Red Flags
Why Xi’s China Is In Jeopardy
Reviewer: Keith Wade, Chief Economist, Schroders
A trusted economic commentator provides a penetrating account of the threats to China's continued economic rise Under President Xi Jinping, China has become a large and confident power both at home and abroad, but the country also faces serious challenges. In this critical take on China's future, economist George Magnus explores four key traps that China must confront and overcome in order to thrive: debt, middle income, the Renminbi, and an aging population.
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Populism and Economics
Reviewer: Dame Kate Barker, Chairman of Trustees, British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme
Populism and Economics, Charles Dumas' latest book, examines the reasons for the rise in populism - Brexit and the election of Trump among other events - and how this discontent with the status quo has affected economics, both perceptions and reality.
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The Value of Everything
Making and Taking in the Global Economy
Reviewer: Rosemary Connell
Who really creates wealth in our world? And how do we decide the value of what they do? In modern capitalism, value-extraction - the siphoning off of profits, from shareholders' dividends to bankers' bonuses - is rewarded more highly than value-creation- the productive process that drives a healthy economy and society. We misidentify takers as makers, and have lost sight of what value really means. Yet, argues Mariana Mazzucato in this penetrating and passionate new book, if we are to reform capitalism we urgently need to rethink where wealth comes from. Who is creating it, who is extracting it, and who is destroying it?
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The Growth Delusion
The Wealth and Well‑Being of Nations
Reviewer: Dr Rebecca Harding, CEO, Coriolis Technologies
In The Growth Delusion, author and prize-winning journalist David Pilling explores how economists and their cult of growth have hijacked our policy-making and infiltrated our thinking about what makes societies work. Our policies are geared relentlessly towards increasing our standard measure of growth, Gross Domestic Product. By this yardstick we have never been wealthier or happier. So why doesn't it feel that way? Why are we living in such fractured times, with global populism on the rise and wealth inequality as stark as ever?
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The Weaponization of Trade
The Great Unbalancing of Politics and Economics
Reviewer: Ian Bright
Trade is being weaponized – and this is not good. As politicians on both sides of the Atlantic raise the stakes, trade is increasingly a tool of coercion to achieve strategic influence. This book looks at the risks for us all as trade becomes an instrument of foreign policy, and it shows how politicians could turn things around.
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Till Time’s Last Sand
A History of the Bank of England
Reviewer: Kevin Gardner, Economics & Intl Divisions, Bank of England (1982-86)
David Kynaston was born in Aldershot in 1951. He has been a professional historian since 1973 and has written eighteen books, including The City of London (1994-2001), a widely acclaimed four-volume history, and W.G.'s Birthday Party, an account of the Gentleman vs. the Players at Lord's in July 1898. He is the author of Austerity Britain, 1945-51, the first title in a series of books covering the history of post-war Britain (1945-1979) under the collective title 'Tales of a New Jerusalem'. He is currently a visiting professor at Kingston University.
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Edge of Chaos
Why Democracy Is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth‑and How to Fix It
Reviewer: Rosemary Connell
In Edge of Chaos, Dambisa Moyo sets out the new political and economic challenges facing the world, and the specific, radical solutions needed to resolve these issues and reignite global growth. Dambisa enumerates the four headwinds of demographics, inequality, commodity scarcity and technological innovation that are driving social and economic unrest, and argues for a fundamental retooling of democratic capitalism to address current problems and deliver better outcomes in the future.
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The Political Power of Global Corporations
Reviewer: Christine Shields
In this book, John Mikler re–casts global corporations as political actors with complex identities and strategies. Debunking the idea of global corporations as exclusively profit–driven entities, he shows how they seek not only to drive or modify the agendas of states but to govern in their own right. He also explains why we need to re–territorialize global corporations as political actors that reflect and project the political power of the states and regions from which they hail.
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How Global Currencies Work - Past, Present and Future
Reviewer: William A Allen, National Institute of Economic & Social Research
Offering a new history of global finance over the past two centuries, and marshalling extensive new data to test established theories of how global currencies work, Barry Eichengreen, Arnaud Mehl, and Livia Chitu argue for a new view, in which several national monies can share international currency status, and their importance can change rapidly.
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Capitalism without Capital
The rise of the intangible economy
Reviewer: Matthew Whittaker
The first comprehensive account of the growing dominance of the intangible economy Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, R&D, or software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers.
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