Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Introduction to The Evil Axis of Finance
    The Introduction to The Evil Axis of Finance
    The Introduction to The Evil Axis of Finance
    Ebook39 pages31 minutes

    The Introduction to The Evil Axis of Finance

    By Richard Westra

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This short "teaser" contains the Introduction to Richard Westra's longer work, The Evil Axis of Finance, along with the Table of Contents for same. It is sufficiently intensive and comprehensive to stand alone, yet whet the appetite of readers for the main course, the book itself. The Evil Axis of Finance responds to the following issues, largely left untouched by commentators and scholars alike: why, despite a raft of potential international investment outlets, is a major share of global wealth and savings still impelled toward a US Wall Streetcentered casino? Why has an increasingly gaping chasm crystallized between bloating global financial activities and the “real-world economy of production and trade? How is it that wealthy governments’ injection of trillions of dollars into stumbling financial sectors across the globe is failing to create decent new jobs? This book connects the dots linking the 2008 meltdown-and over a decade of dress rehearsals for it-to a rigged global financial game that is unraveling the very foundations of modernity.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherClarity Press
    Release dateMar 4, 2015
    ISBN9780985271084
    The Introduction to The Evil Axis of Finance

    Read more from Richard Westra

    Related to The Introduction to The Evil Axis of Finance

    Related ebooks

    Economics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Where Has Inflation Gone?

      Dec 18, 2020

      Where Has Inflation Gone?
      2 min read

    • Article

      Monopoly Money: Is Microsoft’s Acquisition Of Activision Blizzard Good For Gaming?

      Jan 19, 2022

      In 2014, Microsoft bought Minecraft’s developer Mojang for what seemed, at the time, an eye-popping figure: $2.5bn (£1.8bn). It was the first in a series of bullish video-game studio acquisitions by the tech giant, whose games division has been led b

      3 min read

    • Article

      5 Stock Market Signs to Watch

      Aug 30, 2018

      It's no secret that the current bull market and economic expansion are getting long in the tooth. Eventually, the market will turn bearish, and history tells us that we're likely to see a recesssion six to nine months after the bull market's peak. Th

      2 min read

    • Article

      Investment For The Long Run

      Apr 30, 2020

      keynes’ famous quip that “in the long run, we’re all dead” has been misunderstood for almost a century. Many have interpreted it to mean that he cared little about the future. But that would be a mistake. He used it to explain how the quantity theory

      3 min read

    • Article

      Distrust of Cashless Society

      May 31, 2021

      The People’s Bank of China recently launched an e-RMB cyber money system allowing a “controllable anonymity” of financial transactions. This anonymity is only good until the government wants to track what the government determines to be suspicious tr

      3 min read

    • Article

      Culture Warrior In Chief

      Mar 21, 2024

      Culture Warrior In Chief
      14 min read

    • Article

      What’s In Store This Year

      Dec 29, 2023

      What’s In Store This Year
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Dangers Of Printing Money

      Oct 30, 2020

      modern monetary theory, or MMT as it is often called, is a new term for an old idea. Its proponents argue that a state, which issues fiat money does not have to resort to taxation and borrowing to pay its bills. It can fund itself simply by printing

      3 min read

    • Article

      Intel’s 10nm Nightmare What Went Wrong With Intel’s Latest Node?

      Mar 1, 2022

      As far back as July 2015, Intel publicly confirmed that its 10nm node was in trouble. Fast forward nearly seven years and we’ve only just got our hands on its first desktop 10nm processors. Moore’s Law dictates a doubling of transistor densities ever

      2 min read

    • Article

      From The Editor...

      Jun 9, 2023

      From The Editor...
      2 min read

    • Article

      Hardware

      Mar 1, 2022

      Hardware
      2 min read

    • Article

      Best Of The Financial Columnists

      Oct 21, 2022

      Janan Ganesh Financial Times Tesla founder Elon Musk’s apparent attempt to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is another reminder that “business people are all at sea in politics”, says Janan Ganesh. The reason? “They don’t understand

      3 min read

    • Article

      Central Banks Must Carry The Can

      Oct 8, 2021

      Supply shocks, rising prices and labour shortages are in the news. Analysts blame specific factors, ranging from the strength of the economic rebound to Brexit. The likely reality, however, is that the phenomena we see are connected and interconnecte

      3 min read

    • Article

      Recession On the Horizon?

      Apr 2, 2020

      Recession On the Horizon?
      5 min read

    • Article

      The End of Economics?

      Jan 22, 2019

      The End of Economics?
      5 min read

    • Article

      From The Editor

      Jul 20, 2021

      WHEN U.S. PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan into law, he sanctioned a coronavirus relief package that was about as historic as the pandemic itself. The sheer size of the fiscal injection was greater than the annual eco

      2 min read

    • Article

      Malignant Monetary Monocentricity

      Sep 1, 2020

      The monetary authority of the United States, the Federal Reserve, is widely perceived to be independent of politics. Founded with the relatively limited intention of formalizing the interbank clearing system, it would soon morph into a true central b

      26 min read

    • Article

      Michael Hiltzik: America Is Falling Out Of Love With Billionaires, And It's About Time

      Feb 1, 2019

      Our emerging political debate over taxing the rich seems to be getting bogged down in details - how high a tax rate, should we tax income or wealth, etc., etc. But this fixation on nuts and bolts is obscuring what may be the most important aspect of

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Economic Damage Is Barely Conceivable

      Apr 22, 2020

      Like most of us, Adam Tooze is stuck at home. The British-born economic historian and Columbia University professor of history had been on leave this school year to write a book about climate change. But now he’s studying a different global problem.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Surviving A Financial Crisis

      Oct 5, 2018

      Surviving A Financial Crisis
      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Introduction to The Evil Axis of Finance

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Introduction to The Evil Axis of Finance - Richard Westra

      http://www.claritypress.com

      INTRODUCTION

      THE STRANGLEHOLD

      ON THE

      GLOBAL FUTURE

      From the early stirrings of crisis in 2006-7 through the darkest days of the 2008-9 meltdown into this second decade of the 21st century, waves of financial and systemic crises have swept the world. First came trillions of dollars in emergency first aid for victims – Wall Street’s private multinational banks and financial intermediaries, insurance companies and mortgage lenders, as well as assorted non-financial multinational corporations. Second, the blame game: Was it the fault of snoozing regulators, rating agency conflict of interest, a shadow banking system of derivatives traders, delusions of ivy league quants, Ponzi-scheming criminals, or some combination of them? Third, were surveys of spreading mass public trauma: collapse of local banks, burgeoning personal debt peonage, increasing homelessness and spiraling unemployment in the US and elsewhere. Fourth, there was hope.

      In the US and across the world many breathed a big sigh of relief as Barrack Obama ascended to the Presidency. It was not only a question of US wars, secret rendition and torture. But here was a former university professor who actually read books and could understand policy advice given to him and act accordingly. Fifth came hope’s pledges. Trillions more dollars were injected into the economy to prop up what were effectively worthless, yet deemed vital, assets.¹ Legislation was promulgated for universal health care, green infrastructure, public sector employment, small business tax incentives, and so on. Finally the sages, like Federal Reserve (FED) Chairman Ben Bernanke, took to the stage with numbers that proclaimed the recession effectively over. True, there have been aftershocks: the near collapse or rating agency-deemed fragility of the banking systems of outlier states like Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain (the so-called PIGS) and persistent financial institution duress in the US heartland requiring more stimulus rescues, ongoing home foreclosures, and so on. But political elites remain on message: It’s the recovery stupid!

      Throughout all of this, there emerged one indisputable growth industry—that of meltdown books. I have read many of these, perhaps too many, as my credit card spending record with online retailers reveals. The best books from both mainstream and more radical sides of the political spectrum move beyond the blame game to probe the deeper systemic causes of the crisis, many redolent of an ominous déjà vu. Almost uniformly they zero in on processes of economic, political and legal change commencing in the US from the 1980s. Central to the accounts is the rise of Wall Street itself, populated at its apex by mega banks—these melded into financial behemoths through orgies of mergers and acquisitions (M&A)—that are now too big to fail. Economic

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1