BOOK BITS FOR SATURDAY: 12.11.2010

Uprising: Will Emerging Markets Shape or Shake the World Economy?
By George Magnus
Review via Financial Times
It is not often these days that an investment banker takes a sceptical view of emerging markets. Such has been the rush to put money into China, India, Brazil and the rest that caution has often been thrown to the wind…Magnus rightly warns that financial instability and financial euphoria often go together, with disastrous results.
Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis
By Anatole Kaletsky
Summary via publisher, Public Affairs
In this provocative book, Anatole Kaletsky re-interprets the financial crisis as part of an evolutionary process inherent to the nature of democratic capitalism. Capitalism, he argues, is resilient. Its first form, Capitalism 1.0, was the classical laissez-faire capitalism that lasted from 1776 until 1930. Next was Capitalism 2.0, New Deal Keynesian social capitalism created in the 1930s and extinguished in the 1970s. Its last mutation, Reagan-Thatcher market fundamentalism, culminated in the financially-dominated globalization of the past decade and triggered the recession of 2009-10. The self-destruction of Capitalism 3.0 leaves the field open for the next phase of capitalism’s evolution. Capitalism is likely to transform in the coming decades into something different both from the totally deregulated market fundamentalism of Reagan/Thatcher and from the Roosevelt-Kennedy era. This is Capitalism 4.0.


Beyond the Crash: Overcoming the First Crisis of Globalization
By Gordon Brown
Review via Marco Trade News
The international financial crisis that has held our global economy in its grip for too long still seems to be in full stride. Former British Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown believes the crisis can be reversed, but that the world’s leaders must work together if we are to avoid a decade of lost jobs and low growth.
Brown speaks both as someone who was in the room driving discussions that led to some crucial decisions and as an expert renowned for his remarkable financial acumen. No one who had Brown’s access has written about the crisis yet, and no one has written so convincingly about what the global community must do next in order to climb out of this abyss. Brown outlines the shocking recklessness and irresponsibility of the banks that he believes contributed to the depth and breadth of the crisis. As he sees it, the crisis was brought on not simply by technical failings, but by ethical failings too. Brown argues that markets need morals and suggests that the only way to truly ensure that the world economy does not flounder so badly again is to institute a banking constitution and a global growth plan for jobs and justice.
See No Evil: Uncovering The Truth Behind The Financial Crisis
By Erik Banks
Summary via publisher, Palgrave Macmillan
The story of the recent global economic crisis is told in the words of the main players in the drama. Including quotes from bankers, rating agencies, housing agencies, regulators, politicians and media figures. Erik Banks’ latest book shows why we are doomed to experience further financial crises in the future.
China After the Subprime Crisis: Opportunities in The New Economic Landscape
By Chi Lo
Summary via publisher, Palgrave Macmillan
This book analyzes the post-subprime crisis world from the global, Asian and Chinese perspectives. It dispels some of the myths about the crisis’s effects on Asia and China; and exposes the ugly truth of bailout policies and their distortion and hindering of the world’s economic rebalancing effort in the post-subprime era.