● America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb: How the Looming Debt Crisis Threatens the American Dream-and How We Can Turn the Tide Before It’s Too Late
By Peter Ferrara
Summary via publisher, HarperCollins
In America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, conservative policy expert Peter Ferrara explores the issue that will be THE hot-button topic from now until the 2012 presidential election: the looming bankruptcy of the federal government of the United States of America. Providing indisputable evidence that the American welfare state, aggressively expanded by Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress, is on the verge of rapid and total collapse, Ferrara offers concrete proposals for reforming entitlement programs along free market lines that will shift responsibility from centralized bureaucracies to individual Americans. For every concerned citizen, America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb is a must-read—a blueprint for avoiding the impending catastrophe before it’s too late.

● Making the Progressive Case: Towards A Stronger U.S. Economy
By David Coates
Summary via publisher, Continuum Books
At a time of tea parties and rallies to restore sanity, the political debate in America has become nothing more than a shouting match of various soundbites. This book offers a refreshing change by introducing both conservative arguments and liberal responses in a dispassionate and clear manner. Focusing on the issues that ail the economy under the Obama administration and their possible remedies, the book offers substantiated facts and rational arguments on each side, to promote true debate. Chapters on Obama’s response to the financial crisis, regulated market, green economy, need for reform and more offer a true assessment of the problems at hand and propose a progressive alternative to each of the key issues, from foreclosures to entitlement reform. In addition, two appendices provide additional, in-depth information on the roots of the crisis and an economics primer accessible to the lay person.
● The Essence of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
Edited with an Introduction by Hunter Lewis
Summary via publisher, Axio Press
Axios Press’s Essence of . . . series takes the greatest works ever written in the field of practical philosophy and pares them down to their essence. We select the best passages—the ones that are immediately relevant to us today, full of timeless wisdom and advice about the world and how best to live our lives—and leave behind the more obscure or less important bits. Our selections are not isolated: they flow together to create a seamless work that will capture your interest and attention from page one. And we provide useful notes and a solid introduction to the work.
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is widely regarded as the first modern work of economics and a bible of free market capitalism, although both claims are vigorously disputed. What cannot be disputed is that it offers a stinging indictment of what we today call “crony capitalism,” along with a masterful explanation of why such a system impoverishes the whole world. Originally published in 1776 as An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, it continues to be enormously influential. Currents of Smith’s thought run through the works of writers as diverse as Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Noam Chomsky, and Milton Friedman.
● The Origins of Business, Money, and Markets
By Keith Roberts
Summary via publisher, Columbia University Press
Understanding the origins of business is fundamental to grasping modern life, yet most historians look no further than the nineteenth century for their narratives. While the industrial revolution profoundly shaped business practice and much of the corporate organization we recognize today, the full sweep of business history actually begins much earlier, with the initial cities of Mesopotamia. In the first book to describe and explain those origins, Roberts travels back to the society of ancient traders and consumers, recasting the rise of modern business and underscoring the parallels between early and modern business practice.
● The Risk Controllers: Central Counterparty Clearing in Globalised Financial Markets
By Peter Norman
Summary via publisher, Wiley
Clearing houses, or CCPs, were among the very few organisations to emerge from the global financial crisis with their standing enhanced. In the chaotic aftermath of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, they successfully completed trades worth trillions of dollars in a multitude of financial instruments across listed and over-the-counter markets, and so helped avert financial Armageddon. That success transformed the business of clearing. Governments and regulators around the world gave CCPs and the clearing services they provide a front-line role in protecting the global economy from future excesses of finance. CCPs, which mitigate risk in financial markets, responded by greatly expanding their activities, notably in markets for over-the-counter derivatives, and often in fierce competition with one another. In The Risk Controllers, journalist and author Peter Norman describes how CCPs operate, how they handled the Lehman default, and the challenges they now face. Because central counterparty clearing is a complex business with a long history that continues to influence decisions and structures even in today’s fast changing world, The Risk Controllers explores the development of CCPs and clearing from the earliest times to the present.