When Money Destroys Nations

Since the financial crisis of 2008, the major governments of the world have resorted to printing large amounts of money to pay national debts and bail out banks. The warning signs are clear, and the collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar after years of rampant money printing is a frightening example of what lies in store for world economies if painful reform is not executed. When Money Destroys Nations tells the gripping story of the disintegration of the once-thriving Zimbabwean economy and how ordinary people survived in turbulent circumstances. Analysing this case within a global context, Philip Haslam and Russell Lamberti investigate the causes of hyperinflation and draw ominous parallels between Zimbabwe and the world's developed economies. The looming currency crises and hyperinflation in these major economies, particularly the United States, have the potential to turn the current world order upside down. This story of how money destroys nations holds lessons that cannot be ignored.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, the major governments of the world have resorted to printing vast sums of money to pay national debts and bail out banks. The warning signs are clear, and the collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar in 2009 after years of rampant money printing is a frightening example of what lies in store for the world's economies if painful, but necessary, reform is not enacted soon. When Money Destroys Nations tells the gripping story of the disintegration of the once-thriving Zimbabwean economy and how ordinary people survived in turbulent circumstances. Analysing this case within a global context, Philip Haslam and Russell Lamberti investigate the causes of hyperinflation and draw ominous parallels between Zimbabwe and the world's developed economies. The looming currency crises and possible hyperinflation in these major economies, particularly the United States, have the potential to turn the current world order upside down. Zimbabwe's lessons must not be ignored. This is the story of When Money Destroys Nations.

"Since the global financial crisis of 2008, the major governments of the world have resorted to printing vast sums of money to pay national debts and bail out banks. The warning signs are clear, and the collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar in 2009 after years of rampant money printing is a frightening example of what lies in store for the world's economies is painful, but necessary, reform is not enacted soon. When Money Destroys Nations tells the gripping story of the disintegration of the once-thriving Zimbabwean economy and how ordinary people survived in turbulent circumstances. Analysing this case within a gloabl context, Philip Haslam and Russell Lamberti investigate the causes of hyperinflation and draw ominous parallels between Zimbabwe and the world's developed economies. The looming currency crises and possible hyperinflation in these major economies, particularly the United States, have the potential to turn the current world order upside down. This story of how money destroys nations holds lessons that cannot be ignored."--Back cover.

Perkins, a former chief economist at a Boston strategic-consulting firm, confesses he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.

The cover motif is a piece of old German money. It is a Reichsbanknote issued on August 22, 1923 for one hundred million marks. Nine years earlier, that many marks would have been about 5 percent of all the German marks in the world, worth 23 million American dollars. On the day it was issued, it was worth about twenty dollars. Three months later, it was worth only a few thousandths of an American cent. The process by which this occurs is known as inflation. A few years before, in 1920 and 1921, Germany had enjoyed a remarkable prosperity envied by the rest of the world. Prices were steady, business was humming, everyone was working, the stock market was skyrocketing. The Germans were swimming in easy money. Within the year, they were drowning in it. Until it was all over, no one seemed to notice any connection between the earlier false boom and the later inflationary bust. In this book, Jens O. Parsson performs the neat trick of transforming the dry economic subject of inflation into a white-knuckles kind of blood-chiller. He begins with a freewheeling account of the spectacular inflation that all but destroyed Germany in 1923, taking it apart to find out both what made it tick and what made it finally end. He goes on to look at the American inflation that was steadily gaining force after 1962. In terms clear and fascinating enough for any layman, but with technical validity enough for any economist, he applies the lessons gleaned from the German inflation to find that too much about the American inflation was the same, lacking only the inexorable further deterioration that time would bring. The book concludes by charting out all the possible future prognoses for the American inflation, none easy but some much less catastrophic than others. Mr. Parsson brings much new light to bear on this subject. He lays on the line in tough, spare language exactly how and why the American inflation was caused, exactly who was responsible for causing it, exactly who unjustly benefited and who suffered from the inflation, exactly why the government could not permit the inflation to stop or even to cease growing worse, exactly who was going to pay the ultimate price, and exactly what would have to be done to avert the ultimate conclusion. This book packs a wallop. It is not for the timid, and it spares no tender sensibilities. The conclusions it reaches are shocking and are bound to provoke endless dispute. If they proved to approximate even remotely the correct analysis of the American inflation, hardly any American citizen could escape being the prey of inflation and no one could afford not to know where the inflation was taking him. In the economic daily lives of everyone, nothing will be the same after this book as it was before.

The extraordinary humanitarian Samantha Nutt gives a bracing and uncompromising account of her work in some of the most devastated corners of the world - and a new, provocative vision for changing course on growing militarisation. It is a brilliant distillation of Dr Nutt's observations over the course of 15 years providing hands-on care in some of the world's most violent flashpoints. Combining original research with her personal story, it is a deeply thoughtful meditation on war as it is being waged around the world against millions of civilians.

Gold Wars deals with gold's history, and especially the abandonment of gold-as-money under the modern welfare/warfare state. It shows how governments, fearing the affinity of free people for gold, fight it, thereby helping to destroy countries and the gold-mining industry.

"[A] magnificent history of money and finance."—New York Times Book Review "Convincingly makes the case that finance is a change-maker of change-makers."—Financial Times In the aftermath of recent financial crises, it's easy to see finance as a wrecking ball: something that destroys fortunes and jobs, and undermines governments and banks. In Money Changes Everything, leading financial historian William Goetzmann argues the exact opposite—that the development of finance has made the growth of civilizations possible. Goetzmann explains that finance is a time machine, a technology that allows us to move value forward and backward through time; and that this innovation has changed the very way we think about and plan for the future. He shows how finance was present at key moments in history: driving the invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, spurring the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome to become great empires, determining the rise and fall of dynasties in imperial China, and underwriting the trade expeditions that led Europeans to the New World. He also demonstrates how the apparatus we associate with a modern economy—stock markets, lines of credit, complex financial products, and international trade—were repeatedly developed, forgotten, and reinvented over the course of human history. Exploring the critical role of finance over the millennia, and around the world, Goetzmann details how wondrous financial technologies and institutions—money, bonds, banks, corporations, and more—have helped urban centers to expand and cultures to flourish. And it's not done reshaping our lives, as Goetzmann considers the challenges we face in the future, such as how to use the power of finance to care for an aging and expanding population. Money Changes Everything presents a fascinating look into the way that finance has steered the course of history.