Preface
The author speaks to the life experience that led him to write this book: three decades working in various positions in the London financial markets has given him a great deal to think about.
He has a sense of ambivalence about financial markets in general: he admires the efficiency, energy, and purpose - but on the other hand, the narrow-minded focus on financial gain, to the extent it takes precedence over the very purpose of markets, is troubling and dysfunctional to the welfare of society the markets serve.
He also reflects on some of his previous books, and considers that the present one ties up some of the loose ends that were left dangling:
- The Death of Inflation (1996) considered that of low inflation in a period of high economic growth was an unsustainable paradox, which was evidenced by the economic collapse a decade later.
- Money for Nothing (2003) considered the phenomenon of economic bubbles, which create the opportunity to gain great profits while producing no additional value, which is another paradox that resolved in the economic crisis.
While he feels both books have been validated by the disastrous financial upheaval of the early twenty-first century, they were not without their flaws and were likely myopic in considering certain symptoms without a more holistic view of the state of their financial environs.
The present book is not a book of forecasts, nor does it focus narrowly on a given subtopic, but instead takes a broader view of the recent crises to arrive at a more general perspective on the nature of market economies: what works, what went wrong, and how it can happen again, in regard to the entire system of capitalism as it is in present practice.