter the irrational elements that still animate the appeal of finance.

The 2008 crash was the worst financial crisis and the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. It triggered a complete overhaul of the global regulatory environment, ushering in a stream of new rules and laws to combat the perceived weakness of the financial system. While the global economy came back from the brink, the continuing effects of the crisis include increasing economic inequality and political polarization. After the Crash is an innovative analysis of the crisis and its ongoing influence on the global regulatory, financial, and political landscape, with timely discussions of the key issues for our economic future. It brings together a range of experts and practitioners, including Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner; former congressman Barney Frank; former treasury secretary Jacob Lew; Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England; and Steve Cutler, general counsel of JP Morgan Chase during the financial crisis. Each poses crucial questions: What were the origins of the crisis? How effective were international and domestic regulatory responses? Have we addressed the roots of the crisis through reform and regulation? Are our financial systems and the global economy better able to withstand another crash? After the Crash is vital reading as both a retrospective on the last crisis and an analysis of possible sources of the next one.

Economics has become an excessively esoteric discipline. Opportunities to bridge the gap between theorizing and policymaking are becoming increasingly limited. One issue of great importance to modern policymakers is the relationship between globalization and economic crisis. With unprecedented trends towards globalization (in part propelled by developments in information technology), the repercussions of economic crisis are more profound than ever before, particularly for developing countries. What Global Economic Crisis? bridges the gap between theory and policy by examining the destabilising effects of financial crises on economic growth, stability and development. It also presents some innovative ideas intended to inform the design of institutions able to foster more effective international policy coordination.

Much has been written on the financial crisis of 2008 – the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression – analysing its causes and the risks for the future of the global economy. This book takes an alternative approach which focuses on the legacy of the global financial crisis, what is remembered and what lessons have been drawn from it. This volume provides perspectives on this legacy from a variety of contributors including central bankers, regulators, politicians, academics, and journalists. They offer insight into what remains of the crisis in terms of public and industry awareness, changes to the post-2008 financial architecture, lessons from the national experiences of highly exposed small economies, and considers this legacy in terms of oversight by regulatory regimes. These diverse perspectives are drawn together here to ask how we can ensure that these lessons will be transmitted to the new generation of global financiers.